Gerald Wilson, secretary of the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department, this week welcomed delegates to the Society for Research into Higher Education's annual conference at Heriot-Watt University, commenting that the 1996 Push guide to higher education rightly emphasised the attractiveness of the university campus. "The guide also refers to the swans that inhabit the campus's loch. I was relieved to see that the author also found the swans bad-tempered. I had previously assumed that it was only visiting government officials that they did not care for."