Stunned by silence

While Middlesex University and its staff wrangle over the extent of the redundancies in the letters pages, The Diary has received a note from a retired lecturer at the university concerned about the cuts and seeking more information from the university's publications and its website - unfortunately, to no avail.

The former lecturer said: "You might think that I shouldn't be amazed (the times being what they are), but I still think that the university's official public silence on the matter is shocking and that this, in itself, deserves some public comment."