One of Peta’s employees obtained a job at Huntingdon while still working for the organisation and over eight months used

One of Peta’s employees obtained a job at Huntingdon while still working for the organisation and over eight months used a hidden camera to shoot video footage and take photographs of animals which it wants to use in its defence. Peta is involved in a preliminary hearing in a Virginian court with Huntingdon before the case proper begins on 8 December. While Peta was not allowed to show its material in the preliminary hearing, the judge ruled that the organisation would be allowed to present material at the December trial, which will be before a jury.Ingrid Newkirk, president of Peta said: “This is a crucial case. We are fighting for the right to make undercover investigations.

If we lose, no one will ever know what goes on in this or in any company.” The Huntingdon case is the second of its kind to come before the US courts. In the first case Food Lion, a US grocery chain, successfully sued ABC News for using a hidden camera to film hygiene practices in its stores.Ms Newkirk was disappointed the judge had not allowed Peta to show the material to the court “People who test on animals will be popping champagne corks. The judge’s view is that we should have banged on Huntingdon’s door to be allowed in. But why do you think the Home Office inspectors in the UK saw nothing. Did they believe Huntingdon would abuse animals in front of inspectors?”A Huntingdon representative in court was adamant that the company had a right to secrecy and said the public had no right to know what went on in its workplace in the US The case continues.. Two former employees of Dillon Read Securities, including a compliance officer who tricked his employer into paying for part of his house extension, have been expelled from the Securities and Futures Authority’s register of managers. Clive Harris perpetrated the scam after he contracted a builder to help Dillon Read move office in November 1992 when he was a director of finance at the firm.

He then contracted the same builder to extend his home at a cost of pounds 15,000, but only paid pounds 10,000 himself, adding the rest of the bill to Dillon Read’s invoice.
Mr Harris’s misconduct was only discovered almost four years later by another member of staff in September 1996. But when it comes to arriving at the overall degree classification, efforts are made to give the candidate (who remains anonymous) the benefit of the doubt – recognising the subjectivity in marking in most non-science subjects.In one university, for example, while 70 per cent is the mark necessary for a first-class answer, candidates will be awarded a first overall if they obtain 70 per cent in at least half of their papers, and at least an overall average of 65 per cent. When I examine in various universities in Middle England, what continually strikes me is that the marking of individual questions and examination papers is pretty stern (standards of marking have not dropped over the years). If this impression is indeed correct, then the message ought to go out that a Cambridge first is better than at most places elsewhere; otherwise, arising from Jill’s perception of things, student recruitment at this august university ought to plummet.As to examining procedures, the difference between Cambridge and many other universities may be that Cambridge is mean-spirited, while generosity of spirit prevails elsewhere. But is this compatible with the currently politically correct view that a first from Cambridge “is the same as” a first from anywhere else? From what my daughter and her friends tell me it does seem that, partly thanks to the college tutorial system, greater levels of work and intellectual accomplishment compressed into briefer periods of time are required from the Cambridge student compared with what most other universities would impose on their students. But our perspectives together have led me to think about three things – about student workload in British universities, about examining procedures, and about the reporting of overall degree classifications.On the matter of workload I absolutely believe that a student should be intellectually stretched as far as he or she will go, and so am resolutely against imposing on all universities a uniform curriculum for each academic discipline.

On the other hand, I wanted to tell her that to have a Cambridge degree is a cut above having a degree from almost all other universities in the country, and that this should give her a head start in the world of work that now confronted her.My message to my daughter is clearly riddled with contradictions, just as Jill’s perceptions of things are no doubt shot through with prejudice. I wanted to protest to Jill that the firsts and 2.1s awarded outside Cambridge are definitely worthy of the name, and that in any case top A-level grades by no means inevitably lead to a first-class university degree. Also, I indignantly wanted to inform her that my students who get firsts work extremely hard. If I had gone to a university in Middle England I would have got a 2.1, or perhaps a first, with much less work, either at university or at school beforehand.”
This put me in a quandary, for I am a lecturer at one of the universities in Middle England in a non-science discipline fairly close to Jill’s, and I also play my part in moderating the standards of other British universities under the external examining system.