Oxford university

  When Cecil Rhodes was drawing up his will his final dream was of British world domination.

Freedom of speech is a terribly precious thing, which we should all cherish. So let’s not waste it on people with whom we disagree. That seems to be the considered view of those assorted, privileged genii at Oxford University, whose student’s union banned from its Freshers Week a satirical magazine which it feared might cause offence. The magazine is called No Offence and is produced by students. Some incalculably humourless, self-righteous little berk, said: 'We at OUSU do not wish to have an event which is intended to welcome new students to Oxford associated with a publication making light of racism, sexual violence, and homophobia in an attempt at satire'. No indeed.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thegreatbritishkowtow/media.mp3" title="Rod Liddle and James Delingpole debate if all right wing people have bad music tastes" startat=700] Listen [/audioplayer]This week I woke up shocked to find myself on the front page of the Daily Mail. Apparently I’m the first person in history to have gone on the record about taking drugs with a British prime minister. But it’s really no big deal is it? Had I thought so, I’d never have spilled the beans. In fact, I think it’s one of those perfect non-scandal scandals in which all parties benefit. Dave acquires an extra bit of hinterland and is revealed to have been a normal young man. I get 100 more Twitter followers and a couple of columns.

Although Tatler received a boost to its readership following the BBC's 'Posh People: Inside Tatler', a fly-on-the-wall documentary about the magazine, for some 'posh people' the society bible has long been essential reading. One such man who fits this description is none other than the current Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thanks to Tatler's Bystander archive, Mr S has been granted a glimpse into the 21st birthday celebrations of a young Gideon Osborne. https://twitter.com/sophiamcoutts/status/634681872321265664 His party was covered by the magazine back in 1992, and shows that Osborne enjoyed a bash at the trendy Groucho club where guests toasted him 'endlessly' with champagne.

This morning Jo Johnson gave a speech in which he outlined his recommendations for the way in which universities grade students. The new science and universities minister suggested that they rethink the current honours system and instead have a 'dual running' with regards degree classifications and grade point averages. If his idea does become a reality and there is less of a focus on degree classifications, Mr S suspects it will be music to the ears of Jo's siblings, Boris and Rachel. Jo was the only one of the three to achieve a first class degree from Oxford, an achievement which was reportedly a cause of envy for Boris, who along with his sister Rachel, only managed to achieve a 2.

'People are terribly interested in the election,' said Christopher Ricks before his 2004 inaugural lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry, 'but then not terribly interested in the lecture, which I’m afraid is life.' This year even the election campaign has been quite subdued. There has been no anonymous smear campaign as in 2009, no wildcard candidate like Stephen Moss in 2010 ('Yes we scan!'), and only one, very tame, squabble after Melvyn Bragg switched his support from Wole Soyinka to Simon Armitage. There remains an awkward question about whether the Professorship election deserves all the fuss.

You can’t be on a campus for more than 10 minutes nowadays without hearing about inclusivity. Universities and students’ unions are mad for it. At the University of Sussex, a statement declaring that ‘The Union is committed to providing an inclusive and supportive environment’ has to be read, aloud, before every students’ union meeting. Students who want to set up a new society at the University of Bristol must satisfactorily prove that they will ‘respect and promote the Bristol SU values of equality, diversity, safe space and inclusivity’. It’s big in America, too.

Say what you will about Gordon Brown — and plenty have over the last 24 hours — but there is one achievement even his harshest detractors can not critique: he broke the Oxford mould among modern Prime Ministers. Since the Second World War, Oxford University has produced the majority of Prime Ministers, outstripping the rest of the country's institutions and even their arch rivals Cambridge. Aside from those who didn't go to university (John Major, Jim Callaghan and Winston Churchill), Brown has so far been the only non-Oxford PM since 1945 — instead he went to Edinburgh: [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/CSz9t/index.html"] Despite Oxford's long history of churning out Prime Ministers, it was not always so slanted in favour of one institution.