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The Independent today reports that US researchers have found that Magic mushrooms can induce mystical effects.

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 11 July 2006
A universal mystical experience with life-changing effects can be produced by the hallucinogen contained in magic mushrooms, scientists claim today.

Forty years after Timothy Leary, the apostle of drug-induced mysticism, urged his hippie followers to "tune in, turn on, and drop out", researchers at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, have for the first time demonstrated that mystical experiences can be produced safely in the laboratory. They say that there is no difference between drug-induced mystical experiences and the spontaneous religious ones that believers have reported for centuries. They are "descriptively identical".

Only a few millennia late. Maybe we can have 'shrooms' legalised again as a religious rite/right.

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Since the Vatican last week tried to redefine the "Seven Deadly Sins" and the events of the last few days in the financial markets I thought I would share a nice quote by a chap called Josiah Stamp, a liberal economist, tax policy expert, director of he Bank of England for a while, chairman of the LMS Railway company, and at the time reputed to be the second wealthiest man in Britain:

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."

Merseyside police work with Revenue and Customs and other agencies to stop £166m of drugs entering the country

...there's one missing from this list. Can you guess? No, how could you. Every four years members of staff at Oxford Brookes University get to elect two members of the Board of Governors of the university. One from the teaching staff and one from the non-teaching staff.

I have run twice now, in 2002 and in 1998. And I intend to run again. Nominations close this coming Friday. From what I can gather, for that last sixteen years the non-teaching staff position has been carved up between two of the leading UNISON branch officials, with Jon Appleton serving two terms up till 1998 and Ann Black serving two terms since then. For a new boy just two years into my time at the university in 1998 I didn't do badly, at least forcing a second count, if memory serves.

The rules state that one can only hold the position for two consecutive terms, so Ann is out of it this time, but I imagine Jon will once again throw his hat into the ring. But it's time this "comfy" arrangement was broken for a while. The university faces new challenges. A new Vice-Chancellor next year will bring new opportunities to affect the future development of the university. Proposals to radically redevelop the university's estate will affect staff, students and local community profoundly. And the ongoing discussions about the shape of the university's academic offering will need to be handled sensitively and with the foresight needed to try to predict patterns of student demand for many years into the future.

I have now been here for the best part of eleven years - the anniversary will be in January. Not only do I daily see how staff in virtually every department have to work and the pressures on them, but having lived on site for most of that time I, uniquely, have "24/7" experience of life at Brookes and see how changes have affected students and staff in the areas of halls and community links as well.

Oxford Brookes University is a crucial part of my vision for Oxford as a whole and how we develop will affect the city as a whole. Like never before we are in an era when technological change and advancement will make the difference between playing on the world stage and being A.N.Other UK university - being "one of the best" rather than merely the "best of the new" universities as the current V-C puts it.

How we work, how we communicate, how we commute and how we live could be radically altered in the next few years. Leading a campaign for a more cooperative and community focussed way of financing affordable housing, together with my time as a city councillor and in a previous existence in the world of investment management gives me I think a good combination of skills to be able to contribute to and scrutinize plans for large scale capital investment in the university and to be able to watch out for aspects that will affect us as employees in particular, whilst also ensuring that strong links with the local community are maintained and enhanced in the process.

More recently I have been active in lobbying for a project to cover Oxford with wireless broadband access so that all our citizens can fully participate in the new digital world of instant communications and learning, which will be important for the development of the city as a continuing world class education and research base.

So, if you know anyone who is a non-teaching member of staff at Brookes, point them in this direction please. And if you are eligible to vote, I hope you will give me a chance this time round.

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