I can well appreciate the problems facing universities when it comes to trying to root out plagiarism. Hardly a day goes by without the site stats here picking up two or three referrals - usually from Google - where the person at the other end has obviously just rammed their essay question into the search engine in its entirety in the hope that it’ll spit out a more or less complete essay in return.

I’d guess everyone who’s been to university will have their own favorite tale of plagiarism uncovered - even the most innattentive lecturer usually manages to catch at least one student trying it on every year - with the best stories invariably being those which relate the most spectacular acts of academic stupidity such as the sociology student on my own degree course who succeeded in plagerising the university’s own Professor of Sociology without realising that he would be the one making their essay.

All of which leads me to yet another apparent academic own goal, as related by Eve Garrard over at the always excellent Normblog who tells of one unnamed institution which has taken to only penalising female students for plagiarism on the pretext that they’re apparently ‘more amenable to being punished’.

More amenable to being punished? WTF has that got to do with it?

Back in my own student days, plagiarism was dealt with in a very simple and straightforward manner - get caught doing it and you got a big fat zero and the invitation to try again or fail the module. There was nothing amenable about it, that was just the way it was.

Of course this was in the pre-Internet days when you really had to work at plagiarizing by finding a suitable source for yourself - no Googling for answers back then - and with a limited range of source material to rip off chances were that if you did try it on then there was every prospect of having picked on something your lecturer was familar with and getting caught but still you’d get one or two people give it a go even then.

Today, is the site stats here are anything to go by, the problem of plagiarism is becoming endemic, not just here but all over the world, to the extent that you start to wonder just what the real value of a university degree is likely to be in future and how quickly we’ll find ourselves in the same situation as exists in the states where your first degree is largely meaningless and its only when you’ve got at least a Masters that you’re taken seriously.

This is question for which there probably are no easy answers, not when the push is on from Government to make having a degree the norm (no pun intended) and not the indicator of academic ability and excellence it used to be, still its sad to note both that plagiarism appears to be on the rise and that, at least, some universities appear to lack either the gumption or resolve to deal with it effectively.

Given his borderline obsession with voting irregularities you might have thought that John Hemming would have had plenty to say on the subject of voting patterns Saturday’s Eurovision song contest but apparently not - as yet - although I suppose we should be grateful that we’re not alone in being loathed by most of the rest of Europe and that they appear to hate the French, Germans and Spanish as much, if not a little bit more than us.

I think it should be obvious by now, even to the BBC, that we don’t have a hope in hells chance of actually winning the damn thing short of hiring next year’s entry from somewhere in Eastern Europe or the Balkans in the vain hope that we can get a jump on the (Eastern) bloc voting game and the only real purpose the ‘contest’ now serves is to provide an evening’s light relief listening to Wogan taking the piss of of Johnny Foreigner on our behalf. Face it, we’re only in it these days because we put so much of the TV’s right’s cash for it that they daren’t get shot of us - unlike the Irish who didn’t even make it through the qualifying round.

So what should we do? Do we take the same view as the Italians and just give it all up as a bad job?

Nope. I’ve got a much better idea.

Its all just a bit of laugh so lets just treat it as one. Do what the Norwegian’s did and simply choose entries to take the piss - at least I assume that’s what they were up as the idea that their 1980’s glam metal throwback act from Saturday is what passes for fashionable over the North Sea is a truly scarey thought.

In fact, for next years contest, lets go the whole hog and hook up in pact with Ireland - you guys over there talk to McGowan about reforming the Pogues and we’ll gladly match you by sending the Happy Mondays over - ther’s no chance that either will win but at least we can be sure they’ll have drunk Athens dry by the time its all over.

Look, I am serious here. Thanks to the fact that we more or less bankroll the whole event - along with the Germans, French and Spanish - they can’t afford to throw us out no matter what we enter so why not make the most of it and start seriously taking the piss. We send ‘em Ryder and Bez next year, follow that up with Motorhead the year after and then after that, who know? Why not a Sex Pistols reunion, Cradle of Filth or the Prodigy? Better still, get Christopher Guest to reform Spinal Tap for the night - lets face it anythings got to better that trotting out yet more sad reality TV losers.

All we do then is sit back, listen to Wogan’s commentary ang yack it up while watch a crowd of Eastern Europeans all loks ta each other and try to work out what the fuck we’re trying to do to them.

You have to admit, it would be the perfect response.