It seems that Michael Gove, when at Oxford, once pelted a love rival with rotten eggs, and then sprayed the poor chap with fire extinguisher fluid. So perhaps Nick Narcoleptic is right when he says that the Education Secretary is out of control.

Here at The Slog, we’ve been sifting through some of Mr Jove’s latest college curriculum ideas, one of which is the compulsory introduction of examinations for all young people on the unfailing rectitude of neoliberal capitalist theory. A DfE official points out that there “will be no practical element in the examining process, as it often proves rather difficult to get the theory to work, as such”. Here is the official’s first draft of next year’s Part II Management Theory exam for the Seventh Adventist University of West Ohio in Lewes:

Examination of Module IV students: Neoliberal efficiency theory

Do not answer any questions you find difficult. Use BOTH sides of the paper, and give answers out of BOTH sides of the mouth where possible. You MUST answer at least TWO f**kwitted questions.

1. Mr Best consumes alcohol at an efficiency rate of 140%. His imbibe lead over other footballers means that he will be a non-functioning alcoholic by 1990. Devise programme going forward to ensure that Mr Best’s intake efficiency can be upweighted to 175%.
2. I saw a log starting at the thick end, but halfway through wonder if I should’ve started at the thin end. If I saw at the thick end it will take longer to cut through, but the weight of the end will mean that the cut piece falls away earlier under its own weight. Describe in no more than 200 words why you would conclude I am right, wrong, sad or just f**king stupid to be cutting a log when there are unemployed guys who would do it for cash, when I could be working more productively as a writer OR ask awkward questions about the length of the log, and my level of enjoyment in mindlessly cutting logs in the first place.
3. 560 accountants are found dead in 400 cubic metres of concrete at the bottom of the River Thames. Which of these explanations would you deem most credible? 3.1 Socio-economic cleansing 3.2 A major scam involving RBS 3.3 They did it for the shareholders 3.4 Every revolution has to start somewhere 3.5 They were all about to blow the whistle on Mayor Johnson.
4. Boyd Bankfine calculates that by paying very bright people enormous bonuses, he can invent six new investment packages that increase profitability by 140%. Four of the packages are, in turn, based on loans granted to dogs, a Bull US housing market, downmarket New York rental payments, and a recovery in the price of candles. Which of these alternatives should he choose for the last two, and why?

–         Zeppelin futures

–         DDT as a miracle cancer cure

–         Fukushima property prices

–         Double-digit growth in Greece

–         Sino-Japanese rapprochement

5.Sir Jeremiah Junta argues that old people are not being kept alive with enough efficiency, as there are already three times as many people being born as die. He deduces that Nurses and carers need to care twice as much, because he doesn’t really care at all. Scope out a critical path analysis in the food sustainability space using increased old person availability as the core benchmark. What would be the efficiency coefficient of improving senior citizens’ diet in order to fatten them up?

6. A Mr Georgiades Unbornopoulus has an annual tax income of £600bn. He has twenty million people earning an average of £25,000 per annum, and four million people costing him an average £16,000 per annum in benefits because they have been un-employed by large multinational companies with two concerns: keeping people costs down, and avoiding at least 60% of the tax they really owe. They do this to benefit approximately 120,000 people or things called shareholders. There are 640 such companies available to pay Georgiades, earning an average taxable income of £12M each year. Explain, in the style of Daniel Hannan, why Mr Unbornopoulus does not want to tax the multinationals, or think employing people is better than rewarding shareholders who have already been given £630bn in QE dividends. Write a letter to the Labour MP Tom Watson explaining why Unbornopoulus is not insane, a pillock, under the cosh from his mates in the City, or mathematically dyslexic.

Yesterday at The Slog: Little Osborne and Big Cove go Yeo-smarming