Bright red herring spotted in Commons
Did the Tories strike a duff note when they criticised the OU?
In 1965 Christopher Chataway a Conservative MP who had worked in news and current affairs for both ITN and the BBC, quoted Education which suggested that the topic about which most nonsense was talked was educational television. He went on to call the notion of a university of the air:
a bright red herring [with] qualities of superficial smartness and underlying irrelevance which made it irresistible as an election gimmick. However irresistible it may have been at the time I hope that the Government will not feel committed to this particular pre-election idea. On examination, there is not very much to it, as a number of educationalists have concluded.