Mark Andrews on Saturday: Demilitarising universities, a return to the wine lakes, and just who is being hustled?

They sound a right bundle of laughs at Aberdeen University's students union, don't they?

To pass the time away from being locked in their rooms with just a computer screen for company, the students union decided to hold an online debate about whether or not to 'demilitarise the campus'. Which sounds more like a job for the United Nation, but actually meant banning the British Army from recruitment events. I mean, why would the average Gaelic Studies graduate want a career in the Army, with all those jobs in Burger King?

Apparently, some overseas students were unhappy about the prospect of having squaddies on campus, prompting 19-year-old Elizabeth Heverin to reply: "If the British military makes them feel uncomfortable, why did they come to a British uni? Rule Britannia."

The students union has banned Miss Heverin from entering any of its buildings for two weeks.

I'm sure she will get over it though. Particularly as the union buildings are closed due to lockdown.

The BBC has promised a substantial investment in the Midlands, including at least one prime-time drama series which will be made in the region.

Forgive me for not getting too excited. For all its obsessions with diversity, the BBC does not have a great track record of representing the West Midlands.

Back in 2009 the former regeneration quango Advantage West Midlands gave £400,000 of taxpayers' money to bring the popular drama series Hustle to the region. At the time it was hailed as a great coup, only for it to emerge that after filming the series in central Birmingham, the scenes were interspersed with shots of the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament to make viewers think it was in London.

Hustle, by the way, was about a team of professional con artists with an amazing talent for pulling the wool over people's eyes...

By the time you have read this, I will probably have had my first Covid jab, having received the call from my GP this week.

To be honest, I'm feeling pangs of guilt after reading supplies could be about to run short. The main reason for this is thought to be an interruption to deliveries from India, but the silly spat between the EU and the UK hasn't helped matters either.

Earlier this week, most of the major countries in the EU suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine over some spurious claims about side effects. This left them with 7.5 million doses going to waste.

With impeccable timing, the EU then threatened action against Britain, accusing us of hogging all the supplies of the injections its own countries didn't want. It then threatened an export ban on the UK unless we gave them even more of the vaccine it was refusing to use. Presumably to stockpile in a warehouse in Strasbourg or somewhere.

Doesn't it sound remarkably like the old days of wine lakes and butter mountains, when the former EEC used to buy up vast quantities of agricultural produce, not to eat and drink, but to hoard in warehouses in order to maintain food prices?

Which seemed particularly insensitive at the height of the Ethiopian famine.