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Ballot papers for the election of the next general secretary of the Association of University Teachers go out next week, with three candidates up for the £70,000 job.

Former AUT president and philosophy lecturer at the University of Durham, Martin Hughes, has been defending his criticism of the way the official candidate was adopted for the role. John Duffy, a statistician at the University of Birmingham, disagrees that any objections are ethical but agrees that "the rules under which the system operates are not so sensible and will require substantial revision in future".

Meanwhile, the words of the union's spokesman, Andrew Pakes, are already being reported as those of the official candidate, AUT official Sally Hunt.