There’s a long-standing rumour that the University of York refuses to clean its lake, due to fines from
DEFRA – the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – being cheaper than the cost to
actually clean it.
And as any reliable journalist will tell you, every good news story starts with “there’s a long-standing rumour”. So I decided to dive headfirst into exploring this speculation for myself. But the excitement of (what I confidently predicted would be) a career-launching investigation was short-lived, and I was met with watery disappointment when the results of my long-awaited FOI request came back:
This mood-dampening syllable killed off my article faster than you could say “rapidly aggregating, water-resistant bacteria”.
And just like that, I watched my story, which was meant to blow this edition out of the water, drip down the drain.
But it isn’t all bad. Instead of a brutally insightful investigation into the University’s financial choices, you get to see how many water-related puns I can fit into a 200 word column.