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This column is all my own work. Honest

David Aaronovitch
David Aaronovitch

It seems that being a plagiarist makes you unfit for office. But what you can get away with depends on who you are

Both Saif al-Islam Gaddafi and Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, until Tuesday the Germany Defence Minister, may be too young to have heard the satirist Tom Lehrer sing these words:

Plagiarise, Let no one else’s work evade your eyes, Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, So don’t shade your eyes, But plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise — Only be sure always to call it please “research”.

I listened to them when I was 10 and asked my dad what “plagiarise” meant. If I were either of the two above-mentioned, I might well have remembered what he said, but I can’t. I realised it

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