Vice-chancellors earning much more than public-sector peers … Comedy legend Sir Ken Dodd dies aged 90 … London property prices slump

by Martin Farrer

High pay fuels campus divide

A good Monday morning to you all. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the top stories today.

The men and women running Britain’s universities are being paid far more than their peers in the public sector with similar leadership roles, according to research by the Guardian. The issue of high pay for vice-chancellors has come under intense scrutiny in recent months after Bath University chief Glynis Breakwell was revealed to earn £434,000, forcing her to promise to step down in the face of student protests. The Guardian survey shows vice-chancellors are earning substantially more than NHS and local council executives. For example, Sir David Eastwood, vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham, is on £378,000, compared with the £185,000 pay of the chief executive of Birmingham city council – which is the largest local authority in Europe with a budget of £3bn. It comes as university lecturers continue to strike in a dispute over pensions. Becky Gardiner explains why she has walked out.

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Doddy’s dead – The comedy legend Sir Ken Dodd has died at the age of 90. The Liverpudlian funny man died at his home in Liverpool on Sunday, two days after marrying his partner of 40 years, Anne Jones, his publicist said in the early hours of this morning. Dodd, who was famed for his tickling stick, Diddymen and epic standup shows, was “one of the last of the music hall greats”, Robert Holmes said. Dodd’s career spanned seven decades and included television shows, a No 1 hit single (Tears, in 1965) and a record 42-week run at the London Palladium in 1965. Check out our picture gallery of his life here.

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Poison alert – The government’s national security council will meet this morning to discuss the official response to the poisoning of Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury. After people who visited the Zizzi restaurant or Mill pub in the town last weekend were urged to wash their clothes and belongings, concern is growing that public agencies should have warned the public of the ongoing danger before now. The guidance to diners reinforces suspicions that the nerve agent used on Skripal and his daughter was first administered inside the restaurant. Theresa May will be urged by her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, to take a harder line on Russia, which is suspected of carrying out the poison attack.

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Property bust – The aftermath of the Brexit referendum is still being felt in the London property market, according to a survey which shows that prices have fallen sharply in areas that two years ago were showing big gains. The Your Move data shows that the average home in Wandsworth – which includes much of Clapham, Balham and Putney – fell by more than £100,000 in value over the past 12 months. There have also been big drops in other boroughs such as Southwark and Islington. The north-west of England has replaced the capital as the UK’s fastest-growing market. Top was Blackburn, which recorded average prices ahead by 16.4% over the past 12 months, while Warrington also saw double-digit growth.

It’s not such good news in other parts of the north where hundreds of property investors say they have lost money in a string of developments across the regionthat have either stalled indefinitely or collapsed outright. A Guardian Cities investigation reveals that problems with the schemes – known as “buyer-funded developments” dependent on small investors’ deposits rather than bank funding to get off the ground – have brought calls for police investigations.

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Web lament – It’s 29 years since Tim Berners-Lee invented the world wide web but he’s increasingly unhappy with what it’s become. In an open letter to mark the anniversary, he says that the power of large technology platforms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter has become too great and needs to be regulated. Conspiracy theories have spread and fake accounts have stoked social tensions, he says, because the large tech platforms “control which ideas and opinions are seen and shared”. “What was once a rich selection of blogs and websites has been compressed under the powerful weight of a few dominant platforms,” he says.

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A Musk read – No one could ever accuse Elon Musk of not thinking big. The PayPal and SpaceX entrepreneur told the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, that we need to colonise Mars so that some of us survive in the event of a nuclear war. Musk’s space projects include an attempt to put people on the red planet but he clearly sees it as more than just an experiment. “If there’s a third world war we want to make sure there’s enough of a seed of human civilisation somewhere else to bring it back and shorten the length of the dark ages,” he said on Sunday.

Lunchtime read: How to understand the future

Musk also features in our lunchtime read today, which is a selection of books to help us understand the future. Compiled by the famed American physicist and futurist Michio Kaku, one of the books he chooses is Isaac Asimov’s saga of the rise and decline of a galactic empire, Foundation. Musk apparently read it as a child and it inspired him to get into space exploration. Kaku’s other choices feel more conventional, but no less fascinating, such as The Patient Will See You Now by Eric Topol, which explores the way science is transforming medicine, and The Singularity Is Now by Ray Kurzweil, which looks at how artificial intelligence might outstrip our own poor little brains.

Sport

Harry Kane is set for a scan on his ankle which was injured during Tottenham’s 4-1 victory over Bournemouth, and could yet rule him out of the World Cup. Joe Schmidt has set his sights on completing a grand slam by beating England next weekend after Ireland secured the Six Nations title. In Paris, Robert Kitson argues that England’s limp loss to France caps a year of decline for a coach whose methods are under renewed scrutiny. Paul Casey, meanwhile, has surged to victory at golf’s Valspar Championship in Florida on Sunday as Tiger Woodsfinished one stroke behind in a tie for second place.

Business

Downbeat data on consumer spending could overshadow the optimistic message that the chancellor, Philip Hammond, plans to send out in his spring statement tomorrow. Visa said spending on cards fell again in February, making it nine negative months out of the past 10 months. Asian markets bounced higher today in the wake of positive jobs data from the US on Friday and the FTSE100 is set to benefit as well when it opens at 8am. The pound is buying $1.385 and €1.124.

The papers

It is the editor’s worst nightmare: the Times managed to kill off Sergei Skripal in its splash headline, according to an early version of the front page, despite the poisoned Russian spy still being alive. “May set to hit back at Russia over spy death,” the paper’s headline read, though it was later changed to “spy attack”.