I don't know how busy the staff of Brighton University normally are, but some of them seem to have spare time on their hands.

Enough, in fact, to while away the hours by using their employers' expensive computer network to campaign against the community stadium.

A friend who works in this tributary of academia has shown me an email circulated to staff this week, apparently on behalf of anti-stadium activists. I won't trouble you with the details but the nub of the thing is an appeal to university workers to object to the stadium.

It is a forthright document and it is not over-concerned with facts. For example, it blithely states that "a full traffic assessment has not been undertaken..." into the stadium proposals. This sounds boring but is actually quite important. One of the key issues about the stadium is the effect it might have on traffic levels in the area. It is a reasonable point and to deal with it the planning applications submitted to the council last month included, yes, full traffic assessments.

Perhaps the university's internal lobbyist was unaware of them. Or perhaps he was concerned about their conclusions and felt it was safer to deny that they ever existed.

Either way, he was clearly determined to clinch a quick sale. His message told fellow workers that they needed to get their objections in fast and, no problems, he had a supply of handy proformas available to make the task of objecting as painless as possible.

Now what, I wonder, is the official position of the University of Brighton in all this? Were they aware of such extra-curricular activities going on under their noses and if they were how do they feel it squares with (a) their charter and (b) their involvement in negotiations with the Albion regarding land to build the stadium?

If they were not aware then they are now. So what action do they propose to take?

This strange episode was one of two curious developments this week in the campaign against the stadium. The other was a letter in the Argus on bonfire night. Nattily headed 'Sod all', its general thrust was that the Albion's problems are the result of not enough people wanting to watch them.

An ingenious line, given the large numbers of people locked out of Withdean before every league game. As evidence, Mr Black of Hove cited the attendance at the Wycombe match a week earlier. Perhaps he did not realise that this was a game in the LDV pick-up cup and that the crowd of 3,200 was one of the highest in the country.

Or perhaps he did, because he moved swiftly on to say that 16,000 fans deserted the Goldstone during the 1980s and 90s with the result that the Albion plunged £6m in debt. The £6m was a Bellotti figure from 1995. As the Argus pointed out at the time, it was £2m different to the figure Mr Bellotti quoted shortly before.

To adequately shoot down Mr Black's assumptions would fill two books (indeed they already have. I recommend More Than 90 Minutes and Build a Bonfire) but my guess is that his letter was an opening shot in a campaign to persuade the council that the Albion should stay ever more at Withdean Stadium.

Time for Albion fans to get busy, I would say.