You hereby warrant that you have truthfully and accurately completed this application form and acknowledge and agree that the Company may in its sole discretion disqualify you from any interview, auditioning process, competition, event or the Programme at any stage if you supply or have supplied any untruthful, inaccurate or misleading details and/or information and/or have failed to abide by the Rules or are otherwise in breach of any of the terms of this application.


Lee would have had to have signed this before his application was approved.

Seeing as it's Sir Alan who will be paying Lee, I guess he is entitled to choose who he wants for the job. The company has the right to disqualify him at their discretion - doesn't mean that they will definitely disqualify someone, just that they reserve the right to do so.

That may be so and if they didn't like Lee they may have used it against him but they did like him and decided it wasn't an issue.

However as they knew the situation in August 2007 (the date on the letter from Thames Valley University stating he only attended for four months), they could have got rid of him before he started if it was going to be an issue for them.

Probably, and if it had the word 'MAY' in it then it's irrelevant

If Amstrad was complicit in condoning it from the start,
why the righteous anger? In exposing Lee Amstrad exposed themselves.

I note that nobody here has actually SEEN what was on his CV and exactly how it was expressed. He has stated that he mentioned that he didn't complete the course.

Really, who cares? A lot worse goes on in the real world that gets swept under the carpet, well mostly. I'm far more bothered about the politicians who pay their partners, families and so on out of their expenses, or the highly paid government officials who get huge golden handshakes! Essentially this is a private matter between SAS and Lee, and although it may appear to set a bad example, we shouldn't take much notice of a TV programme. We don't have to watch it, and even if we do, it can spark debate about this common practice. Thankfully I'm old enough now that I don't have to explain what I did until I was 21, and though I like to think of myself as honest, I have been known to stretch a college course I left in Feb 1982 to appear that I'd been there until the summer of 1982. Stretching 4 months to two years was a bit of a gamble.

I'm sure Lee made most of his mistakes because of his insecurity about his educational qualifications and difficulty in explaining periods of his life. I think he will feel more secure now, and just knuckle down and do his job, and get some of the rough edges polished up.

The employer can 'let things go' if they choose.

The clauses are there to help the employer get rid of someone they *don't* want. If they *want* someone, all such clauses can be disregarded.

Exactly!

SAS has made it perfectly clear that he looks down on formal qualifications anyway, so he doesn't give two hoots about them. If the job were dependent on a candidate having a specific qualification, it would matter, but this one doesn't, so the "lie" is really irrelevant.

The issue of lying might give an employer pause regarding personal integrity, but I think SAS has considered this too and understands why Lee did it. And it clearly doesn't bother him.