Kingston University London Dissenter's Blog

The slaughter and destruction of jobs, roles and depts continues at KU relentlessly: Vice-Admiral, Gold Commandant and Failed Architect Steven ‘Two Jobs’ Speer, AKA the Grim Reaper, remains determined to save £20m in the financial year 2025-26, no matter how he does it or whose careers he destroys in the process. After all, he’s got a big vision for Knights Park car park, and he needs to find that lovely £23m from somewhere, so he can finance his giant new shiny building at Middle Mill and leave a ‘legacy’ with his name stuck somewhere on it.

The latest damaging cuts will come from a ‘consultation’ on the Student Directorate, which will review things such as Student hubs (which have only been in existence for two years but have been disastrous, and Spier approved them in the first place!) and inconveniences such as library books and librarians. After all, this is Kingston University: who needs books? Such old-fashioned things. And library staff? Far too many of them. A ‘self-help’ automated library will be far better, and take up much less space. If students want ‘information’ and knowledge, they can use Wikipedia instead. Simples.

As many KU staff are all too painfully aware, Spier and his Senior gang of Silver Shirkers have brought a whole new meaning to the word ‘consultation’: they have altered its OED definition and it now means, in KU parlance, ‘decision that’s already been made’. It’s a CONsultation designed to insult our intelligence: Spiersy likes to announce a ‘consultation’ every time he wants to make cuts so that it sounds all nice and democratic (and appeases the Board of Governors, who like to see what they regard as good public relations), but the reality is always that its just a farcical con: the decision has already been made and there will be no backing down. Any views from staff are just dumped in the bin. This was on full display yet again with the recent so-called ‘consultations’ in FBSS and KSA, and we all know the outcomes of those – they were fixed (and fixed well in advance). Careers destroyed, departments wrecked. And all because the VC has been grossly incompetent when it comes to the proper management of KU’s finances.

Now the Uni faces the latest round in the ongoing slaughter: a ‘Redesign’ of the Student Directorate (which means, of course, reductions in staff), and an ‘external’ Review of Library and Learning Services. All this will include the relocation of Enterprise Education from Academic Services into Student Development and Graduate Success (meaning a reduction in staff), and loads of money spent on external consultants for the ‘Review’ of Library and Learning Services. More money down the drain. What a tragic farce.

Spiersy, as usual, never explains how using ‘external’ consultants will lead to cost-savings (the paradox where, in order to cut staff costs, you spend tons of banknotes on getting advice from ‘external’ consultants who are supposedly experts on how to get rid of staff and make savings). He just ignores such points, and ploughs on regardless. It’s the economics of the Madhouse, or should we just say the ‘Town House’? In other words, it is Spiersy’s ‘Clown House Strategy’ in full and hideous action again.

It is like a cross between a badly-made Carry On movie, an Ealing comedy and the worst kind of horror film. Or perhaps ‘Admiral’ Spier, with his weird Naval language (‘navigate’, ‘explore’, ‘discover’, etc, etc), just simply refuses to accept what a terrible VC he is, as the vessel sinks and yet more of his leading managerial rats jump ship.

On a Friday, 11th April, just before the weekend – when everyone tends to disappear off home (relieved that they have survived yet another nightmare week at the Uni) – the KU Comms Team, under the instructions of Admiral Spier and his SLT (Senile Leadership Team), sneaked the following announcement on to the main Uni website, probably hoping  hardly anybody could react before the end of the working day:

 

Gold Commandant, Vice-Admiral, Supreme Leader and nasty course Axeman Steven ‘Two Jobs’ Spier is not a happy man again. But then, was he ever a happy man? According to reliable admin sources near the top of the KU command chain, Spiersy has been getting the hump again over the actions of the local UCU branch at Kingston, and regards their challenges to his latest staff and course cuts policy as undermining the University’s public reputation.

It is not the first time he has moaned in this way, of course. Previous actions adopted by UCU were also described as ‘damaging to’ (his words) the University’s public reputation. Just like the Uni’s newly adopted mascot, Kevin the Blue Parrot, Spiersy (bless him) has a habit of repeating himself endlessly, like an old gramophone record that has got stuck in its old age.

In recent SLT meetings and BOG (Board of Governors) meetings, the Axeman has done a very good impression of a demented Dalek and has rambled on endlessly about ‘Future Skills’, ‘transformative’ policies, ‘Town House’ initiatives, ‘Financial realignment’, ‘restructuring’, ‘sector-leading’ policies, ‘demand-led’ courses, ‘sustainable’ futures, ‘purposeful momentum’ (eh?), ‘global leadership’ (we kid you not!), Swiss cheese (you what?), line-dancing’ (no, seriously), etc, etc (contin. p.94).

As far as the supreme Dalek is concerned, his wisdom is King and cannot be criticised, so he complains bitterly when anybody so much as dares to question or challenge his ‘sector-leading’ decision-making. Ironic, isn’t it? The man who has done more than any other previous Kingston VC to undermine and wreck the University’s reputation through his savage cuts to courses (which led to big front-page headlines in the local press), his piss-poor management, his extravagant spending on useless outside consultants, his embarrassingly bland video blogs and ‘Town House’ speeches, his special favours for close mates on the SLT, and a host of other questionable decisions, has had the gall again to turn round and blame the workforce for KU’s poor public relations!

We should not be too surprised. The Daily Telegraph-reading Vice-Admiral has never liked Unions, whether teaching staff or service support staff ones. He was visibly upset when the Conservatives, whose Ministers he tried to woo, lost the last general election. He has not had much success in trying to woo Labour Ministers (he even turned up to the last Labour annual conference to try and ‘sell’ his ‘Future Skills’ programme to a conference fringe meeting side-panel, but attendees were not impressed). He has now turned, in sheer desperation, to the local MP, Ed Davey, and has persuaded him to express public support for the ‘Future Skills’ bullshit. The award of KU hons to Davey in the past was an added incentive for Davey to agree. Davey has now become the equivalent of a propaganda mouthpiece for KU’s ‘Future Skills’, and the VC very quickly ensured that this news was plastered all over the Uni’s relaunched website. What this also means, of course, is that Davey has refused to speak out against the latest round of savage cuts being made by the VC. The VC, in sum, has effectively neutered the local MP. Some of the local Lib Dem activists, however (especially Lib Dem students), according to our sources, are not very happy about this at all. Oh dear. Fireworks ahoy!

In short, Spiersy likes to pose for publicity photos in Parliament, especially if it is with the local MP, but dislikes anything that smacks of real politics, especially anything connected with human rights, critical thinking and union activism. He likes to associate himself with Black History Month and other such events, but his hostile comments in private about progressive equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies have left staff who heard them disgusted and seething. Hence his dislike of UCU. The only Union Spiersy has sought to cultivate has been the Union of Kingston Students, on the basis of ‘divide and rule’. But even student union officers have recently become wise to his manipulative ways, much to Spiersy’s frustration. When UCU previously took industrial action, Spiersy gloated to the newly-appointed head of the local Council (his new, and only, best friend at the time) that the numbers of KU staff picketing at PR and KP campuses had been ‘small’ in number. A bit like the number of brain-cells in Spiersy’s head, then?

Remember, this is the man who is so arrogant that for a very long period of time he refused to even meet Union reps face to face, and always sent his favourite bagman, the now departed (but not missed) Dave ‘Mac the Knife’ Mackintosh, to confront UCU reps and negotiate, which in KU speak really meant ‘relay the latest decisions from on high’.

Remember, too, that the so-called Gold Commander is the man who also gave ‘Mac the Knife’ a special financial bonus for taking on a shiny new Deanship, but without telling the rest of the SLT about this secret bung. This is the VC who trousers a huge sum of money a year for being VC, but also has another secret job on the side (which he does on the University’s own time).

This is the man who has used University money to enjoy a series of ‘business’ trips abroad, even staying at one of the most expensive hotels overlooking Times Square in New York, defending this to the BOG as necessary for ‘income generation’ (pull the other one!).

This is the inept and empty-headed individual who also seems intent on reinventing the University as a hybrid ‘Polyversity’, a kind of glorified and dumbed down technical college, where more and more of the teaching (including the so-called ‘Future Skills’ programme) will be delivered online by outside private contractors, with less and less directly-employed KU staff. In fact, that is the point of the recently announced ‘proposals to support delivery of a demand-led course portfolio’. The Supreme Commandant wants to cull as many staff as he can to ‘save’ £20m, create a much smaller and more pliable workforce (who will work in constant fear of their futures), and generate sufficient funds to meet his dream of yet another big shiny new building, a £23m ‘Town House II’ built at Middle Mill, and even designed by the same idiots who designed the ‘award-winning’ Clown House at Pen Rd.

Spiersy also recently floated to the BOG the nutty idea, as part of his future ‘vision’ (his FOM – ‘Future Operational Model’), of radically cutting down on staff office space. The ultimate logic of this is to have, at some stage in the future, no staff offices with p.c.s but, instead, a highly mobile very small ‘taskforce’ of cheap lecturers all working from laptops, with much of the ‘Future Skills’ nonsense covered by private teaching agencies on zero-hour contracts.

Above all, the whole point of the vision he has for a ‘sector-leading’ Future Skills programme involves creating a nice pool of cheap and malleable graduate labour, so that large companies and their CEOs can cherry-pick at their leisure from newly-qualified students. Just look at the lists of companies in the various glossy Future Skills brochures printed at great expense by the Uni.

The latest attack on staff and courses by Spiersy and his gang, announced in his ‘demand-led’ communique placed on StaffSpace a week after staff were called in to ‘special’ meetings in KSA and FBSS to be told the latest grim news, will see the axe come down ruthlessly on so-called ‘low-recruiting’ courses within Criminology, Politics (what’s left of it, after previous cuts), and Sociology in FBSS, and all English, Philosophy and Humanities provision in KSA. Even more disastrously, the highly successful and praised Kingston Language Scheme has been targeted for closure. As Dissenter has warned before, this is just the beginning. The first round of cuts cover the financial year 2024-25. The next round will come in 2025-26, and will slash staff and courses in other Faculties. Don’t say you were not warned.

There is a frightening new disease spreading rapidly across much of the HE sector, and it has also contaminated large parts of FE across Britain. Labelled by scientists as ‘Big Building Syndrome’ (BBS), the new plague has infected many University Vice-Chancellors and their managerial hangers-on in Senior Leadership Teams, those unaccountable daleks who hide within the overpaid elites that now claim to run the UK’s Universities.

The Gold Commandant and Vice-Admiral of Kingston Uni, Sir Steven ‘Albert’ Spier, who is quite clearly (in his own mind anyway) the world’s greatest architect, as well as being a major expert on Swiss cheeses, has gone down with a particularly bad bout of BBS. Even his contact lenses have gone misty, inhibiting him from reading his Daily Telegraph properly or gazing at his favourite little ‘Striding Full-Length Female Nude’ sculpture located just outside his office door (and how bizarre is that?).

Obvious symptoms of BBS include a maniacal desire to build BIG shiny new Buildings worth millions of pounds, coupled with an obsession to have the Building named after them, or at least have a large lecture hall within the new building bear their name.

Once infected with BBS, there is no known cure, except resignation. But that rarely happens, and Spiersy is not going anywhere until he secures that precious ‘legacy’ – a giant new building. SpierSpace, anyone? Or the Spier Centenary Dome? BBS sufferers, who are convinced they are always right, will refuse any medication or offers of alternative solutions. Previously known as Big Bullshit Syndrome, the latest new variant of this truly sickening disease leaves the sufferer with a really high temperature, the shakes, a massive inflation of their already-large ego, and an overwhelming desire to spend loads of money Bigly, money that their University simply cannot afford and does not have. In some of the worst cases, the sufferer, usually a former but failed academic with delusions of grandeur (such as believing they are somehow a CEO of a major company), runs off to the bank to arrange massive loans, or dips dangerously into the University’s emergency reserves, or persuades their Board Of Governors (BOG) to sell off parts of the University estate in order to raise badly-needed cash. Sound familiar?

In the most acute cases, VCs try to persuade themselves and others that they are whizzo property tycoons, wheeling and dealing in ‘real estate’ and huge capital projects. Kingston’s Vice-Admiral is a classic case of this. Rather than invest properly in staff and in quality education, which is what he was hired to do in the first place, BBS sufferers see everything as game of monopoly, where risk is a given and the challenge is to accumulate as much money as possible in order to Build Big, Build Bigger and ‘Build Baby Build’.

This is the reality of the so-called ‘Town House Strategy’. It’s not about ‘navigation’ and ‘Future Skills’, the vacuous marketing BS that Spiersy is so fond of – its about seeing everything Bigly and claiming your institution is ‘sector-leading’, ‘innovative’, providing a new ‘approach’, etc, etc (contin. p.94). ‘Old’ buildings are deemed as outdated and irrelevant to the VC’s new ‘vision’, as the BBS sufferer will often make bland and yawn-making statements which set out a desire to Build Big and have a ‘state-of-the-art’ giant edifice with ‘landmark’ teaching spaces.

But Big Buildings soak up loads of money, and sufferers of BBS quickly realize, but won’t admit (see Prof. Spier’s case profile) that in order to pay Peter you have to rob Paul. Instead, BBS sufferers ramble on endlessly about the need to ‘realign all parts’ of the University with the VC’s ‘mission’ in order to find new, ‘visionary’ and ‘innovative solutions’, etc, etc. Or they pontificate for hours about ‘sharpening our offering’ to ‘ensure investment in areas of growth’ and have a ‘targeted’ course portfolio (eh?? No, me neither). Yet the money has to come from somewhere. Where to go to get cash?

Sell, Sell, Sell

One solution is to sell off parts of the estate. This has been happening Bigly in recent times. Here’s just a few examples. In 2021 Kingston Uni sold off its Kingston Bridge House to raise Big sums for the new multi-million pound ‘Town House’ building (which went badly over budget anyway). In 2023 the University of Leicester sold off five buildings for a huge sum. In 2024 the University of Gloucestershire announced it was selling off its Hardwick Campus, while the University for the Creative Arts sold their Rochester Campus. In the same year London South Bank Uni (LSBU) announced it was looking to sell off its New Kent Road building in the name of ‘efficiency savings’, and is closing its Havering campus in 2027. Wolverhampton Uni recently announced it was closing its Telford site. And on and on it goes. In late 2024, it emerged (through a leak) that Kingston Uni had secretly instructed its estates team to draw up plans to identify what buildings and land could be sold off from its Kingston Hill campus, with a view to possible disposal of the whole site at some stage in the future.

Desperate times, desperate measures. Some critics might say all is just a sign of Unis raising funds for future emergencies, given the decline in international students and squeezes on research funding. But is this the whole story? No! The reality is that BBS is often at work, rampaging through the brains (or lack of them) in the heads of VCs, who seem obsessed with ever more Big Buildings in order to attract future students. It’s a damaging illusion and, in many HEIs, just serves to put the institution at even more risk of decline and insolvency.

Sometimes the financial decision-making of VCs and their inept arse-licking managers makes no sense whatsoever, and is enough to make all good accountants weep into their hands. In 2022 the University of Westminster, after trying (and failing) to back a new technical college for 14-19 year-olds, and having just spent £16m on a new Big Building for the college in central London, closed and off-loaded its Sir Simon Milton Technical College (UTC) near Victoria Station. The building had been open for just four years. In any other sector, the VC and senior managers would have been dismissed for gross incompetence and woeful decision-making. But this is HE, remember, where, no matter how much is thrown into the bottomless pits of ‘prestige’ buildings, the perpetrators are never held fully to account, but just continue regardless, trousering huge sums in salary.

VC’s BBS

Kingston’s Vice-Admiral has been showing major signs of BBS for a long time now, but his SLT just meekly say nothing (apart from occasionally leaking things to Dissenter, all part of the infighting you see going on behind the VC’s back). But the most frightening signs of a VC suffering Bigly from BBS is when they turn on their own staff and target departments for cuts or ‘savings’ in the name of ‘efficiency’ or ‘restructuring’. It is symptomatic of the sufferer having no regard whatsoever for those below him, and who believes – contrary to all the objective evidence – that culling staff, or axing ‘loss-making’ courses, will somehow raise loads of extra cash that can then be redirected towards yet more spending on Big shiny new Buildings.

On Wednesday, 26 February, 2025, Kingston’s staff were given a classic example of their VC’s BBS in action. Two Faculties, the KSA Faculty and the Faculty of Business and Social Sciences (FBSS) held special staff meetings where, in both cases, the Dean gave a presentation, which consisted mainly of praising the so-called ‘Town House Strategy’ to high heaven, then announcing major cuts to courses and staff. Both Deans then did a runner, cutting the meeting short and disappearing quickly, not even bothering to allow staff to ask questions. It was a truly terrible way to treat hard-working staff, and has left much bitterness to add to the misery of staff hearing that jobs and courses will go. To add insult to injury, staff quickly received the very same day emails ‘inviting’ them to one-to-one appointments with line-managers in 4-5 days time to discuss Voluntary Severance (or, if they reject VS, compulsory redundancy). Apart from the fact that one would be very unwise to go to such a meeting without a representative to accompany you, this was requested at insultingly short notice. And who are the line-managers tasked with doing this ugly deed? Managers who are completely untrustworthy. In KSA, for example, one of the managers is our old mate Simon Moron-Worthless, whose past interest in ‘sleeping studies’ and reputation for ‘handsy’ behaviour is enough to put anyone off, while the other is Janice ‘not-nice’ Miller, who most staff have never seen in real life, and who tends to lose her temper if one even has a brief question.

Vice-Admiral Spier and his gang of nitwits and daleks have clearly made a huge mess of the Uni’s finances over last few years. Yes, they will blame low student recruitment, decline of international students and so on. But that is not the whole story, and all this has happened on their watch. In any other industry, a CEO would come under great pressure to resign. But in HE, a VC can get away with, if not murder, then the nearest thing: the  mismanagement of money to a point where it brings the destruction of the careers and livelihoods of others.

The real story behind these latest cuts stares us right in the face: the truth is our VC has acute BBS but, due to exceptionally poor and inept financial strategies, the Uni has run out of money to finance his pet projects. He wants to save £20m over two years and realign budgets using a ‘resource allocation methodology’ (RAM) (these idiots just love their BS terminology, don’t they?). At the same time, and we kid you not, he wants to spend £23m on a Big shiny new Building at Middle Mill, and has already invested a ton of dosh in having a shiny new glass entrance at Pen Road. It’s an Alice in Wonderland approach to economics, ill-judged, irresponsible and plain nutty. But it also has dire consequences: in order to satisfy his vanity and have more Big Buildings to secure his ‘legacy’, Speer is prepared to throw staff under the bus and destroy courses and disciplines that often took years to develop and in which staff invested many, many hours of their lives.

And if you think this is only happening to two of KU’s Faculties, think again. This is about this financial year. The latest cuts will only save £10m; the cuts for the next £10m will come in 2025-26, when other Faculties will be ‘targeted’. There is more pain to come in the next year, and nobody, wherever they are in the Uni, is safe. BBS is driving everything, and is the disease that refuses to go away.

There was no prewarning. At first, it just seemed like one of KU’s usual anodyne staff announcements and was quietly placed on the Uni website with no fanfare. But this is not surprising, because the few staff who spotted it and read it the same day soon realised the enormous implications of what it said. And the clue was in the title: ‘Achieving our ambitions in a challenging national context’.

Although he had kept his distance from it, the grubby hand of Spiersy could easily be seen behind it. The first few paragraphs struck a positive note and sought to present a sunny and optimistic message about how well things are going with the Vice-Clown’s ‘Future Skills’ and Clown House Strategy, how Kingston is being ‘transformed’ and so on. In other words, how well Spiersy’s pet project – the dimunition of the University into a Polyversity or glorified technical college – is progressing.

But, halfway down the announcement, the real purpose behind the warm words emerged, like a sudden dagger plunged into staff hearts. Caroline Harries, the new ‘Chief Operating Officer’, had also been forced to attach her name to it, as the VC, characteristically, was too cowardly to want to have his own name associated with bad news and admission of failure (for that is the only way it can be interpreted). So Spiersy had press-ganged his new ‘Operating Officer’ to do his dirty work (and, according to insiders, she was not very happy).

And, according to the announcement, how is the Uni ‘navigating a way forward’? (the Vice-Admiral just so loves those nauseating nautical terms). Over the next two years, we were informed, the Uni needs to ‘achieve’ £20m in savings across the University i.e. it needs to cut money and lots of it. There will also be a ‘review’ of KU’s course portfolio (again!) and a review of Faculty Budgets.

These have already started. Insultingly, in FBSS, staff were invited to a meeting where they were told the Faculty needs to save over £8m, and staff were ‘invited’ to come up with ideas on how to do this (no, we are not kidding). As one member of staff commented, it was like being asked to build your own scaffold for the public hanging. In KSA, pressure is also now being put on certain subjects to start cutting down module choice and find ways to ‘combine’ courses. Managers have also been told in other Faculties to start looking for ‘efficiency’ savings.

Dissenter warned back in March that the ‘Axeman’ was coming, but few seemed to take our warnings seriously. After all, so some said, the departmental and subject closures of recent years, and the culling of staff through VS or enforced redundancies, surely meant that there would be no more financial squeezes? There seemed to be the complacent attitude among some staff that they were now ‘safe’ and there would no more cutbacks. This was reinforced by reassurances by the Senile Leadership Team around Spiersy. But it was all a lie. We need to face the harsh reality that Spiersy and his gang have well and truly mucked up. The so-called ‘challenging national context’ has been made much, much worse by the inept and frankly useless leadership shown by the Vice-Clown and his Senior Dalek Team. The ‘Town House Strategy’ won’t save the sinking ship.

The multi-million pound costs of the Town House, the huge sums spent on Holmewood House, the ‘transformation’ of Knights Park, the ‘Penrhyn Road Transformation project’, the Uni’s ‘Website Transformation Project’,  yet more sums spent on the John Galsworthy Building (to replace all the heating infrastructure) and, now, a proposed multi-million pound ‘high specification building’ for KSA’s Middle Mill site (Spiersy is determined to have his ‘legacy’ building before he retires), have all sucked in, and will continue to soak up, enormous sums. The Uni’s marketing strategy has also been an embarrassing affair, and has failed to attract the numbers of new students KU so desperately needs. The Uni has also gone backwards, not forwards, in recent national Good University league tables. By any measure, the Town House Strategy is simply not working. So something has got to give, and in Spiersy’s mind, culling courses and loyal staff is the only option (no matter how reassuringly it is dressed up). Despite how loyal or hardworking you may be, you are not safe. Spiersy and his overpaid acolytes will be more than happy to throw more staff under the bus to try and save their own skins.

A recent sign of how bad things have become were the changes made in the Summer to the ‘Academic Management Framework’ (Spiersy loves his pseudo-business terminology) and to Faculty leadership teams. This was sold to us a way of ensuring they continue to ‘best support the University’s ambitions’, in line (inevitably) with the VCs pet ‘Town House Strategy’. A host of new roles have been created, such as Deputy Deans and ‘Faculty Operations Managers’. There was also much B.S. about ‘Strategic Planning Partners’. You could hear the groans right across the Uni. Yet more changes to the senior managerial structure? How many have there been over the years since Spiersy has been VC? Yet more money dished out on new senior roles? In the meantime, at mainstream staff level, it is clear that this will all be financed through staff and course cuts, no matter how much the VC denies it.

As he sits in his Holmewood House office, when he can be bothered to appear on campus (don’t forget he has another job on the side) and gazes out on to ‘Striding full-length female nude’, the sculpture located just outside his office, and fantasizes about his ‘vision’ for the transformation of KU into a so-called ‘multiversity’ (yes, the latest sick-making buzz word), the Gold Commandant hates anything that exposes the reality of his poor and inept leadership skills. He likes to rant on endlessly about ‘Future Skills’ and how this has made KU ‘sector-leading’. To add insult to injury, a new staff handbook has even been issued on ‘Skills Development’ to ‘train’ staff for – yes, you guessed it – the Town House Strategy. But he refuses to face up to the fact that he has no managerial skills himself, and that the ‘Town House Strategy’ is really the Clown House Tragedy.

Kingston Uni Comms Team News Release: For immediate media distribution. No embargo.

After many months of creative innovation by a specially selected interim team, Kingston’s Gold Commandant, Admiral and Senior Vice-Clown Steven ‘Two Jobs’ Spier is very pleased to announce the adoption of a new Kingston University theme song, to be used at all graduation ceremonies and at all University-related special events and official occasions.

Based on the famous Eton Boating Song, the music and lyrics in Kingston’s version capture most eloquently Professor Spiersy’s truly transformative ‘vision’ for the institution, and has won full approval from the BOG (Board of Governors) after their latest celebratory dinner held in a hotel in Windsor Great Park.

As part of the ongoing Clown House Strategy, the new song will be used at all public events sponsored by the University, sung by our acclaimed Town House Choir (sadly now a Quartet due to recent efficiency savings in the Music dept). It will also be backed up vocally by our new University mascot, Poly the Parrot, which has been trained to squawk loudly at the end of each 8-line stanza, thus bringing pure joy to the Senior Leadership Team and any members of the public who have the University’s unique gold earmuffs to hand.

Do bear in mind that it is traditional at Eton that the song is best sung while in a boat on the Thames and, to meet this convention, Kingston will now have an old rowing boat on hand to float past the Rose Theatre on graduation days, which parents will be able to join for a modest £1,000 fee, or a simple large donation to the Town House lift repair fund.

Ordinarily, only the first, sixth, seventh and eighth stanzas are sung, and Kingston will abide by this quaint olde English tradition.

The Eton Kingston Boating Song.

Stanza 1:

Jolly boating weather,

Will KU sink or swim?

Swing, swing together,

But our future’s looking grim;

Skirting past the rushes,

Of the smelly Hogsmill stream,

I am your Vice-Clown,

The cat that’s got the cream.

Stanza 2:

Let’s be dim together,

And exercise ‘Future Skills’,

We’re in this mess forever,

And it gives me lots of thrills;

Let’s navigate together!

And transform your tiny brain,

‘Future Skills’ are lovely,

I’ll repeat this again and again.

Stanza 3:

Our skills are ‘sector-leading’,

A claim I like to instill,

But since every Uni is doing them,

Our competitive advantage is nil;

Yet I remain your Leader,

And ‘Gold’ Spiersy is my name,

My ego is gigantic,

And all I want is fame.

Stanza 4:

So pull, pull together,

’cause your VC is a great chap,

I’m desperate for a Knighthood,

Even though I am really crap;

I think I’m really clever,

But my staff think I’m really not,

We’ll suffer Future Ills together

’cause I’m just a massive clot.

Stanza 5:

I really like the Daily Telegraph,

The greatest paper around,

And in its very pages,

Lots of my ideas have been found;

Let’s ‘transform’ Kingston Uni,

With lots of business-style quack lit,

Even though much of this lingo,

Is plagiarized ’70s bullshit.

Stanza 6:

Sink, sink together!

Because we’ve hit the rocks,

But while your job is tanking,

I’ll still be earning lots;

I’ve spent loads of KU money,

On lots of shiny things,

But the Strategy is so risky,

The results are embarrassingly thin.

Stanza 7:

We’ve fallen in League Tables,

And thrown out lots of staff,

But our prospects remain unstable,

As my Leadership skills are naff;

So swing, swing together!

Keep my ‘future ambitions’ safe,

We just need to save £20 million,

And cut out all the ‘waste’.

Stanza 8:

Work harder for our future,

Until you are fit to drop,

And stop your silly questions,

Or I’ll ensure you face the chop;

If we sink below the water,

You can wave your career goodbye,

My ‘Future Skills’ won’t save you,

Whatever they really are.

Stanza 9:

For I am your Dear Leader,

And Spiersy is my name,

I’m transforming Kingston Uni,

Back to Poly status again;

So be really grateful,

That I am in control,

And please don’t tell the media,

That I’m an overpaid ar–hole.

 

Copyright: Spiermint Rhino Productions, London.

(Please avoid singing Stanza 9, or I will be very mad at you).