Kingston University London Dissenter's Blog

The Dissenter blog has been given a copy of the first draft of the VC’s 2026 New Year message. We thought you would like to see the original before it was edited and redrafted by the Uni Comms Team under the watchful eyes (through his misty dark contact lenses) of the Golden Commander himself, Sir Steven ‘Two Jobs’ Spier, Supreme Chancellor.

Greetings My Workforce! (or what’s left of you).

If you don’t follow Myself on social media or have missed me on my special KU videos or my rare Clown House appearances, I thought you would like to hear from me directly to your inbox during your precious few days off. And I do hope you have enjoyed the special £1,000 bribe bonus I gave you in your December wage-packets. It is not a pathetic attempt to try and win back some popularity with staff after the plunge in staff morale, as some of you have alleged (you ungrateful sods).

Impact, ambition and success

As we approach the final hours of 2025 and the end of a most trying but productive term, I think we should be very proud of all that we have achieved together as a University (but Myself in particular) to overcome this most challenging of years. Despite a major drop in student applications to KU, the destruction of staff jobs and axing of courses and departments, and negative student feedback on my pet ‘Future Skills’ spin-fest, I nevertheless still congratulate both Myself and you, my workers (those of you still with jobs), for our ability to adapt quickly and creatively this year and to support each other through this most difficult time. Our forbearance, coupled with my undoubted wisdom and stupendous expertise, has allowed us to see students progress, pay their enormous fees and graduate, to welcome brand new students to an exciting new academic year, and has successfully seen our students once again through the first term of a blended online and on-campus nightmare satisfactory experience. These are significant achievements and I thank you all for your dedication to Myself, our students, your research (when you can find time to do it), and the PolyUniversity. As we Canadians like to say, no worries and giv’er.

There have, of course, been some very major minor disappointments. There was some unwelcome news about my pay as VC, placing me in the top 20 highly-paid VCs in the country, and raising questions about whether I am value for money (outrageous). Some members of the staff union YUKU (bunch of Lefties) even tried to ask me annoying questions about this, but I successfully batted them away. What cheek! There was also some negative publicity about the further millions I intend to spend on a giant new building at Middle Mill, the contract for which has been awarded to my close mates (NoGraft Architects), who also designed and built the world-beating and wonderful Town House. I refute such nasty and snide allegations that were made about the contract awarding process. What people must understand is that it is better to use tried and tested architects for my special projects, and – speaking as one of the world’s most foremost architects myself – I can assure you that it really is going to be value for money (just like my huge salary) (ho, ho).

Innovation and new vision

In fact, the ‘award-winning’ and amazing new Town House, truly one of the design wonders of the modern world, continues to astonish all who visit and use it, despite the roof-leaks, electrical circuit issues, regular lift breakdowns, the closure of the top-floor cafe, and huge amounts of daytime noise from students. Our innovative policy of encouraging sixth-form students from all over Kingston and elsewhere to use (and abuse) the Clown House has been a massive success, with only a few complaints from our regular students (the moaning minnies) and some grumpy staff. As with the Clown Town House, I am confident the new ‘Riverside’ Building at the Knight’s Park campus will increase creativity and innovation, despite the occasional smell and suffocating clouds of summertime insects from the Hogsmill stream, and the many millions I intend to invest in it will more than justify all the pain I have had to dish out by cutting staff and courses during 2025. I refute all the ridiculous allegations that the new Riverside Building is just yet another giant ego trip for myself, a massive vanity project so I can leave a ‘legacy’ for KU when I retire. What utter nonsense. One of the lecture rooms will have my name up in lights, but that’s small fry compared to the transformation that will come about once all the dust has settled and the building is finally opened.

When we showed the local peasants residents the plans for the new Riverside building, many of them were clearly left speechless. I personally took that as a massive vote of confidence in my golden VCship and skills. I know that all the local dignitaries, student Union reps, and members of the Board of Governors have welcomed my pharty hearty confidence in the project, which I had worked on for many months of hard toil, despite my other jobs responsibilities and long stays in a top hotel in New York.

As a leading architectolologist, I know a lot more about sheds buildings than the guys who know about architecture – and let me assure you, my loyal workforce, that the Town House is a true marvel to behold, which in coming years will be held up as a building of immense natural beauty and as one of the seven million wonders of the modern world and will (cont. for 90 pages). The Clown House is a real model for the new Riverside Building, and the new Middle Mill site and building will enhance KU’s claims to be a leading pioneer in sustainability, despite the slightly annoying fact that KU plummeted in its national sustainability ranking in 2025. As far as I am concerned the league table of 153 universities released by People and Planet, which alleged that we have fallen from 60th last year to just 94th this year, is completely unfair and flawed. What cheek. We are more green than ever. In fact, other Unis are green with envy. We are way ahead of the game. Just look at the ‘green’ redesign of the land at the back of Pen Road. With its concrete benches, new parking spaces and attractive bits of grass, topped off with a couple of bushes, I think you will agree we have more than met our environmental ambitions. Furthermore, our new innovative green-friendly graduation robes, which can now be recycled as dish-cloths straight after the Rose Theatre ceremony, have won numerous design-award prizes in the local press (April 1st). One headline proclaimed ‘From blue-grey to green’. This brought tears of joy to my eyes (but messed up my contact-lenses for a while). In fact, as far as I am concerned, the Uni has a deep and longstanding commitment to sustainability and continues to make significant progress embedding environmental responsibility across all areas (good that, isn’t it? Took me many days to write these words). The new Uni mascot, Poly the Parrot, with its stunning display of grey-blue-green colours, epitomises everything we all love about the Polyversity University under my wise steerage.

Investing in success

Another major achievement for Myself in 2025 was to invest more dosh into Holmewood House, my base of operations and the thriving hub of central command at the Uni. When I first moved there, I modernised parts of the House with a modest decorating fund of half-a-million pounds, which was money well-spent, believe me, and gave me and other key Uni managers (such as Simon Moron-Worthless) some badly needed personal office space (and boy does Worthless need his personal space, the naughty boy). The only problem is that we had to share part of the Building with what was left of some parts of KSA (Humanities, English Lit types, Philosophers and a few other weirdos). Well, the good news is that I have now kicked out all these wasters (who reads books, anyway, these days?). I have also abolished Philosophy and English Lit as the icing on the cake. You see, I really can have my cake and eat it. As a result, the Senior KU Management team have now been able to take over the whole of Holmewood, and I have spent another half-a-million notes on some more renovation of the place, giving it a distinctive design-style, which I have deemed ‘Spierist’, which combines a vibrant colour-scheme with sculpted wooden handrails and excitingly retro door-handles. I refute allegations this was further evidence of my giant ego and empire-building at work, and was an extravagant waste of money. As far as I am concerned, the Uni’s money is my money, and I take all financial decisions in the overall interests of my career the Uni’s strategic interests and vision.

There is more than a lot of support from our wonderful Board of Governors (BOG) for my vision. The Board’s annual grand Xmas dinner and booze-up, one of the highlights of your my working year, was a great success, and has helped cement my full control of the BOG, er, accountability to the BOG. I will dish out some more Honorary Doctorates to keep the BOGsters happy in the near future. I have also shrunk the size and membership of the Senior Management Team, so my our decisions will take even less time to implement. Genius.

A successful First Term in 2025-26

The release of our latest Annual Report highlighted the my KU’s impact, ambition and huge success. Over the course of 60 glossy and vacuous pages, staff and customers of the Uni can read a very important story written by Myself (with help from Moron-Worthless) about our vision of how we can optimise the decisions made so far and implement the activities undertaken, as we need to thrive as a Polytechnic Polyversity clapped-out College University and avoid the impression that we have, er, steered off course and completely lost our way strategically. The visionary Road-Map set out in the 60 tedious insightful pages of the Annual Report will help steer us around new corners, nasty bends and other bumpy challenges and there will be no U-turns as long as I remain your, er, driver Vehicle Vice-Chancellor. All hands to the wheel!

To this end, we have also assessed our new strategic capabilities, many of which are about how we work and steer and how we teach and learn and drive, thanks to our greatly enhanced digital capabilities and our capable mastery of new big words such as forbearance and, er, capabilities. Our achievements and capabilities in the first term of 2025-26 show we are capable able and agile enough to work and drive in this alternative way. As you can see on page 3 of our Annual Report, we are ‘driving’ advances in teaching, research and knowledge swaps, and are embedding our values and supporting success (whatever that means. Search me). In my last drone talk in the Courtyard of the Clown House, the feedback from the many thousands present suggests that our students are incredibly grateful (in fact tearful) for the opportunity I have provided to them to remain part of our driving thriving, vibrant and very, er, capable Kingston community, with full access to both online and on-campus facilities and capabilities other bits (when they work) (and despite the regrettable massive cutbacks we are making to the Library and Learning Services). Yes, we are a truly Civic University, driven by a civic culture and system: we think like a system and act like entrepreneurs, enabling a full range of capabilities to be adapted via an optimal strategy (good this, isn’t it?). Yes, I was especially pleased with our Annual Report, and the BOG even congratulated me on sneaking the negative bits about the Uni’s finances to the back of the report, as most people won’t be bothered to read it right through to the the end. I truly am a genius. Trebles all round!

So, staff-types, it just remains for me to wish you a Merry Xmas and Happy 2026, and I very much look forward to seeing you back at the Uni, slaving away in the interests of my our unique Future Skilled Vision. Chins up.

Sir Steven Spier,

Gold Commander, and (in my humble opinion) one of the UK’s leading VCs.

According to the latest leaks from the KU comms corner of the Uni, Vice-Admiral and part-time VC Sir Steven ‘Two-Jobs’ Spier has been getting very anxious and red-faced about the less-than-impressive student applicant numbers. He has been turning the screws on Faculty managers, urging them to do much more to reach recruitment targets. With his peculiar obsession with Naval terms, the grossly overpaid VC is clearly at sea and at a loss about how to bail out his sinking leadership. And panic over student numbers is part of this.

Staff have been told they need to market and ‘sell’ the Uni to potential applicants with greater urgency and more energy. The comms staff have also been told to ‘big up’ Kingston’s image for public consumption and to get more parents interested in what KU has to offer. Presumably the thinking is that if KU can draw in parents, the parents will eagerly tell their offspring what a great place Kingston is.

Comms have therefore been putting out regular messages on X and other social media platforms to catch the attention of more potential applicants (sometimes with two-three messages daily), with lots of glossy pictures of trees, the River Thames, Kingston’s older-looking buildings, and overhead images of the Town House, seen from the air or from an odd angle in Pen Road (which nearly got the photographer run over by passing traffic).

Some of this has reached predictably farcical proportions. Anybody looking at the images KU has put out of Knights Park campus, with the photo angles designed to deliberately emphasise all the lovely green trees and foliage enveloping the KP buildings, would easily get the impression the campus is in the middle of the countryside rather than near the grotty old Hogsmill and close to suburban streets. One pic of the Town House at Pen Road had a golden sunset in the background, all designed to make it look as if Pen Road is some kind of sophisticated and glamorous paradise. There have also been some misleadingly glossy pics of Kingston Hill put out, designed to reel in Business applicants and other money-generating punters.

The Gold Commandant has also ensured that some cheesy-looking pics were released on the launch of the latest ‘Future Kills’, sorry, ‘Future Skills’ report at Parliament, clearly in the hope that potential applicants will think that this so-called ‘sector-leading’ BS somehow has the backing of the Government itself. It has all been really painful to watch, especially how all this spin has been adorned with glossy pics of very satisfied looking ‘students’ with big smiles on their faces. And it is doubly insulting to see the VC engaging in spin at the House of Commons when one of his recent acts was to destroy Kingston’s Politics dept.

So what is really going on here? The truth of the matter is that it’s all a sign of how desperate Spier and his Senior Silver Surfers in the SLT have become to try to boost numbers and generate more income. Despite a £7m surplus for the financial year of 2023-24 and huge reserves of £400m, the financial mismanagement of Kingston under Spier’s truly dire Vice-Chancellorship has left the Uni in a dangerously precarious position. To try to stop the financial rot, the VC has ordered Estates to identify what could possibly be flogged off in the future, and (as many staff now painfully know) he has aimed for £20m in savings over two years, axing staff and course portfolios, cutting Faculty budgets through the charmingly-named RAM (Resource Allocation Methodology), and has ordered external consultants to identify how Library and Learning services could be dramatically shrunk. It was also no surprise to see that there has been yet another reshuffle of the Senior Leadership Team, with changes to size and make-up of the SLT (just how many reshuffles of the crappy SLT have there been over the years? We have lost count). And much more pain is in the pipeline for 2025-26. After all, Spier has foolishly committed the Uni to spending yet more millions on a giant shiny new building at Middle Mill, so he’s under even more pressure to be seen to ‘deliver’.

The tragedy of all this is that Spier seriously thinks he can spin his way out of the mess that he is mainly responsible for and create the impression that all is well at Kingston. But staff in the know have realised that, with all the brutal cuts that have already taken place, and all the new ones still being planned, very real and lasting reputational damage has been done to Kingston Uni. Is it any wonder that potential students are reluctant to apply and that numbers are down?

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.