This blog has just passed its second birthday, set up in response to the neoliberal overbearing management that Kingston, and indeed many other universities, are subject to. Its purpose is to give voice to the many dissenting employees who are effectively silenced in open discourse, a deep irony given the ideas of free thinking that used to be at the heart of any worthwhile university. Challenging the management culture publicly is at best pointless because disagreement is dismissed, at worst a threat to one’s job.
Does the satire of this blog have any effect? We are unlikely to see any significant change in the hectoring stance of Kingston’s management but perhaps we will make it wriggle uncomfortably from time to time. Meanwhile we hope the blog cheers you a little; in the words of Dunne, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The management is only too comfortable because they are the only ones whose pay is going up.
We would like to thank all our readers, which includes not just Kingston staff but others around the country and as far away as Australia and America. Also a big thank you to those of you who have contributed. Please do keep sending in your comments and ideas. If you want to contact the blog, just make a comment on an article.
Thank you for your efforts exposing KU’s management over the last 2 years. As my tenure at Kingston fades to a distant (geographic and temporal) memory your blog reminds me why I left and of the colleagues left behind (albeit they are jumping from the sinking ship at an increasingly rapid rate).
Many thanks for your comment. We are all rats now but the Big Rat stands to attention on the bridge as the music plays.