More Spin from Admiral Spier

Roll up! Roll up! Vice-Admiral Steven ‘Two Jobs’ Spier is getting ever more desperate to make his ‘flagship’ Clown House Strategy work, and wants to re-sell the Tragedy, sorry ‘Strategy’ to his long-suffering and underpaid KU staff yet again. The Polyversity Comms team has invited KU staff to a Town House Strategy ‘all-staff event’, to be held in the rather hollow ‘courtyard’ of the the Town House on 27 April. Yep. You read that correctly. Staff have been invited, once again, to hear about ‘Town House Strategy updates and developments’ from our very part-time Gold Commander and, this time, he will be joined by Mystic Meg, sorry, ‘Futurologist’ John Vary, one of the world’s foremost experts on horoscopes. Spiersy will no doubt be hoping that Mystic John will use some creative Future Skills to include a confident prediction that the VC will inevitably be rewarded by his close mates in the government with a Knighthood. The Vice-Commandant feels that he deserves this honour for all his work creating what he (laughingly) calls his ‘progressive new model of education’, otherwise known as the ‘basic skills model’ by most other Universities (and which many of them dropped ages ago).

As the academic year draws to an end things have not been going well for poor old Spiersy and his plan to become ‘Sir’ Steven. Since the launch of the Future Skills campaign a full two years ago, a shed-load of money has been thrown at the Clown House strategy and it has been re-launched over and over. But there has been little interest from KU staff, and there’s hardly been an avalanche of interest from industry. The Town House Fellows scheme, sold to staff as ‘a very special opportunity’ to contribute to the ‘delivery’ of the TH Strategy, has been disastrous, with hardly any interest or applications. This is hardly surprising, as it involves a lot of casual donkey work for very little in return. Spiersy and the SLT (Senile Leadership Team) have been so stuck for ideas they hoped that exploiting some eager members of staff as ‘Fellows’ would bring some fresh creative thinking to make up for their own empty-headed approach, hilariously deemed ‘workstreams’ by Spiersy’s ultra-loyal SLTer Simon Worthless-Moron, KSA’s notorious Professor of Sleeping (around) Studies, who has written much of the Town House Strategy bullshit.

But it’s all gone horribly stale for them, and panic is setting in. Spiersy has also become aware that other VCs across the country are beginning to watch this failure pan out in real-time. In a sign of how desperate the world’s leading architect and expert on contemporary Swiss cheeses has become, Admiral Spiersy recently ordered his loyal bagman David ‘Mac the Knife’ Mackintosh, the oldest Dean in the University, if not the Universe, to step down as Dean of the Faculty of Health, Science, Social Care and Education, and concentrate instead on TH Strategy ‘implementation’ – i.e. giving the Town House Strategy momentum again before the ‘flagship’ hits the rocks and sinks. Mackintosh could hardly say no, as he was given a large (secret) bonus by Spiersy for overseeing the disastrous split with St. Georges and for making huge cuts to courses across the University.

For sheer entertainment value alone, the ‘all-staff’ meeting should give any staff who can be bothered to attend (and face the mind-numbing tedium) a good opportunity to get some ‘updates’ on how spectacularly wonderful everything is going. Just be careful of the tumbleweed as it flows through the courtyard. And for God’s sake don’t ask any questions! The VC does not like to be embarrassed. It’s bad for his nerves.