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.