Bulster Uni’s Bullying Boffins

Last time we “named and shamed” Bulster’s notorious VC “Tricky Dicky” and his HR gopher-torturer, “Mad Bonnie”. We offered an expose of the mediocre former nurses, school teachers, administrators and policy “chancers” who make up the senior management team at Bulster University.
The local UCU branch and many of their staff have argued that top management  have been so consistently ineffective over decades that the only way Dicky could keep his multi-campus Gulag archipelago together, was through bullying at every level of this depressing institution.

Since this misery is inflicted on  Bulster University staff and students and offered to the public on the bank-rolling of public money, our readers are entitled to quiz the evidence of public shame in this province where one might have thought the lofty European Declaration of Human Rights might apply? Why is public money being wasted on a failed university? And why are the moguls of Bulster University apparently so unaccountable? With a HR Chief like Bonnie, Arthur Cox Solicitors are the current in a long line of lawyers kept busy for Bulster University!

Among universities in the UK and Ireland, Bulster University has consistently been among the worst for harassment of staff, and for work-place stress. It has among the highest rates of staff bringing cases to Industrial Tribunal and has been the subject of a number of successful landmark employment discrimination and bullying cases. Bulster University’s track-record for industrial relations is so bad the mild-mannered University and College Union which supposedly represents most academic staff believe Bulster University is “off the scale” on bullying and harassment of staff and needs a whole new category beyond just “grey-listing”.

In regard to its internal reconciliation of industrial conflict Bulster University employs its own watch-dog or “University Visitor”, normally a senior legal figure, but whose terms of reference make him or her a de-facto employee of the University and who staff believe takes instructions directly from the university administration. Under such a procedures the Visitor, a person who is supposed to be genuinely independent and to represent the Monarch in the interests of fair-play, could be no more than an apology for an academic dictatorship.

Recently these luke-warm powers have been weakened and the Royal Visitor cannot now address employment issues. It is a sad indictment of Bulster that it’s Legal Head  “Olly” Mac is embroiled in a legal battle against the University.

This has involved Olly being suspended from his post on several occasions and has placed him in head-on conflict with the “uber dictator” his line manager, the universities Director of Torture and Execution, “Mad Bonnie”. And for those who might feel some sympathy for Olly getting a touch of his own nasty medicine, one should not forget this legal supremo has “ducked and dived”, and allegedly “lied and falsified” over decades of Industrial Tribunals brought by the University’s desperately immiserated academic staff. Never reluctant to wield the knife against his employees, it is a safe bet to say that nasty Olly is just now getting it in his own ass!

We can also report that Olly’s boss, “Mad Bonnie”, may himself be on his last days at the University. Subject to final disciplinary warning for bullying and threats, Bonnie is now under police investigation for criminal harassment and misconduct in public office. What also seems likely is that once Dicky’s ship finally sinks, Bonnie will be drowned with the other senior managements rats.

What implications has all this bullying for academic standards at Bulster University? Well for the malaise of plummeting academic standards in every league table we must attribute a good deal of blame to the University’s Provosts and academic deans who have been the enforcers of the college torture chambers. One thinks in particular of former Coleraine Provosts, Mal Blunt and Robbo “The Hutch”, both well remembered for their over-use of “Mad” Ronnie and his HR heavies.

Not quite s dazzling as the famous “TV cops”, our Campus Provosts “Blunt and Hutch” had no scruples about bulldozing their colleagues along the way. In the process this duo became infamous for allowing large-scale closure of their programmes and singularly advancing their mediocre academic careers. Blunt was especially loathed by staff for his KGB-style web monitoring and “cyber-trolling” of academics. Perhaps more famous for sporting prowess than genuine scholarship, Blunt predictably turned campus management into a “game sport”.

After a week or two of “Blunt’s KGB treatment” his line-employees were cornered like rabbits in a flash-light. “Hutch” who had a less than stellar career as an economist is probably better known for being “economical with the truth” at college disciplinary and employment tribunal proceedings.

At most universities deans are custodians of collegiate knowledge. Bulster University is singularly unique in maintaining a deanship enforcing University House policy across the campus archipelago. Names which come to mind among corporate tsars include an Arts Dean whose life-hero is probably Polish General Jaruzelski, the former Communist supremo who imposed martial law to crush the Solidarity democracy movement.

Under Bulster’s own General, the Arts faculty has been reduced to shreds, its courses and staff dislocated across the archipelago and academic morale in ruins. Great Arts course that worked well in cultural cities like Derry were closed down while new ventures in scientific areas like Pharmacy,  Veterinary Science and Microbiology have yet to deliver!
In Bulster academic leadership is less of a deanship and more of a dictatorial tsar-ship! Then we have the recently elevated Milly Dick whose gaff in accepting hundreds of unqualified students did not prevent him making Pro-VC…a truly Ulster illustration of the corporate American saying “f..k up and get kicked up…”
Then we have the over-promoted Dean Raisin in Life Sciences famously ridiculed as Dicky’s most loyal dunce. Ms Raisin has wasted no time in joining Dicky in the international “cookie trough”. With Dicky she was  among about a dozen Bulster boffins accepting substantial gifts from Saudi educational institutions (who now owe Bulster over £2m in unpaid fees). 

Ranging from Rolexes, scarves and rugs, these might be interpreted as expensive “kick-backs” which the Senior Executive Team Minutes show resulted ultimately in a teminated contract, a £2 Million loss and the bizairre reality of a heavily indebted Bulster educating rich Saudi students at full cost to the local tax-payer. The Bulster managers got their gold watches, the university lost money, the tax-payer footed the bill, and local Northern Ireland students suffered from the short-fall.

Finally we have Social Sciences golden man, and rumored to be Dicky’s confidante, Micky Paul, whose rush to power shows how a Kingston boy can make a few talents go a long way. And as his leader is about to bow out as Bulster VC it is rumored that Dicky is also about to “come out “about his sexual identity.

These gossiped revelations recall those of a former Ulster University Education Chief whose personal sex-change journey would have been viewed more sympathetically even by Ulster’s “religious far-right” management had she not also been a bullying maniac. In true Ulster Christian fashion they allegedly ordered her thereafter to use the disabled toilets!

Ousted from Ulster, she went on to be removed for further bullying in Scotland. Well if indeed Dicky become one of our first VC’s to come out as part of the LGBTI community, this might well be one of his most honest actions at Bulster. But if announcement follows the rumor mill, Dicky is likely to be compared negatively with Thames Valley Uni’s flamboyant ear-ringed, pony-tailed bully Mike Fitzgerald (pictured here)  who finally  resigned after a devastating watchdog’s report said that degree standards at TVU could no longer be guaranteed. Echoes of Dicky in Bulster although “Tricky Dicky’s” suits are somewhat more sober and one doubts he’d ever get an ear-ring!

So that’s all for now from our Dictator at Bulster University. Next time we’ll take a look at what it’s genuinely like to be in one of Bulster University’s torture chambers, and we’ll see if the keepers of the torture machine, Dictator Dicky and “Mad Bonnie”, will finally get their just deserts. Who knows maybe this would not be the first time Dicky and Bonnie have worn handcuffs!

ADVISORY… This is a work of humorous fiction and any similarities with persons or places real or imagined is purely a matter of coincidence. If you’ve been bullied at Bulster University or any F/HE institution don’t hesitate in complete confidence to E-MAIL: bullied.academics@yahoo.co.uk  Victims may complain without penalty under their college procedures or consider making a complaint to their local police. Where the police are contacted bullying usually ceases immediately.