I'm so lonely

I wrote to our Marketing Director on April 9th, asking how he could justify paying some very expensive consultants for internal 'rebranding' ('' because it's not a real word) while the university struggles to make massive cutbacks.

Have I had the courtesy of a reply? Of course not. So I institute the Communications Countdown. I make it 23 days so far. If it gets to 50 days, I'll start using his actual name.

Yet more utter nonsense.

My institution is facing rationalisation, redundancies, module restrictions and cutbacks to 'aid' 'retention'.

In France, students and lecturers faced with the same kind of managerial 'activity' are holding 24-hour lectures, readings and walks. Here, we're paying expensive external consultants large amounts of money to run focus groups about 'brand identity'. Brilliant. Let's call it, er, let's think, how about 'Wolverhampton University'? That'll be £30,000 (at a conservative guess).

Suicidally, I've just sent another angry e-mail to the 'Director of Marketing and Communications'.