(Image of Paula Vennells is public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.0)
The Post Office Scandal is the defining event of 21st century Britain.
Between 1999 and 2015, about 1000 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft because of faults in the Post Office’s IT accounting system. The Post Office senior management, headed by Paula Vennells, knew the software was faulty but pursued convictions for years, destroying livelihoods, reputations and lives. A shocking injustice was carried out at the instigation of a few, but condoned by many, and met with the silent consent of politicians, civil servants and the judiciary.
There are many similarities between what is happening in our Universities and the other British scandals like the Post Office (as the poster ‘England’s Dreaming‘ has noted here and here).
The Post Office was once a public service. Corporatisation began under Tony Blair’s Labour government in 2000 and was completed by David Cameron’s coalition government in 2012. This change brought a profit-driven, defensive management culture to the Post Office — one that prioritised institutional reputation and revenue. Similarly, UK universities have evolved from public educational institutions into quasi-private corporations, competing for home & international students and global rankings. With this commercialisation has come risk aversion, PR management and brand protection over transparency or accountability. In both cases, managerialism has uprooted an older public service ethos.
Both the Post Office and universities operate within frameworks that privilege internal control over transparency. Universities handle allegations of misconduct, bullying or research misconduct through “confidential” internal procedures. These processes are rarely subject to external oversight and their outcomes are never made public. Like the Post Office’s internal investigations, university grievance systems are designed not to uncover truth but to protect reputation. The absence of independent scrutiny allows the discretion of senior management to dominate, often leaving complainants isolated and discredited. This opacity creates conditions under which serious individual harm goes unchecked and systemic dysfunction remains hidden.
The Post Office scandal was marked by extreme power imbalance: local sub-postmasters of modest means faced the combined legal and financial resources of a national institution. A similar asymmetry defines university employment and research structures. Early-career academics, doctoral students and fixed-term staff are dependent on senior colleagues for funding, authorship, and professional advancement. When conflicts arise over research misconduct or workplace bullying, these individuals have no chance. They often face the full weight of institutional HR/legal divisions and public relations teams. Even Professors with secure open-ended job contracts are still vulnerable. For example, Cambridge University has resources exceeding many small countries and so they can easily bankrupt any Professor in a legal fight.
The Post Office was under significant political pressure to maintain a trustworthy public face as it moved towards privatisation, and thus portrayed the Horizon system as faultless. Universities share the Post Office’s structural incentive to preserve brand integrity. In an environment where reputation directly affects funding, rankings and student recruitment, negative publicity represents existential risk. This creates a culture in which the avoidance of scandal always outweighs the pursuit of justice. The Post Office’s insistence on the infallibility of its Horizon software mirrors University senior management’s insistence on the infallibility of their internal procedures.
There were ~1000 sub-postmasters who were wrongfully prosecuted. At least 13 people are believed to have taken their own lives and at least 60 people have reported that they contemplated suicide. There was profound damage caused to people’s lives, reputations, families and health
The scandal in that UK universities is on a comparable scale. Over the last decade, at any UK university, there are many hundreds of victims — people whose complaints were mishandled; whose accusations were ignored; staff or students plagiarised; PhD students marginalised; early-career staff bullied with no recourse; young researchers whose careers were destroyed. The 21 Group knows of multiple instances of staff or student suicides caused by University management. The number of victims and the scale of the harm is comparable to the Post Office.
So, who is playing the role of the handsomely rewarded Paula Vennells in the next Post Office Scandal?
And who are the “thugs in suits”?
And who are playing the role of the many politicians, civil servants and the judiciary who silently consented?
46 Comments
math · 8 November 2025 at 11:59
VCs will just use the Vennells excuse.
Vennells said she had been “too trusting” and accused five key Post Office executives of having withheld information from her
“I was trusting. It’s all the pro-VCs fault, I wasn’t told the truth”
Eileen Nugent · 12 November 2025 at 13:09
Scapegoating type tactics don’t work when dealing with one of these deeply embedded systemic faults. Those whose actions were focussed on making it possible to characterise the systemic fault and who contributed to the analysis of the systemic fault were capable of doing something in the situation and made a positive contribution to fixing the systemic problem. Those whose actions were focused on scapegoating others – which does not work in these situations and is waste of resources – were not capable of doing anything in the situation and made a negative contribution to fixing the systemic problem.
If there is a systemic trust issue it is not possible to trust key executives with no independent verification, it’s a trust and verify situation. In this case it was even worse because the systemic trust issue is at an interface between two organisations so it’s a compound systemic trust issue which means it’s also not possible to trust key Fujitsu executives with no independent verification.
If an organisation is constantly scapegoating individuals – individual post masters – this can create an ongoing illusion of an organisation solving its problems but as soon as the problem is integrated over longer timescales it becomes clear that the solution is determined by the nature of the organisational problem and that all the organisation has really done is gotten rid of some of its best organisational problem solvers and blocked itself from solving its organisational problems internally.
Jay · 8 November 2025 at 18:39
The use of expensive lawyers like Carter-Ruck to hush things up is a major scandal. It is corruption, a serious misuse of public money. It would be good if the people responsible for this are exposed.
Ultimately, the VC carries the can for this because he/she is the most senior administrator & bears responsibility.
MUSKETEER · 8 November 2025 at 19:26
At UCam it is clear the American Queen is totally clueless! She I believe is at the whim of the Council, Registrary, Head of HR, and some rogue Heads of School. She signs where she is told to do and enjoys her 1st class travel, free luxurious housing and meals, and some ‘queen-like’ activities. So all the internal disputes are left to the likes of Prof Smallman, Prof Teflon (now Master of a College), Prof Drinkalot, Prof Crookery (he now runs a part of UKRI), and the totally inept Pro-VCs. In this poisonous pool Prof Viciouswoman and others like her thrive! The place is doomed!
DArtagnan · 8 November 2025 at 21:07
It’s actually very unclear who is in charge of the place. The Registrary is on leave & members of Council complain that they are not being told everything. Some of the senior management are inept, avaricious & without morals. A sense of drift and decay pervades the place.
TheResearcher · 8 November 2025 at 21:50
“members of Council complain that they are not being told everything”
If you mean the University Council, I find it very curious and hard to believe that they genuinely think that. When I contacted them to report research misconduct that had not been addressed by the senior leaders before them, they never responded. One of the members in particular who is Head of College is clearly not interested, and I am absolutely sure about that. He even complains when I cc him in my lengthy disputes with the University when I should cc him as the Master of my College! Interestingly, the University keeps removing him from cc when they reply to me, and he told me face-to-face a few days ago that was the appropriate procedure as he should not know those topics. He also told me how important confidentiality was and that I should not disclose what I do because it affects the reputation of others. I had to explain to him that we have very different views about confidentiality and how it is used in the University of Cambridge, and that I will follow my view, namely in his College. What a sad person. He has a wide range of evidence of misconduct sent to him by me and others, but looks the other way.
Concerned · 10 November 2025 at 13:41
All I can say is that this appears deeply disturbing. Is it my understanding that there are multiple instances of HR instructing students to remove responsible parties from cc and/or not communicate to other associated parties within the university? If accompanied by direct threats of disciplinary action or worse, intimation of police referral without explicable grounds, that would be quite a grave matter. For it could then reasonably be inferred that those making such communications were either a) aware that their actions would be seen as unreasonable and unjust by others, or b) deliberately seeking to prevent responsible parties being notified and rendered culpable of negligence for failing to intervene. After all it is the right of every student or staff member to notify those involved or responsible for internal processes of information that is pertinent to their function and the duty of all those who have received information to act appropriately based on that.
TheResearcher · 10 November 2025 at 17:05
Yes, Concerned, you are correct. They are perfectly aware of what they are doing to me, and they deliberately remove the most senior members from cc when I cc them, not least for being the Master of my college and member of the University Council, and the Master himself had the courage to tell me in my face that their decision was absolutely reasonable and that he agreed with them. Obviously, I told him that I will keep ccing him and no one will prevent me from doing so. He may ignore whistleblowing disclosures or safeguarding referrals done by third-parties; he may ignore how a member of his college is being crashed by the university and accused of abusive behaviour against hundreds of people; he may ignore that I cannot complain about any topic nor even use Statute A IX, which is a right of any member of UCam, namely members of the Regent House and students; but he cannot prevent me from ccing him when I report what is happening to a range of individuals, internal and external to his college. The situation will become increasing embarrassing to him, regardless of any accountability he may have in the future.
England's Dreaming · 9 November 2025 at 02:40
This is a reflective of a deeper governance problem in the United Kingdom, which is that we lack the necessary institutions to hold elites to the same standards of ethical integrity, due diligence and legal compliance as exist in comparable western democracies.
For a generation we have delegated extensive powers to specialised bodies that focus exclusively upon policing the poor and marginalised. These include anti-terror, organised crime, and “anti-social” (now “criminal behavour”) orders that allow for ad hoc surveillance, judicial injunction, or fast-track conviction for those suspected of minor infractions that may escalate to more severe crimes.
By contrast, our political, social and economic elites float in an unreal “soft touch” world marked by informality and permissiveness. The institutions of British high society, with their informal rules of decency and fairness, do not uphold standards of integrity or accountability.
It is this system that has failed. To fix it there is one clear solution. We need specialised agencies that will subject our societal elites – politicians, corrupted law firms, business leaders – to the same fast-track investigation, criminal sentencing and imprisonment that for a generation, the poor and marginalised have dealt with day to day.
Fortunately, there is good precedent for this, and it can be done without undermining the liberal democratic process. Over the past generation Australia, for example, has set up powerful anti-corruption agencies that can conduct surveillance on high-level figures, then use such evidence in court to hold civil servants or politicians to account. These have had remarkable success in exposing corrupt practises and have sent a number of high-profile figures to jail, including former state minister Ian Macdonald and Queensland mayor Paul Pisasale. Far from undermining democratic accountability, they have proven a valuable complement.
By contrast, when it comes to sanctioning elites who break the law, Britain is woefully ineffective, not just in comparison to Australia, but also Canada and the United States.
Regarding the latter, much is rightly now made of the fact that the current administration of Donald J. Trump is working actively to undermine judicial independence. But what needs to be remembered here is that they have motivation for doing so. For American courts, unlike their British counterparts, have proven unfliching in holding elites to account. After the first Trump administration of 2016-20, for example, Trump advisor Steve Bannon was sentenced to our months in prison in relation to the January 6 Capitol attack, as was his trade adviser, Peter Navarro. Also sentenced to serve time in prison time were Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, and political consultant Paul Manafort. American courts, unlike ours, have real teeth, and do not spare the wealthy or powerful their bite. In the UK, Prince Andrew may have lost his titles, while Paula Vennells has returned her CBE. In America Jeffrey Epstein spent his first his period in custody in 2008 and died in jail in 2019.
Trump may be undermining US rule of law; but at least there is rule of law to undermine. In England, when it comes to elite accountability, it is one law for them and another for us. If the tragedy of the United States is that they have already had their revolution, that of England is that we are still waiting.
It is time to bring the revolution home.
The first step in the accountability revolution is to ensure that the laws that exist in England and Wales on paper, will henceforth be backed by enforcement agencies with the specialised powers to investigate and prosecute based on them.
For let there be no doubt on this. Organisations acting in a manner which results in injury and suicide are engaged in criminal negligence. So, too, are any executives, lawyers or regulators found to have looked the other way.
If crime is to pay, then all those responsible must be made to pay the price.
21percent.org · 9 November 2025 at 14:50
As reported in the press today, Peter Mandelson sent Jeffrey Epstein an email in 2003 stating his legal troubles ‘just could not happen in Britain’.
21percent.org · 9 November 2025 at 17:38
It was sent in June 2008 after Epstein’s conviction by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution: “I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened. I can still barely understand it. It just could not happen in Britain.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/10/mandelson-told-epstein-your-friends-love-you-after-2008-charges-emails-show?utm_source=chatgpt.com
TigerWhoCametoET · 9 November 2025 at 19:32
Oh goodness with the full quote that is just awful. It is a horrible reflection on the UK to see someone so senior say a thing like that.
Eileen Nugent · 12 November 2025 at 13:23
A free market is a market that is kept free of false information. A country that ignores whistleblowers with key information on organisational faults, defunds it’s national regulators and leaves inefficient legal processes in place to wear down whistleblowers before any full investigation of the organisational fault can take place cannot be said to be a country that has an effective system in place to continuously maintain its markets in a free state.
Eileen Nugent · 12 November 2025 at 13:40
Stability and continuity = tuning free market kinetics to match the kinetics of the social environment and physical environment = increasing regulatory power and focusing legal system power on powering specific sets of legal processes to deal with rapidly shifting social environment and physical environment kinetics.
Eileen Nugent · 12 November 2025 at 14:14
For cultural change to work it has to be done right – increases in dynamic discipline of national regulators cost public resources but having static and/or undisciplined national regulators during an active national reform process is not an option – the legal system has to be capable of continuous auto-regulation – calculating the public resources it’s ongoing needs are demanding and getting them, ignoring all irrelevant external influences.
Anon · 9 November 2025 at 17:37
@21percent-org – the Mandelson quote is shocking yet also revealing in what it tells about the poor state of accountability in British society. The more shocking thing behind it is the impression of a member of the British elite using the country’s lack of whistleblower protection and freedom of speech as apparent “selling points” to rich perpetrators abroad!
Couple more points to add…
1. @England’s Dreaming – the U.S. courts are indeed better at “going after” high profile wrongdoers though the record on criminal negligence is so and so. Elizabeth Warren did sponsor a bill last year however that would have made executives liable more directly liable for criminal negligence.
2. EU states are the more proactive example to follow. In Italy, the former CEO of the motorway management company (Autostrade per l’Italia) was charged with negligent homicide following a bus crash arising from poor maintenance. After exhausting his appeals in April of this year he was finally sentenced to six years in prison. As you might imagine, prosecutors were not exactly impressed by attempts to use “lack of awareness” as a defence against charges of negligence.
21percent.org · 9 November 2025 at 17:41
Agreed about EU states (or some of them, sometimes). Nicolas Sarkozy and Bettino Craxi ended up in jail.
SPARTACUS · 10 November 2025 at 14:00
With major scandals in several schools (Clinical Medicine, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences) the UofCam is in deep s..t! Bullying and confidentiality as a tool of intimidation will not solve the underlying rot! Tribunals and Courts will be very busy! Tic toc tic toc… boom!!!
BreakerMorant · 10 November 2025 at 17:13
Don’t forget the School of Arts and Humanities with plagiarism, research misconduct and bullying scandals in History, Geography, Music & Architecture
And the School of Humanities and Social Sciences with massive problems in Education & POLIS likely to break next year because of court actions/journalists.
Our HR seem to have an uncanny ability to repeatedly hit the self-destruct button. There’s a good chance that the HR Division will end up blowing the whole University to smithereens.
Bang, bang, you’re dead.
TheResearcher · 10 November 2025 at 17:28
BreakerMorant, we have been waiting for news from you… what happens if you ignore the gagging orders? Can you be sued? Send the news to me and I share them. The university will not have much to take from me!
BangBang · 10 November 2025 at 18:07
“Our HR seem to have an uncanny ability to repeatedly hit the self-destruct button.”
If only it was the self-destruct button, the one for HR!
We’d at least get rid of the malicious ones among them (and legal) who just seem to enjoy playing gods and then watch the sparks fly…
…before crying “oh goodness, this is bad, what could we do? what could we think of? yet another useful piece of advice? or another one of those really helpful letters? Perhaps the sparks will then turn into the most brilliant fireworks…!”
Anonymous · 10 November 2025 at 14:23
A Professor recently put it directly, but privately, to the VC of the University of ‘KK’ (*), why they were allowing the persecution of Whistleblowers by horrendously abusive and corrupt means, and allowing them to be dismissed unfairly or unlawfully?
The VC wasn’t concerned at all, and in fact the VC deemed it the “right” thing to do (of course the VC felt this way – as the VC needs to authorise such dismissals long before the scam takes shape by their immediate colleagues to execute it, or at least at the very early stages of it).
The VC was asked why they were allowing such an obvious “scandal” to unfold under their watch. No response.
The VC was asked directly why the internal ordinances and statutes exist only to persecute and expunge legitimate complainants who speak out against HR or management. No response.
The VC was again asked to intervene on this scandal, but this time said that they will not even open the letter that was attached to this effect.
This VC just didn’t care, and the Director of HR was even worse. They feel that they are completely immune, and that such victims will be silenced by forced confidentiality, and eventually by NDAs and bought off. I suggest that this University, and the wider sector, radically revise this strategy going forward.
For those reading this blog, if you find yourself the innocent victim of the wrath of University HR and management, and are being subjected to malicious HR processes, then ensure that all senior HR and management knows everything that is going on. That way ‘plausible deniability’ is an excuse they will never have, be it with the general staff base, their peers in HR and management, and also with the courts.
Those overseeing such processes have their methods to counter this of course (we are seeing this attempted in real time with the appalling treatment of TheResearcher). For example, to expunge a member of staff, they will subject them to a series of bogus HR processes, where those overseeing these processes will be in on the scam, or certainly HR and the Chairs will be (which are always selected from a very small group of senior managers, especially when they really want rid of someone). It’s done this way to ensure that no memory of previous and related HR processes is carried forward, i.e. that all your hard evidence is swept under the carpet before the new panel looks at the case again. The hope, on their part, is that any hard factual evidence you have withers away from one process to the next (along with your health), and all that is left is their manufactured and malicious narrative against the victim, which gets worse with time. This is the condition that they seek, and if they achieve it, the victim has no chance at all.
So you must restate every key aspect of your case, with evidence, over and over, and in writing.
They will fight you tooth and nail to prevent you from doing this of course, and may even blatantly prevent you from making your case at all. They will say that this evidence is not relevant, and was part of the other process etc etc. Any obvious absurdity with the position they take is never a problem to them (which is one of the reasons why gagging orders are issued). Resist this as best you can, so that they will not have ‘plausible deniability’ either.
(*) see https://21percent.org/?p=2769
FP · 10 November 2025 at 15:04
It’s an insane gamble with both their own reputations and ours. There’s a thousand ways this could all spiral out of control.
TheResearcher · 10 November 2025 at 15:19
I confirm this was the method that they have been using against me, and a key reason for why I am technically forbidden from contacting hundreds of people, including “Any HR staff from the University of Cambridge” is because the university—read senior leadership—was concerned that I shared what I know internally further when they realized I was doing it, while at the same time wanted to prevent me from complaining about any topic. The latter has been happening as they ignore my complains and questions, but the former has not been very successful as I continue to contact a bunch of people and reporting what has been happening with me. You may want to check the Reporter this week…
Accepting confidentiality is the worst thing one can do in this situation, and I am honestly really looking forward for receiving the results of the “investigation” against me for alleged abusive behaviour against hundreds of people where the university could even call the police to discuss my “crimes”. Only the bright minds who had this idea—and the senior members of my college who have been cced in these communications and do nothing about it—do not think this is surreal and a shame.
Anonymous · 10 November 2025 at 19:28
FP – Indeed, there are many ways it can spiral out of control, at least from the perspective of the victim (also see earlier posts on this: https://21percent.org/?p=2729 for example).
As the victim is being subjected to this maelstrom of abuse and defamation, the malicious narrative concerning the victim gets even worse very quickly, by design, and the stages required to achieve the pre-determined outcome gets pushed forward one by one. The latter in particular is carefully controlled, perhaps by just a few individuals, and there is no stopping it.
The key thing to keep in mind here is that once it is clear to the victim that senior HR and management have started their attack run, it’s already too late, and it would be safe to assume that they all already know the key points of the false narrative that has been constructed for use against the victim. Any further internal career progression, which depends on these individuals, has already been severely impacted.
Yes, up until that point it can be considered a gamble for the victim to adopt certain approaches, so it’s vitally important that victims can recognise the signs that they are in this trap as early as possible. In these circumstances, the best the victim can do may be to go about gathering the right kind of evidence in the right way, for any eventuality. That includes the approach noted above to deny the perpetrators any ‘plausible deniability’ and the victim carrying over evidence etc.
Perhaps miracles may happen, where a panelist eventually comes along in the chain of HR processes and doesn’t play ball with HR and other senior management, at least not entirely, but I just haven’t seen it yet.
21percent.org · 10 November 2025 at 20:19
What happens to someone in University HR who doesn’t play ball is here:
https://21percent.org/?p=1239
They are ousted.
We feel sorry for honest people in University HR — if they remain, they must die a little each day.
Force Majeure · 10 November 2025 at 20:58
Thank heavens we have a blog like this which offers a means to turn things around at ‘two minutes to midnight´ i.e. before things truly blow up. It is a service to the university to provide this final canary in this coalmine and enable the rest of us to act —- if we can save our institution from the damage wrought by the senior figures responsible for these travesties.
SPARTACUS · 11 November 2025 at 09:24
“As the victim is being subjected to this maelstrom of abuse and defamation, the malicious narrative concerning the victim gets even worse very quickly, by design, and the stages required to achieve the pre-determined outcome gets pushed forward one by one. The latter in particular is carefully controlled, perhaps by just a few individuals, and there is no stopping it.”
This is the script! Amazing how many now know this!
In the biggest scandal of all involving the School of Clinical Medicine and CRUK this is precisely what happened! The corruption of the process will be exposed eventually! Tic toc tic tic toc… BOOM!
Raven · 11 November 2025 at 10:30
And shame on those who could perhaps stop it or at least raise concerns, but are too busy looking the other way as a comfortable pre-retirement as Head of House beckons. Collaborators in abject abuse and defamation, as they should be called.
Quoting from a previous blog comment:
“[And yet,] an academic who judges the behaviour or work of another without looking at the evidence, without checking the evidence, without ensuring the evidence is trustworthy or lawful, an academic who endorses conclusions on the basis of hearsay, HR gossip, material “too confidential” to disclose and statements “taken as read” should be outed and thrown out of the community for that reason alone.
For having lost all sense of academic judgment. For not following standards and ignoring the Statutes.”
Anonymous · 11 November 2025 at 12:52
I would appeal to such collaborators to come forward, or at least to help those victims they know have been persecuted. If they do not, then they will have no right to claim that they were a ‘prisoner of the system’. They need to fully realise that they are a critical part of the system of corruption and abuse, and are therefore just as culpable as the ring leaders. The full picture is coming out now and there is no stopping it.
I do not feel that our University system can survive for much longer in this state. We are now very definitely in national enquiry territory. Our Australian colleagues are making progress on this. You may recall the following statement being put out recently by the AAUP:
https://www.professoriate.org/2024/12/27/allegations-of-misconduct-and-unethical-conduct-by-senior-australian-university-managers/
Given the scale of the problem, the AAUP actually call upon Austrailia’s National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) to look into it. As you may have seen, several states are now running government enquiries into how their Universities are being governed, and one at federal level too. The AAUP have prepared submissions for these. For example:
https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/lcdocs/submissions/92430/0013%20Australian%20Association%20of%20University%20Professors.pdf
Much of this has resonated strongly with me, and I’m sure the same is true for many others here. For example, they recommend “that willful or negligent damage to academic units constitutes a criminal offence, recognising academic departments as part of the nation’s intellectual infrastructure”, and to “make lying in the conduct of any university work a sackable offence”.
Please all take a moment to read through this document.
Anon · 11 November 2025 at 13:19
Can confirm. This is definitely coming to the UK. As government forced to bail out HE sector there are serious questions from civil servants as to why international funding grants, donations, and foundational partnerships were blocked.
Anon · 12 November 2025 at 08:21
The university sits on billions and billions of illiquid assets. So why are they desperate to cut the annual operating deficit to zero – even at the cost of losing frontline educational staff? Perhaps because running deficits invites external scrutiny of this kind into how the money is really being spent?
BreakerMorant · 11 November 2025 at 12:12
Lady Macbeth reports chaos & power struggles at the top
***BREAKING****
We would like to provide an update on senior leadership positions in the University.
Following recent changes and ongoing transitions, the University has decided not to proceed with the appointment of a new Chief Financial Officer at this time. This decision reflects the need to maintain stability and continuity in our leadership team and is in no way a reflection on the successful candidate. As a result, and with considerable regret, we confirm that Rita Akushie will not now be joining the University as our new CFO. We and Rita had been looking forward to her joining us, and we are very grateful to Rita for her engagement in this process.
We are pleased that Anthony Odgers has kindly agreed to continue in his role to help guide the University through this period of change.
We recognise the significant change in leadership positions in the central University administration at present through absence, vacancy and recent arrival. Interim arrangements are now in place to cover for the Registrary’s prolonged period away from the office. These roles are key to providing strategic and operational stability and leadership to the University, and we would like to assure you that organisational resilience will continue to be of the highest priority.
IMAGINARY · 11 November 2025 at 14:05
UCam is collapsing! No wonder: American Queen, Prof Smallman, Prof Teflon, Prof Drinkalot, Prof Crookery, Prof Bullshitmore, Prof Viciouswoman, Head of HR, Council, … What a rotten lot!
Brute · 11 November 2025 at 14:30
Don’t forget Nurse Emily, the Teddy Bear, Concerned Face, Miranda Priestly, Fireman Mike
And Corporate Camel, the Company Man
And the Masters of the Colleges — Kerris Bowles-Ottery, Wendell Lacksworth and Lord Glossover
MUSKETEER · 11 November 2025 at 14:43
Kerris Bowles-Ottery, Master of a College, and Prof Teflon are one and the same! That is what D’Artagnan tells me!!! They hence share the same bedfellow!!!
Atos and Potos cannot help but laugh out loud! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yes you guessed: I am Aramis!
Fixer · 11 November 2025 at 18:18
Trying to fix the university is like trying to repair a ship board by board while it is still out at sea. Its impossible. There are too many rotten planks. The only way to fix these problems is to take us in to port and do a total rebuild.
21percent.org · 11 November 2025 at 18:41
Accurate, unfortunately. There are too many underperforming individuals in the top echelons of the University, despite the fact that we are paying them top dollar.
Fixer · 12 November 2025 at 07:45
Sadly true. It takes the loyalists like the supporters of this group who are prepared to dedicate their own time and money to hold up professional standards and campaign for reforms that will deliver to meaningful change.
BreakerMorant · 12 November 2025 at 07:52
****BREAKING*****
Yesterday’s announcement was nothing short of extraordinary.
The new CFO appeared to have a golden deal — a job for life worth about £400,000 a year. Walking away from a contract like that can’t have come cheap; it likely cost the University very serious money — upwards of a million pounds. The only reason to take such an expensive step would be if continuing with the appointment posed an even greater risk.
So what could have gone so wrong, so fast?
The new CFO was going to have the Finance Division report directly to her. But that setup doesn’t align with the University’s own Statutes and Ordinances, which place the Finance Division under the authority. of the Registrary.
The Registrary has been on leave since the CFO’s appointment.
The new reporting lines effectively sidelined her, it could even amount to a claim of constructive dismissal. That might explain why the University abruptly reversed course — better to pay off one contract than risk a much bigger legal and governance crisis.
Eileen Nugent · 13 November 2025 at 11:10
The CFO will have a higher level of expertise in financial regulation of an organisation than the Registrary. As soon as a CFO role has been created the CFO will be in a position of higher authority over the finance division than the Registrary. That will always be the case because the CFO is focussed exclusively on the financial regulation in the organisation so their higher authority over the finance division is continuously being maintained by the nature of the work they do in their role.
The Statutes and Ordinances don’t then reflect the reality of the situation – stating someone has a higher authority over the finance division when the statement is illogical and in conflict with the reality of the situation doesn’t put them in a position of higher authority over the finance division. The person with the higher level of expertise in financial regulation is the higher authority as far as the finance division is concerned – what is stated in the statutes and ordinances and what will happen in practice is not then the same thing. When was that part of the statutes and ordinances written – the statutes and ordinances should have side annotations dating statement insertions and statement checks to make it easier to tell in when the statement first made sense to someone in the university and when it was last queried by someone in the university.
As far as I can tell the Registrary is not a trustee of the University, they have no governance role that makes them responsible for oversight of the financial regulation of the University, what role is the Registrary then playing in the financial regulation of the university? If there is a major operational problem with financial regulation of the University that the CFO is not flagging up for those in governance roles with oversight of financial regulation is the Registrary more likely and report this than an internal whistleblower in the finance division? If it is not now possible to define a role for the Registrary in the financial regulation of the university then this indicates that this specific act of sidelining the Registrary – ceding authority over the finance division to the CFO – happened to the individual in the Registrary role when the University appointed its first CFO. Does the university want a problem with financial regulation in the university to take out both the Registrary and the CFO? Is there now an unnecessary additional potential point of failure in the organisational financial regulation loop?
Eileen Nugent · 13 November 2025 at 12:02
*more likely to see and report
If the aim is to a create a tighter organisational financial regulation loop in an organisation going through a significant period of financial uncertainty whilst also operating in a sector going through significant financial uncertainty then this is a legitimate aim. It’s not just the impact on the Registrary’s employment that would need to be considered here, the impact on overall working conditions in the university of not making any changes and not creating a tighter financial regulation loop would also need to be considered.
Cambridge has significant numbers of people working on fixed-term contracts whose survival in their chosen career path is not yet guaranteed. Getting a permanent contract anywhere in the world is often conditional on a high level of performance in the narrow window of time when they are on fixed-term contracts in Cambridge. Any additional unnecessary financial instability in the organisation can therefore have a compound impact on the long-term careers of significant numbers of people. Cambridge has large cohorts of these early-career academics in the process of setting themselves up to launch a successful academic career elsewhere in the world, these are the people who are the most sensitive to any changes in the levels of organisational stability.
Eileen Nugent · 13 November 2025 at 13:20
I recognise that these situations where on-the-fly job roles alterations are being made this can be extremely painful for people active in the roles undergoing alterations.
I remember a governing body where I was being asked to make a judgment on an organisational restructure that could have meant losing the only bit of employment that I had left at the time. It’s significantly more difficult to recover from a mental breakdown from a position of being unemployed and it’s significantly more difficult to find any employment and/or change job roles and/or change careers from a position of being unemployed not having fully recovered from a mental breakdown.
Depending on individual circumstances it can be extremely painful to be put in one of these on-the-fly job role alteration situations because you are being asked to engage in an act of self-harm – the magnitude of which depends on your own individual circumstances – if that is what in the interests of others in the organisation and in the overall interest of the organisation. You are being asked to override one type of fundamental self-protection – protect your own individual interests – to engage a different type of fundamental self-protection – collective protection of group interests – and it’s a challenge for anyone put one of these situations to continuously find the right balance point in it, that is especially the case if it is a fluid situation.
Anon · 12 November 2025 at 08:13
From the announcement, the following wording struck me as odd:
“the University has decided not to proceed with the appointment of a new Chief Financial Officer… This decision reflects the need to maintain stability and continuity in our leadership team”
It is a bizarre statement. Why is there a “need” to maintain “continuity”? For what purpose or end?
One cannot help but wonder whether these words will be referred to again at some later point.
SPARTACUS · 12 November 2025 at 08:31
UCam is in deep decay and rotten. The American Queen regime is finished. She will go soon. The problem will remain: the corrupt, inept and vicious oligarchy will stay in place.
An Extraordinary Announcement from Cambridge University - 21percent.org · 12 November 2025 at 08:36
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