Mathew Browne

An excerpt about UCL from the Financial Times’ Lucy Kellaway in an article about university management. Make of it what you will…

Increasingly, universities are run by people who are trying to embrace what they see as modern management techniques. This can be catastrophic. They import third-rate management fads that the private sector has already junked and implement them badly. University College London got into a mess last year when it spent £600,000 ($1m) rebranding itself as UCL. Its staff were not amused by a 51-page booklet telling them how to use the new logo, containing edicts that all images should be “vibrant and aspirational” – such as two people jumping into the sea. They were also given two dozen words including “challenging” and “liberalism” that they were encouraged to use when communicating with the outside world. All of which would have been insulting to the intelligence of a humble office worker, let alone an esteemed academic.

I’ve had my parents staying for the weekend, which has been nice. Despite being our guest my mother has insisted on cooking, then criticising the weight I’ve put on in recent years. Joyous.

I was pleased to hear that a good friend of mine (and reader of this blog) has finally plucked up the courage to ask out his crush, and is waiting eagerly for their first date. How very Dawson’s Creek.

My father and I were out shopping on Saturday, passed a generic electrical retailer and were rather pleased with ourselves at Wales’ 8-0 lead over Italy. We weren’t so pleased when we got home to find we’d drawn the match 18-18, at home no less. We were equally unimpressed by today’s cack-handed performance by England against the French. What a load of bollocks this Six Nations tournament has been. However, it must have been great for the bookies.

Speaking of sport, rumour has it that Joe Calzaghe will headline a monster night of boxing in the Millennium Stadium, sharing top billing with Ricky Hatton. Looks like I’ll be in Cardiff on July 8th then… Of course, barring a sudden lottery win or the abolishment of airport taxes, this will certainly put paid to my plans to see Guns N’ Roses in both Dublin on June 9th and Paris on June 20th. Nevermind. Speaking of Guns N’ Roses, Gilby Clarke is playing in London in May. I must get myself a ticket.

On Friday I’m at Guy’s hospital manning a stand promoting the site that I’d made for work, in the company of a Nobel prize winner, no less. I also need to somehow find the time to get the medical image database up and running, which is a tall order considering I know fuck all about databases or web servers, and my go-to guy leaves his job on Friday.

Ooh, and I won a Wrestlemania T shirt. If good luck comes in threes, then I’m due my third soon…

Two BBC news stories to make your blood boil. This nation is chock-full of simpletons.

Story #1: Reward kids when they’re good? They should be well-behaved anyway, without financial incentive. Why not just punish the scally ASBO scrote-bastards when they’re bad? WHO THINKS UP THIS SHIT?!

Story #2: Baa Baa Black Sheep is now Baa Baa Rainbow Sheep. Morons.

I despair, really.

In the last few minutes the EPSRC has confirmed the grant funding that secures my job for an extra TWO YEARS!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am moderately pleased.

If the Home Office have their way (see what I did there?), soon you’ll pretty much have to halt your drunken fumbling to fill in a watertight multi-page paper confirming both parties consent to sexual intercourse. Nothing like legal documents to make you randy.

Quoted from the article:
“Mr O’Brien said that redrafting the law would stop cases being thrown out by judges and increase the number of convictions.”

I note that there’s no mention in the article of a revision to the law that reduces the number of false accusations. Just increase the convictions. Never mind if they’re actually guilty of anything, let’s get the number of rape convictions up.

Imagine - or don’t - that Anna Slacktrousers gets hammered one night and wakes up with Jimmy Plateface. Anna can’t believe she’d sleep with such a fat, grotesque mess. Therefore, he must have raped her. Yeah. Got her blind drunk and he forced himself on her. Or maybe, just maybe, Anna is a whore. A whore who has such a high opinion of herself that she doesn’t remember that she dropped her linen quicker than her morals the previous night in a freakish, unshapely concourse that would have sickened even the most hardened Internet porn addict.

Of course, I do not mean to make light of rape. But how can you prove or disprove rape when the accuser can’t remember if they consented or not?

I found these amusing. Maybe you will too.

Axl Rose works at McDonalds

Guns N Roses parody

There’s a fantastic sketch starring Will Ferrell as a boss with anger management issues, but I can’t find it at the moment…

I was pleased to hear that a friend of mine showed this blog to a kid who is in hospital at the moment (and very bored, it would seem). He liked the Family Guy videos that I posted. This pleases me.

I redesigned my own website over the weekend in anticipation of my pending search for a webby job. A vast improvement, even if I say so myself. Unfortunately, I hate writing the “why you need a website” and “hire me, I’m great” blurb that such websites require, and as such it’s looking a little sparse on that front, at least until I find a couple of hours to write something more professional.

There is a conference for beauticians at Excel today, according to an announcement at Canning Town DLR this morning. It certainly accounts for the legions of plucked-and-preened, fake nailed, impractical high heeled, enormous-hooped-earring-wearing Essex girl types sporting bottle-blonde hair and/or hair extensions who were frequenting the eastbound platform today. If there are single male readers who go for that sorta thing - and I know there are - you might want to go and hang around the Excel centre like the creep you are. They’re beauticians after all, ergo there’s a 96.7% chance they favour a Brazilian…

Uh oh, now I’ve gone and said too much…