Thanks to Daily Mash for providing this pastiche of our week in Ofqual Comms:
CONCERNS have been raised over the standard of science teaching after it emerged thousands of GCSE pupils could not tell the difference between a microscope and a frog.
Question Two: Which one is the frog and which one is the miocropscope?
Exam regulator Ofqual has demanded urgent action by ministers before a child suffers serious internal injuries from trying to drink a bag of carpet tacks.
Ofqual said the dumbing down of science teaching has led to children being awarded physics GCSEs for running head first into a wall, while the chemistry exam involves making a glass of Ribena without getting yourself or anyone else pregnant.
And according to Ofqual one child was awarded a ‘B’ grade after claiming that gravity was invented in 1994 by his Uncle Derek.
A spokesman said: “We risk creating a generation of adults who will not only lack vital 21st century skills, but who also risk electrocuting themselves while trying to release the tiny people trapped inside their television sets.”
Filed under: Branding, Comedy, Exams, PR, Press, Work
I love The Poppletonian, Laurie Taylor’s mock university corporate news colum in the Times Higher Education (yes, we’ve lost the Supplement bit). I also love his cast of character including the desperate Jamie Targett, Director of Corporate Affairs, and the hippy-dippy useless Jennifer Doubleday, Head of Personal Development.
I was thrilled when the VC welcomed the new look on 10 January this year as I was just broaching the topic of a refurb of Open House.
Speaking shortly after his return from an exhausting nine-day conference in the Maldives on the future of higher education, our Vice-Chancellor declared that he was “really on the whole fairly excited” by the new look of The Poppletonian.
He told our reporter, Keith Ponting (29), that in his opinion, the previous newsletter had often spent too long concentrating on “the many negative aspects of the university” and on reporting “lots of minority views that failed to represent the true nature of the institution going forward”.
It is so clever in so many ways, so many in-sector jokes perfectly judged and aimed in all directions!
In today’s edition the dogged Jamie Targett makes an urgent appeal:
In a shock statement this week, Jamie Targett, our Director of Corporate Affairs, announced that he was introducing an “urgent” quota system in response to the dramatic increase in campus e-mails bearing the word “urgent”.
While administrative staff would retain the right to use “urgent” at all times, academics would be restricted to 12 “urgent” e-mails per term. He believed this was the only way in which “urgent” could regain the original meaning of “urgent”.
The cleverest, cleverest thing is that it is all so on the button. As perfect satire must be.
Filed under: Administration, Comedy, Higher Education, Internal Communications, Joke, Press, Work
January 9, 2008 • 1:11 pm
I’ve just been having a cup of tea with a colleague who, it strikes me, is the perfect factotum: efficient, organised, quiet, amazingly discreet, tactful, diplomatic and a wonderful problem solver.
And clearly these people are vital in the world of internal comms, these are the people who make organisations work.
A while ago she mentioned in passing that she thought she’s got her job for her soft skills rather than for her relevant experience… and her skills are polished!
Which brings me to my question, is one born like that or does one learn to be like that? I think the former. These qualities are all the ones that I admire most but which drive me to distraction. Very often I want to grab these awe-inspiring people by the lapels and shake them until they tell it straight. Whilst all the while slowly turning green with jealousy.
I too want to be able to make oblique references to a myriad of things and in so doing probe and work out how much someone knows before drip feeding a bit more (but never too much!).
Instead, I’m far more likely to err a touch on the side of indiscretion in a bid to inspire a mutual exchange of confidences and then check myself by explaining why I can’t say any more.
Suffice to say that if it’s nurture I’ll be putting my best foot forward…
Filed under: Administration, Comedy, Internal Communications, Work
October 30, 2007 • 3:52 pm
See Overheard
Overheard at lunchtime at work.
Woman 1: Yeah, I don’t like reading books in the first person, you know, I did this, I did that…
Woman 2: Yeah, it’s self-gratification isn’t it?
Woman 1: Yeah, I much prefer a good story….
Filed under: Books, Comedy, Language, Work
September 23, 2005 • 9:02 am
Writing about Mma Ramotswe And The Full Shopping Bag of Despair from transversality
Last night we went to go and see a live radio recording of Dead Ringers at the Arts Centre
It
was fantastic – but the scene that really had me creased up was the
Book of the Week sketch in which they created a very long-winded and
circuitous version of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith.
Very, very funny.
Charlotte Green, Radio 4’s own Pussycat Doll.
If you want to hear it it’s being aired on R4 at 6:30 this evening – and it will also be on the R4 website on playback.
(We also saw the lovely Helen and other people from work.)*
Ooh – and Nev Fountain, one of the writers, is a Warwick grad.
*Which
I always think is a bit of a mixed blessing with the Arts Centre,
although we’re very lucky to have such a fantastic facility on campus,
it does mean that you bump into colleagues in a potentially awkward
social setting.
Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Books, Comedy, Radio 4
