All New Cunt of the Week

Clearly a twat....

Niall Kennedy is going to prove an exception to my normal rule. I’m going to revisit the twat and what a twat he is. This is largely provoked by his recent postings here. If ever anyone was condemned from their own mouth…
Some people brighten up a room just by entering it, some by leaving it and some by being the star of I Was Impaled On A Pole And Nibbled At By Lepers playing on a continuous loop on a widescreen plasma TV. Such was Niall. I worked with him briefly – but not briefly enough for my liking - at a school in West Beijing. My first inkling that things were going to go tits up was a reference from his tutor, which basically said he was a tardy, unreliable cunt. By that point it was a bit late. The reference basically had to be dragged out of the tutor in question as she obviously didn’t want to say what she really thought. At the time, I reckoned it was probably a bit of a personality clash. As it turned out, that was unlikely. Niall didn’t really have much of a personality.
He arrived in Beijing and went through the usual introduction to life in the PRC and his responsibilities as a teacher. He was noticeably bored and twitchy throughout the entire induction process which made me wonder if he was having ketamine withdrawal symptoms. With hindsight, I reckon that – or something similar – was pretty much exactly the case.
The first Saturday of term – weekends were our busiest period – there was no sign of Niall (he pronounces it ‘Neil’), so I had to take his class. He eventually arrived 20 minutes late, which didn’t impress the kid’s parents. They basically demanded we change the teacher on the spot, which we duly did. Niall was delighted as it basically meant he had to do less hours whilst still getting paid the same. He had no concept that it basically meant someone had to do more work. Self-obsession and a virtually sociopathic disregard for others were something I came to realise characterised Niall.
There was one occasion when he was working at one of our off site-schools alongside another teacher, Muriel. As his classes finished after hers he had to wait 30 minutes before being picked up and brought back to the school. He tried to insist that we changed the classes around – ideally that Muriel would do both classes and he would do even less work. By this time, we pretty much had his number, so we largely ignored him. The principal of the school did, for two weeks, personally pay for a taxi to pick him up. Ken, deputy DOS of the school, and I soon developed amnesia about this arrangement and left the twat to stew.
He shared an apartment with Tom, another fresh recruit to the school. Tom, to be fair, just wanted to be in China and didn’t really want to teach. We had a series of complaints about Tom’s lack of preparation for his classes and it was obvious he would have to go. To be fair to him, Tom told us he wanted out and we agreed an exit package. Part of this agreement was that he could stay in his company-funded apartment in West Beijing. We then started to get complaints from the other tenants in the block and the landlord about late night drinking and generally anti-social behaviour. We duly asked Tom to leave. The complaints persisted and it turned out it was Niall not Tom who was the source of the problem. He had, however, blithely allowed his flatmate to take the blame for his own behaviour in order to secure the apartment for himself. Yes, he was that much of a cunt.
As the summer school loomed – halfway through Niall’s contract – we had a bit of a dilemma. We had a new off-site school we were opening up in Daxing, a suburb of Beijing. Niall obviously wanted to go, but it was impossible. Not only was he completely irresponsible and untrustworthy without direct supervision, he also had distinct personal hygiene issues which would have made it completely impossible for him to share a room with any of the other foreign teachers. One teacher made a point of coming to see me and telling me if he had to share accommodation with Niall he wasn’t going and would rather quit than be obliged to. We didn’t send Niall who took this rather personally, which I must admit rather made my day. I’m nice like that.
This was also the time of the Sichuan earthquake and there was a move to send some of the foreign teachers over during our downtime as part of the relief effort. One thing we all agreed on was that Niall was not going to be part of the delegation. We felt the region had suffered enough.
Summer 2008 saw a new initiative at the school – we were going to produce end of term videos featuring the classes we’d taught. This was a bit of a ball ache, but we all rallied round to get it done – with one notable exception. The Chinese teachers – our partners in all of our classes – were under no illusion that unless these videos were finished on time they would face financial penalties, this was even though finishing the videos was actually the role of the foreign teachers. All of the foreign teachers finished their videos on time – except for one. His Chinese partner teacher was Janice, a teacher who I was very fond of,  who was heavily pregnant at the time. She laboured over this video – not her role – tears literally streaming down her face and was very worried about getting into trouble if it was late. Niall, meanwhile, lay in bed despite making promises he would come in.
I was livid and when he got in we had the long overdue showdown and I suspect every word rings in his ears to this day.
Good.
It is also noticeable that Beijing’s pollution problem has substantially reduced since Niall left. Every time he left his bedroom window open during the Olympics a Canadian athlete fainted.
He also claims he went to Oxford. I find this enormously hard to believe. Culturally, socially and even in matters of punctuation, I mean really… Standards have fallen since my day.
The one thing I have taken away from this is the importance of both taking up references and taking them seriously. This is particularly important in the TEFL industry when people are coming from disparate territories and where disputes are common. The fact that people like Niall can continue to get  jobs in this sector will only continue to bring it into disrepute. Parents, kids and colleagues are shortchanged by people like Niall. Any potential employers reading this, do your kids a favour and avoid him like the plague.
One other thing I should add, in all conscience, as a word of warning to anyone considering employing Niall as a teacher, is this - early on in Niall's time with us there was an 'incident', one which involved inappropriate behaviour. This was reported to us by several concerned Chinese teachers. As a result, instructions were issued that on NO ACCOUNT was Niall to be left alone with the younger children, particularly girls. This was a policy that was maintained until the day he was sacked. To be fair the incident was never repeated, but then we made sure the opportunity never arose. To potential employers, I would say this - inflict him on your adults if you're desperate, but keep him away from kids or at least make sure there's always another adult present at all times, especially during level testing...
As a curious PS to this, this link (http://www.citizendia.org/European_Universities_Debating_Championship) demonstrates he didn't actually go to Oxford at all but to Glasgow University. Presumably the facts were changed to stop us getting a reference from his university. Degree certificates are easy to forge in the digital age. I wonder if he actually graduated. The more I look into this, the more, like Kennedy himself, it stinks to high heaven.

Niall eventually got round to responding. He's not known for his repartee or ability to complete projects. It's the expected mixture of whinging, self-serving, delusion and outright lies. It largely goes to prove that his writing abilities are every bit as poor as his teaching ones. A few things need addressing, but they can wait - until it's recruitment time in the TEFL industry again. http://therealtonymurray.blogspot.com/

This made my day - http://therealtonymurray.blogspot.com/2011/03/something-to-think-about.html. Here Kennedy accuses the school of mismanagement for not sacking him when suspicions about his innapropriate behaviour toward young girls first emerged (this is despite the monitoring and containment protocols that were put in place in line with our policy and as outlined above). His defence amounts to: "What kind of school wouldn't sack me for being a paedophile?". I hope no other academic institution proves so remiss. In light of the number of hits on the original posting from non-english speaking countries across the world, I doubt Kennedy will be in close proximity to young children any time soon, which is just as it ought to be.

As an intestesting addendum for would-be employers, this strikes me - Kennedy's employment as a teacher has largely been in places like Venezuela and China. The thing these places have in common? Unlike some other countries, such as Japan and Korea, they don't require incoming english teachers to sumbit to a criminal records check in their own country prior to taking up an appointment. Why do you think he's only targetted countries with this policy?