This is the final chapter of a series of events that took place almost three years ago. Back then I was the Director of Studies at a school in West Beijing, a school I'd worked at for three and a half years. It was my last term as I'd decided to go back to journalism.
The name of Niall Kennedy will be be familiar to anyone who has read this blog. He is an odious little bloke, a diabolical teacher, a fuck-up as a human being and a danger to children. I forgot about Niall when I left the school, then he goaded me into writing about him and then he goaded me again. So I decided to tell the whole truth. I wrote about why he was sacked, the ban that was put in place on him being alone with kids and the way he shat on his supposed friends and colleagues.
This naturally freaked him out. For the first time in his life, he had been exposed for what he was. His seedy way of life, unnacceptable behaviour and sociopathic personality were laid bare for all to see.
He panicked. He wrote a blog of his own, hoping to try and pass this off as a spat between two equally unpleasant individuals. He emailed mutual acquaintances. At first he begged them to persuade me to take down my blog. When this failed, he started threatening them - a fact he refers to on his own blog. He would, he said, write on-line exposes of them. Thankfully the people he contacted - frends, former colleagues, current employers and even one or two people I normally can't stand - were unimpressed. Niall was trying to do what people like him always do - frighten people into covering up his sick little secrets.
There are hundreds if not thousands of people like Niall in the TEFL industry. They survive on the lack of communication between schools, the failure to take up references and the he's-no-longer-my-problem attitude that allows them to get away with moving from country-to-country ripping off schools and endangering students.
The TEFL industry was pretty good to me. It gave me a start in a new life after a few years in the UK which had been pretty miserable. Through it, I met my wife and I met many of my current friends, both Chinese and Western. The school I worked at in Beijing was particularly good to both my wife and I.
As the Director Studies for the School (in my last year there)_, it broke my heart to see keen-to-learn kids arrive at school only to have to wait 20-30 minutes for a hungover Niall to turn up late and unprepared for their class. It broke my heart to see their parents, many of whom had made huge personal sacrifices to find the money to give their kids a good start in life through learning English, be basically ripped off by Niall. He effectively pocketed their money and gave their kids nothing in return, despite all the efforts we made to improve his teaching and his attitude.
It horrified me when allegations were made about his innapropriate manner toward one young student. He was smart enough never to repeat it once he knew we were watching, but he remained a danger.
My initial posting has been widlye enough read and is easy enough to find with simple googling to hopfeully ensure Niall never works in a school again.
When he first wrote his blog about me, I ignored it. Later I had some concerns that any would-be employer would read it and assume we were as bad as one another and maybe give Niall the benefit of the doubt if he were desperate enough for a teacher. For that reason alone, I present Niall's blog below. The comments in bold italics are mine. I will leave readers to make their own minds up.
The one good thing about Niall is that he has motivated me to try and nail all the other Nialls that infest the english teaching industry. Today I am launching a new initiative - theteflblacklist. This will be a resource for schools, students and parents to find out whether their teacher is one of that small, but determined band that set out to abuse students, rip-off parents and destroy the reputations of schools.
You can find the blog here http://teflblacklister.blogspot.com/
I'm going to promote it on a number of TEFL related sites and keep it maintained. It could be Niall's name is the only one that ever goes on it. I hope not. If it is, at least I know I've done my best. If any school is stupid enough to take Niall on, then they have only themselves to blame.
As I said, these are my last words on this. It has been unpleasant wading through this and even sharing a Google search with the likes of Kennedy is enough to make me wince. If some good comes out of and it helps, even the tinest bit, to clean up the TEFL industry then it may have been worth it.
Let this be an end to it. Back to the jokes in my next blog post I hope.
With people like Niall, it is easy to let them ply their filthy trade by just doing nothing. It is incumbent on all of to try and stop them.
Some of us are gonna try....
Friday, 25 March 2011
Something to think about.
I'm aware that this blog has attracted some interest. Tony Murray himself has mentioned it on his blog. According to my stats, I'm getting hits from Hong Kong, China, and the UK, as well as elsewhere. Judging from the Google search terms which lead people here, I'm getting hits not only from people looking for information on the Gafencu title, its owner, or the publishing company, but also from people searching for this blog directly, using both my name and Murray's. I have reason to believe that some of these people at least know Murray personally, and some know both him and me.
I suspect that most of the hits Niall is getting or claiming to get are from people searching for him online after he has applied for a TEFL job, reading my blog and his then deciding not to take his application any further. This is almost certainly why he’s still stuck in London – which is a huge result for the TEFL industry and for kids who want to learn English.
So, I'd like to direct these people's attention to the following paragraph on Murray's blog, written at a later date and added at the end of a previous entry about me.
"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 another adult present at all times, especially during level testing...."
Sadly for Niall, as he well knows, this is all true and probably explains why he has not denied it. Accusations made against foreign teachers were rare and taken very seriously. He was steered almost exclusively toward teenage and adult classes and even made a huge mess of them. Niall obviously didn’t get involved with teaching in order to impart or share knowledge, as he clearly made no effort to plan or teach lessons. In this case, it was clear there was an ulterior motive for his desire for proximity to children. The fact he actually looks like a paedophile straight out of central casting – unwashed, twitchy, unable to meet your eye, habitually wearing crumpled clothing and with obvious personal hygiene issues, hardly helped his case. Personally, whether the allegation against him was true or not, I would never leave a kid in his unsupervised charge.
Of course, it's clear that this is a libel of the most serious kind, and equally clear that I have little possibility of legal redress, considering that I am in the UK, while Murray is sitting smugly in Hong Kong and more or less knows what he can get away with. What Murray has perhaps not considered, however, is that he is not only libelling me, but also those people whom I worked for in Beijing, who, alongside him, had managerial responsibilities, and who (according to his invented story) chose not to take action to remove me immediately following this so-called 'inappropriate behaviour'. I will, at present, continue with my policy of not naming these people, but they should think carefully about what light their former association with Murray is casting them in.
For all those others reading this blog who either know Murray, or are considering having some kind of personal or professional dealing with him, I would urge you to think seriously about the kind of person who would invent something like this. If this does not raise very uncomfortable questions in your mind about him, then nothing will.
The only uncomfortable question this should bring to anybody’s mind is about why Kennedy was ever considered fit to teach young children in the first place and what steps can be taken to stop it happening again.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Tony Murray : Bigot
As any Westerner who has worked in China can tell you, it is very easy to live there with almost no real contact with the local culture. Tony Murray came to China in his forties with an alcohol dependency after a series of failed jobs in the UK, and like many middle-aged men in his position, found he could command a level of respect simply for being European, and for being able to speak English.
I love this – “no real contact with the local culture”. Eh, apart from having a Chinese wife and Chinese friends from every job I’ve ever had in China, many of which I am still in touch with – witness my Facebook page. Niall completely alienated all of the Chinese staff at the school we worked at, virtually all of whom flatly refused to work with him over the summer term – one of the reasons his services were dispensed with four months into his six month contract. The first management meeting after I finally told Niall just what a despicable excuse for both a human being and teacher I considered him, I got a standing ovation from the Chinese senior teachers present, all of whom had been pushing for him to be sacked for several months. Email addresses available for any would-be employers who would like to speak directly to these managers are available on application to me (teflblacklist@gmail.com).
As to having a “series of failed jobs” behind me, Kennedy had more failed jobs behind him before reaching his thirties than I have approaching my fifties. To my certain knowledge, he has never managed six months of continuous appointment. He has either been sacked or broken his contract (before being sacked) from every TEFL job he’s had. Potential employers should make a note to ask about this. Get a contact from every school on his CV (I can supply several). Check employment dates with them and seek out any missing terms. This will inevitably lead you to other schools that Kennedy has conveniently omitted from his CV. Incidentally, the shortest period of employment of my adult life was two and a half years (not six months as Kennedy untruthfully insinuates) at the Carnyx Group. This was a company I left mainly because I knew just why the MD liked being dropped off in Manchester car parks and she was worried I might spill the beans and her husband would find out. As to an alcohol dependency, well yeah, I do like a drink, but I don’t bother much these days. Maybe because I don’t have to deal with cunts like Kennedy on a day-to-day basis anymore.
The sad implication of this is that it bred a level of contempt for the Chinese, and for Chinese culture, that became evident in how he spoke to those around him.
He was very dismissive of the possibility of learning any Mandarin himself, and, when I knew him, could not speak even simple sentences despite having lived in the country for years. His only real social contact with a Chinese person was with his (much younger, and considerably more attractive than him) wife, who also seemed to function as permanent translator and contact for beer companies, utility companies and the like. A level of arrogance and dismissiveness directed towards the Chinese people as a whole, and based on stereotypes, predominated in his conversation, notwithstanding this personal attachment.
You got me there, I was crap at learning Mandarin, but then I was crap at learning French too. It seems to have slipped your memory that, despite what you put on your CV, you didn’t speak any Chinese either. Like most things on your application – ability to teach, hardworking, communication skills, that turned out to be bollocks too. Also true is that my wife is younger and considerably more attractive than me.Nice to know that you were leching after her. I would have thought she was a bit old for you though. As a matter of record, when once you got back to your apartment too pissed to open the lock and had to stay with us, she insisted on throwing out the sheets you used, maintaining, with some justice, that she would never get the smell out. As to her functioning as a contact for beer companies, utility companies, well she spoke Chinese, they spoke Chinese, it did seem to have a certain logic.
For example, he once told me that all the Beijing people were only looking forward to the 2008 Olympics because they had been 'brainwashed' into it. He implied that said ordinary Beijingers could never disagree with their government, even internally, and could not think for themselves.
When discussing health and safety problems at Wu Yi school in Beijing, where we both taught, he was heard to venture the opinion that 'the population here is so big, the authorities don't care if they lose a few' and suggested that no-one would notice if some of the children went missing.
Then, turning to his blog, we see that this arrogant and dismissive attitude has persisted with him in Hong Kong.
Now Niall, short of material on me beyond the fact that I like a drink and can’t speak Chinese, simply resorts to making stuff up, presumably in the hope of alienating my employer. As with most things in his life, this has also proved a failure. I actually had few conversations with Niall, beyond upbraiding him for lateness, being ill-prepared or listening to him try and foist some of his dwindling amount of teaching responsibilities onto his unsuspecting colleagues on some pretext or other. That said there is no doubt that Bejingers had a far different and less cynical view of their looming Olympics than, say, Londoners do of theirs. That is just a situational and cultural difference, although it was certainly a view fostered by the media and the government. The Chinese themselves actually joke about the size of their population and are frequently surprised when the western media gets caught up in some ludicrious expression of mass grief over some low level incident. Niall would know this had he ever manage to engage any Chinese people, adult students or Chinese teachers for instance, in any kind of dialogue. Sadly, Niall was and is too preoccupied with himself to ever lower himself to such an exchange. For the record Niall, I value and respect the Chinese and their culture. Now North Americans and the Scots, those – with one or two honourable exceptions – I do tend to think of as complete and utter cunts.
For example, he discusses disabled children in some particularly unpleasant terms:
Joey Deaconland
One of the first things I noticed after spending a few weeks in Hong Kong is the sheer number of spazzers, wheelchair jockeys and menks that jostle for space on the island’s packed pavements – we don’t have sidewalks here, thank fuck.
At first, I thought this phenomenon was possibly caused by the toxic fumes wafting in across the bay from Guangdong, the province responsible for 98.3% of the world’s crap Christmas presents. Either that, I speculated, or it was a result of the lingering legacy of British cuisine, with the populace still scoffing pies, chips and Jaffa Cakes 13 years after, fixed grins in place, they were handed back to the TLC of the PRC.
Alas, I think the answer lies elsewhere and not in the superfluity of Hong Kong’s differently-abled. I think it’s more to do with me. Having spent the last five years living on the Chinese mainland, where the Single Child Policy is still very much in force, my perception of the normal ratio of society has been somewhat skewed. In China, where your child is considered cerebrally challenged if it’s not great at quadratics and is still only a Grade III piano player at the age of seven, what chance for those with cerebral palsy? Or a hump?
At my charitable best, I hope these choices are made in utero, but I fear the reality is far worse. If Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen are kept flid-free by pre-natal testing, I can’t help but wonder what happens in the clinic-free rural areas where the majority of the population still lives.
Unless, of course, all offspring judged sub-standard are put on a bus to Hong Kong. I kind of hope so.
Those readers not from the UK or younger than Murray's 46 years might not understand the reference to 'Joey Deacon' who was a sufferer of cerebral palsy. In case you don't understand the terms 'spazzers', 'wheelchair jockeys', 'menks', and 'flids', well, trust me, this is clearly hate speech.
But note the casual, racist allegation that rural Chinese parents routinely murder their children if they have some kind of disability - what right has Murray to make that kind of charge?
There's an Orientalist stereotype common in the west of the inscrutable, dangerous, yet unthinking monolithic bloc of Chinese, and it is one which Murray, Chinese wife notwithstanding, appears to have bought into.
Yawn, Niall, now you’re truly scraping the barrel. In your arrogance, you are assuming that anyone reading this piece is not intelligent enough to understand what is actually being said here. The article, which I stand by, employed the use of both style and content to make its point, two items missing from almost every aspect of your life. Even your internal contradictions are showing here – one minute you are attempt to lambast me for criticising Chinese people for being unthinking (I’d love you to put that one to my wife!) and the next you are saying it is wrong of my not to accept same said unthinking, unquestioning process. You really are desperate aren’t you, you sad little man? Didn’t one of your unsubstantiated CV claims say you were some kind of debating champ? Blimey, the competition must have been shit as you seem incapable of stringing together a coherent argument.
I wonder if Lina Ross Mohindar of Gafencu Men knows of the contemptuous attitudes expressed by her employee, Gafencu's managing editor, towards the Chinese people and Chinese culture?
I also wonder what Gafencu's readership would think about it? And what about the advertisers in Gafencu Men's current issue (November 2010)? These include Zenith and IWC watches, Maserati, B&B Italia, St Regis Beijing (Starwood Hotels), and Lanvin Paris, among many, many others.
Seeing as the email you sent to them came from a sacked, suspected paedophile and seeing they have been working with me for six years, they didn’t take you all that seriously. All the drug-taking allegations did make me seem much more interesting to the one or two people at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club that I passed them on to, so ta very much.
Do they know what kind of image their money is buying?
As I have since had a pay rise and my contract extended, well I expect they do. Yes Niall, it is possible to both complete and renew a contract, though I doubt you will ever get to experience it.
Saturday, 6 November 2010
By way of example...
The caption to this picture on Facebook reads 'A familiar sight....'
Sigh, actually a school Xmas party. Please provide other examples if they’re so common. Thought not….
Indeed.
Posted by Niall K at 11:05 0 comments
Monday, 18 October 2010
Gafencu editor Tony Murray : Alcoholic and Drug Abuser
Much of the material for this post will be taken from Tony Murray's own blog, here, written in his own words. In a previous post, I already discussed Tony Murray's drink problem and how it contributed not only to the conflict between us, but to his general inability to do his job as Director of Studies. Turning up to work to be in sole charge of a group of teenagers whilst staggering and red-faced from drinking all day is the mark of someone with a serious alcohol dependency issue, not someone who occasionally has one drink too many.
Eh, it was an adult class. I’d had one drink at lunch time with a guy who was taking over as the foreign manager, due to the fact I was leaving to go back to journalism. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in the school, both planning the class and ensuring that the videos were finished on time. A fact that you should know as you should have been there finishing yours, instead of recovering from whatever shady crap you’d been up to the night before.
Additionally, it was an adult class that I taught that night, one that I took over from you following complaints from the students about how dull your class was and how ill-prepared you always were. I told them that this was their last class with me and they only cheered up when I assured them that they were not getting you back.
It appears however that this is not the first time that Tony Murray's alcohol abuse has gotten him into trouble at work.. Let's review an item taken from his own blog.:
In the dying days of my time in Glasgow when they employed an expensive lawyer to help them break my contract, one of the accusations levied at me was that I got pissed at industry do’s. Everyone got pissed at industry do’s. The Drum had even carried an account of previous (and subsequent) Drum editor, Richard Draycott, getting so pissed at a Glasgow Pub Club event that he threw up on his own shoes. I always tried to throw up on someone else’s.
Bragging about your binge-drinking is not uncommon among British men of a certain age. But the true hallmark of the alcoholic is denial - in this case, denying that his problem contributed to costing him his job.
If his bosses at the Carnyx group hired an expensive lawyer to get rid of him, I rather think getting drunk at industry events was probably the tip of the iceberg. And what to make of this piece regarding Murray's departure from that particular post after only six months?
"Mr Young, editor in chief of the Carnyx Group, described Mr Murray as having slight ''eccentricities'', but said his redundancy had been handled ''as amicably as these things can be''."
I imagine a multitude of sins may have been concealed underneath that handy euphemism, 'eccentricities'.
Good try Niall, but doesn’t it cross your mind that if I had anything to hide or be ashamed of I would hardly put it on a publicly accessible blog? Just to put you right, I was at the Carnyx group for two and a half years, not six months (and hated virtually every minute of it). They hired an expensive lawyer as they were shit scared of getting involved in yet another industrial tribunal (they had already lost two that year). In the end it cost them 15grand for me to fuck off – not a bad sum for 2002. Unfortunately, for them I had done absolutely nothing in violation of my contract, but they had violated virtually every aspect of their side of it. I love the idea of you turning to them to back you up as virtually everyone I know knows exactly what kind of people they are. With a number of kids of their own, though, even the Youngs would draw the line at giving someone like you any endorsement. In fact, you could prove the one thing we’ve agreed upon in nearly 15 years.
More references to drinking on Murray's blog abound. For example:
Aside from nights out, the 90’s were a great time for lunches. My most memorable occurred with Arthur Porter, late of the late Crains. At the time he was new business director of TMD Carat (now Feather Brooksbank). We met in some Italian restaurant on Deansgate and man did we go for it – at least three bottles of wine (possibly more), then on to the brandies. We started at 1 and finished around 6, by which point I was so pissed I had to book into a hotel as there was no chance of me getting safely back to Brum.
Murray also commonly drunk to excess while sitting alone in restaurants during his time in West Beijing, which is far from a good sign.
Eh, if I was sitting alone in a restaurant, how would you or anyone else know I had drunk to excess? Wasn’t I, a minute ago, according to you, incapable of ordering food or drink on my own? Why would I sit in a restaurant, when I had an apartment just around the corner from the school? More desperation, Kennedy.
But that's not all. It seems that alcohol is not the only intoxicating substance of which Murray likes to partake. Witness:
“There was one Media-Link do at castle near Edinburgh in 2000. I was kind of obliged to go, as was Scott Seeley, probably the best sales person the Drum ever had. Realising how dull this event was likely to be, we (well I – Mr S was perennially skint due to his proclivity for having too many babies) invested in a few lines of coke. We wandered around this magnificent castle completely out of it (hardly the only ones). I think Media Link may have made some kind of announcement. Would love to know what it was."
and, from an account of a different event :
"One of our sales girls had a load of coke on her, so the three of us ducked into the handicapped toilets at the ICC. God knows what they made of Deb’s blood tests the next today but, to be fair, being coked off your tits is the only way to enjoy BPA – now PACE – events."
The stereotype of the hard-drinking journalist is a common one, and maybe even one which Murray aspired to emulate. I also would not be so naive as to pretend that cocaine use isn't common in the UK, particularly in the media sector. But Asian society - particularly Chinese society - is considerably more conservative about such matters. Penalties in China for drug abuse can be very severe, and societal disapproval is pretty comprehensive. Even Hong Kong, far more westernised than mainland China, has a far less liberal approach to hard drugs than the UK. I wonder if Lina Ross Mohindar of Total Media is aware of her employee Tony Murray's drink and drug habits? Bragging about them on a blog prominently featuring the brand name of a key title was not, I think, Murray's smartest move, for all that he used to work in PR.
Drinking and drug taking, particularly coke, was rife in the advertising sector at the end of the 90s. I edited a marketing magazine and went to a lot of awards events, even organized quite a few of them. It would be hypocritical of me to pretend I didn’t both partake and enjoy it. I still look back at those days with great affection. It was an entirely appropriate way for a media journalist of the time to behave. Unlike you Niall, I am no hypocrite, though I suspect you could not afford to be similarly honest about your own pastimes. Similarly, unlike you again Niall, I never took drugs in China and have never taken them in Hong Kong. Whereas you were one of that small posse of teachers from that time that used to make regular excursions into Sanlitun in search of cannabis. You were also obviously on a come down from some kind of addiction – ketamine, another teacher suggested to me, when you started in Beijing. This is presumably what contributed to you being beaten up in Venezuela and having your contact there abruptly terminated.
Here is a video of one of the award ceremonies organised by Ross Mohindar's 'Best of the Best' title in Beijing. It's instructive to note the difference between what seems a classy, stylish ceremony and the Bacchanalian carnival that, it appears, Murray is more accustomed to. From a report in The Independent:
"At one regional advertising and design awards ceremony, 11 people vomited, there were five fights, the police were called twice and one person left in an ambulance. "They just went mental," says Tony Murray, editor of Awards World."
Indeed.
All true, they were animals. Nothing to do with me though. I was as shocked as anyone. Just how does this reflect on me? Ah, I see, more desperate scrabbling.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Tony Murray : workplace relations
Working as a journalist and managing editor of Gafencu magazine in Hong Kong means that Tony Murray must be responsible for hiring, managing and looking after a number of staff. I wonder if Ms. Lina Ross Mohindar, his employer and founder of Total Media Limited, is aware of Tony Murray's unique approach to workplace relations? Let's look at Murray's two blogs, here and here, where we can see some of the things he has said publically about members of staff under his supervision in the past. None of the quotes which will be featured here are about me: Murray's hatreds are many and varied. However, out of respect for the individuals concerned, some of whom I know, I will obscure their real names. Would you want to work for this man?
"Take ****, our 30-year old Canadian, who somehow has got it into his head that he is "more than just a teacher" and also believes that he can tell the future. Unfortunately, one of senior teachers went out for a drink with him and told him he was a silly cunt. Now, he wants to leave. Now, admittedly it was me who said it, but I can only say in mitigation, that well, he is a silly cunt."
"First up is XXXXXX, our one venture in breaking our long observed No North Americans policy which was our school's one token nod in the vague direction of sanity.... XXXXXX, it must be said, is a big lass. In a country where most women have no arses to speak of, you really stand out when each of your bum cheeks requires a separate postal code. I ventured out to lunch with her at one of the local restaurants and the look on the face of the guys whose table joined couldn't have been more astonished if she'd arrived fully dressed for an extended space walk"
"YYYY is from New Zealand, but has proved no Kiwi Fruit, in that he has remorselessly pursued at least two of the Chinese teachers and had a prostitute back at his apartment in the week that he has been here. He has also managed to usurp my long standing claim to be the Worst English Teacher in China. Within days he had proved an inability to teach teenagers and than matched it with a similar aptitude with kindergarten kids.
And then only last night (after being specially briefed by the Chinese headmistress ******, that his debut adult class featured a number of her friends and some senior members of the local communist party) he managed to "accidentally" fail to teach the last 25 minutes of his two hour class. The smart money is on the order of the Wellington (geddit?) Boot before too long."
"Our third arrival was ###### from Dublin, who has so far appeared breathtakingly normal, popular with the Chinese staff and even able to teach. I think I hate her the most.....A complete failure of the scrupulous vetting procedure normally adopted by our Foreign Manager which normally ensures (with one obvious exception, ahem) only total dipshits get through."
"Teacher at *****. Snogged Chinese girls when they were passed out. Candidate for involuntary euthanasia."
"Recently voted by AA, BBB and me as *****’s worst ever teacher. Including the paedophile. Bet he didn’t see that coming."
But, dear readers, it is not just about his staff. You see, I find myself speculating on whether Tony Murray has psychological problems. We all find ourselves upset and frustrated at different times in our lives, feeling that someone has gotten the better of us or outwitted us in some way. But the first post in Tony Murray's current blog really goes beyond that - a litany of resentment, disappointment and impotent rage stretching back to his schooldays. Most of us have forgotten about the people who bullied us at school by now, but not Murray, it seems. Here are some snippets from his blog. Ask yourself about the stability of someone who would make all this public, in a blog, no less, indexed on Google and featuring the names of his employers, Gafencu magazine
All of these refer to different people.
"Dull cunt, staying awake in the self-regarding presence of this Daily Telegraph rep was above and beyond work requirements. Don’t know what he’s doing now. Suspect not much."
"What he never knew was that me and Mary, my partner, at the time, used to regularly stick his toothbrush and that of his, underage, partners up each other’s arses."
"Look up cunt on wikipedia and you get gps direction to AAAAA’s house. Possibly the person I dislike the most. A cunt.""
"Made my life miserable at secondary school, but was sort of buffered by the fore-knowledge that the rest of their lives would involve them dispensing fries and assiduously seeking out sachets of tartar sauce. Which it did."
That last one probably contains a huge clue to the whole sorry deal.
As previously remarked on, Tony Murray has a remarkable fondness for the word 'cunt'. I counted 12 instances in one single post. I do hope he doesn't exhibit the same poor standards in his journalistic output.
Actually, I stand by all of this. I am 47. I have met some awful people. I have been lucky enough to be able to spot a twat from a mile off all my life, but seldom tactful enough to just put up with them. Some people are beyond the pale. They get away with it because people don’t care enough or lack the confidence to confront them. I reckon in my life, the number of people I truly detest doesn’t even get into double figures. I stopped the Cunt of the Week feature simply because I ran out of cunts. TEFL, in particular, attracts some dreadful individuals. By the way, only one of the people listed above actually worked for me and then not directly.
If I was unfortunate enough to meet another ideal candidate for the Cunt of the Week section, I would happily reinstate it. Since leaving TEFL, there have been no contenders. This is possibly because after spending four months as an appalled witness to Kennedy’s behaviour, everyone else seems quite nice by comparison. Well done Niall, you raised the bars in terms of cunt-dom – put that on your CV, after all you ought to have a least one true item on there.
Much of this post will be a response to Murray's post here, where he charmingly refers to me as 'Cunt of the week'. My own experience with Murray was both bewildering, frustrating and ultimately a little saddening. We had extensive online correspondence before he arrived in China (my fault : I added him on MSN Messenger for the interview), and he struck me as more than a little difficult and clingy - always wanting to chat online about nothing at all at obscure hours of the morning, for example.
More mendacity here. There is a 12 hour time difference between Beijing and Venezuela, with the country being some 12 hours behind China. So I would, finish classes about 3pm, go home, turn on the computer and Niall would be on line in Venezuela at 3am in the morning. This actually did cause some alarm with the headmaster, especially as Niall spent most of his time slagging off his then current employer and reported that he had been mysteriously beaten up. To this day (well until now) he has no idea how close he came he came to having his offer of a position with us withdrawn.
I came to see on arrival in China that he was completely alienated from the other staff, who openly spoke of him in a disparaging manner, and that he clearly hoped that I would relieve his isolation. At that time, while not being particularly enthusiastic about spending time together, I felt a little sorry for him. What I would soon come to realise however is that Murray brought that situation upon himself by his total lack of empathy for others and his woeful people skills. Like many men of his type - middle-aged, chip on the shoulder, failed marriage, a history of professional disappointments, deep feelings of inadequacy - Murray cannot take being questioned, contradicted or upstaged in any management decision. Any time a teacher complained of overwork, a difficult schedule, or inadequate resources, Murray would take it as a personal affront. 'Just do it' became his response to any staff difficulty, together with 'So what's the problem?'. This quote from Murray's former blog, available here, sums up his approach to workplace relations - note his inexplicable dislike of North Americans:
"It's stunning, quite frankly, that these buggers - Americans and Canadians - have ever achieved anything as nations (okay, admittedly, lumber and crap songstresses aside, Canada hasn't), but the amount of self-rightous clockwatching and whinging we suffer from our colonial cousins is astonishing.
Frankly it's a wonder the Mayflower ever arrived Stateside as definitely no-one would have agreed to row on their day off, no matter how becalmed the vessel was and woe betide the captain if he tried to serve sea biscuits and rum instead of burgers and Budweiser. Cultural adaptation is not a great strength of Transatlantic TEFL teachers. They're a bit like daleks, only with less charisma, a greater degree of cultural imperialism and a desire to have multiple days off whilst all the other daleks have to do their exterminating for them."
Yes - some people might see insulting your staff on a publically viewable blog as not the best way to achieve harmony within any business. And some people might feel a little sympathy for the above-mentioned Americans and Canadians, who, after all, normally only had one day off in seven and were frequently required to work on it by Murray.
But Murray's genius at man-management did not end there. The same blog describes how he dealt with a personality clash with a different teacher, one of my predecessors as Murray's Least Favourite Person:
"Unfortunately, one of senior teachers went out for a drink with him and told him he was a silly cunt. Now, he wants to leave. Now, admittedly it was me who said it, but I can only say in mitigation, that well, he is a silly cunt."
Some truth here, but very little. I didn’t socialise with the teachers. None of the senior teachers did. This was part policy, part because they were up to 20 years younger than us and partly because of their complete lack of life experience made them dull company. I did expect more of Niall, I’ll admit. On paper, he looked an intelligent, well-travelled experienced teacher who could bring something to the party, both socially and professionally. It was instantly apparent that this was not to be the case. He was universally loathed by all of the management and by all the Chinese teaching staff, none of whom socialised with him.
As to complaints about overwork…the teachers worked 18 hours a week. With one guaranteed day off a week, that was a maximum of three hours a day. These were also what’s called “academic hours” – an academic hour being actually 45 minutes. Due to Niall’s unpopularity with the Chinese staff and due to the fact that three of our external sites refused to have him on their premises due to both his ineptitude and sinister behaviour, Niall never ever worked an 18 hour week. Unfortunately, this meant that other more competent and professional teachers did have to work harder to cover for him. This delighted him as he still get paid his full 18-hours a week pay as long as his hours did not fall below 12. The fact that his colleagues and supposed friends were losing part of their free time to compensate for his piss-poor teaching didn’t bother him.
Complaints being met with “well just do it”, well that was almost certainly true. Genuine problems were dealt with promptly and sensitively –like the one female teacher who was having a tough time at a particularly rowdy school and who we quickly transferred.The majority of complaints were self-serving or simply stupid, with a number of teachers expecting to be completely spoon-fed and not realizing that yes, it was actually their responsibility to go to the library and sign out their own text books. It is a perennial problem in TEFL schools that many foreign staff arrive in the mistaken view that they are really there to be on holiday or learn a language, the fact that they have to adhere to their contract and actually take their (fairly lightweight) teaching load seriously surprises many of them. Naturally, anyone involved in disabusing them of these preconceived notions is not going to be popular. Frankly, by this point, Ken (my deputy) and I were at a point when we’d seen all of this whining, irresponsibility and immaturity half a dozen times before in various intakes. We didn’t want to be their friends, we just had a complex range of classes on different sites and with different requirements and we just needed to get it all done effectively and on-time. There was little sympathy for those who put more effort into whining than they did teaching. The lack of initiative of this particular intake appalled us and if that came through in the way they were treated, well, good. One day, should any of them – not Niall obviously – ever find themselves in a management role, I hope they are honest and perceptive enough to look back on just how ridiculous and embarrassing their behaviour was and be suitably ashamed.
Murray's fondness for the word 'cunt' will become apparent to anyone who reads his blog. This is a man who, supposedly, has an Oxford degree in English (ok, from a Permanent Private Hall , but still.) and yet a breadth of vocabulary more suited to a 14-year old than a 46-year old.
Anyway, dozens of little slights and incidents like this chipped away at everyone's respect for Murray, and he knew it. What made things worse was his total incompetence. He would frequently change the time of a meeting - or call one in the first place - only hours beforehand and expect everyone to find out by text and show up. His sole managerial responsibility for the first half of term was to create a fair and workable timetable for all the teachers, and he proved incapable of even telling people what time their classes would be, let alone such minor things as locations, books and arrangements. He notes one time I was late, which is fair enough, but neglects to mention that three different people missed a class that week because he hadn't told them the correct details. He delayed telling us the details of a major video project - and writing the script for it - which meant that the whole staff found it very difficult to complete: and all because he had already wasted weeks attempting to persuade his own boss not to do it.
But what was worse was the drunkenness, which will be discussed in greater detail in a future post. If Murray wasn't actively drunk in work, he was usually hungover, or suffering, and he very much looked it. Any staff night out, you could guarantee that Murray would be late, hungover, and supremely irritable the next morning. Naturally, if any staff member had acted this way, he or she would be reprimanded or fired, but Murray was fortunate to have risen far enough to, usually, escape that kind of scrutiny.
Meetings were at the same time every week. They were brief and formed part of the teacher’s contractual obligations. Kennedy was late for every single one of them and was regularly bollocked for it. Occasionally, there would be ad hoc meetings with regard to a demo class or a new site opening up. These were kept to a minimum. In the 13 weeks Niall actually worked for the school, I’d be surprised if there was more than four of them. As soon as we knew a meeting needed to be held, we texted or called all the teachers concerned. If a teacher’s day off fell on the same day as a meeting, we went out of our way to accommodate this.
At the start of term, everybody knew when their classes were and everyone was on time for them except for Niall. At the start of term, there is inevitably some chaos – sales and administrative staff want to attract the maximum no of students, but put on the minimum number of classes (this maximises profits and resources). At every school I know of, there are time table changes right up to the very last minute. It is quite possible that the timetable would go through 7 or 8 revisions before being finalised. It’s a pain, but everyone works around it. In this case, everyone knew of their classes a full three days before term started and, some classes had been finalised up to 10 days beforehand, something of a record. All of the teachers managed to go to the library and sign their books out, except Niall who seemed to believe he was above all that. Similarly, he expected to be called and reminded of the weekly meeting even though it was at the same day and time every week. He would use not being called as an excuse for not attending, even though everyone else was aware of it. He would also sit there throughout the meeting with an I-know-all-this-sneer on his face. He did the same thing in the weekly teacher training sessions (timed to take place straight after the weekly teachers meeting in order to maximise every teacher’s free time). His sneer was quite incomprehensible to us as he was clearly the worst teacher in the school and the most sorely in need of training.
As to staff nights out, this was the one term we never had any, largely for reasons that had little to do with Niall. I love the fact that Niall says I was grumpy in the morning. This is fascinating because:
a) Niall never managed to get into school in the morning
b) By the time he did shamble in, then yes I probably was grumpy – as were the parents who were waiting to see their kids’ teacher arrive and his Chinese co-teacher who had inevitably had to cover his class for him for 20 minutes.
Grumpy? I was fucking livid.
A series of little conflicts made me eventually realise that for some personal reason Murray genuinely disliked me. He would frequently pull me up about some imagined problem in front of the other staff, which I could deal with, even if it was a little unpleasant. But Murray was a gossip and a troublemaker and seemed to genuinely enjoy making life difficult for those unfortunate enough to work under him. Three other teachers, apart from me, were called in to the school for meetings with the owner on Murray's instigation, under the pretext that they had said or written some 'disloyal' comment or had criticised the school or managerial regime in some way. He seemed to never be able to rest until he had created some controversy or tried to get someone fired. My poor flatmate was his first target, and was the subject of a Murray-led whispering campaign centred around his alleged lack of effort (although two senior teachers told me they had reviewed his lessons and considered them satisfactory). For this, my flatmate Tom was let go, and forced to move out of our shared accommodation much to his extreme inconvenience.
Getting very thin here, Niall. Admittedly, I didn’t like you, for both personal and professional reasons. I was concerned about the inappropriate behaviour allegation and disgusted at the unprofessional way in which you conducted yourself. I suppose I took it personally because I’d recruited you and felt a degree of guilt that you were so crap. I was also slightly embarrassed, I suppose, because we’d supposedly been to the same university (Oxford). The fact that you didn’t know any of the pubs, other colleges or city landmarks quickly made me suspicious. A suspicion that proved true when it turned out you’d been to Glasgow, rather than Oxford as you’d put on your CV. So don’t take it personally. I’d have treated any incompetent teacher who’d lied about his qualifications and wasn’t safe to leave around kids in exactly the same way.
I myself was called in to a last-minute meeting on my day off on the grounds that I had been trying to persuade other teachers to leave the company. It was a ridiculous suggestion, made purely to try and cause me trouble, because I would not have benefited in any way from doing that. Fortunately, the school's owner agreed with me that the whole thing was ridiculous, and referred to Murray as a 'shit-stirrer'.
I had nothing to do with you being called in and was unaware of it (if it was true) until I read that. You’ll have to look elsewhere for the source of that one. How the school’s owner refers to you to this day, I’ll leave to your imagination.
On the day of ourr final confrontation, described by Murray on his blog, at around 5-6PM, he had already spent the whole day drinking in a local restaurant and was clearly the worse for wear - red-faced, staggering, reeking of drink and even more irritable than normal. He considered it nonetheless appropriate for him to be in sole charge of a class of 13-14 year olds in that state, something which disgusted the 3 colleagues who witnessed it. Far from a 'long overdue showdown' as he describes it, he merely babbled and raged at me incoherently, slurring his words and shaking with the effects of the drink until his clearly embarrassed Chinese wife had to drag him home. (Incidentally, contrary to Murray's account, I not only finished my video project before the deadline, but I wasn't even the last teacher to do so).
All entirely true except for the fact I’d been in the office all afternoon, then briefly at home, it was an adult class (actually a class of yours that I was covering at the student’s request). And yes, I’d been drinking. I’s had one bottle of Tsingtao about four hours before. I had planned every single word I was going to say to you and I suspect it all rings in your ears to this day. My wife was there and her only comment was: “That should have been done a long time ago”. You were the last teacher to finish your video, as you well know, with the majority of the work being done by a heavily-pregnant Chinese teacher in tears as she struggled to finish it. The fact that you inflicted that on her whilst you lay in your foul-smelling pit was the turning point that resulted in you getting the bollocking you so richly deserved. In fact if I’d been her husband, I’d have kicked the shit out of you. I hope you rot in hell for that. The fact that you tried to deflect attention from the content of the bollocking by maintaining I was pissed was quickly seen through and you never taught at that school again after that evening. I did and I’ve got an open invitation to go back – as I have to all of my last three jobs. Have you? Have you for any job you’ve ever had?
Murray would not stop there however, and continued to try and get me fired, as well as to have me thrown out of my apartment. Even when I had signalled that I would not renew my contract, which finished at the end of August, he was determined that I could not stay in company accommodation, and, even during the Beijing Olympics, when the school was closed anyway, would constantly phone the school's owner demanding or pleading for me to be expelled (the owner apparently had to switch his phone off during this time because he was so sick of the calls). Murray of course knew that if I had been forced out of my home, I would be unable to find alternate accommodation during the Olympics for anything less than 5-6 times the price and would probably be forced to take an expensive last-minute flight home. The fact that he continued his vendetta anyway tells you a great deal about Murray's nature and character.
Once you were off the teaching roster, I genuinely had no interest in you whatsoever. I was obliged to get involved again – something I really didn’t want to do – because of complaints from the landlord of your apartment about your behaviour – noise, smell etc. Admittedly, left to me you would have been out of your apartment the day you stopped teaching, but the headmaster of the school let you stay. You repaid his kindness by causing a string of complaints from your neighbours and landlord. Things became increasingly fraught between you and the school’s management and I was obliged to intervene and spoke to you as civilly as I could to try and arrange a pay-off for you which would see you vacate the school’s property without any further unpleasantness. You have no idea how much trouble you almost ended up in
The above should add a little context and background to Murray's account of our dispute. It is written in the same grotesquely overblown and abusive style as his comments in the blogs linked to above. It is also full of inaccuracies, lies, and exaggerations. I signed a six-month contract rather than a twelve-month one, for example, I finished all my written work by the required deadline, and I never once took a day off sick or asked that other teachers take over my classes. Murray's favourite slur is to make insinuating comments about my personal hygiene. Well, all I can say to that is: I spent my whole time in China living with a series of flatmates and short-term guests, and not one of them ever mentioned any such problem to me, including during Beijing's notoriously hot summer (and believe me, given the personalities involved, some of them would have). I don't believe that Murray's account of this is accurate either.
Well, interesting that you should bring up the subject of inaccuracies and exaggerations. True you were on a six month contract, but with an option to extend it to 12, From day one, there was no chance you would have had that option. Of your six months, you worked for four. Your original contract covered the summer school. You were offered no work for this period. This was because of the damage you had already done to the school’s reputation, the fact that none of the Chinese staff would work with you and all the management couldn’t bear the sight of you, on both the foreign and Chinese side.
On the personal hygiene front, frankly you stink. As to the fact that you profess not to know of this, well, typically it’s something your best friend points out to you. I dare say, you may have a shortfall in that department. One teacher who was billeted in your apartment after you managed to get Tom thrown out, left after just one night, disgusted at the squalor you were living in. I actually remember a conversation with you when you insisted that you wouldn’t pay for a cleaner for the apartment, despite the fact you had piles of left-over food, unwashed clothes and half-empty beer bottles strewn across the apartment, even in the communal areas.
As to this being a dispute, well it’s not. It’s a sincere attempt by me to make sure another school doesn’t take you on. You present a danger to kids, you represent a waste of the money for parents who make huge sacrifices in order to save up to give their kids a better start in life and you will undoubtedly damage the reputation of any academic institution foolhardy enough to take you on.
Don’t try and make any equivocation between you and I. I understand that that the best you can hope for here is try and pass this off as some sort of personality clash, with both parties being at fault and as bad as one another. That is not the case. Should any potential employer want clarification of this, I have email addresses for nearly all the people who are referred to in this article and will gladly pass them on. They can then draw their own conclusions.
Future posts in this blog will seek to examine Tony Murray's character and inadequacies further, to shed some light on the reasons for this man's behaviour. For now, I would warn any person reading this blog considering working for Tony Murray to think very carefully before you do so. You will not be treated fairly, equitably, or reasonably, and no assurance that is made to you by him can be taken at face value. Potential future employees of Gafencu magazine, or freelance contractors, have been warned.
By the way, we are recruiting again at Gafencu. If anyone reading this is interested, they can come along and talk to the current staff or spend a day with us. I have nothing to hide.
An explanation for this blog
Who is Tony Murray?
Tony Murray is Managing Editor of Gafencu Men Magazine. He is an employee of Total Media Limited, a Hong-Kong based magazine publisher founded by Ms. Lina Ross Mohindar. Prior to this he worked at the China Daily in Beijing, and a number of years ago edited several publications in UK local media, particularly in the Northwest of England. Titles he was associated with include Adline, The Drum, Marketeer, Synergy and Awards World. He has also spent some years working as an English language teacher in China. He now lives and works in Hong Kong.
Tony Murray's blog is available here and his Twitter feed is available here.
The one bit of your blog that is largely correct.
Who am I?
I am a UK-based student. In 2008 I worked at a language school in West Beijing, where Murray was Director of Studies and my immediate manager.
Again largely true, though I think “worked” is pushing it a bit
Why have I written this blog?
Unfortunately, my time in China was marred by a series of increasingly vicious and personal disputes between myself and Tony Murray. He clearly felt that my work was deficient in various respects, whereas I considered him, as a manager, unprofessional, incompetent, and with serious personality and possibly psychological issues. He repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, attempted to terminate my employment and have me expelled from my company-provided accommodation, as well as conducting a whispering campaign against me with friends and colleagues.
Taken in itself, this could describe many people's experiences in their jobs, and, had this saga ended when I left that company in September 2008, I would not have taken this step. Unfortunately, since then Murray has pursued a systematic and relentless campaign against me on the internet. He has smeared me and traduced my name, along with that of many other enemies of his, with a series of vitriolic blog posts containing untrue, hurtful and defamatory content.
Actually, I’d forgotten about Niall until he had a go at me on a website I still do some work for. The attacks were anonymous but, unfortunately for Niall, the site is owned by a friend of mine who told me who the, rather puerile, attack, was coming from. I then replied with a passing mention on my blog, a passing mention that inspired Niall to attack both me and my wife, at which point I decided the whole full and sorry story should be told. As usual, he has been the architect of his own downfall and should really be blaming himself for his unemployability.
I found it difficult to take the decision to write this blog because I would prefer to leave the whole sorry situation behind me. But, in a deliberate and vindictive campaign to hurt me personally and financially, Murray has decided to attempt to influence Google search rankings in order to try and prevent me from obtaining future employment in the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) sector. As you can see in the post linked above, he explicitly suggests that future employers should 'avoid me like the plague', and to that end, is now searching for all publically available data on me (including the names of my employers after leaving his company) in order to manipulate Google rankings on a range of possible searches.
It’s not vindictive. Kennedy is a danger to kids. He shouldn’t be allowed to teach children. I can only re-state that future employers should avoid him like the plague. Judging by the international hits on my article concerning him and the fact that he is obviously marooned in London, beyond even the usually high tolerance levels of the TEFL industry, I have obviously succeeded. This is something which delights me. This is partly for the problems it causes Kennedy, but largely because I have spared some other Director of Studies the heartbreak of watching a classroom full of eager kids, many of whose future success is dependent on building their English skills, being short-changed by an incompetent teacher with dubious designs on his charges. I offer no apology for this. I wish whoever had employed him before me had done the same, then a generation of kids in West Beijing would not have had a full term of their education wasted by one of the most despicable excuses for a human being it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.
Why is this such a problem?
Apart from the deeply unpleasant and vindictive nature of it, I think it is an example of cyber-bullying - an increasingly common phenomenon in our ever-more interconnected and online world. Internet bullying is described here as "when the Internet, cell phones or other devices are used to send or post text or images intended to hurt or embarrass another person". Extreme cases of it have recently featured in the news, such as here, here and here. I of course do not consider my own case as serious as those of the stories linked. But I do not intend to simply lie down and accept what is being done to my name and reputation. This blog, therefore, is a form of self-defence. It will put my side of the story in this dispute and reveal some facts about Murray which may cast doubt on his credibility, decency and judgement.
Any attempts at cyber-harassment were initiated by Kennedy, I merely rose to them. However, I should have written this blog as soon as I realised his true nature. I should have made greater efforts to safeguard other kids in other countries and I bitterly regret not doing so. It is an oversight I intend to try and make up for…
Why haven't I tried to resolve this situation another way?
A series of comments I earlier left on Murray's blog was deleted. I attempted to contact his employer, Ms. Lina Ross Mohindar, requesting that she reflect on the implications of this behaviour for the image of her company, but my emails to linaross@itotalmedia.com were not responded to. I further was unable to convince Blogger that Murray's posts breached their Terms of Service. This, therefore, is the only way I feel able to put my side of the story.
Niall, no-one responded because no-one wants to play any role in shielding your activities. The only thing your floundering around and ignorance of how the Internet works (particularly search engines) has achieved is to make sure a huge audience of now- never-will-be employers are aware of your name. You had better find a new career as you, yourself, have ensured that you will never work in TEFL again.
What can you expect from this blog?
I will attempt, in as reasonable and neutral a tone as I can manage, to put some facts and background details forward, drawing where possible on publically available sources, or upon my own recollections. Where I cannot verify the truth of a story I will say so.
If you wish to comment privately, please contact me at: therealtonymurray@gmail.com
I sincerely believe that you feel hard done by this, that you feel you are an innocent victim. In truth – and I recognised this early on – you have but a slender grip on reality and genuinely seem to believe that those around you are inferior and can be inconvenienced as you see fit. I dare say that this is the first time the consequences of your actions have caught up with you. I hope you can take this on board, change, get help whatever, but I doubt it and frankly it’s too big a risk to take.
You are not a fit individual to have around children. I don’t want it on my conscience when you are finally left unsupervised for too long. People like you, well every school’s got’em. Can we ever stop’em?
Some of us are gonna try…
Please visit: http://teflblacklister.blogspot.com/
Although having vowed not to writer further about Kennedy, this excerpt from a documentary on Strangeways prison reminded me so much of the difficulties of trying to work with a truculent, anti-social individual with clear hygiene issues,that I couldn't resist posting it. Niall Kennedy, this is a glimpse of your future. God help the poor buggers who get stuck with you.
kht27@hotmail.com (deputy DOS at the time)
cotterdavid@hotmail.com (headmaster of the school) cindy_P520@126com (current DOS of the school)
cotterdavid@hotmail.com (headmaster of the school) cindy_P520@126com (current DOS of the school)
Janiceliu628@hotmail.com(the pregnant girl at the time)
Don't take my word for it.
More chucklesome fun from Niall at http://therealtonymurray.blogspot.com/
Interestingly no email addresses supporting his side of the story - and there were two issues of Scamp and Giles Bastow is now my facebook mate and we chat regularly. A fight in a bar? My, my Niall you get sadder by the week, you obnoxious, abhorrent child abuser.
Interesting Postscript:
More chucklesome fun from Niall at http://therealtonymurray.blogspot.com/
Interestingly no email addresses supporting his side of the story - and there were two issues of Scamp and Giles Bastow is now my facebook mate and we chat regularly. A fight in a bar? My, my Niall you get sadder by the week, you obnoxious, abhorrent child abuser.
Interesting Postscript:
An email arrives, unbidden, from someone claiming to be a former employer of Kennedy that I was previously unaware of. Apparently, as I'd pretty much guessed, this was not the first time Kennedy was cautioned about innappropriate behavour towards kids.
More details when and if this pans out.
More details when and if this pans out.
