Well he is back and do not tell me you don’t know who I am talking about. I will give you a clue. He is a pinchbeck headmaster, one in name only without the qualities of people with that title. He is an ultra right wing Catholic, steeped in the falangist philosophy of Spain where he spent his young life washing his dishes in the backwaters of Opus Dei.
I think you are with me now, yes give three ringing farts for the second coming of Mr Daniel Kearney, Lord High Headmaster of St Bede’s College in Manchester, back from his hard earned sabbatical or extended home leave as his doting deputy, Mrs Pike, called it. A year in the job and he needs a few months off to recuperate. Well he certainly got it. After the stumbling, stuttering, incident ridden first year of his tenancy, he is back to torment the staff with his ridiculous ideas on how to run a second level educational establishment into the ground, which had run very successfully under its previous head, the sorely wronged Mr Mike Barber, until the putsch when Kearney in his odious Iberian way took charge with the full support of the nodders who call themselves a Board Of Governors, led by that imperious and ruddy complexioned Monsignor Michael Quinlan.
The staff since that time have been hopping mad at his foolish antics, their problem like so many groups of teachers is that they have no proper leader. Teachers of necessity are guides rather than leaders, they lack the qualities of rumbustiousness and drive that is necessary for one with skulduggery at the top of their list. I will volunteer if they would have me but I doubt if they could force themselves so low.
The staff looked on, as Kearney’s star was in the ascendant and as teachers who had served the school admirably, were treated abominably. All they, the staff that is, were able to do was stamp their feet and mutter and moan like demented banshees as the school plunged inexorably into disarray, its head held up above the raging waters of scandal by parent’s fees and they seemed happy enough to let the school sacrifice their children while they got on with their happy business of earning.
Now the morale and determination is at an all time low as the established staff reel at the ridiculous behaviour of Kearney’s under-educated, over-promoted yes men, who have now over the last year been promoted into positions of control like the government of some eastern European revisionist state.
The other day Kearney called the staff together for an unplanned staff bullying session, it is in this arena that he tends to get his kicks. I am beginning to think that he is probably a psychopath along with all his other charming attributes. It was in this meeting whilst obviously talking about the financial position of the school, plagued by diminishing income and rising costs which have only been covered up by some nifty accountancy bookkeeping, that he told the assembled that in the interests of openness and transparency they ought to know that after his first years unremitting hard labours, his salary was so much and that was a lot less than Mr Barber, the previous head, was getting 18 months previously and so it should be when he takes extended home leave at the drop of a hat. He seemed to want his disaffected, much maligned staff to come rushing forward, pound notes in hand, to offer their hard earned to the charitable coffers of the College. My feeling is that in the interests of openness and transparency Mr Kearney should realise he is a square peg in a round hole, he should work the rest of the year for nothing and then piss off and take his Manchester City footballers finishing school with him and set up elsewhere, preferably in the High Sierras.
He seems, Dan Kearney that is, to be trying to restabilise the ship by pulling the bung out of the bottom of the hull to allow the hulk to fill itself up to the gunwhales and in so doing making it an easy task to scuttle her when the time comes and mark my word that time is nigh. Things are moving at a faster pace than ever he or in fact I imagined. Yesterday the school’s Achilles or Hector, depending on what side of the Hellespont you live, came a cropper. For the purposes of simplicity we will call this man, this man of God, Achillor and let us hope that he has not become one already.
This man who has jumped from nowhere, sphinx-like out of the ashes of Duggan, Dodgeon and their ilk, and who for some inexplicable reason is only understood by the inner most denizens of the Holy Roman Church, was granted powers financial in the running of the school. Some would call him an honest to goodness parish priest from St Mary’s in Denton, a little parish to the east of Manchester, others would know him better as a Machiavellian misanthrope. His powers lie behind the throne, Achillor was Cardinal Richelieu to Kearney’s Louis XIII, he it was who organised the 2011 putsch, the florid Quinlan’s right hand man and assassin.
Yes we are talking about plain Fr Timothy Hopkins, a Governor of St Bede’s College in Manchester and a Diocese Of Salford representative on the City of Manchester Children and Young People Overview and Scrutiny Committee. With the massive strides this man made over the last few years he was obviously monsignorial material in the making, he used to walk round St Bede’s College as though he owned the place. Tommy Duggan would have been dancing in his grave, Terry Dodgeon would have been pouring himself a final drop of craythur at this man’s mighty progress. He was everything they had hoped for in a regurgitated form of their latter-day selves. The tortured staff thought differently, they used to call him Father Ted, Achillor to me and you
Who was right? Well yesterday news came through that must have been devastating to the Bishop of Salford , his Diocesan Trustees, the Governors of St Bede’s and to Mr Pedro Kearney himself. Allegations of a sexual nature had been raised, the Police and the LADO (Local Authority Designated Officer) are investigating. This is, if proved, a very, very serious matter and these two organisations are the best placed to handle these smears. Priests can no longer hide behind the cassocks of bishops or the gowns of headmasters. Fr Timothy Hopkins has had to step down.
Let us just say that allegations are that, just words, until investigations takes place but if proven, God forbid, they would be a massive blow to the Diocese of Salford which has for so long washed its dirty underwear in private and a shattering, almost death threatening haymaker to St Bede’s College already only held up by the sorely tried generosity of a bamboozled flock of parents.
Que sera sera and only time will tell and decide Achillors fate but I have recently been shown a financial report on the College and although no expert myself, one or two things stood out immediately, I have commissioned an in-depth investigation on the report by an Old Bedian and an ex-De Loitte and Touche accountant, which I will be publishing in the next few days and will give us an interesting insight into a failing company. As regards all other facts reported above I have been only able to produce same with the help of some very brave and downhearted members and ex-members of the staff of the College and the fortitude of some strong but disheartened members of the clergy of the Salford Diocese who realise now that they are within the realm of a Church they did not exactly join.