A colleague in a university in the North of England was concerned about the way her university was implementing the government strategy to combat religious extremism, primarily aimed at Muslims, called Prevent. She was going to express her disquiet at a meeting of the University Senate, the collective meeting of all the staff of the University. Before she went she mentioned this intention at a departmental meeting in her Faculty. To her astonishment the head of department started to cry, saying: ‘if you do that they will close down our department!’ She did not go.

I had a meeting with my line manager as part of my appraisal. I took copious notes in order to fill in my page on the website. We agreed on everything I was going to write. After I’d done it, my line manager asked me to rewrite it using more of the target language and changing a few sections. I did this and she then sent me the same email again, asking me to change it again. I’d spent considerable time writing and then changing the document so I asked her if we could have a 5-minute meeting so that I could clarify exactly what she wanted before writing it for the third time. She refused to meet me and then sent me the same email again, this time in bold and enlarged to such a large font size that it didn’t all fit on the screen. At that point, I resigned. This was the final straw.