Thanks everyone for your concern and useful comments.
I've had a few really productive meetings with my academic and industrial sups in the last few days... tho still not got them in the same room!
anyway, things are looking up and I have a plan so better for the time being. i still have concerns about differing expectations but, i think sneaks is right, I need to compromise slightly on my aims and also do some work "on the side" to satisfy their requirements.
hairui - you may be right, but it feels like I've come to far already! I know I haven't, and there's plenty more oppoortunities out there, but now I've made the decison to stick it out and hope its the right one!
Colourful- thanks, I'll think about it, but I don't know if I would ever feel comfortable speaking to the counsellors, I would feel like this is an insignificant problem compared to the more personal sorts of issues people must have and like I was wasting their time - whether that's true or not.

Thanks! It does seem a lot of people struggle with external organisations.
I think you are right, what they want is never going to be related and I feel I will end up doing the same, working on the side, as what they want is not enough to satisfy the requirements of a phd, my academic supervisors tell me this, but won't tell him! I could just go along with it and do what they want, but that is effectively consultancy work and I could / was getting paid a lot more to do that! However, I do have the problem of them threatening to withdraw the funding if I do anything that doesn't fit exactly with what they want (unfortunately I still can't figure out what that is as it seems to change all the time!)
And its a v small orgaisation, so there isn't really anybody else I can talk to who may be interested, but thanks for the advice, and good idea about setting up more frequent meetings and trying to make everything clearer.
I do know I am causing myself problems my losing confidence in my work and getting lazy because I feel there's no point working!

Hi All, I'm new to the forum but have reading posts for a while, and know my situation is similiar to many others, I just am getting to the end of my tether!
I am 2 years into my 3 year phd, and have done no data collection or fieldwork yet. This is mainly due to a number of setbacks as a result of my industry funded supervisor. to keep a long story short, I cannot do anything right, so everytime I feel ready to go I get told no by him. I've been accused of plagiarising him, yet at the same time not having read some of his work, and also of having a desire to ruin the company, none of which are true. I am trying to approach my work objectively but feel pushed into doing certain things in ways that will go against what I believe. My academic supervisors are supportive but at the same time see the industry partner as more of an expert than themselves in the field and so are reluctant to disagree or even discuss content.
I could go on forever, but won't bore you. Basically, having gone over the same problems several times I know the only way to change things is for me to become more assertive, and more motivated, but right now I have none of those things, as I have been pushed down so many times and feel like everything I do is wrong, so there's little point working, which is just causing me to slip further and further behind.
I am constantly waiting for the next round of horrible emails to arrive and always thinking of leaving, but I really want to work in research and love my field of study, so quitting now doesn't seem sensible, and the influence of my funder in the field may mean I struggle to get a job if I annoy him.
any thoughts or advice from anyone who's had a similiar situation??
Thanks!!

based on something I've just been doing I think you can test for the normality of the difference between male and female... and as long as that is normally distributed then its OK to compare even if the samples themselves are not normally distributed... I think (hope)!