That's Nominet's fault or to be more precise, it's Lesley Cowley and the boards fault. I've never much cared what Nominet's management paid themselves, just so long as they did a competent job but Direct.uk is proving to be a huge disaster and someone should pay for that.
I said at the time that the board is there to do a job and they should be judged on results but unless something changes pretty quickly, I think there's a case for calling for a vote of no confidence in any board members that voted for Direct.uk to go ahead.
This a big problem that will eventually become a huge problem and Nominet's new CEO needs to address it as a priority. If the only way to make the public aware of .uk is to spend a LOT of money on marketing and education then he needs to be brave and spend it rather than obsessing over how much is given to the trust.