Learn English – patronize vs condescend

First of all, each of the examples given in the body of your question should be "whom."

This is a holdover from when the English language had cases, which you sort of referenced by noting the difficulty in identifying a subject. Who is always a subject, while whom is either a direct object, indirect object, or object of preposition:

1) Whom did you kill? (DO) 2) To whom did you give the book? (IO) 3) Who is the person about whom you are talking? (ObjP)

If it is difficult to tell by looking at the original sentence, try moving the who/whom in the sentence to see whether it holds an object position:

1) ...the Government has instructed Heads of Department to terminate whom from long-standing provisional employment.

2)...the Supervising Teacher considered whom deserving of compensatory remuneration...

3)...the academic committee had originally advised against whom...

4)...she had expressed reservations about whom in writing...

5)...the Supervising Teacher had specifically shown a reluctance towards nominating whom...

It may initially feel weird performing this kind of move operation, but if you can't immediately see whether the who/whom is acting as an object or not, then this is the easiest way to disambiguate that.

'Patronising' and 'condescending' essentially mean the same thing, i.e. acting like someone is beneath you and not as good as you. However they don't quite get the meaning of lowering yourself in the same way, and that's where the second sense of 'patronise' comes in.

The adjective 'patronising' is a cognate of the verb 'patronise' which needn't have negative connotations. 'Patronise' can simply mean a giving relation in which the person who is 'patronising' is the giver. This is a slightly outdated sense, hence the notion of a difference of social standing between the giver and the receiver. You might 'patronise' a shop, i.e. give the gift of your custom to the shop (particularly in the days where the 'patron' of the shop would have been of higher social standing than the shopkeeper). The Medicis were famous 'patrons' of the arts, i.e. they were of very high social standing and sponsored artists who otherwise would not have been able to work. 'Patronise' has a sense of benevolence in it, i.e. the person doing the patronising is of higher social standing but is being generous. For instance an answer to a question could be patronising because the person doing the answering gives the impression that they know more than the other person but are being kind by answering.

In contrast, 'condescending' is cognate with the verb 'condescend' which is to lower yourself. It doesn't have the giving relation and sense of benevolence that 'patronising' does. It simply means that the one person is better than the other. If you condescend to answer a question, you answer it knowing full well that the person asking it is not as good/as deserving as you are, sort of in a similar sense of coming down from the ivory tower for a bit. Historically, the usage could be non-pejorative (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/condescend gives a quote from Pride and Prejudice with a non-pejorative meaning). However, even in the non-pejorative sense of being friendly to someone of lower social standing, the sense of protection and sponsorship that is present with 'patronise' is absent.

The adjectives themselves basically have the same meaning now, but historically especially 'patronise' had this second meaning of fatherly benevolence/benevolent superiority.