This is what it looks like when you refuse to tolerate trade union victimisation: voting YES and YES to defend a colleague. #HandsOffMarie #UniteAgainstVictimisation

You should read this. There are elements that need removed from UCU, and it’s not the SWP.

It's beyond disgusting that #UCU has threatened members of #Unite UCU, in effect union busting.

Fears for job cuts at Aberdeen University. UCU’s strike ballot in its final days, vote yes to action to oppose cuts #SaveHE #StopTheCuts www.heraldscotland.com/news/2584751...

Reading Marx and drinking Guinness

UCU boss Grady faces hearing over claims she used union resources to rig election...

This is a horrendous use of my subs @ucu.org.uk

Say “NO” to Victimisation in @ucu.org.uk 🚨 Strike rally ⏰ Thurs 12 Feb @ noon 📍 UCU HQ, Carlow Street, London Including guest speaker for the Workplace Day of Action for Palestine 🇵🇸 Everyone welcome! Bring your branch banner & your solidarity to say #HandsOffMarie

Ahead of the 10 February Certification Officer hearing, I’ve written about why Ewan McGaughey and I took this route. This is a regulatory process, not a court case. Ewan and I will represent ourselves. UCU has hired a King’s Counsel. vickyblakeucu.uk/202... /1

The way in which the University is approaching job cuts was already troubling for a number of reasons, and here is another ...

It is high time that the Higher Education student loans system is being challenged. Great! But the fees+loans system was more than an attack on a generation. It was a deliberate mechanism for a much wider assault on Higher Education. What lay behind it? We need to go back to the Willetts Plan. 🧵1

Also appaling.

Redux

This is appalling.

Day 1 of UCU election period and the red baiting has begun already.

Colleagues were interviewed on BBC Radio 4 about @qmul.bsky.social's sudden escalation in taking down posters & threatening disciplinary action. It is a great explanation of what's happening & its dangers. Listen from 22min in: www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/... or clipped: youtu.be/SJGnCrDaCf0?...

To make the Promise a reality, brave decision-making will be essential. Teams across Scotland are committed to keeping the Promise, but despite their dedication and effort, the scale of the challenge requires a significant step-change in resource allocation. buff.ly/VdHta6e

“Closing Southend means losing homegrown social workers people who understand this community.” Join us this Thursday as we rally to stop the cuts and save Southend’s campus. 🕛 12:00–13:00 | 📍 The Forum, Elmer Square, Southend

Have heard Regi speak a few times at Congress and fringe events. She would be an excellent VP and I’m certain would allow members to decide where our union goes. Vote for her!

📣 Hands off Marie! Tell @drjogrady.bsky.social and @ucu.org.uk to stop victimising Unite UCU's safety rep. ✍️ [email protected] #HandsOffMarie #UniteTheUnion @unitetheunion.bsky.social

We are also hosting a rally outside of the Holyrood building in Edinburgh tomorrow from 12:30-1:30pm. If you’re in Edinburgh, come and join us, in better weather ☀️ The rally will focus on our and other campus unions fight against job cuts in the Scottish HE sector.

400 jobs at risk. A campus set to close. This film explains what’s happening at the University of Essex and why staff, students and the local community are organising to stop it. 📍 Southend rally | 5 February

📢 It is sometimes really hard to grasp the sheer gargantuan scale of human stupidity. Endless wars, doing nothing much about climate change, wasting billions on space exploration, and now the mindless adoption of AI. We really need to stop being so pigshit thick. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Univeristy management claim that there is no money to keep people in jobs, yet look at their expenses…

Private Equity vultures feeding off the most vulnerable children - at enormous public expense.

UK Universities cut 13,300 jobs, paid £300m+ in redundancy. Economic contribution of the HE sector, £265bn. Systematically destroyed by govts - foreign students not welcome, cut real-term grants, fees, students burdened with debts, low staff pay/morale. Govt want skilled labour. archive.ph/favYt

No moral Compass: Private equity earns millions in profits as crisis engulfs children’s social care. My new column via Substack open.substack.com/pub/martinba...

Who is on Trump's 'Board of Peace' for Gaza? Not one Palestinian. Not one woman. Tell us again how these governments stand for self-determination, equality, liberty, peace, justice, and democracy? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When Trump uses ancient law against people in Minnesota, we remember a great woman's quote: “What presents itself to us as bourgeois legality is nothing but the violence of the ruling class, a violence raised to an obligatory norm from the outset.” ― Rosa Luxemburg (murdered Berlin 15 January 1919)

Ballots across Scotland from Heriot-Watt, Strathclyde, Stirling & Aberdeen are going in the post Vote now Save jobs Post your ballot (with or without a dog) (don't post the dog they're not covered by the prepaid stamp) @ucuscotland.bsky.social #UCU #Scholar #GTVO #Heriot-Watt #dogsPostingBallots 🐕

Hundreds of vulnerable children are living in illegal children’s homes, including caravans, holiday camps or AirBnBs, some for as long as three years. Damning new report by @childrenscomm.bsky.social www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/news-and-blo...

Staff shortages put Dundee’s architecture course at risk, students organised and won. Teaching has been reinstated in full. Collective action works.

🚨 Landlordism is one of the ugliest aspects of UK inequality. Living off rent (always set as high as possible) derived from the work of others is a fundamental unfairness. It's a symptom of a failed housing system - one where profit has been prioritised over need. www.theguardian.com/money/2026/j...

If John Pilger was around today, he'd have a lot to say about the Venezuela situation.

Announcement! 𝗜 𝗮𝗺 𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗨𝗖𝗨 𝗩𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁. 🗳️Voting begins 30 Jan. I think UCU has to stand up for education, research and publicly-accountable science. My election blog is at seanwallis.uk Join me!

‘The fight of our lives’ What the USS strike of 2018 tells us about the union today Introduction When Higher Education becomes a market, every VC and SMT see every other university as their competition. When they invest in campuses speculatively, and fortunes are won and lost in the Great…

Yes, it's almost certain 2026 will be worse than 2025. This isn't a reason to panic: it's a reason to step up your work on resistance, connect with others, lend a hand or share practical skills. As someone wise once said, you don't rise to the occasion: you fall to the level of your training.

📢 THANK YOU for your support this year ♥️ Below is a reminder of the gross #inequality that ruins the UK every day. Figures are based on the High Pay Centre’s findings that, in 2024/25, the AVERAGE FTSE 100 CEO gouged a “salary” of £4,580,000. Divide by 365 and you get a daily pay out of £12,548 🤮🤮🤮

The UK media’s silence on the Palestine Action activists’ hunger strikes is a deliberate editorial choice - Professor Bart Cammaerts blogs.lse.ac.uk/medialse/202...

UCU management are destroying the union under cover of branches too busy fighting against sector meltdown. It’s about time those NEC members and UCU branches horrified at what’s being done in their name demanded accountability. Oh, and maybe take a closer look at the accounts while you’re at it.

Heriot-Watt Scholar provide online learning to Scottish schools, colleges, & to HW students You, your children or your students may have used it. You can help secure Scholar for future learners. Use the form to speak out for a unique learning service👇 heriotwatt.web.ucu.org.uk/2025/12/02/s...

ICYMI: Curious about Artificial Intelligence and what it all might mean for children's social care? Announcing our new Emerging Insights Series of free, open webinars about AI beginning in the new year. Find out more and register now: buff.ly/Sbhhapy

Striking BL staff, struggling to pay their rent, advised to consider not giving presents this year, and interim CEO, Jeremy Silver, has the nerve to tell them they ‘don’t live in a real world’. Only 17% of staff guaranteed the Living Wage (£14.80 ph) suggests acute familiarity with the ‘real world’.

🔴 NEW: The University of Edinburgh has quietly paid more than £750,000 to a controversial consulting firm amid job cuts - staff say bosses ignored "repeated" questions about its role. Read more about 'Nousferatu' 👉 www.theferret.scot/p...

I had an interesting set of interactions w AI-generated content that I think is instructive. A very bright student made a claim in an essay that struck me as outlandish, so I searched the question on Google which turned up that phrasing the search a certain way makes the AI summary agree w the claim

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

Alf Dubs is a 92 year old man who spent his life fighting for refugees, and in particular for refugee children. He fought the Tories tooth and nail during their last three terms, only to see Labour adopt far-right policies on immigration. “But to use children as a weapon ... I’m lost for words.”