Chegg?? Helping students CHEAT???? Oh my word, how on earth did students abuse the platform that much, this is not at all what it was meant for, Chegg must be so embarrassed……

Olly Robbins, skulking in a pub with a roll of twenties, asking some kid to knock over McSweeney and grab his phone

The thing about a life long civil servant - and one who has made their name in diplomacy - is that temperamentally they’re rule breakers. Mavericks. Not afraid to bend the law to get a result.

If Olly Robbins really unilaterally decided to overturn the failed vetting recommendation on his own…..boy, that’s chutzpah. I just can’t see how you wouldn’t *even implicitly* sense check this the Foreign Sec, w No10, w the Chief of Staff…..

Goldsmiths need to save £20m a year on staffing (they say). FOIs show Goldsmiths have spent £14-£16m over *seven years* on consultancy (£2m per year) The spending of the second does not negate the cost pressures of the first.

Oh fuck off. Where did that goal come from

18 people in the audience, to hear someone say a load of very niche things about UK politics (many of them wrong) and almost nothing about their country. Leave alone the ethics. Purely on a value for money basis, I’m not convinced £10k a month was buying the Orbanistas that much good stuff…..

Of the many things I love about Justin Rose, probably top is that in a golf world in which everyone else is backed by Callaway and Titleist and Rolex, he’s backed by an investment bank, a public affairs agency, and a computer based human resource management system.

Reform: something terrible happened Police: having investigated it, we see no evidence Reform: well that proves our point then The very definition of a lose/lose (or for Reform, a win/win) Presumably had GMP found evidence, they wouldn’t then be the usual suspect establishment lackeys…..

What a punchline.

Just listened to Al Carns on PM programme for an extended interview and I’m now all in Carns for PM

Lib Dems - it’s a disgrace that teacher training numbers are down / that childcare take up is low / that grants for widening access don’t get picked up. But also, don’t pay to tell parents about any of this. Also, spend of approx £5 per child in the English edu system is a “slap in the face” 🙄🙄

A fifth?!!???!

Well lookee here, turns out that you fuck around, you find out

Just got a call from an unknown Iranian number. Now to take a big slug of coffee and call them back

Really interesting: @jonathansimons.bsky.social new polling on student loans finds people who are paying back (aged 25-44) are much **less** likely to "be concerned" with the system than people not of the age to be paying back www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... @nickhillman.bsky.social

From me

Turgid. Turgid turgid turgid. 3 corner goals. 3 loads of grappling and shoving. Hardly the beautiful game is it.

A lot of people on Bluesky that are very angry that Farage et al are chipping away at rights of citizenship, suddenly switching away themselves when it’s concerning terribly nouveau riche and tacky Brits in Dubai, eh?

You just dont get letters like this anywhere except Country Life.

For all the 200 posts on here saying that this shows the rise of the Greens, this to me seems the key insight The biggest implication for me is a more likely shift towards some sort of PR voting system (not for 28/29, but soon after, because it will almost uniquely be attractive to all parties)

Miriam Cates contains multitudes.

V interesting piece. A headline of £365m savings, but these 12 councils control just shy of £10bn of budget, so that’s a 3% efficiency. Not nothing - but £70m of that is a nationwide revaluation of the LGPS (not repeatable) and at least £25m is asset sales (ditto)

The thing is, I think that Arsenal is the middle class North London team, and Spurs is the working class North London team. But will need to see some rooms in their houses to confirm

It’s a shame that it’s half term, because the Tower of London is just going to be really busy today and there’s not much space available

What a first day for the newest member of the most hidden bit of the UK constitution; the Golden Triangle

Student loans paid off for those who do a one year period of national service immediately before or after university

Please please I beg you Suella Braverman not more 50% Blair target discourse

More from the Guardian’s “why that occasional thing you like is terrible and you are evil” correspondent.

I’m really not sure who is in the “I care enough about fact checking these claims to go and read the whole report” group, who is not in the “I will go and download the easily accessible report from the website” group. Who’s the group that is being targeted by this?

Well this is utterly horrifying, from m’learned colleagues at PF

I like Chris a lot, and this is really more about more poor No10 judgement - of *course* someone like that isn’t going to be a radical, reforming Cabinet Sec - it’s hardly a surprise!

Rayner says she’ll make advance payments to HMRC to preemptively address the tax issue Now Streeting preemptively shares his Mandelson texts with Sky News 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

How do we help people in at risk occupations to change career? Join us to talk about it. [Add topical joke of your choice].

Presumably Morgan McSweeney now assumes the traditional role of the Prime Minister’s new Envoy for the Nations and Regions?

Well this from the teaching union's rep doesn't exactly sound convincing that it wasn't about the fact the MP was Jewish does it?

4.5 hours a day? Amateurs

I mean even my half remembered first year contract law module tells me that the business is legally in the right here (a price is an invitation to treat, that’s why if you labelled a diamond ring as £1 by mistake you clearly wouldn’t have to sell it for that)

Well. On the one hand, McSweeney evidently has a lot of political nous as a campaigner, but can’t plan a policy agenda or run an administration. Whereas Sue Gray doesn’t have political campaigning chops, but also can’t plan a policy agenda or run an administration.

I’m sorry, the nexus of money and power is too much for *Davos*, now??

This is the best articulation I’ve read on why we should change Plan 2 (even though I don’t *think* I agree) and wider changes to the student architecture that the Right can (and probably will) adopt

Hope he gets a good obituary in the LSE alumni magazine

I’m old enough to remember when GB hated Mandy the first time, with the force of a thousand suns

Ed Davey on the Today programme talking Mandelson

Something something, fighter and not a quitter

This is a mad idea, obviously - we have frozen thresholds for income tax, so this would be grads getting a better deal on tax than non grads - but increasingly I am of the view that there is going to be something of a political movement here @catneilan.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Nick Robinson and Mary Beard The two people Matt Goodwin feared If asked to a dinner He’d rather be a sinner And shoot himself? Really, that’s weird