I reckon the threat to Farage is about 100th of that directed at Diane Abbott but his performative whinging is 100x greater.

The disastrous financial situation of Britain's universities - far worse than prospective students or parents have been allowed to know - will be one of *the* issues of the next 18 months to two years. The government doesn't even know this yet. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... Wiser and more knowledgeable heads may know better, but with the absorbing of Special Branch teams in to Counter-Terrorism Command across the UK; it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a terrorist aspect to this case. Why can’t the media stop reporting tripe?

@medivalist.bsky.social a strange thing happened yesterday when I received a post which you had sent me 6 months ago about the Sicily conference… Anyway, thank you for that and I’ll see you at the Battle conference in Swansea in a few days time!

🤬

Trump is incapable of understanding this.

At some point, politicians (& some university leaders) are going to have to realise that paying for trained experts to professionally study, teach and communicate knowledge about the past (even the distant past) isn't a nice-to-have luxury, but an essential component of a cohesive modern society.

It’s a fact - people and government departments even, will bang on about ’zero bill homes’ overlooking the cost of buying the kit that takes away the bill - it’s a madly one eyed presentation of fact.

Good news, but the fact that this is only happening now, nearly three years after the cyber attack shows 1) what a huge job BL staff have had rebuilding services, 2) that the BL is underfunded, and 3) the impact this has had on academic research, especially in the humanities.

'The decision to slash funding for creative subjects comes despite the field being named as one of the UK’s “highest potential sectors” in the government’s industrial strategy.' 1/2

'A trade union says 36 staff face losing their jobs at the University of Lincoln. The University and College Union (UCU) said it would hold a strike ballot if the proposed redundancies go ahead.'

😡

For those at @imc-leeds.bsky.social today, Eleanor Bailey and I have organised four sessions on Loyalty (in various forms) today, all in Newlyn GR.01 - hope to see people there!

"Integration" has been a repeat fake discourse for years, because the real problem isn't really minorities not wanting to integrate, but the majority not wanting to be integrated with.

Universities don't need to be "placed at the heart of local economies." They already bloody ARE...!!!

Nigel Farage is toast open.substack.com/pub/theleadu...

Live footage of Farage trying to find Clacton.

The destruction of the HE sector is a piece of cultural vandalism with serious implications for the social development of the population and the national economy. Presumably, the reason it is not front page news is that the Media are in hock to those who seek to profit from it, the BBC included.

It's not that a Humanities education turns all its graduates into good people, it's that it arms good people with the skills and knowledge they need to understand and advocate for themselves, others, and society.

futurism.com/future-socie... lol

CFP: IMC Leeds (5–8 July 2027) Conquest, Invasion, Colonisation: Experience and Memory in Early Medieval Britain. Papers are invited for panels on the experiences and legacies of conquest in early medieval Britain and Ireland. Abstracts to [email protected] by 31 August 2026.

Yes, please!

What IS the government strategy? And why do MPs not care about major constituency employers?

We don't have a housing crisis because we have a planning problem - whether you blame that on Newts or not. It's because we have a building problem - an effective cartel of big builders, sat on massive (12 yr) landbanks, which they release into the market at the speed which ensures high house prices

Time and again I think that THIS is the stat universities should shout, shout & shout again about. New education export data again show HE responsible for nearly three-quarters of a £37bn UK revenue source. Fund our universities! Source: explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statist...

You probably won't read this in the right wing media today

Like I said…

Oh, now suddenly people notice! Absurd, pathetic. It's been going on for years. Wait until the Big Names suddenly piling in see what happens next - and where it happens. Serious failure of journalism on almost every front of the university crisis. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

I need y'all to understand that I teach high school and there are teenagers already planning to leave the U.S. to because they will be studying science or medicine. They are SO serious about it - saving money, learning extra languages, and looking to see if there are familial connections abroad.

UNFUN FACT: The 2026 FIFA World Cup features 48 teams co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico. Of the 48 participating nations, the United States is the only one without a universal health care system.

Bizarre.

Put off by the cost of getting to London and paying for a ticket to see the Canterbury Embroidery (aka Bayeux Tapestry)? Why not pop into *free* Reading Museum and see a Victorian copy displayed around the balcony. Some 60 years I saw it hung in Bayeux’s Town Hall - hung vertically - around a room.

To be clear: this is DIFFERENT to ALCS! this is about public lending, ALCS is scanning/photocopying and other secondary use. Sign up for both! (tho I've yet to be borrowed enough to make anything from PLR)

This is the future Big Oil built for us. Fossil fuel companies knew decades ago that their products would drive increasingly severe and frequent heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires, but lied to protect their own profits at the expense of public health and safety. The public deserves accountability.

I don’t often post about football, but seeing Germany and the Netherlands going out to Paraguay and Morocco respectively, and Brazil just squeaking past Japan looks like the World (Cup) shifting on its axis, and all the better for that!

Grrrr.

Save this for dark days when you doubt that there is progress. There really is!

Gulp! ☹️

WTF is wrong with UK media? Farage claims he wasn’t in politics prior to receipt of the £5m. He was majority shareholder (53%) of Reform. May 2023–April 2024. Farage served as the party's Honorary President. How can you be an Honorary President of a political party and not be involved?

'Classicist says university job cuts are "ideological" attack' (The Times), by Ed Halford, Marieta Marinova and @nicolawoolcock.bsky.social

#defendexeteruni c.org/sffZcfYxMw

The average life expectancy of a new Russian recruit—from arrival at a training ground to death in a combat zone—lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks. Once sent onto the battlefield, they survive an average of 20 to 35 minutes. @peterfrankopan.bsky.social foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/25/r...

The hope that science brings — though it’s not an excuse to fail to bring down global temperatures but a reason to fund the research that drives it.

The consequences of failing to tackle climate change are already here. Bus drivers. Teachers. Millions working through extreme heat. Time to get the drive to net zero back on track. @drjogrady.bsky.social on Sky News

My learned colleague has noticed that the Redundancy Implementation Plan claims they've had 1266.5 hours of meetings with the 34 affected staff. That would be 52 days of non-stop meetings. Now we're wondering whether the plan they swore they'd worked hard on is…AI generated.

This strategy (?) seems completely unsupportable to me!

1. Abolish OfS 2. Re-establish a HEFCE planning body 3. Bring back numbers targets I'm detail per uni 4. Restore/ increase small topup funding for expensive STEM and Medicine 5. Establish reorg fund 6. Ease student immigration controls ...Even all that will only part stabilise things I'm afraid.

Difficult 'even' to thrive as a teaching institution: research is the seedbed of university teaching, in humanities no less than science. So blindingly obvious it shouldn't need saying. Astonishing, depressing, and self-destructive when those at the top treat humanities research as a 'nice to have'.

One of the lessons of the last two years is that Labour urgently needs to stop being afraid of its own shadow. Burnham should appoint whoever he thinks would be the best Chancellor and throw his authority behind them. The Daily Mail will try to kill them anyway. So just govern.