Morag 🐶 says "Don't screw this up, humans." #DogsAtPollingStations

QMU might be the last Scottish Post-92 offering single hons Sociology, & we're at risk of redundancy. By the end of day 1 of our Petition to Protect Jobs & Courses at QMU we had 100 names. This morning we're already on our way to 200. Please sign & share! speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs...

Yes they're now also built on financial ineptitude, managerial cruelty, and ideological cowardice.

speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs... Last week the Sociology Team & other colleagues were told we're at risk of redundancy amid sweeping harmful changes at QMU. Please sign this @ucuqmu.bsky.social @ucuscotland.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk petition to support protecting our jobs, courses & students.

Just saying, there's quite a difference in the reaction between say, Goldsmiths losing sociology versus, say, Huddersfield or QMU.

Please everyone sign and support my east side comrades. Sociology in the post-1992 sector is being gutted and sociology itself is being made into a subject for elite universities.

The Sociology Team at QMU are at risk of redundancy (alongside other colleagues) as a result of significant organisational changes. Please sign this petition to protect jobs and courses: speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs... @ucuqmu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk @ucuscotland.bsky.social

Protect jobs and courses at Queen Margaret University speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs...

speakout.web.ucu.org.uk/protect-jobs... Last week the Sociology Team & other colleagues were told we're at risk of redundancy amid sweeping harmful changes at QMU. Please sign this @ucuqmu.bsky.social @ucuscotland.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk petition to support protecting our jobs, courses & students.

Impeccably timed, as ever

This is important. As we face these unprecedented times in British Higher Education, with a huge swathe of jobs likely to go, remember to reach out for help before and after the redundancy meetings. There's a huge amount of practical advice and experience out there. 👇

Buy The #Loki Variations💚* and everything else before we lose 404 Ink for good! *I'm really gonna need the money!

Happy International Workers' Day. On Monday our whole Sociology Team @qmuniversity.bsky.social were emailed that we are at risk of redundancy (as are some others at QMU). @ucuqmu.bsky.social members are being balloted. Steely Dan will continue until morale improves. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR5K...

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A perfect snapshot of academia today:

👀 It's what the Schools Sustainability Proposals are all about; 70% teaching time, increased use of grade 7 (assistant lecturer) posts - hollowing out the university

Friends, if you’re taking sertraline, check the batch number as there is a recall out and you may have ended up with a mislabelled lower dose of citalopram. www.gov.uk/government/n...

Our thoughts are with every member of staff being notified they are at risk of redundancy today, the first round of compulsory redundancies this time round

Tribute: Tributes have been paid to former Brae High School headteacher and Shetland Recreational Trust (SRT) chairman Joe Irvine, who died recently. Irvine was the headteacher at Brae between August 1988 and December 2003. shet.news/jecag

Ballot papers have started to arrive through the post. Vote YES to supporting strike action and action short of a strike - this gives us strength in negotiations and telling management we won't accept worse working conditions or compulsory redundancies

Institutional and experience expertise cannot be carried by junior colleagues and those with shorter experience. HEIs are eating themselves, destroying their own capacity to survive in their narrow mechanistic approaches to balancing their books...

Somewhat of a shock to say the least. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1447...

Every VC in the UK outside of the obscenely rich elite institutions.

Press release from @ucu.org.uk about the proposed compulsory redundancies here: www.ucu.org.uk/article/1447...

This is how pay has behaved in a UK university ( @edinburgh-uni.bsky.social ) since 2008. CPI, CPIH and the deprecated RPI are measures of price inflation. Tot WP and Reg WP are measures of other peoples' pay. Details blogs.ed.ac.uk/hughpumphrey... and linked posts.

I got my permanent job at a university in 2008 (after 8 years hourly-paid) and now face redundancy. My salary has declined in real terms for my entire career. The graph for senior management pay in a broken sector looks very, very different. This is not an accident.

Colleagues at QMU have just received notification that management are seeking to make up to 20 members of staff redundant in a first phase of organisational change. Sending strength to all colleagues during this challenging time - we will fight against compulsory redundancies 💪🏻

Orbán is out, but the think tanks, funding and relationships built under his government won’t just disappear overnight. So we’re making that investigation free to read

That investigation looked at Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), funded with £1.3bn of Hungarian state money, and its links to networks across Europe, including figures connected to Scotland.

Last year, The Ferret followed a story from Scotland to Hungary, tracing how a think tank backed by Viktor Orbán was feeding into culture war debates here.

ahhhh the cinema in shetland did a screening of jurassic park, with tickets being paid for with foodbank donations, and they ended up with A HUNDRED AND FIFTY KILOS OF FOOD 💖

I'm afraid there'll be much, much more of this going forward. Prospective students and parents should check very carefully before applying to university courses that may not exist by the next autumn, and may be closed even while they're on them. www.itv.com/news/central...

Read about it from @theorkneynews.bsky.social here: theorkneynews.scot/2026/03/22/n...

Controversial but - students *perceive* they have been failed when what has happened is they have failed to understand information retrieval is a skill requiring effort. I don't believe a zero friction experience is realistic or desirable in learning, actually.

Mimetic politics is the 21st century gateway to fascism

Steely Dan will continue until moral improves. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR5K...

The BBC doing its bit here to stigmatise mental health issues and play to the Tory/Reform ‘over-diagnosis’ line The real facts in the story are that more than a fifth of all GPs have refused a sick note. Not that you’d know that from the breathless and misleading Culture War headline

“The use of learning analytics systems to proactively identify students with poor attendance and direct them to wellbeing support services via nudge interventions had no measurable impact on students’ subsequent academic engagement across any of the trials"

This is so so upsetting. So Grammerly is violating the memory of bell hooks AND making AI versions of the rest of us before we're even dead. Someone tell me who to sue, not even joking.

Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now

I wish we were launching this in the halcyon days of a better Twitter when we had much more reach but hopefully there's some aspiring publisher or currently struggling publisher (lol, aren't we all) who might need this and see it! Bursaries for small presses coming very soon!

This is not just cursed, its monstrous. The digital resurrection of a historian who died in January of this year, all so Grammarly can get some more clicks and engagement from students and/or scholars and/or others. It feels so wrong on so many levels, these ghosts enslaved to AI forever

One thing I think we don't prepare young people for well enough is the extent to which in adult and professional life everyone is just completely At It

I don’t know about you but I think we maybe need to look again at how we deliver mental health support.

Hard to decide if it's the Greens winning or Goodwin losing which is bringing me the most happiness right now.

The richest man owns X. The second and third richest men control Google. The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post. And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros. See the problem here?