Super helpful TPS explainer here from @bparsia.bsky.social. Also useful in setting out how USS and TPS differ. #UCU #UKHE

Say it

Okay Confessions II is next level. So beautifully cohesive and the production makes me want to weep with joy.

Yesterday 142 academic staff at the University of Lincoln were put at risk of redundancy including the entire Politics and International Relations team. This follows cuts since 2024 which have already seen over 500 people leave the university. This is the 'University of No Regrets'.

I'll say it's swift, I didn't even know they were dating.

HAPPY NEW MADONNA ALBUM DROP DAY EVERYONE

huge day for (children of) recovering catholics

Genuinely brilliant news for TPS members in HE and FE. Extremely positive. #UCU #UKHE

@exeter.ac.uk is not in deficit, has £200m+ cash reserves, hasn’t invested in white elephants, doesn’t have a recruitment problem, never had 1000s of international students, and deliveres outstanding outcomes in teaching and research. If UEB’s data projects a deficit won’t they share it with UCU?

also Northumbria offerred a 12k 'transition payment' to switch to USS, that looks like a ludicrious offer in light of this reduction... @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social

Give me a few little wins and an incredible dish of Turkish eggs and I'm your girl

And your girl has been cited 😎

Gone straight to the top of the TBR pile!

And they would be correct

Curse of private equity Up to 150 ex-WHSmith stores to close as rescue deal approved. Substantial debts owed to creditors written off. Will have knock-on effects. Post offices housed within shops will go. Many towns/districts, missing bank branches, will have no post office or bank branch

We are recruiting for two roles in our Policy, Public Affairs, and Campaigns team. If you always wanted to appear before a Select Committee in Parliament, love a consultation, or read transport strategies for fun, we want to hear from you! Find out more on our website: https://bit.ly/3KJbYyn

Half of my energy bill is something called a standing charge, which is what companies charge people every single day even if you dont use a single unit of anything. People started reducing their energy usage so all the companies hugely raised their standing charges.

This I would love to see

We shouldn't start caring only, and suddenly, when it's an 'elite' research-intensive university. Like climate change we needed to start caring a long time ago and there's no better time to start than now.

Bit of good career news: I have just been awarded Associate Fellowship of HEA!

Glad there's been some recognition of this.

Newsletter #21 is here! Come and get it! #UCU #UKHE And if you're not already subscribed, why not do it now?

Today we celebrate the 153rd anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Suriname. 223 years of a genocidal act meant to kill languages, cultures, us and our personhood. Survived by ingenuity and the struggle towards freedom. Passed down to me by Rheine Slijngaard, my great-great-great grandmother.

CN: child abuse

Deeply disappointing and sad to see, especially as this was done as part of a literary programme that has been doing plenty of good work.

In need of some positivity? You’re in the right place📍 Welcome to #RewildingWins, our monthly series where we put a spotlight on some of the month’s incredible rewilding achievements. And what a month it’s been… Scroll down to see June's highlights👇 🧵1/8

“Demographic Anxieties” can now be preordered (pub date June 30)! It shows how the Israeli settler-colonial state and its borders shape Palestinian women’s reproductive freedom, but it is also an ethnography working through what it means to research Palestine as 1/2 www.ucpress.edu/books/demogr...

The Anglo-Saxons (2/2)

Today's Guardian (1/2)

Just here to say how much I deeply loathe the Online Safety Act

Yay! This looks fab. Congrats Ruth!

Really great stuff from Jo. This will also save work for everyone as there will be no need to manage co-options, which are also less democratic than elections. #UCU

This sort of story always gives me this reaction: okay, but if everyone did this there would be no small businesses or nice local economies? Nothing to enjoy in retirement?

Listening to this atm - sounds like a fascinating book. newbooksnetwork.com/the-hobo

Hear me out VAT on Small Boats crossings

Leicester‘s history unit ranked second in the last REF - it did not matter a jot when the university decided it wanted to cut staff. REF rankings can‘t be taken away after they‘ve been awarded & university leaders know they might be off to wreck another university before the next REF comes around.

Bookmarked for later.

I’m very pleased that the trade press is giving space to the Exeter horror. Next challenge is for them to look a little further down the league tables - Northumbria perhaps, or my own place. We have feelings too.

I’d love it if you’d sign this. It might not prevent me and my colleagues losing our jobs, but it will draw attention to the ideological vandalism being perpetrated by the wealthy execs running our university. Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter - sign the petition below! c.org/NpvY4sR9gH

Just had a lovely email to inform me that my first book, 'Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain', is coming out in paperback next year! #MedievalSky Needed some positive news, and it landed. boydellandbrewer.com/book/onomant...

Ah yes, time for the whole world to unite in wanting Djokovic to lose

Tiring but good day. Double bill of Eastenders, perfection

I’m really glad to see this. It’s also wild that by long overdue here we mean *two centuries*. Two centuries of ruling elites consolidating more and more land in fewer and fewer hands while those forced to the streets were criminalised

Absolutely appalling.

Um, really?

The fun thing about Kemi's ranting about Nigerian oil nationalisation is that the big Western companies - Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Agip, Total - have had their hands all over the country for decades, and everything just gets worse. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrole...

This is the image. It's fine to draw trans women as legibly women because we are women. It is subversive to draw trans women like this because most depictions of trans women intentionally exaggerate 'innate' masculine features with an 'artifice' of femininity, denying transition's efficacy.

I was so invested