You’re just the second best fictional clergy

Dear Spotify & Apple Music, Last time I looked...the year ends on December 31. best regards The Decemberists #unwrapped #applereplay

This self harm - the loss of jobs, prestige, innovation, soft power - because of the ‘genius’ McSweeney strategy of sucking up to Reform voters, racists & right wing newspapers… None of whom will ever vote, like or endorse anything Lab does A toxic brew of political cowardice and stupidity

This is £600m from the same university sector that is pretty close to collapse in a growing number of major institutions? Many of them universities that are among the biggest employers in the very ‘left behind’ towns and cities that Labour talks so much about…

Blue Labour attacks on universities continue One of Britain’s biggest success stories must suffer cos…you know…the 20% of voters who hate all foreigners, vote reform, will never vote Labour…but the govt priority is to place their prejudices over the national interest

You have a tax on international students, you have less of them, huh, you have less revenue, and whoopsdaisy, you're back to the taxes you didn't want to hike and everyone is cross.

I left Twitter in 2015 ten years ago because of the scale of threats, abuse, cyber-stalking I received & the real world impact it had on me personally & professionally. Under Musk X is worse. He is a foreign hostile actor, interferes in our democracy, incites violence. Gov should be bold & abandon X

Well If Trump requests this FIFA should move the games to Mexico or Canada #fifa #WC2026

Did someone say Rockney.... www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ6w...

"You state in your letter three times that your client has suffered “overwhelming financial and reputational harm”. This is presumably on the Beetlejuice principle that it you say something three times it somehow appears" davidallengreen.com/2025/11/the-...

The first of what we can hope will be many legal victories for the music industry in its fight against the AI pirates. A Munich court ruled that OpenAI had breached copyright law and was liable to be sued for damages for appropriating content without authorisation.

Well, this is quite a serious allegation. I do hope the BBC shows true impartiality and investigate whether or not some of its Board members are systemically biased. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/n...

Elon Musk is once again inciting violence on British streets because the government has taught him there are literally no consequences for doing so. They even carry on using his far-right social network to promote government policy as he does it. The absence of backbone is *astounding*.

Unlike Zarah it seems, I support international solidarity against fascist imperialism and that’s why I support military & humanitarian aid to Ukraine. There’s no peace without defending Ukraine. There’s no peace with Russian occupation.

Massive news. Some one has invented owned media, and here’s the marmalade dropper… it isn’t the same as journalism. Mind blown

Next time Vance tries to criticise the UK about free speech - just give him a hard star and project this onto a large screen

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

A reminder - the UK govt provides ZERO teaching grant for the teaching of humanities and social science in universities

Reading papers is a basic skill (and dare I say duty?) of scientists, and I include medical doctors in that group. Keeping abreast of the literature is a foundational part of our professions. There aren’t good shortcuts. In any case, reading papers regularly is fun. arstechnica.com/ai/2025/09/s...

The tepid bath of managed decline

Big Tech| Meta’s huge spending on lobbying to electorally punish politicians who support democratic controls and online safety www.reuters.com/world/us/met...

It is and was extremely low cost for established institutions to stop using social media platforms that willingly abandoned content screening to block extremism, racism, misinformation etc. That they are mostly all ignoring this - including governments - is an abdication of public duty and ethics.

Next week: The Business Secrets of the Pharaohs | Mark Corrigan #peepshow www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

In case you missed it yesterday: evidence that the glossy millionaire migration reports - the ones that have been all over the media - may be fabricated:

Overall Impact of including 16-17 Year Olds: RFM: -0.2% LAB: +0.2% CON: -0.2% LDM: -0.2% GRN: +0.2% Others: +0.1%

And apparently meta are not giving users an opt out option www.computerworld.com/article/3632...

Zuckerberg & Meta now pushing fake doctors on Instagram- programmed to lie about their identity

Here’s a little secret - the journalists who write articles about how London has fallen all live in London and love it. They go to the theatre, exhibitions, gigs, pubs, restaurants, parks and know their kids’s schools are the best in the country. They slag London off in print for money. That’s it.

The owner of Twitter sends out 100 right wing propaganda tweets every single day and the algorithm is set up so that every single person on Twitter has to see every single one of these tweets. Now here’s another piece about Blue Sky’s ideological diversity problem.

🔴 The ‘Millionaire Exodus’ the UK Media Told You About Never Actually Happened The equivalent of 30 stories a day were published about an exodus of wealthy people that a new study finds was “non existent” bylinetimes.com/2025/06/10/t...

American police targeting and firing rubber bullets at journalists from close range www.9news.com.au/world/los-an...

I find it genuinely hilarious that people write lecturing op-eds telling me I should return to X to hear more diversity of thought.

I realize posting this here is preaching to the choir. But after the Grok White Genocide thing & Ye essentially launching an exclusive Neo Nazi single on the platform... I felt motivated to write about X and how bizarre it is that so many people (news outlets, celebrities, politicians) use it

Just one university - UCL - employs almost twice as many people as there are working in fishing boats.

I’m sitting in a classroom with masters students; the majority of whom are international. They contribute fees and living costs to the UK and take home skills and an understanding of our culture. I struggle to see where the downside is. I’m beyond frustrated.

Regional and local economies: propped up by the local university. As has been true for many years - HOW can successive sets of ministers not grasp this basic fact - never mind making levelling up a reality, we're in danger of flippin' levelling down if the penny doesn't drop @timleunig.bsky.social

I feel like the Labour leadership is once again overestimating the vote-winning potential of a PR blitz. When some combination of universities and either the social care system or the councils that fund it start collapsing on your watch, no one's gonna care that you got a few good headlines first.

I see the graphic The Metro chose for a story of age discrimination against people 50+ is a white beard & walking stick! 🙄🤦🏻‍♂️ #everdayageism

As total a failure of leadership as it is possible to imagine. Universities are immense assets - socially and financially - at a local, national and international level. Allowing terror of the Daily Mail to destroy them is unforgivable, hugely damaging, cowardice.

“They are raising the salience of Reform-friendly issues without establishing themselves as the answer” www.joxleywrites.jmoxley.co.uk/p/they-are-j...

The FBI just arrested a sitting judge for “obstruction” of their nativist agenda. Do you really think you are safe?

As a co-investigator on this project, I am delighted to share some very good news….The bid for £10million for a Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space has been successful! To be based at Space Park Leicester www.linkedin.com/posts/davids...

Any Labour SpAd arguing for restricting student imm should be sat down in front of a map and asked three Qs: 1. Where do you think the unis in most financial trouble are? 2. How many people rely on them for jobs and income? 3. Which party represents these seats?

The US was looking at similar under Reagan/Bush. Then it was going under the name “Brilliant Pebbles”

An autocratic monarch’s power of patronage

I wrote something about the secret police kidnapping and disappearing students over their op-eds, and wondering what happened to all those people screaming about the "free speech crisis on campus." www.techdirt.com/2025/03/27/t...

International students being snatched off the streets in America