Food banks - specifically the 1,600 run by Trussel...just how busy are they? Here is the annual data for 2015 to 2025. Other than a blip due to the 1st year of COVID, usage went up in each full year under a Tory government. 2024 was half-Tory, half-Labour - and usage fell. 2025 fell even more.

I really, really need academic organizations to think more critically about travel (conferences, talks, and meetings) during the Trump administration. Sadly, most are not.

MANCHESTER! 👇👇👇 www.coldwarsteve.com/2026/03/20/o...

Thanks, Ryan, and congrats on your win! Would you mind sending this message to legislators and college presidents across the country? Signed, Professors everywhere

[Sade voice 🎵]

my view on this is that publishers should stop it with the 80k wordcount obsession, so many contemporary non-fic books are obviously 40-50k pieces of work stretched to the extent that they become very boring to read - just let people write cheaper, shorter books! www.theguardian.com/books/2025/d...

Spanish PM Sánchez responds to Trump: "Spain is against this disaster... Govts are here to improve people's lives... It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are unable to fulfill that mission use the smoke of war to hide their failure, and in the process, fill the pockets of a few."

The international boycott of ChatGPT has absolutely exploded. 2.5M people have already joined, and this is just the beginning. Go to quitgpt.org. Cancel your subscription, delete your account. And tell at least one person why. My op-ed: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I have seen a lot of cursed stuff in my time in academia but this is among the *most* cursed. Grammarly is generating miniature LLMs based on academic work so that users can have their writing ‘reviewed’ by experts like David Abulafia, who died less than two months ago.

the 'Fest' run by Connecting Legal Education's wonderful bunch, @dohertylawteach.bsky.social, @veronanid.bsky.social and @parkendlydia.bsky.social Read the full article, here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... (Presentation skills can be found here: www.ishankolhatkar.com/presentation...) 2/2

It's March and conference season is just around the corner. More details this week of where I will be appearing over the next few months. In the meantime, here's my view on chairing conferences from this article on what was the most fun conference I've ever attended (and Chaired)... 1/2

Trump in 2011: “Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak and he’s ineffective.”

💬 "Regardless of economic or social mobility, class-based cultural markers such as accent continue to shape how people are perceived and treated." Our research on the pervasive issue of accent bias in the workplace cited in The Conversation ⤵️

Eusébio buying soul LPs in Harlow's Startime record shop in 1968

a year is a long time in politics

✍️ New article: Tracking historical progress against slavery and forced labor: a long-run data view For much of history, forced labor was widespread and brutal. Tens of millions of people were made to work under the threat of violence or punishment. The situation today is very different.

"As his post goes on, his language gets older. 100 years older with each jump. The spelling changes. The grammar changes. Words you know are replaced by unfamiliar words" Fascinating. So how far back in time can YOU go?

Kidnapper: your getting in the trunk Me: *you’re

Wow.

Hopefully there will be further protests when the rancid racist cunt is actually in the stadium.

🎶 … When the Home Sec is told That the ban was too bold That’s … R (Ammori) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2026] EWHC 292 (Admin)

Can we bring back the era when saying this shit would get you ostracized for life. For all the cancelling supposedly about, rich auld fellas still feel pretty free and easy about dropping their invective... share.google/HPDFEvyxD5v4...

US Olympic Curling Team member speaks out against ICE: "I'm proud to represent Team USA. But we'd be remiss if we didn't mention what's going on in Minnesota and what a tough time it's been. What's happening is wrong. There's no shades of gray."

Name them shame them

Get Palantir out of the NHS https://notopalantir.goodlawproject.org/email-to-target/stop-palantir-in-the-nhs/?utm_source=bluesky&utm_campaign=PalantirNHS&utm_medium=social_media

Incandescent. One of the best pieces I've read about what university means to people and their communities - and what will happen to a city and people after one closes. The *Labour* government and Jaqui Smith in particular should be ashamed of themselves and shamed into doing something. Deplorable.

Devastatingly sad. Every Labour MP should be forced to read this. In fact, every MP, who rushed back to Parliament to vote to save one steel mill, whilst hastening the collapse of dozens of universities - and harming the students, staff, communities and economies universities sustain and support

billionaire: we billionaires earn our money through hard work and our extraordinary intellects. we are simply more perceptive and insightful than regular people mr nonce: hmllo billi,onirr, wuld u liek 2 visit my sexcrime. Island. ? billionaire: deborah, hold my calls

Huh. This entire administration is an Epstein Island afterparty.

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

Annual reminder of how many days there are in each month.

The is the biggest national embarrassment in American history.

In the space of two minutes he confused Greenland and Iceland four times by my count. bsky.app/profile/atru...

Trump: "World War 1 -- they lost 100 million people. It actually ended World War 1. A lot of people don't know. The Spanish flu in World War 1 ended the war."

Which begs the question about who's funding Policy Exchange. Who is planning to benefit from untrammelled executive power, free from judicial constraints (whether domestic or not)? And are the academics who put forward these 'papers' paid or not? If so, can they still be considered academics?

Some people resist evil quietly. Not with speeches or slogans — just by deciding, again and again, to do the right thing when no one is watching. That’s how I ended up reading about Gino Bartali. 1/8

Reminder that the new Policy Exchange paper on the ECHR will get a lot of traction in the media because this debate is about vibes, not facts. Those defending the ECHR need to think about how to influence vibes too. ukconstitutionallaw.org/2025/10/09/a...

Universities are the softest of soft political targets, but chasing praise is going to help. There's no money for a redefined moral mission (meaning what?) and Kim McGuinness has great universities in NE England doing local work, but doesn't seem to notice: politicalquarterly.org.uk/blog/attacki...

European alternatives for digital- HOPING for more ethical and sustainable futures, we shall see. Now is the opportunity. european-alternatives.eu

Macron now refers to "intimidation or threat", explicitly comparing US behaviour in Greenland to Russia's approach to Ukraine. Sweden's PM says: "We will not allow ourselves to be blackmailed". Much, tougher language from Europeans than we have seen before, responding to the US escalation.

Boycott Estée Lauder now! Its owner is the oligarch pushing for the annexation of Greenland. Boycott their owned brands whilst you’re at it.

The Government staying on X is pathetic: Ministers need to show some moral backbone inews.co.uk/opinion/the-...

Dit.

Oxford West & Abingdon MP Layla Moran has become the first Oxfordshire MP to quit X (formerly Twitter). She said “I can’t sleep knowing that I’m leading traffic to a site that actively enables sexual exploitation of women and children.” Her Bluesky profile is @laylamoran.bsky.social .

Still using X? Or even worse, paying for it? If the hate speech wasn’t a good enough reason for you to leave, I wonder if Musk’s AI stripping clothes off your daughters and wives at the request of other users is? Those with big followers in mil hist should check themselves @almurray.bsky.social etc

I lost my father, when I was 8, at the hands of other people. The amount of sadness I feel for this woman’s children is overwhelming.

It's unfair to say that X is only a site for Nazis *or* porn - it's also a site for Nazi porn.

Seeing a performer successfully hype the crowd with "When I say constitutional, you say crisis!" makes me wonder if we're doing public law conferences all wrong