'willful destruction of the HE sector' is another answer to "why do people hate Starmer" question. Those are all "labour voters" [generally] and they are being fucked.

Universities keep towns and cities alive. The economies within them and outside of them are so vital. Not only is the way we've treated higher education in this country appalling, its dreadfully negligent, and compounds already existing problems

Happy 100th, Mel Brooks. Spent 10 minutes trying to pick out the funniest clip I could think of from one of his films. I'm not even sure this is it, but it's from the amazing climax of my favorite Brooks movie, so... enjoy "The French Mistake" www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMK6...

It remains one of the main examples of hypocrisy in British politics. Anti/Non-Zionist Jews are either ignored or told they are not sufficiently Jewish, which is textbook antisemitism. www.youtube.com/watch?v=URpI...

If England have a man and a plan against Panama today it could go either way.

Palestinians aren’t Semites. Neither are Jews. “Semitic” is a language family, not a race. Some gross 19th c. race scientists misunderstood it as a race, & the word “antisemitism” was coined in that context. But we (I hope) are not race scientists, & we do not share this racial categorization.

Can I just add, and I'm exasperated at this stage, I don't know how Dan is able to keep his composure IF IT'S CAPPED, THEN IT'S NOT A SAFE ROUTE

In case you didn’t know, Exeter uni, where I work, has announced a plan to make 25% of staff in my English department redundant. Left-over staff will do double the teaching while their research time will be shrunk to 1%. Meanwhile admissions for English at Exeter are HIGH, and on the rise this year

Back when I was a Head of Sixth Form advising students on university applications I never imagined that the major challenge 10 years later would be trying to guess which university departments are likely to close and which subjects might be abolished

oh I can promise you this: the UK's appeasement of the UAE, one of the most consequential authoritarian regimes in the world, is as catastrophic as its appeasement of Israel. The UAE has bought the UK's silence. boycottuae.org/countries/un...

As an historian of Jewish history, when I teach the medieval blood libel, I now have JD Vance's complete lie that Haitian migrants were eating pets to use as a modern comparison, to demonstrate why it was that large groups of people actually believed this.

This week I've participated in a fair number of internal and external final undergraduate exam boards for English Literature My takeaway? Our students are achieving *extraordinary* levels of criticality and creativity in extremely tough material circumstances 👏👏👏👏👏

First ever back since spasm. Did not enjoy.

Support has dropped off massively, but I'm confident folks will step up. A chance to help six families, plus fifteen more families in a displacement camp, at one link? Amazing. The ask? Click "weekly" on just a coffee so they can eat. Then act for their tomorrow. chuffed.org/project/hope...

Even if this is true with the way our political discourse currently works, we have to behave as though it isn’t, so we can build that world. We have to call out Israeli war crimes as though antisemitism does not exist and call out antisemitism as though the state of Israel does not exist.

Cc @ninearchespress.bsky.social

In oncology waiting room with husband. A young woman with a small child went past saying ‘Remember what I said: if you’re not good the doctor with the big knife will cut your head off.’ Nice.

I remember 1976. I was six years old and got I’ll from the heat. Been wary of hot weather ever since.

It’s wild that politicians don’t seem to grasp the degree to which universities contribute to the economy- local, regional, national. The failure to intervene is a stain on this govt - a shocking dereliction of duty to every worker, every local business, every student, every area that is suffering

Tenth anniversary of Cameron announcing his resignation - possibly the worst UK PM - Johnson for all his venality and Truss for ideological idiocy don’t come close to the long term damage that resulted from Cameron’s Brexit referendum gamble for party management reasons. Truly terrible judgement…

Britain about to get its seventh Prime Minister in ten years. I can’t say I’m surprised. As a people they’re often wonderful of course—very musical, for example, many charming customs, and always joking around in their quirky way—but they just don’t have the temperament for stable self-government.

Ten years ago I was being interviewed for a university job. I didn’t get it, but the right person did.

Kitty does a slide down the sleeping dog’s mouth

He should do his first post as Labour leader on here and close down his twitter account.

‘Anticipating the moment when the Prime Minister might be a handful of feet behind us.’ What?

For Fathers' Day, Keir Starmer posts a photo of his own father, who died in 2018, and a non-political message. The replies are a torrent of vitriol & cruelty, all with hundreds of Likes. We complain a lot about the quality of leadership, but there's a huge problem with the way we treat politicians

The attacks on Ed Miliband, the one truly successful person running a department under Starmer, shows that the lack of seriousness in British politics goes way beyond No.10 to the press, the trade unions, the business sector.

Net immigration is down. Net immigration is down. Net immigration is down.

Thoughts with Edinburgh’s Muslim community.

I feel like it would somehow be fitting if Four Seasons Total Landscaping is called in to fix the reflecting pool

110 GBP left and 1 hour to do it. Support Spark Space, Gaza as they create a safe, fully-equipped workspace with reliable electricity and fast internet, offering students and freelancers in Gaza the environment they need to continue their journey despite the hardships. chuffed.org/project/spar...

🇵🇸 Gaza Needs Your Support: Help Build a Lifeline for Students and Remote Workers! chuffed.org/project/spar...

I wish our dystopia had more neon.

Poets: you can be as quiet as you want. The right readers will find you.

This is an embarrassing image for the UK. A self-respecting British fox should be dragging Binface's contents out over the stage

Congratulations to Andy Burnham for winning The Masked Singer.

BBC are not allowed to report on elections on the day of an election.

This is sweet and funny an opossum sees a mirror 🪞 and gets scared and “plays possum” it is fine, this is a normal behavior when surprised 😮

It seems a good day to remind people that in the UK 3 times as many people work in Indian restaurants or for McDonalds as in the whole coal and steel industry. 5 times as many are academic staff at universities. If Labour does not understand its electorate, there is no way to appeal to it.

The sound of a universe slowly deflating…

There’s a crack in everything. It’s where the hissing noise comes from.

@scriblit.bsky.social has landed at The Tism!! All hail our sister in snark

There are only two ‘e’s in Edgware.

Monday outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London where the Judges upheld the proscription of Palestine Action.

6/6 We should not be giving a platform to companies that profit from settlement expansion or speculate about reoccupation. Drawing UK Jewish institutions into these controversies makes our community less safe. yachad.org.uk/statement-on...

1/6 Yesterday’s 'Great Israeli Real Estate Event' at Edgware United Synagogue prompted protests. Attempts to portray those protests as simply hostility towards Jews are wrong and risk undermining the very real fight against antisemitism that our community is facing.