Monday.

It's indicative of the way the British media establishment works, but the best chance for a reprieve for Modern Languages at Nottingham is the fact that lots of media types will have kids or friends with kids studying at Nottingham. No-one cared about Salford in 2013 when 50 years of provision died.

Why is the BBC News website full of 'explainers' like 'What is a bus and why is everyone talking about them?' or 'Eating yoghurt is revolutionary but where does it come from?'

Next time someone tells you that train drivers "just push buttons" show them this from the BBC

Sean in Classic Corrie explains Eurovision to the Rovers crowd.

Bonsoir, fans!

Fascinating thesis here by Chris Brady looking at the phenomenon of the 'Northern Fun Pub' 1973-1993 and its mainstreaming of queer culture. It seems that Disco Tango, the 1979 Danish Eurovision entry by Tommy Seebach, was apparently the most popular 'tambourine song' in the pubs all over the North.

Milei looks like all the cast of Are You Being Served in one

Today I played my students, most of whom were born in around 2005, a Cissie and Ada sketch. I felt very old.

Teddy on her pouffe throne, surrounded by her favourite cardboard boxes.

Reaction to Badenoch's speech is everything wrong with Britain's policymaking community. Mostly couched in terms of the politics and her survival. Nothing on the utter garbage of policies that would leave us in an even bigger mess. UK policymaking may be irredeemable. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cl...

The full, extended Hetty Wainthropp theme. Never mentioned when iconic TV music is mentioned, but for me it's up there with the Suchet Poirot theme for best ever TV theme. youtu.be/UHk1aaZEDcQ?...

In memoriam...

Please join me in congratulating Woman on her appointment

The fascinating thing about this is that it demonstrates that the quality journalists in the BBC don't work for the flagship Westminster operation. If she'd said this on the Today programme, I doubt it would have been challenged as the presenter wouldn't have been across the facts either.

Dame Patricia Routlege - what a life well-lived. 96 years of bringing nothing but joy to millions of people all over the world.

The lady of the house has left her residence :( www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

This is the same kind of journalist who would write, with great surprise, that a council house was immaculately clean with a 'neat' garden when on a safari interviewing some 'ordinary people'.

I started watching a low budget Christmas film on tv, but I got distracted and when I got back a new one had started and I didn’t notice because they all have exactly the same plot

Today I learned that Frédéric Etherlinck, singer of the very unsuccessful 1995 Belgian Eurovision entry, is the host of the Belgian 'Traitors' franchise.

Friends fear he's replying to clikcbait threads on the Channel 5 Jeremy Vine Show Facebook page.

People are assuming that Andy Burnham would be looking for a seat in Greater Manchester. A much more realistic possibility would be St Helens South and Whiston, where the incumbent MP, Marie Rimmer, is 78. Burnham went to school in St Helens Borough and lives very close to the borough boundary.

This remarkable therapy uses an approach the Trump administration just cancelled funding for.

"She's no Beyoncé, but she did play bongos for Milli Vanilli" #CoronationStreet

No, I absolutely did not get caught by security singing along to this in my office when I thought the corridor was completely empty youtu.be/_9p8dMEyPu8?...

Just found an academic account of the iconic 'PALS?!! PALS?!!' scene on Coronation Street and it's delicious.

Vox pops are the lowest form of journalism because they allow news organisations to editorialise through selective interviews without even the spurious science of polling data. This is leading the website of the BBC which must think it’s the most important news happening today.

The UK university sector's desperation is now beginning to show through.

Yes, those of us who like watermelon are a lively bunch.

Induction Week has started.

Counterpoint: it's no bad thing for councillors to be able to park for free when on council business in the centre of their city. This relentless of haranguing of elected officials for trivialities is making political service untenable for many. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Rayner is absolute class. She's been a bit silly in organising her taxes, but that's not why they hate her. They hate her because she did not know her place.

Worrying long term hidden fiscal drag The family income threshold at which English students maintenance loans start to get reduced is just £25,000/yr. It has been this level since the 2008/2009 academic year. We have had 64% (CPI) inflation since then. So it's been slashed hugely in real terms

29 minutes and counting on the phone to GP (in the most off-peak time imaginable) for a task that I would be very happy to do online, if only they allowed me to do so. I just want to move an appointment that they made for me (without consulting me) because, you know, I work.

This is the level of smarts we're up against

There are now 101 British universities making redundancies. When will the madness stop? Answer: it probably won't. qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

This is one of the most remarkable things I've ever read.

Interesting change from the front-page thumbnail to the substantive article itself. One for the media language scholars.

This is disgusting behaviour from UCA. I teach Linguistics in a university School that has 'Creative Technology' in its name and offers a plethora of creative subjects. There is no contradiction in this. The people who signed this off should be ashamed. Fight for your subjects on their own merit!

I long for a time when the biggest menace on the horizon was Esther Rantzen telling us about the evils of guar gum on 'That's Life!'

😑 We're now at a stage when 'entry requirements' for RG universities in the normal UCAS cycle are substantively meaningless; they're nothing more than markers of prestige when AAB becomes CCC in Clearing. There was at least a sort of honesty when unis were giving out loads of unconditional offers!

The BBC needs to reconsider its news-sharing agreement with CBS

Again, there is a systemic problem here of "loyalty to the organisation" outweighing "loyalty to the people it serves" that feels almost endemic.

An academic tribute to a great man. I was never less than in awe when I found myself in the same room as in him. Bill Labov: Looking Back, Looking Forward - Sneller - Journal of Sociolinguistics - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

If you were alive in the 1980s, this is among the most wonderful & truly incredible things you have ever witnessed in your lifetime.