The contrast between the vision with which government & government ministers invested in universities in the post-war era, producing from green fields regional powerhouses like Sussex, Essex, Warwick, and today's impoverished, Gradgrindian government HE steer, is appalling. Likewise its results. 3/3

Support staff, librarians, museum workers and others are on strike this week at the University of Cambridge. They are seeking a 'Cambridge Weighting' to compensate for working in one the UK's most expensive cities.

Every trans-supporting cis person in the UK needs to make peace with becoming more annoying, persistent, and pedantic than they ever thought possible. EHRC guidance is full of contradictions - they're relying on transphobic compliance out of fear. DON'T GIVE IT TO THEM

Here's a poem for the closeted, those outside binaries, and everyone who longs to blossom. Fuck the Supreme Court and the EHRC. Oak is not the only tree. I love you.

The EHRC Guidance is merely guidance. It is not law. You do not have to follow it. You are breaking no laws by allowing people to use the bathroom of their choice in your building. You are breaking no laws as a trans person by using the bathroom of your choice.

Put the money into buses, for crying out loud. 😬

Nottingham VC Jane Norman called plans to cut 700+ jobs and axe 40+ degree programmes “exciting.” Staff disagree. Today a marking boycott begins. 62 days of strikes follow from June. We will keep fighting. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1450...

Reposting with full alt text, because it’s important that this stuff is accessible.

Why is the UK so bad at trains? I’ve been on long distance trains every week in May. Every single one of them has been cancelled or late or both. And we can’t even get the project that might help right. Functional, usable trains should be the bare minimum of a country’s infrastructure. 😬

Those made redundant will not get other academic jobs because there are none out there so this will be professionally, and more importantly personally devastating. Nottingham’s VC should be ashamed that she’s allowed this to happen (except shame doesn’t seem to be a thing that VCs have.)

This matters. Please co-sign. Managers like to pretend that petitions don't move them, but in reality cannot but answer questions about the numbers, and suddenly things that were deemed inevitable appear to be more-evitably-than-previously-declared.

Every single member of the History Department at Uni of Nottingham is at risk of redundancy. Every single one of us.

This article points to an £85m loss to reinforce the idea that UoN will run out of cash. That number includes the reval of the pointless campus and redundancy payments. Neithe affect cashflow. The truth is we made a slim profit operating (£0.8m) www.timeshighereducation.com/news/notting...

This is not the reason. A year isn’t enough time to establish a course or gauge ‘demand’ (and so what, anyway, this is a vital course for higher education and should not be scrapped on any grounds.)

Help stop another attempt to use the present crisis in higher education to roll back the academic study of black history and culture in the UK.

It’s diary day today! Submit your diary here! ☀️

Given the horror with which we heard about Cardiff slashing programs just over a year ago, I note that a certain dull ache has crept in to announcements of the latest university to slash staff. It is no longer shock. It is resignation that the inevitable is spreading.

Back on strike with @sheffielducu.bsky.social. Why? Management is pushing ahead with restructures despite sitting on £200m+ in reserves. Along with colleagues in East Asian Studies, I also find out in 12 days how many of us they want to fire. No justification is deemed necessary by management.

I'm Lead Judge of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, awarded at University of Edinburgh since 1919 and due to be announced this month. But the university is currently withholding 100% of my pay for participating in a marking and assessment boycott. So, at present, there will be no prize.

Sheffield’s archaeology department was second to none, world leading and internationally significant. All the things that universities purport to value. It was also full of good colleagues (which universities seem to value less, but is no less significant.) I’m sorry it is no more.

A strong statement from @ucu.org.uk on the University of Sussex win against the OfS. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1449...

Our first event took place in Sheffield on 27 April 2006, which makes 20 years of Longbarrow Press. Thanks to all the poets, artists, readers, audiences, and many others who have been part of this project. Some reflections from last year: longbarrowpress.substack.com/p/inventory

Hopefully Welsh museums will tell Reform to cachu bant.

Closing today - please repost!

on strike again with @ucunorthumbria.bsky.social this week - Uni executive have walked out of talks and are going to go ahead and cut our pay and pensions, in whatll likely only be a first move in a 'post92' race to the bottom!

Handy Guide: ✅ Free Speech: When GCs who had no relation to my University complained to try and get me kicked off my course ❌ Not Free Speech: Exercising one's right to peaceful protest against those advocating your exclusion from society – on the campus you have to live and work in

Great sounding job for those with the right experience. Really good to see a company being explicit about anti-racist, equality and ecological commitment and with an eco-minded travel/annual leave policy and plans to trial sabbaticals. Plus #SheffieldIsSuper obvs.

Not once in the 80s, 90s or 00s do I recall a politician urging the public to embrace email, mobile phones, texting, two factor authentication, online banking, air fryers, or to replace all their cassette collection with a CD collection. So forgive me if I smell a rat.

Honestly, absolutely fuck all of this shit.

👀👀👀 www.ucu.org.uk/article/1447...

Out today!

Seven countries now generate 100% of their electricity from renewable sources, proving the transition is not theoretical but already operational. The barrier is no longer technology, but political will, investment priorities, and the courage to move faster.

There used to be a ‘live’ Arts and Humanities version of this in Sheffield which connected researchers in A&H with people in Sheffield. The University cut the pretty modest funding for it. It was great and enabled Sheffielders of all ages to talk with researchers about their research.

It also seems nonsensical that additional training places cannot be delivered safely because of the strike (reason BBC is reporting.)

Today is trans visibility day so I kindly ask the UK media to learn how to do a debate about trans rights. Watch and learn @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social 4 experts. 0 politicians not about ideologies,"views" it's about facts. turn on the subtitles and you'll get the idea youtu.be/X8pcaCJk51Q?...

For those who don’t know, the OU brought teachers like Doreen Massey, Stuart Hall, Margie Wetherell, Grahame Thompson, John Allen, Tony Bennett to design and write degree courses to anyone, regardless of prior qualifications often FOR FREE and until 2010ish for around £3-500 p.a.

In a week when I've had it with ridiculous men, here's a line-up of brilliant women for Catherine's excellent course for those whose work has a historical element (not just historians) and who want to translate it for other contexts. Mid-PhD onwards. Apply, apply mcphh.wordpress.com/take-your-re...

One of the most striking things about this area is how the Battle of Orgreave has been totally erased from the park and housing estates which now occupy the site. Not a single sign or information panel. There should be a walking trail along the lines of the Bosworth Battlefield Trail.

Vile and unnecessary. I'm so sorry for all the girls that thought GirlGuiding was a supportive, inclusive space. It should and could have remained so.

This. And added to it, there is no ethical use of AI because of the people that are making money out of it and how they’re doing it. Universities need to stop the gymnastics of trying to convince themselves that there is. No more ‘ethical use of AI’ workshops, please.

Friends! I work w/ the charity Arts Emergency which pairs artists from underprivileged backgrounds w/ working artist mentors. IT ROCKS. This week, donations are being doubled. Spare £5/10 & make art better? ❤️🎨 @artsemergency.bsky.social donate.biggive.org/campaign/a05...

This is the company the UK government has embedded in the nation’s services. Seriously, fuck everyone who is excusing this.

If your next article is 'Is the Labour party still "labour" in any meaningful way?' then maybe we'll listen.

As @amyryall.bsky.social pointed out, the REF is supposed to be an audit of institutions not individuals. In that case, let's only award pension benefits to VCs whose universities are in the top 20% of the REF table. That'd tighten them. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/sheffie...

Do u think they did an equalities audit before deciding on a two-tier workforce because I have some wild guesses about who is most impacted here.

I thought REF was supposed to be institutional. Solidarity with all @ucuhallam.bsky.social this is absolutely despicable behaviour.

So sad, and so unnecessary. We offered a legal indemnity, against all legal risks, to the leadership of Women's Institute, and Girlguiding, so they could continue to include all women. Both declined.

It has been a DECADE how are we still having to explain this shit.

Government's own industrial strategy talks of the UK being the best place in the world to make and invest in tv, film, video games, music, performing and visual arts, by 2035. This seems incompatible with giving away copyright to AI companies.

This appalling fat cat wants to shut the door on all my mature students, many of whom left school after GCSE and give up a lot to go to university. I can tell him that they’re the hungriest for education and far from being unable to graduate, they regularly get the highest grades. Hateful man.