£1 in every £11 spent on UK public contractors goes on private equity - a galling statistic in this excellent bit of reporting from my colleagues @michaelgoodier.bsky.social @c-aguilargarcia.bsky.social and others www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

After six consecutive Oxford-educated Prime Ministers, Britain may finally see some real diversity in the top job: a Cambridge-educated Andy Burnham

This is great timing - today's episode of @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social with @elidavies.bsky.social may well be of interest! Picky bits / girl dinner gets v much.. unpicked open.spotify.com/episode/1MOo...

Ogoni activists in the Niger Delta have asked me to run a small crowdfunder to pay for Hell t-shirts that can be given to participants of the Niger Delta Climate Change Conference later this month (& billboards!) Trying to raise £2k, I've put in £300 to start it. Donate below ⬇️

"In recent years the number of nurseries backed by private equity and investment firms has doubled. For every £5 spent ... more than £1 ends up as profit – double what other private nurseries make and seven times more than non-profits." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The birth rate in the UK in the mid to late 1930s was almost as low as it is today and I can assure you that it wasn’t because Stanley Baldwin’s teenagers wouldn’t get off their phones. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Just now in conversation with @kasiatee.bsky.social I was reminded that over a series of tweets during the pandemic I turned the LOTR trilogy into a tale of modern UK academia. So… here you all go

Very pleasing to get an email yesterday from @kingscollegelondon.bsky.social to say that, for three years starting in September, I'll be a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies. This institutional affiliation will help a lot and I can maybe do some fun stuff at KCL too!

The Quietus is 90% funded by subscribers, and we need another 500 this spring to help us fight the AI-pocalypse – with this in mind, there's a huge sale on our top tier subscriptions. If you like what we do, here's how you can help: thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

Delighted to kick off Friday’s @vittles.bsky.social column with a tale from Westminster: www.vittlesmagazine.com/p/recency-bias

Objectively hilarious

This is tonight!

Thought this was a model response from @celiarichardson.bsky.social to a pretty harsh article in the Spectator about the National Trust

3 actual quotes from this piece: “Can I afford the tax? Yes. Is it going to deter me? No. But I think it’s shameful. I provide a lot of money to people who are blue-collar workers who work for me, servers in restaurants." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Next Tuesday I’ll be talking to @danhancox.bsky.social at @housmansbookshop.bsky.social about THE ASSET CLASS - if you’re in London, do come along! housmans.com/event/book-l...

Me: (Smart, looking at the most devastating evidence imaginable that my smart plan is an incredible, historic disaster) I was even more right than I suspected

twenty years ago people attacked universities by deriding “Mickey Mouse degrees” like media studies in favour of “proper” subjects like history, and now universities are skipping that step and simply abolishing everything that isn’t economics

Re-upping this for the Tuesday crowd: My latest weekly roundup of reading and listening recommendations, taking in legacies of conflict, new trends in international law, and the role of genre in cultural production, among other themes. All reposts (and subscriptions) much appreciated. x

New article! Chains of closure: how collections move and change when museums close www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10..... Why did the Commonwealth Institute and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (and several others) close, and what happened to their collections after closure?

Still time (just about!) to support this crowdfunder for a radical bookshop in Newcastle. An excellent cause:

I passed my PhD viva 13 years ago today. Even ignoring my horror at the passage of time, it's still very difficult to figure out how I should evaluate the years since then.

First UK tour dates for THE ASSET CLASS! I’m really looking forward to talking about the book in person over the next few months at a bookshop / gallery near you. We'll be adding more events in the UK and internationally soon

Profoundly stupid, just a stunner of a choice

I was at the @ihr.bsky.social tonight for the ‘Pitch my Project’ contest that they’d been running in conjunction with the @royalhistsoc.org & Chalke Valley History Festival. The finalists were all terrific - really genuinely interesting & enthused. The judges had a very tough job picking a winner!

This looks like a brilliant resource. learn.lsbu.ac.uk/hubfs/Women%...

Graduate salaries 'are not really telling us about the innate value of studying a particular subject at a particular institution. Instead, they are telling us about the value of those qualifications in a particular economy at a particular point in time.'

'Stuart Hall, Ideology, and Neoliberalism’s Reactionary Drift', by @lcornelissen.bsky.social for the @jhideas.bsky.social blog.

to be clear, Matthew Goodwin has one (1) child and should thus be penalised for failing to meet the replacement rate under the incentive scheme that he’s established here

Another new @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social episode, with a very special guest on a very timely subject: Davos, its weird global elites and weirder freebies cursedobjects.podbean.com/e/davos-hand...

Several of our 2026 funding streams are now open for applications, including our Research Access Grant, Decolonising Design History Grant, Accessible Design History Grant, and Research Publication Grant. For further details, please see the Awards section of our website: buff.ly/pAyBfub

New Substack from me - on "the battle for the soul of this country", fascism and UK rap's Flag Play danhancox.substack.com/p/i-think-i-...

The @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social auto transcription is generally very good but it has transliterated Keir Starmer as “Cursed Armour”

10 days until the #CFP deadline for the online workshop *Object Stories in Health and Medicine 1700-1900*. We invite proposals for 15-minute talks on a single object related to health or medicine during the 18th & 19th centuries #histmed #histpsych #medhums www.birmingham.ac.uk/events/objec...

New episode on Baby on BOARD! badges, and the unintended meanings of objects for the public good 🤰

This is a very common scenario: a private museum closing because its owner wants to retire, with the collection going to auction.

Our first exhibition, Cursed Objects in Museum Shops, runs until 26 June, so get down to Bloomsbury while you can! It's FREE, 10am-8pm, Mon-Fri, at the Peltz Gallery. All details here: www.cursedobjects.co.uk/events/mp1jq...

Periodic reminder there is an entire range of daft shit available from my shop: spellingmistakescostlives.com/shop

...then on 11 June, joining the good people of the @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social Podcast to discuss WAR TAT and our cultural memory of 1939 to 1949 with @lottelydia.bsky.social and Kate Clements. Key object for me – the Tank Museum's soft toy Panzerfaust here. Tickets: www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event...

No, employers need to do their own training. It’s not educators’ job to make sure that school-leavers — or graduates — have the specific skills that each company needs. Employers need to invest in their workforce.

Do you know of a museum, library, or archive that offers images from their collection for publication or presenting, for free? Please use the form below to help crowd-source a list of these magical places!

Very rare to discover Magna Carta trending for non-insane reasons. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

For those interested in a more in-depth dissection of Jamie Oliver & New Labour, here’s @jonathandnunn.bsky.social and I on the fabulous @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social with @danhancox.bsky.social & @kasiatee.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/0WuB... Jamie’s ‘Fish Stew’ song must be heard by all!

yo yo yo yo yo Museums +Tech CfP is open museumscomputergroup.org.uk/mcg-museumst...

Thames through Time is back in Birkbeck, but the MA Archaeology & Heritage student Christopher Snary @bbkhistorical.bsky.social only brought in a scaled model of the Thames historical dockyards that he has made! Archaeology and model-making, it’s important!!

Looking forward to joining @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social for a live event this June, discussing WAR TAT w @lottelydia.bsky.social & Kate Clements. Endless branded gin, of course, but also more sinister tat such as the soft toy Panzerfaust – thread here: (1/4) www.cursedobjects.co.uk/events/war-m...

I'm going to be one of the guests on the @cursedobjectsuk.bsky.social podcast live show in London, 28th May. Tickets are free but you have to book: www.cursedobjects.co.uk/events/mille...

New Substack from me, about why the most annoying cyclists on the road are actually helping make everyone safer open.substack.com/pub/danhanco...

⌛ Final Week ⌛ Time is running out to visit our current exhibition: 'Unfolding Time: The Medieval Pocket Calendar' – closing 15 May. 🕰️ 🔗Opening times + digital highlights: www.lambethpalacelibrary.info/unfolding-time #UnfoldingTime #MedievalSky #BookHistory 📜

⏰ Awaiting #StartYourWeek? In the meantime why not dip into the world of #CursedObjects in museum shops with @kasiatee.bsky.social and @nndroid.bsky.social? 🦀 Listen linktr.ee/bunker_pod

Brilliant new exhibition on the tat found in museum shops 2 May - 26 June 2025. Weekdays 10am - 8pm. Peltz Gallery, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD