The kids get it.

“Let’s call it for what it is: bullshit. The truth is, politicians have talked about little else but immigration for decades and in the most dehumanising ways. Polanski added: “Stop the boats’ is all we hear. Well, today I'm saying ‘stop the bullshit’.” www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

A must-read for environmental historians, labour historians, & historians of embodiment, trade, Britain, the Thames, and more. Conceptually ambitious & a really good story with an unexpected & dramatic denouement. #envhist

The first review of Teaching Gender is here! academic.oup.com/tcbh/article... I'm grateful to David Loner for engaging in such detail with my work.

"When Tony Blair tried to launch ID cards in the early 2000s, it cost £4.6bn at 2010 prices, and never even got off the ground." goodlaw.social/j17w

Absolutely rancid discourse around this in so many different ways it's difficult to know where to begin. You can't appease proto-fascists who don't want to vote for you anyway. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cw...

This is superb, giving lie to the idea that the rise of the far right is simply a problem of bad/mis-information. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/se...

V happy to share a new OA article in @pastpresentsoc.bsky.social written with Sim Koole. It’s about dock work, dockside life and the changing river in turn of the century Rotherhithe.

One of the unexpected things I've learned from my advocacy for trans people is how malignant parts of the State can be, how it can misuse data for positively evil purposes. It's taught me people can't be safe with a digital ID card and so I've signed this. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/73...

No better illustration of the far right’s incredible success in re-legitimising racism. No 'pensioner deportations' under Reform, says Kruger www.bbc.com/news/article...

The most recent war against Iraq and the genocide in Palestine are the two biggest crimes of this century. Fitting, I guess, to make a leader of one a manager of the other.

How many times is it possible to be completely and utterly done with Labour?

This, but first I make sure the classroom recording system named for Jeremy Bentham's dystopian surveillance prison is running smoothly. bsky.app/profile/bell...

Book proposal just finished and sent off - time for a deep breath and a long lie down in a darkened room.

Latest plan by Starmer to a) Become even more unpopular and b) Upset vast swathes of people in Scotland and North of Ireland.

Oh look, right under the "Starmer to force digital ID on everyone" is "Names, pictures, and addresses of 8,000 children stolen in nursery chain hack". I am about to go live in the woods and knit hats for squirrels.

Electric Wind is here! Thank you for the surprise post @manchesterup.bsky.social ! Available for pre-order and in all good bookshops from 14 October 🙂

If you're in London on 21 October there are still a few tickets available for the launch of my new book Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London. I'll be in conversation with the wonderful @julialaite.bsky.social about all things history.

I can hear Howard's wonderful voice saying this.

If you're in London on 21 October there are still a few tickets available for the launch of my new book Songs of Seven Dials: An intimate history of 1920s and 1930s London. I'll be in conversation with the wonderful @julialaite.bsky.social about all things history.

Full story @bylinetimes.bsky.social: TalkTV Presenter Accused of Assault After Dragging Climate Protester From UK Trump Dinner EXCLUSIVE: André Walker incident facing police probe over allegations he attempted to punch and kick a protester at a Republicans Overseas event during Trump’s UK visit

Would find this more convincing if the elephant in the room were addressed head on: research cultures develop/are enacted in research (& teaching) structures. The REF2029 cycle has seen extraordinary structural change. Will/how will PCE assess cultures in this context? 1/2

The #WingedGeographies blog seems to have been retired (nothing more recent than 2023) but there are insistently topical pieces to be found. #NatureWriting www.wingedgeographies.co.uk/post/pigeons...

Really pleased we could make this happen.

It would just be nice if the government had the attitude towards universities that it seems to have towards, say, cars

Car park?

I do not like that Chloé Dygert I do not like her, she's such a bigot. I do not like her MAGA views I do not like her in the news. I do not like her love of Barbie, I do not think it makes her quirky. As for her love of Charlie Kirk, That Chloé Dygert, she's such a berk.

Kenneth Williams liked to go cruising there, as @tricksterprince.bsky.social tells us in his book Queer London (If I remember correctly)

"You don’t fight the politics of violence by quibbling with the details. You stamp it into a million pieces! You draw a f*cking line!" If Keir Starmer won’t even make a moral case against deporting our friends and neighbours, then what is the point of him?

And - as if all those things weren't enough - a regular at the Cave of Harmony when it was reincarnated at the heart of Seven Dials...

It's MRS MINIVER by Jan Struther, which was first published in the UK in 1940 and began life as a light-hearted newspaper column in the Times. It took on a a very different form as a Hollywood movie starring Greer Garson in 1942.

There is in fact a database 'Open Syllabus' which tells us that of the courses it covers Plato is prescribed 4024 times and Judith Butler 178. galaxy.opensyllabus.org

It takes a special kind of person to go to the African continent and show support for someone who was OK with racist and slavery views. The Rwandian children watching is so ironic. Note the Yahoo article is before Kirk's death, August'25. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Eryri Five-O

And - as if all those things weren't enough - a regular at the Cave of Harmony when it was reincarnated at the heart of Seven Dials...

And the institution told academic staff (1) that they were not working hard enough already and (2) their workloads were going to increase.

Eryri Five-O

Almost everything in this Report is wrong. You can see why brownfield opportunities are exaggerated, but the easy pickings are in North Manchester and inner north Glasgow and you don't get off the hook in south-east England www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

I have to acknowledge that this by @j-amesmarriott.bsky.social does an excellent job of proving its own point, by being appallingly badly researched (mostly random and inaccurate/misleading snippets from X, I think). I blame the Times more than Oxford, though. archive.ph/kYfps

Nice surprise to see my article on Capenhurst Women’s Peace Camp is out today - have a read if interested in space, the weirdness of the Wirral, local feminisms and anti-nuclear activism in Merseyside, and global solidarity movements in the 1980s academic.oup.com/tcbh/article...

Core work hollowed out to feed the beast. I have a lot of sympathy for how hard it is to run a uni in this messed-up funding system. But that should lead managers to advocate to changes to the system, not knowingly push the risk & the pain on some of the most vulnerable. www.ft.com/content/3f49...

I for one can’t wait but I do have skin in the game - a piece on the post-war history of the idea of the working class community - but there’s so much more - it’s a BIG book

A short post about the Modern British City, out in November: www.lundhumphries.com/blogs/featur...

BBC News's problem used to be its misplaced tendency to deploy 'false balance'. Alas, the problem's just got a lot worse....

The launch of my new @manchesterup.bsky.social book Songs of Seven Dials will be at 6pm, Tues 21 Oct, at Waterstones Covent Garden. I'll be in conversation with the wonderful @julialaite.bsky.social. Please do come along. Free tickets, but register in advance www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/songs-of-s...

We seem to have reached the point where the crisis of masculinity discourse is itself in crisis.

Now obligatory sign tapping plug… www.manchesterhive.com/display/9781...

"Oh no. Not again."