I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again. Universities are roughly 1000 years old. They predate most operating models including capitalism and have lasted for a reason. Installing insecure, helpless managers who ape business methods results in bad businesses, not good universities.

A strange English Palm Sunday custom - The Caistor Gad Whip ceremony Every Palm Sunday, the lord of the manor of Broughton in Lincolnshire sent a man with a whip (with a leather purse attached containing 30 pieces of silver) to the Caistor parish church.

We're in with the same folks: "Scotland’s largest university has turned to Nous Group at the same time as it is making savings that could lead to nearly 2,000 job losses. Staff say they were misled about the extent of its work." www.theferret.scot/consultancy-...

Example no. 231235256256251541551 that the Venn diagram of transphobia, racism and misogyny is a circle.

Agreed. #TransRightsAreHumanRights 🏳️‍⚧️

If you’re Belfast-based, there are paperback copies of my book already on sale in the brilliant indie shop No Alibis!

In London, Mayor Sadiq Khan brags that road deaths in London are lower than nearly every other European city In Birmingham @richardparkerwm.bsky.social and @cllrjohncotton.bsky.social will shake their heads, wring their hands and give you every reason why Brummies have to accept road violence

You'll note Manchester in this list. But not Birmingham. @richardparkerwm.bsky.social knows poor road safety and dense traffic drains an economy of productivity Want to know why Manchester is the city on the up? 👇🏼. They have good leadership

NOUS is wrecking destruction all over the #UKHE sector. The list of clients isn’t pretty, seeing how they’re the ones with the most dire stories in a sector full of dire stories: Cardiff, Coventry, Derby, Plymouth, Edinburgh, QMUL. Who else has got NOUS in? Cc @timeshighered.bsky.social

"Your death doesn't count unless you're the right sort of person, therefore Towton is basically a fight in a pub car park"

<rolls eyes extraordinarily hard in historian>

fascinating to watch even the rest of the nasty right realise Goodwin is a hateful prick and turn on him isn't it

Really striking to see four universities from the West Midlands in this list. Where are the others?

And making the 'what's the point of a degree?' a reality: if you're not being taught by the specialists in their specialism in order to develop the specialised skills, how is academia different from school?

Also spotted - and looking very fine - in Waterstones Birmingham earlier @grindrod.bsky.social

Issue movies, I find, tend to age poorly, but 1961's Victim not only continues to work for its issue (closeted homosexuality) but is also just a plain old fine, fine movie. (Plus you get some great views of the West End etc.)

Starting work soon on a new 3 year book project. People keep asking me if I’ll use AI to help me? I would rather wear a hornet’s nest for underpants than ever delegate thought to a plagiarism engine

Same brand identity. Same organisational structures. Same educational Offer. Same old same old. Mass produced pret a porter distinctiveness.

So much money money diverted. So much responsibility deflected. Managers are buying unaccountability, and they know it. Because those powerpoint slidedecks are an absolute joke.

Same brand identity. Same organisational structures. Same educational Offer. Same old same old. Mass produced pret a porter distinctiveness.

This is the situation we find ourselves in

A very easy step the Secretary of State could make is to shut down the use of consultancies in #UKHE. It leaks SO MUCH money out of the (public) sector to for-profit firms, is creating a truly dangerous monoculture, and is so seemingly obscure none outside the sector will be pissed off.

(2/2)...I am so angry with myself for not taking a screenshot and just asking outright. The board are all City and Legal and Ex Cabinet, so I can see why they dont want it on their website, or any conversation, but there must be a way to recover the info. Large donation circa £2m

Help. (1/2) I have a Trust that was set up in part with a large donation by a corporate. When I asked them about it, they removed all public content referring to the donation and have blocked me. I assume as a Trust I can go to the Charity Comms, look for grants etc in any annual report? .....

Friends front out. Keeping good company in Waterstones Birmingham. (Not the Turner book: that’s awful).

Friends front out. Keeping good company in Waterstones Birmingham. (Not the Turner book: that’s awful).

Run free Tierna, you can rest now. I love you and miss you so much my beautiful old boy. Thank you for everything x

🚨 New on Substack, Lincoln’s Early Council Housing and the Corporation’s "duty to provide the houses themselves" - Homes for Heroes, a model Garden Suburb and pioneering slum clearance: municipaldreams.substack.com/p/lincolns-e...

For just a brief moment, all is good in the world.

Run free Tierna, you can rest now. I love you and miss you so much my beautiful old boy. Thank you for everything x

Cheery 8/10 review for Tales of the Suburbs in the Express (!) www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-exp...

As the police find no evidence whatsoever of illegal family voting or voter coercion in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the BBC should ask themselves why, on the morning of the result, they gave so much airtime to these absurd and obviously racist claims from Nigel Farage

Any 19thC British History ppl know of a decent history of Free Masonry? Not finding anything on BBIH but may be being dense

The mad emporer has triggered chaos he cannot control open.substack.com/pub/iandunt/...

Lying about your own country in return for money from a foreign power. There should be a word for that.

It’s the 105th anniversary of the birth of Roderic Fenwick Owen, who wrote a biography of an RAF commander, married a Tahitian princess, picked up men all over the world, became court poet to the sheikh of Abu Dhabi, turned down a Jackson Pollock, and spent a night with Sean Connery…🧵

This is refreshing. I keep attending meetings in which people say they’ve fed a departmental strategy document and the new UKRI guidelines into the plagiarism machine and THIS is what we should do now.

The general public, who need to read this accounting to avoid falling into self-comforting myths, probably won't because the religion of normalcy prohibits any sort of encounter with the trauma of COVID awareness or memories from the time of its emergence. This is a real and dangerous psych. effect.

Isn't this just straight up insane, as policy? Doesn't it send a global signal that could absolutely trash international student recruitment in the UK?

When people talk of nations 'declining', it's usually all very vague and anecdotal. This is what decline looks like. Tangible, measurable regression: a society making a choice to roll back its progress and reduce its future possibilities of success. It's also very, very avoidable. Heartbreaking.

Strong professional and moral principles: Valuable. Delivering those principles like a cricket bat to the offender's head: Priceless.

On the latter point... it does sort of implicitly suggest we do need to understand and teach the limits of this stuff. But also, I wonder where the more inappropriate use of the tech is in the sector, and suspect it's not in student essays/coursework.

This is refreshing. I keep attending meetings in which people say they’ve fed a departmental strategy document and the new UKRI guidelines into the plagiarism machine and THIS is what we should do now.

I just attended a meeting with literary agents in which they said there was zero tolerance for "AI" content. They want people to think well and write well, and that should be at the core of university practice too.

These people have a funny way of saying "Environmentalists have been proved right yet again."

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

Really looking forward to seeing this exhibition when I go home next. Perhaps of interest to @emilyrobinson.bsky.social @clairelanghamer.bsky.social?