Meanwhile down in Dulwich, one of the more unusual planning enforcement complaints in Southwark Council's inbox ...

I think I'm going to be the only person I know not to be in Edinburgh in a couple of weeks

No they shouldn't

Burnham would do well to get rid of Jacqui Smith…

I think this is interesting (and *of course* tech boosterism is a vote loser if the pitch is ‘everyone will lose their jobs’)

Ok I desperately need to find the Twin Peaks soundtrack on tape

I really don’t think anyone foresaw Exeter being the straw that broke the camel’s back, but here we are

The Nick Hillman quote at the end of this is a real failure to read the room moment

Really think people did him a massive disservice

'As the 145-year-old university prepares to slash nearly 200 more jobs, it has finally released its figures for the financial year 2023-24, a period that saw it come close to bankruptcy, before it was bailed out by the Scottish government.' 1/3

Is there a ‘this is what a dissertation is’ guide out there in book form?

Incisive rejoinder to the Vanderbilt/WU report on the humanities, by Harvard AAUP’s Dick Moran: www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

Applications for the Postdoctoral Fellowships are open. This fellowship is a three-year award made to an annual cohort of outstanding early-career researchers in the humanities or social sciences. Learn more: https://bit.ly/4xWduAS

been angling to run Reading's tourism board for years

I am very glad to see how widely covered the insanity at Exeter is, but please I beg everyone, understand this is happening EVERYWHERE in UK universities. If people care about anything valuable that this sector does or contributes too, they need to get loud, now.

I genuinely did not think that the Bayeux Tapestry fandom existed.

now's the time for Reading Museum's full-scale replica of the Bayeux Tapestry to shine

Am I missing something? If there are fewer EU students around in the UK, isn’t giving them a fee discount potentially positive? Or will universities just make bigger losses on them?

Is that ‘long-term strategy’ a fire sale, then?

Can someone explain why some train companies insist you pick up tickets at machines instead of—I presume very easy these days—just emailing you a PDF like everyone else?

I’m wildly pro closing roads to cars obviously, but I am somewhat against “we lack the state capacity to fix a bridge in zone 2 london”

Excited to be giving a talk on my forthcoming book in Amman. Come say "hi" if you're in town or watch online!

Someone has stolen a bit of That Tree from the grounds of a National Trust property and a tree valuation expert (I said what I said) observes the sapling could be worth "a huge amount". www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/art...

I’m wondering if the twenty-something New Yorker tote-carrying hipster male in London is going to die a death due to Trump

Letter in this week’s LRB. My Latinist husband has just returned from running his dept’s open day and indeed reports every subject talk packed & their stand inundated with interested teenagers.The kids are alright. The Classics departments across the UK’s universities are… less so.

Welcome to actually being prime minister.

This is one of those threads where the lack of a dash between tweets is... Ahem.

Also working-class autodidacts didn't just read alone - they read in groups, set up libraries and reading rooms, and battled for Mechanics' Institutes (many long ago merged into unis) to teach music, history, and politics. They built the public adult education infrastructure that's being destroyed

It feels like this is the inevitable culmination of "hidden histories" and "untold stories" combined with "we can't footnote your work, that would be awkward for the reader." But at its core, it's just the result of an utter lack of respect for the labor and expertise of an entire field.

So having done this for nearly a decade prior to this job: I agree.

I’m very pleased that the trade press is giving space to the Exeter horror. Next challenge is for them to look a little further down the league tables - Northumbria perhaps, or my own place. We have feelings too.

A beautiful piece on the spirit of Margo Leadbetter “as the Surbiton sum of all fears that rattles our dustbins and taps on our replacement windows, as if Cathy from Wuthering Heights was distantly whispering well thank you very much Jerry at our every disappointment and indecision.”

In memory of Penelope Keith now is a good time to read the best piece I’ve ever read on The Good Life. It’s by @jonnelledge.bsky.social and available on the @thequietus.com thequietus.com/subscriber-a...

So long Margot

WTF?!

Sub-optimal that universities are being pushed into the category of ‘luxury goods’

I’d like to know how many people who get upset, say, about adaptations of the Odyssey have actually read it

Applies elsewhere, too

Tfw you meet obviously pushy parents

How UK higher education -- and education policy/the country in general -- is viewed in Germany. Wie peinlich. What a mess.

I spent much of 2024 misusing @qmucu.bsky.social socials to badger this man's podcast into talking about #UKHE, providing a new story in response to their weekly request for input each & every week. Glad he's noticed now but can you imagine what earlier attention on his platform would have done?

Remains of people exhibited in ‘human zoos’ to be returned to French Guiana

I can imagine how frustrating and infuriating this must be for many staff and students at Oxford, I suspect perhaps even the majority.

In the past few months I’ve been involved in a couple of small workshops/conferences, I’ve done peer reviews, I’ve written references, I’ve marked and talked to students about their work. This is basically the job but these days it’s unclear how much of this is actually perceived as having *value*.

This will be wearyingly familiar to anyone reading it. But what is overwhelming is the sense that something has gone really, systemically wrong and it’s uncertain if there’s a way to fix it.

‘Say yes and never do it’ Mel Brooks knew how to deal with the studios

Bring back the ‘research note’!

So much of the scholarly apparatus viewed as normative is recent: masses of footnotes, peer review etc.

I mean add it to the list, but does this government have a, urr, plan beyond “maybe switch to PE kit” and “I dunno try and find a fan?” for when every summer school day is 30C+? This is also the week after next guys