It just never ends.

At the university we’re constantly being pressured to do personalised videos for applicants and more general stuff. How anyone comes to watch them is never explained, but if the place depends on a tired old git (me) saying ‘rizz’ for the kids, we’re dead.

🚨 1 in 4 staff at Goldsmiths to be axed. All while senior management get eye-watering pay rises and £16m is spent on consultants and lawyers. This is the reality of Higher Education in the UK. Our members have voted for industrial action, support them. www.ucu.org.uk/article/1447...

Just going to post this once a month until the university permacrisis ends: m.youtube.com/watch?v=DWkv...

I’m not saying that the gods have spoken but on the day of our sacking meeting campus is closed due to a massive network outage.

The walking embodiment of clientelist postcolonial politics. A family dynasty lacking principles and brains, yet have Kerry in an electoral vice. Ugh.

A small addition to the office door in light of what’s going on here. IYKYK.

I had no idea Shetland was a male-only island…or is it just Farage's circle?

Every time I contemplate local and wider higher education management/policy poor old Calgacus’s summary of Roman policy springs ineluctaboy to mind: ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant. Where they make a desolation, they call it peace.

There's a journalist who asked of Cricket Australia, the organising body, do they play cricket in order to make money, or do they need to make money in order to play cricket? It strikes me that this applies to universities and education/research.

Contrast with my VC, who recently stated that ‘all staff must learn that we are a business, not a public sector organisation’.

I like that the Guardian is doing news as poetry now. Here’s a recent one, ‘8h ago’.

Management: design a course that contains 40% of what you teach now. Also management: report to us on Wednesday to find out how many of you we can now sack. (50% is my guess, and there’s no way they’ll pass up the opportunity to fire a union caseworker).

A while back we might have called this a shrine. These people are very odd, aren’t they?

My uni’s marketing department: we won’t advertise your course. It’s not a ‘hero’ course. Management: you haven’t recruited. We’re shutting you down.

Coming up on Fox: JD Vance announces a blockade on the Danube through Budapest.

@gravitasanomaly.bsky.social Dissenters cheating as usual:

@sarah-schof.bsky.social Those disgraceful dissenters

Can’t find the original text, but part of the 1720s Bubble was a company that promised a venture so profitable that its actual activity had to be kept secret. Investors piled in…guess what happened.

I expected this R4 series about compressed air to be full of inflated claims and a bit of a let-down, but it’s more than just hot air.

After the 2008 banking crash the UK parliament called in the CEOs. The first question was ‘what are your banking qualifications?’ Surprisingly few had any. Q2 was ‘can you explain the financial instruments you were selling?’ None could. Crash explained. Same for AI?

@andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social Re the solar farm mentioned in your UK politics rolling coverage: is 180,000 homes really 50% of UK residential dwellings? Seems a bit low for a population well above 60m. 70m divided by 360,000 = 194 occupants per household!

God wanted those 120 schoolgirls dead?

Midlands medieval story-loving friends! I'm performing 'Yde and Olive' at Wolverhampton's wonderful Arena Theatre on the 15th April. It is a beautiful performance space and one I often teach in, so it will be a real honour to share this story there. Please share. wlv.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/...

A bit of Oxbridge banter from My Heart and Lute by Alfred Felkin (Inspector of Schools, husband of Ellen Thorneycroft - author of anti-suffrage novels). Thanks to Robert for accessing a copy for me.

Episode 90 of Jupiter Moon, the university in space soap opera. Anna Chancellor’s postgrad character may be pregnant by Professor Brellan. She’s not happy about it; he’s annoyed that her symptoms are interfering with her workload. Plus ça change…

It should be a part of every student's education to be in a delegation to senior management to get better systems* *Systems being everything. But the student experience should not be purposefully bad to encourage student delegations

This (from WonkHE) is my management’s dream: subcontract a few people to write a narrow range of courses; flog them to dodgy franchises; abandon all responsibility for their students; sack our own staff and flog off the property. University as profit centre, nothing more.

What an appalling few weeks - a pointless war that started with the murder of 120 children, ‘ending’ with a dictatorship entrenched and Lebanon seemingly abandoned to Israel’s expansionist imperialism.

Finally Trump says something I agree with. ‘You know what’s a war crime? Having a nuclear weapon’. Sadly he’s too far gone to mean it or remember that his country has nuclear weapons:

I'm chasing a detail in a PhD I'm reading. Is anyone currently at Cambridge university library or the National Library of Scotland kind enough to look up Alfred Laurence Felkin's 1901 My Heart and Lute and tell me what kind of book it is? Worldcat has almost no info. The title is from a Moore lyric.

I sympathise but worry about a species which has to spend untold billions to send a few people millions of miles in the hope of provoking some thoughts. It should be fairly obvious that life down here is precious, and I'm not sure some pretty photos will persuade our sociopathic rulers anyway.

Andy Long is a liar. Pensions are deferred pay. THES should be ashamed of itself for the use of ‘encourage’ when ‘force’ is more accurate.

Personally I would agonise for months over a single footnote, conclude that ‘more research is needed’ and give up when reviewer 2 was mean to me. Other disciplines may respond differently.

Off sugar for dental health reasons, a minuscule Terry’s chocolate orange egg is my sole concession to the day that’s in it.

I’m not desperate. Don’t call me desperate everything’s going well.

The joke’s on them because the email reads Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass), when any ex-Catholic fule kno that Catholicism famously doesn’t do Mass on Good Friday. The Stations and Passion, yes. Mass, no.

My uni's head of digital' - previously IT specialist in banking his entire career: 'the future of HE is tech- and process-led, not academic led'. Managers/BoG: 'hook it into my veins'. What we're actually *for* other than sharing profits between senior managers and PA Consulting remains unexamined

Did BBC radio 4 #Today programme really just do a whole package about drilling in the N Sea without once even mentioning #climate change? And not having anyone challenging the one-sided claims of former BP boss? So irresponsible #bbcr4today

This silly story revealed something worrying about the BBC’s journalistic practice: instead of getting a second or more authoritative source, it published the story as true, presumably because being early is now better than being right. We should expect better of an important organisation.

If you're in Caernarfon on April 24th, this will be worth attending - Llion is a great thinker and researcher, and his book is a revelation.

Every day a fresh reminder that leaving the Labour Party was the right thing to do. Factory farming is a moral horror and an environmental disaster, and Labour seems incapable of resisting industry lobbyists in any field. The Wye is a toxic soup thanks to the chicken industry.

Today’s agenda: - finish reading a PhD I’m examining - read a friend’s book chapter - meet HR to discuss why they haven’t noticed that an entire department is over contracted hours and being made to do things they aren’t qualified or paid to do, and what they’re going to do about it.

One small editorial change to the leaflet, a quick look online for the Freepost code and Reform’s electoral leaflet is ready to pop back in the post at their own expense.

How I wish I still lived in Wales to vote for this. Still, nice of Reform to do Plaid Cymru and Y Blaid Werdd’s campaigning for them.

I loved spotting this review of a young friend’s co-written book in the LRB. Hoping it will help her get a permanent job.

Good news for all other European women though.

Bad news for Farage’s Italian current partner, and his Irish and German exes.

Ebrill 2020: "Be wna i yn ystod segurdod cyfnod Cloi Mawr y Covid, dwch? Wel dechra blogio wrth gwrs!" Chwe blynadd union yn ddiweddarach dwi'n dal wrthi'n reidio ac yn rwdlan sgwennu hanesion. Yn brysur ar rhif 82 rwan. yrhenddeurodiwr.wordpress.com

Caption competition time! 'Look out everyone, she's going to blow'. 'As the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, I can truthfully say that toxic fossils are my life'. 'Profiting from crude emissions? Sign me up'