Thus far, the UK government has effectively banned non-violent direct action. Now they are saying marches, which the media often don't bother covering, need to be banned. When they say they 'respect the right to protest', no they don't. Not at all. The right to protest will cease to exist here. /1

Eight years ago, I wrote that the OfS was an obscenity. Senior academics told me I was hyperbolic. Some said it would 'never use' its powers. Much still to be said about the complacent attitude of uni leadership and senior academics. /1 punkacademic.org/2018/01/03/i...

Livestreaming now: The Anarchist News Review! With activist legal updates, discussion of violence and Palestine solidarity, Trump conspiracies, Kathleen Stock getting a High Court drubbing and more! www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP54...

IF WE TOLERATE THIS is out today! These are worrying times politically but if there's one thing I want to get across, it's that the slide into far-right nationalism is not inevitable. Please help me spread the word. uk.bookshop.org/p/books/if-w...

Reupping this since Hall has been sounding off again.

Eight years ago, I wrote that the OfS was an obscenity. Senior academics told me I was hyperbolic. Some said it would 'never use' its powers. Much still to be said about the complacent attitude of uni leadership and senior academics. /1 punkacademic.org/2018/01/03/i...

Very shocking that AFAIK no major politician (including fellow LGBTQ+ ones) has condemned the attempted murder attack via arson on LGBTQ+ at Pink Punters this weekend just gone - would love to be proven wrong here.

Arif Ahmed should be dismissed and his post abolished. Phillipson, the responsible minister, should then resign. This fine was politically motivated and a fundamental breach of academic freedom, which can never be defined or 'policed' by the state.

Tremendous and much-needed good news - the University of Sussex have won their High Court battle against the Office for Students. The OFS fined the university over half a million pounds for having a trans inclusion policy. If upheld, this would have set a gross precedent for all oppressed groups.

The High Court has just confirmed what many of us knew. The Office for Students fine of the University of Sussex for supposed ‘free speech’ infringements was a biased piece of right wing culture war politics and had nothing whatsoever to do with free speech. Sussex vindicated and the OfS exposed.

Just a series of replies on the world university leaders made. If I had a penny for how many times I have heard VCs on 300+k with a knighthood say they are dealing with an impossible environment, I'd be a millionaire. Or at least have a few grand.

Arif Ahmed should be dismissed and his post abolished. Phillipson, the responsible minister, should then resign. This fine was politically motivated and a fundamental breach of academic freedom, which can never be defined or 'policed' by the state.

This.

Just a series of replies on the world university leaders made. If I had a penny for how many times I have heard VCs on 300+k with a knighthood say they are dealing with an impossible environment, I'd be a millionaire. Or at least have a few grand.

There's no debate which is improved by the intervention of Tony Blair. This is ableism. It frames anxiety, depression and ADHD as things people just need to get on with, with no acknowledgement of how damaging that attitude is, or how hard it can be to be recognised and diagnosed in the first place.

Well that is profoundly evil. How society treats those in need is a reflection on the souls of us all. And that reflection shows a deep illness in the hearts of America.

literally fucking eugenics

Happy to share the new SI of History of Education(55:3) “Senses, Emotions and Experiences in #histed” From the 2023 @histedsocuk.bsky.social conference in Sheffield, OA articles explore how education feels through bodies, memory, belonging & resistance. Guest-ed by me 😊 doi.org/10.1080/0046...

It also reveals their ignorance of how UK politics works. Immigration has rarely, if ever, been "off the table" in modern history. Anxieties about immigration require constant confrontation and management. There's no magic number where the Right will say "okay, problem solved, time to move on."

Yeah, being a Labour politician is what has defined his life. Easiest way to think is what would your memorial say? For example, it is unlikely this is how a previous one went: 'Field-Marshal Bernard Montgomery, chair of school governors. NOT an army officer'.

lmao he's big mad

@nicnorthcott.bsky.social is an ESOL tutor who works with refugees. She is a brilliant educator, whose students adore her for the effort she puts in to their learning. She makes a difference to people's lives every time she teaches. She is also Smudge's mum/my wife & we are proud of her always.

Am ill, usual drill. This one is slightly put out she isn't currently getting fuss, but she is still parked up here with me. Our little mate.

Article english.elpais.com/health/2026-...

Ha, "I don't normally drink a half" is the new "I normally have frothy coffee in a mug, not a posh cup with biscuits!" See also: "I don't normally advocate for supporting universities, I'm too busy on the assembly line!" Authentocracy's moved from discourse into actual industrial policy.

More winning under Labour: “The Foreign Office unit tracking potential breaches of international law by Israel in Gaza and more recently Lebanon has been closed because of cuts within the department” They have at least 26,000 “verified incidents” www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Politics is the continuation of war by other means (Foucault) Most anarchist thing he wrote, imho. Violence is always in politics. Ask everyone being bombed in the Middle East. Graeber was right for his part when he said debt was violence. Politics is, at a fundamental level, violence. /1

Come on Exeter City. Born and raised an Evertonian and always will be, but volunteered with the club for several years and still in the Trust. Been a desperate season, and fan ownership really matters as a principle. Hope the Grecians can do it at Burton today.

ICE agents brutally murdered Alex Pretti three months ago today. Federal officials spread blatant lies, claiming that Pretti had assaulted ICE agents even though widely available video showed that to be false. We honor the courage of the demonstrators who immediately responded to Pretti's murder.

Whether I'm there or not next year, here are the things that have been replaced by a generic skills module including 3 weeks on Using AI: 1. My linguistics colleagues on accent and dialect change, and atittudes towards the local accent. Led by the accents in the room.

If anyone has any experience with USS medical retirement, I'd appreciate advice. My DMs are open. Might not be available to me but I'm really struggling now and without exaggeration unless something changes soon I worry I won't last, have CKD & HTN as well as MS, in addition to other stuff. Thanks.

Again, the political disengagement is purposeful; the UK government for instance decided very early on it wouldn't take Long COVID seriously. This gets them off the hook to some degree for the failure to prevent infection/spend money on mitigation.

If anyone has any experience with USS medical retirement, I'd appreciate advice. My DMs are open. Might not be available to me but I'm really struggling now and without exaggeration unless something changes soon I worry I won't last, have CKD & HTN as well as MS, in addition to other stuff. Thanks.

As other posters have said, it isn't that he didn't understand it though, is it. Aid to those who need it just doesn't play a part in his vision.

Even compared to last year's #MSAwarenessWeek, this has been the one from hell. Just seems that every year it coincides with the most ridiculous ableism and humiliation. Which we're just supposed to endure, like good cripples.

RFK Jr is despicable and dangerous, but this line of thinking was basically UK government policy in 2021. The pass-agg culture of British eugenics is less show-stopping than the US equivalent, but just as deadly Did this for @freedompress.bsky.social at the time freedomnews.org.uk/2021/09/01/w...

I was heavily critical of the whole OfS/UKRI settlement when I wrote British Universities in the Brexit Moment. Rob is spot on here - OfS always meant as a mechanism to ensure sector totally subordinated to government whims, the antithesis of the vision put forward in the Robbins Report in 1963 /1

THE CULTURAL MARXISM CONSPIRACY OUT NOW

What if... what really makes Britain "ungovernable" is... the nature of its political media and of its political class?

More on the state of British academia. Such cruelty and brutalisation effected through these processes that are dismantling disciplines and universities in the face of governmental indifference

15 minutes; no questions; government got the blame; my department to have 60% of us sacked. Apparently sacking us will lead to a ‘new, improved’ curriculum. No voluntary scheme, straight to selection and legal minimum redundancy payment.

Wish people wouldn't assume because someone passes as cishet that they are. There might be a queer, gender diverse person there who has their battle that they fight every day. Even if you are out, even if you think you have seen it all, you mightn't see it in them. Some of us hide. Help us not to.

'Military veterans' A cynical attempt, as it was when the strategy was announced last year, for Stonewall to attempt to 'rightwash' itself, & move away from the work it should be doing 'Maybe if we focus on veterans Reform won't hurt us' Good luck with that...or not. The first pride was a riot.

Two A-10C 'tank-buster' aircraft (78-0632FT & 82-0659FT left Lakenheath this morning. We cannot track them but a KC-135 (59-1475) also left and seemed to be refuelling something off the coast of Italy. We will wait until we put them on our list: lakenheathallianceforpeace.org.uk/bombers-for-...

First day of #MSAwarenessWeek and it's a shitter. I rang to move my MRI tomorrow and they just cancelled it, as they said it's a second 'Did Not Attend' as I have only given them 24 hours notice. I need that MRI, but funnily enough having MS I am ill. /1

You know what this piece really reads as? Offering a palatable explanation for why everyone under 45 is rejecting the subscriptionization of their lives, without insulting all the people who've turned our entire existences into subscription models and data farms.

Indeed. Lots of AI use *is* about nostalgia, homebrew computing and bringing back old tech is about getting out from under the totalitarianism of the former.

This account below is my EFC account. But I've realised more blues probably follow me on here. Any help/advice appreciated.