"It is a farce and a desperate distraction, and the people of Clacton deserve better - but if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won’t stop him." If Rachel Reeves can produce gold like that I feel like she should stay on as chancellor.

Occurs that Count Binface would need to disavow his hereditary title to be eligible to sit in the House of Commons.

If you know, you know.

"Burnham urged to end freeze in salary threshold for student loan repayments"

wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/... Yikes.

That Napier/SRUC/St Margaret's collaboration (in The Times this morning) - here's what's going on: wonkhe.com/blogs/a-deep...

"It's too hot for LEO data" Yes it is, but this collection adds refreshing prior attainment quintiles to the taste you know and love.

Good piece on the travails of actually trying to collect data from real people to feed into the Labour Force Survey www.thetimes.com/article/b478...

NEW on Wonkhe: Higher education will be among the first systems to feel the impact of demographic shifts. David Kernohan sets out recommendations on what needs to change now buff.ly/8GJwg2P

Got to say I agree with every word of this: www.cityam.com/there-should... If you are going to pitch anyone, write it yourself. If I wanted Claude's take I could prompt it. But I don't, because, it will say nothing and nobody would want to read it.

So pleased to see the career on track, doing something meaningful, and using skills I learnt questions highlighted here. And I love that self-employability/own business/portfolio is also highlighted. Thank you @wonkhe.bsky.social and @dkernohan.bsky.social!

I'm at 175 responses for my survey on personal tutoring! I want to smash the 200 threshold, so if you're an academic in UK HE who's had pastoral repsonsibility for students in the last 5 years under any title, I'd love to hear from you - it only takes ten minutes. Please do share.

Why would anyone deny themselves the wonder that is masala dosa?

And equal proportion (42%) of people think that the English student finance is fair as think it is unfair: yougov.com/en-gb/tracke... - meanwhile 56% think it is not good value for money (yougov.com/en-gb/tracke...).

Yeah!

N=26 (after weighting) so it's not exactly a secure finding.

NEW on Wonkhe: Three draft statutory instruments herald the end game of the biggest change in the student finance system since 2011. DK breaks down what is going on, and asks why these plans have seen so little meaningful scrutiny wonkhe.com/blogs/the-ll...

Still holds. He's not challenging for the leadership.

WACO: Wes Always Chickens Out.

More on what we could/should have won: wonkhe.com/blogs/for-th...

There are a few things HE is waiting for that we know needed a "suitable legislative vehicle" (tidying the FoS bill, some bits on the LLE...) It doesn't look like there is one - unless there's a spare section of the (SEN focused) Education for All Bill. More widely, nothing on any wider reform.

They say when you write an article you have to have your intended audience in mind. So this basically could have been an email to @mike-rat.bsky.social wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...

Is it too much to ask that Labour thinks about a woman as leader? Just once?

I'm pretty sure that Keir Starmer won't resign while you take a few minutes to look at this new data on the size and shape of franchise provision in English higher education: wonkhe.com/blogs/findin...

Absolute STATE of that OfS data release. It's reasons like this that we need OSR for.

So. Vellum discourse. Vellum is not used for the copy of the State Opening of Parliament Speech used by the King (The King's Speech). He does get a specially printed booklet,and generally the monarch had preferred to have it a few days in advance (hence an earlier cut off for changes).

NEW: OfS puts conditions of registration on computing at Northampton. The VC responds: wonkhe.com/blogs/ofs-in...

NEW on Wonkhe: As OfS publishes a second cut of its sexual misconduct survey, Jim Dickinson argues the data offers providers a risk-assessment framework rather than a compliance scorecard buff.ly/cL7jvV5

So true. Basically everything I enjoy fits the pattern of updating numbers I can fixate on.

Here's a really good blog by @jaclarner.bsky.social explaining how the voting system works for tomorrow's #Senedd elections If you're voting in Wales have a read before you vote - tactical voting, if that's your plan, is very different to a Westminster Election jaclarner.github.io/jaclarner/bl...

NEW on Wonkhe: OfS has spent years regulating outcomes for groups with protected characteristics, but rarely their experience. Jim Dickinson argues that Keir Starmer's antisemitism announcement accidentally points at a fix buff.ly/L7dfF4z

NEW on Wonkhe: There is a way of assuring quality in higher education that foregrounds the needs of employers and the expertise of professionals. David Kernohan asks why nobody seems to be interested in it. buff.ly/0Ld5v1X

NEW on Wonkhe: The Office for Students made "errors in law" and showed possible bias in investigating and fining the University of Sussex. David Kernohan and Jim Dickinson have the details from the judgement, and ask what comes next buff.ly/wvMTofQ

Honestly the more you read, the less good it looks for OfS: wonkhe.com/blogs/sussex...

Oh dear.

NEW on Wonkhe: The Biobank data found on an auction site didn't get there because of a technical hack. David Kernohan wants to talk about academic trust and malpractice buff.ly/Ihnt8j4

Quite the UK Biobank story. Glad that the data was de-idenified, and that there is a technical fix to stop it happening again. www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/news/a-messa...

NEW on Wonkhe: DfE enacts the free speech rules it planned to last year buff.ly/tuUahhn

Guys, you don't need to put external CO2 into beer. www.cityam.com/beer-fear-co...

Occured that you could probably visit Wales' nine universities in a single working day. It'd be a slog, but it would be 7h25 according to bing maps. www.bing.com/maps/directi...

NEW on Wonkhe: Media literacy is changing – again. And this time the answers are not clear wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...