🎓 You don't need to be a Cambridge boffin to work out that a 1.4% pay rise is a pay cut. Or that, for an institution with assets of £8.26bn, imposing a lousy deal like this is taking the Mickey!
📣 Support striking Unite members at Cambridge University. Sign our petition
cutt.ly/HtJjgeuc
Solidarity from Cambridge, where the Unite branch is on strike today and tomorrow for pretty much the same reasons!
Library assistants, administrators, IT workers and other university support staff on the picket line
Solidarity with staff striking at University of Gloucestershire today and Thursday ✊ A 1.4% pay offer, after years of below-inflation pay incrreases, is beyond insulting
southwest.unison.org.uk/news/2026/04...
Strike leaflet with pictures of picket lines
Today is the first of our planned strike days at the University of Cambridge.
University workers deserve far better from higher education institutions. For years they have had real terms pay cuts imposed on them which is unacceptable. Unite fully supports our higher education members.
Strike leaflet with photos of pickets
Unite to strikes at Cambridge University. Strikes begin on April 21st and 22nd, followed by April 30th and May 1st. We are starting with two days a week to help our reps measure attendance levels and leave us the option to build up to more strike action as we get closer to exams.
We've got lots happening at the Museum next month!
Highlights include:
✨ Talk: 42, The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams
✨ Exhibition: Richard Croft: Life and Designs
✨ Family activities during May half term
Head to our website for full details: buff.ly/MFLDUm6
Strike leaflet with pictures of picket lines
Next week! Members at Cambridge University Unite branch will be striking for a better local pay deal. 1.4% is not enough for higher education workers, and the University is too wealthy (and Cambridge too expensive) to not do more.
"Dig deep for the miners" from the 1984 miners' strike
I really don't want to strike, but this culture of university pay not keeping up with the cost of living needs to stop!
I really don't want to strike, but this culture of university pay not keeping up with the cost of living needs to stop!
Man standing next to 60cm high pile of books and reports
That was a good mornings cataloguing! Reports of the Solar Physics Committee (ranging from 1891 to 1914)
For our talk this May, we're being joined by Kevin Jon Davies, a television and video director and the author of '42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams', a Sunday Times number one bestseller drawn from Adams’ own papers.
📆 Wednesday 20 May
🎟 £10
💻 buff.ly/d07hid8
📸 Andy Hollingworth
Unite to strike at Cambridge University. Our first strike dates will be April 21st and 22nd, followed by April 30th and May 1st. We are starting with two days a week to help our reps measure attendance levels and leave us the option to build up to more strike action as we get closer to exams.
Yes, and it was certainly like no other parish church I have visited in Britain!
A screen with the words: "Libraries Alliance. Libraries Through Life".
A photograph of the entrance to the British Academy
A photograph from a presentation at the Libraries Alliance event. The text on the screen reads: "Libraries Alliance. Libraries Through Life."
Today, we took part in the launch of the Libraries Alliance at The British Academy in London.
Celebrating ‘Libraries Through Life’, the Alliance brings together the library organisations that touch every aspect of people’s lives.
🔎Find out more: https://loom.ly/NkgReFY
The drawing shows an elaborate scene with an inscription and two apparently martial figures with staves or weapons confronting each other at the top, and two bound captives below. No indication of the material is given, it is possibly a stone stele.
The drawing, of either a wooden or stone carving, shows a crowned figure facing left, holding a flowering plant, standing beneath an archway. There is an inscription in the bottom right corner.
The drawing, which may be of one of the carved wooden lintels depicting Maya deities at Tikal, shows an enthroned seated figure wearing a crown and holding a plant like object, with another figure standing before him, a head in profile behind him, and inscriptions above and below.
The drawing shows a figure wearing a crown and a feather cloak, and holding a staff, with an inscription above and two other faces drawn at the side. It is from a stele of Maya deities from Tikal.
These are some of the fifteen drawings made of the Maya site at Tikal, which were exhibited to the Society of Antiquaries by Frederick Chatfield at the meeting of 18 May 1854, and then presented to the Society by Charles Chatfield at the meeting of 25 May 1854.
Oldest known meteor shower to light up UK skies this week. The Lyrids can be fairly decent. 🔭 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/weather/arti...
🚨 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...
The NHS is suffering a huge staffing crisis, thousands are leaving and those who remain are pushed to breaking point. Unite will be continuing to pressure the government into investing properly in our health service and not making the system and the service worse by cutting roles.
JOIN US 🔽
We're VERY excited to be hosting the fantastic Yvonne Lyon & Boo Hewerdine in the @isstirling.bsky.social library during their upcoming tour - come along to hear their amazing album live, Fri 29th May, 7pm
Book your free ticket: stir.ac.uk/ahw
@artatstirling.bsky.social @macrobertarts.bsky.social
🎙️ What’s it really like to be a Chief Meteorologist?
Chief @roostweather.bsky.social joins @bradyharan.bsky.social to discuss :
🖥️ Humans vs supercomputers
⚠️ What happens when high‑impact weather is expected
🧠 Why experience still matters in modern forecasting
🎧 www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnAR...
An independent arXiv
I'm a bit late passing this news on, but a few weeks ago arXiv announced that from 1st July 2026 it will be establishing itself as an "independent nonprofit organization". It has been hosted for many years by Cornell University. You can read here about the reasons for this and…
Galileo never saw the far side of the moon.
However, William Gilbert observed a part of the sides of the moon before 1603 (due to lunar libration), and Hevelius was the first to map lunar libration with a telescope in 1647.
Saturday 11th 9:30 am Colchester
Staff and students will protest at Essex University’s open day on 11 April against job cuts, course closures, and plans to shut the Southend campus.
Education is on the line.
Stand with them. Get down
Beecroft Bequest case study | Anglo-Saxon gold and garnet jewellery at Lincoln Museum 📿
In 2025 the MA’s Beecroft Bequest supported Lincoln Museum’s acquisition of a remarkable group of gold and garnet jewellery, the work of Anglo-Saxon goldsmiths in 7th century England.
Read more 👇
I will be joining hundreds of NHS workers at parliament to protest against NHS cuts to jobs and services. Unite will be continuing to pressure the government into investing properly in our health service and not making the system and the service worse by cutting jobs and services.
Join us. ⤵️
Join us 29 April (9:00–16:30) for Restoring British Nature | The Linnean Assembly 2026.
A day of collaboration and action - bringing together voices across science, policy, land, finance & culture to shape the UK’s nature future.
Find out more: buff.ly/vOn56WW
Penguin bar wrapper - empty
I can't think what might have happened to it