No. She really isn't.

Imagine running a cafe, it is losing business. What do you do? Reduce your menu to tea and toast, get rid of your most experienced staff, lower the ingredients quality to toilet water and dust, and pay for lots of managers business consultants to "run" the business.

#UKHE in a nutshell.

I'm pretty confident the Ford Escort will lead the world in global automotive transport when I die.

Mahmood telling Labour voters to "fuck off" for not wanting Labour to pander to what are, in fact, the entirely illegitimate concerns of people who will never vote Labour, is peak Labour since the election. Still, she is getting her wish. Labour voters are indeed fucking off in droves.

How did Spanish Influenza, if not start, then at least massively spread? @chriskempshall.bsky.social @agregory.bsky.social @airpowerhistory.bsky.social @alanallport.bsky.social

Asking for a friend.

As @davidandress.bsky.social notes below, the sector is also making lots of academics redundant. The ability of newly minted scholars to compete with people with decades of experience and publications is diminished even further.

Only when a few more "real" universities that they want their kids to go to run into even more serious trouble. So probably next year.

I think a lot of "optics" issues and minor scandals in the grand scheme of British scandals (appointing Mandelson - lauded by most commentators on the right at the time) were all weatherable had the Greens not sapped 10-15% of Labour's poll numbers, partly because Starmer pivoted Reform right.

Easy wins, which cost little, such as electoral reform, devolution, public standards reform, media reform, social media regulation, and parliamentary reform, have often been defanged or implemented slowly.

The adherence to Tory fiscal rules has limited any scope for meaningful improvement to many important public services, creating the impression that Labour are more of the same. Meanwhile, trouble in councils, universities, criminal justice, etc., overshadow those improvements that have been made.

I would argue that the real reason Starmer's premiership is untenable is because his political decisions have been wrong on a strategic level. The efforts to combat Reform by appropriating Reform policy has destroyed support from the left without any noticeable gains winning over rightwing voters.

I think both things are true. The unforced errors have been many and egregious. However, it is also true that from the outset, this government has received far more negative commentary, making mountains out of molehills, than any over recent decades. The "freebies" "scandal" a case in point.

Olly Robbins bailing out the PM here. I doubt many in the papers or social media influencers will buy it.

Or that the electorate would return an incompetent, corrupt, and mentally unstable pos as president after having witnessed that pos doing a violent coup.

Fortunately for @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social, most UK universities are currently shedding jobs, thousands between them each year, and the sector has been run off the cliff into financial oblivion by gov. and managers, soon there won't be much speech to protect of any kind.
qmucu.org/qmul-transfo...

On the subject of great villains:

I'm very sorry to hear this. It's absolutely devastating.

Sad to say, I know exactly how you feel. I've got to interview next week for a job with much diminished T&Cs after nine years of service. If I don't outperform my colleagues, I'll be out. Utterly demoralising.

Nonsense, of course. A government bowing to a right-wing moral panic with little basis in reality. Also, the successive hostility from Tory to now Labour governments to a highly lucrative sector, which they seem determined to destroy, is just baffling.

Searching for 'OfS' to see what people are saying about the UK Higher Ed sector is... unwise.

It presumably depends on what she means by "deportations". Deportation of foreign-born individuals who commit violent crimes? Probably. Mass deportations as proposed by the far-right? No chance. I bet it wouldn't be supported even by a majority of would-be Reform voters.

It all has very "last days of Rome" vibes to it.

Wait, so they want to legislate to protect freedom of speech by limiting students' right to protest...a formjof freedom of speech? 🤔

Anyone working in history of comedy/satire, television, modern British politics - there's a fully funded PhD to research the Spitting Image archive @theul.bsky.social, with supervision at Exeter Uni. All disciplines considered, pls do share widely.
www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

And there was I thinking I'd read all or Orwell's essays. It would pair nicely with his Atomic Bomb piece.

I actually didn't know Orwell discussed it! I read about it in a student dissertation!

Dynamo Moscow’s 1945 tour of Britain?

I'm interested in your opinion on whether Labour can turn this around? From a legislation point of view, I think they have been pretty good. The immigration stuff is pushing me Green.

The idea that there are two sides to everything or even a debate is a pernicious nonsense poisoning society

Reminds me of redundancy. I looked at what I'm owed, given I'm going through a process right now. 9 years of service. £6,400.