'the archive creates possibilities extending beyond Britain and the Caribbean.Migration and the forced movement of people under enslavement mean descendants can be found across the African diaspora, including in the US and Latin America.' Ancestry account required www.theguardian.com/news/2026/se...

Nearly 4m records of enslaved people in 20 former British colonies now searchable online

Exclusive: Collection’s 300,000 pages record lives of enslaved people in countries including the Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius, South Africa and Trinidad

theguardian.com

bear with me but... wouldn't it be wild... if the head of the British Library had ever been... a librarian??

mia ridge@miaout.bsky.social · 2h ago

New CEO at the British Library www.bl.uk/about/press/...

there is no sensible reason why a 5 year spouse visa cost us a little over fourteen grand. none whatsoever. and that's before you break it down to the addition of renewals every 30 months, the health surcharge, the endless price hikes, the final kick in the teeth for ILR (three grand! to settle!)

Emiliano Mellino@mellino.bsky.social · last wk.

The UK government is making upwards of £4.9bn in profit from visa fees, citizenship fees & the immigration health surcharge. Meanwhile, people are getting into thousands of pounds of debt or going without food just to afford to these immigration fees. www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

as with the Manchester United Women Supporters Club, I imagine part of the appeal of the Muslim Supporters Club is that you would reduce your risk of running into Michael Deacon

Jonathan Liew@jonathanliew.bsky.social · 1h ago

michael deacon continues his valiant quest to be britain's unfunniest man

their name is the clue, guys!

Musa Okwonga@okwonga.bsky.social · 15h ago

I keep seeing Die Linke described as “far-left”. They’re not! They‘re just left! It’s just that the general political tide is so far out to the right that to most pundits they look like Che Guevara.

Surely at some point film studios need to realise that medieval authenticity (what people imagine the Middle Ages were like) is way, way more boring than if they went for historical accuracy (what scholarship believes the Middle Ages were like based on the sources).

My personal bugbear with all this is not that Piers Plowman was actually composed before the Peasants' Revolt (John Ball quoted from it in his sermons) and therefore the PR makes little sense as a Robin Hood origin. But rather that once again we have a dark, dreary, muddy, COLOURLESS Middle Ages.

"The family make the mile and a half journey by car" This is why our roads are so congested and knackered.

Angry People in Local Newspapers@apiln.bsky.social · yesterday

“I think I shouldn’t have to pay a charge for parking on this clearly signposted private road because I’m doing the school run” isn’t the slam-dunk legal argument you think it is, Mr Loud Shirt In A Built-Up Area.

I read this over the weekend and really enjoyed it -- partly a funny book about contemporary publishing mores, partly a rom-com, partly a historical multi-generation novel about literary culture -- currently 99p on Kindle www.amazon.co.uk/Hot-Desk-Lau...

Hot Desk: New term vibes? Embrace the return to work with this smart, romantic office satire

Hot Desk: New term vibes? Embrace the return to work with this smart, romantic office satire eBook : Dickerman, Laura: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

amazon.co.uk

"so-called Mickey Mouse degrees" I mean, so-called... by you?? that's not what "so-called" means???

Peter Whitewood@pwhitewood.bsky.social · yesterday

The Times supports the Russell Group idea of letting the ‘best’ universities charge more, a proposal for running institutions into the ground if they haven’t benefitted from accumulated prestige. And ‘best’ according to what? Teaching quality would produce a different list than assumed here.

This is not good. No doubt partly due to the closing down, or increasing competitiveness, of other funding routes and the ever more difficult job market.

Charles West@pseudo-isidore.bsky.social · 3d ago

21,627 applications for the Marie Curie early career fellowships.

also needs "ugh, liberal democrats I guess"

Joel Williams@jaowilliams74.bsky.social · 24h ago

Outstanding new voting intention format from local LibDems.

Wife and I are about to cough up her second round of visa and NHS surcharges. £4,000. She works full time, paying into the system twice over. The application process is, once again, extraordinarily demanding and overtly hostile. This must be an extremely stressful burden on lower income households

Emiliano Mellino@mellino.bsky.social · last wk.

The UK government is making upwards of £4.9bn in profit from visa fees, citizenship fees & the immigration health surcharge. Meanwhile, people are getting into thousands of pounds of debt or going without food just to afford to these immigration fees. www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

‘The report is expected to say that there is no direct evidence of widespread overdiagnosis of autism and ADHD in Britain’ Preview of what is expected in the independent review led by @britishacademy.bsky.social Fellow Peter Fonagy liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/476...

ADHD is not being overdiagnosed, major Government report set to find

Landmark report expected to rule out mass overdiagnosis but warn support can be hard to obtain

liveapp.inews.co.uk

International recruitment down 27%. Another policy triumph from the government, at an estimated £100,000 in net economic benefit per student.

CAS issuances down 27% as UK visa refusals jump 30%, Enroly data shows

Recruitment behaviours are changing, with South Asian and African countries the worst hit amid the UK's compliance squeeze, according to new data analysis from Enroly.

thepienews.com

Christening a baby is nothing like christening a ship. I know that now. Once again I can only apologise.

It doesn't take too much imagination to wonder where this story might be headed...

I am inclusive in my denim styles - I love a barrel leg jean, love a wide leg jean, even love a skinny jean (they’re just cigarette pants, really!). But I just read an article claiming that “low-slung boot-cut jeans” were on their way back in and I physically recoiled.

Touted as an achievement. What a fucking kick to the gut at the start of term.

Felicity Callard@felicitycallard.bsky.social · 4d ago

The brutal reality of universities' suppression of wages (in KPMG's report for DfE on cost of undergraduate provision in England) assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6aabfa...

“Don’t bring a union rep” is one of those sentences that always means your employer is going you treat you with respect and dignity

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 5d ago

'The University and College Union (UCU)’s Edinburgh branch said staff had been called into “informal meetings at less than 24 hours' notice” and told not to bring union representatives.'

Genuinely cannot believe this tone from a VC who has just announced that hundreds of jobs are going to be lost

Always humbling, two children in, to make a really rooky parenting mistake. We’re always learning!!

A side issue, but the thing that is always cited is “gas prices” and — I know I always say it — but we won’t make any global progress on climate change until Americans get used to paying *a lot more* for petrol. Have you looked at British petrol prices any time recently? Now double them.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 5d ago

This is insane. Inflation is under 4%. We’ve genuinely created a monster here: a public that hallucinates intolerable inflation no matter what the actual figures are. It is a bullet to the head of the entire progressive project *and progressives can’t even be made to care.*

The absolute scourge of the ‘informal meeting’ - a technique management now regularly use to avoid accountability. Always ask what ‘informal’ means, always demand the full formal process with union support, and always remember that it is definitely not an ‘informal meeting’ if HR are there.

Margot Finn@eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 5d ago

'The University and College Union (UCU)’s Edinburgh branch said staff had been called into “informal meetings at less than 24 hours' notice” and told not to bring union representatives.'

Voluntary redundancy extended, *this* time with the explicit message that the now-possibly-inevitable compulsory redundancies will get smaller payoffs. Plus we’ve got a figure now that the university is trying to save, and lots of fun ways they might try to save it.

Charlotte Lydia Riley@lottelydia.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Another round of voluntary severance, this time with an explicit message that if this doesn’t cut the budgets enough, compulsory redundancies might be on the table. And to think at the weekend I was telling people that we seemed to have escaped this cycle…

NINETY programmes, fucking hell

Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco@joshpizpom.bsky.social · 5d ago

EXC: 90 programmes in Edinburgh University's College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences are to be closed. The casualties, which include 48 language and literature programmes, will be 'taught out', w/ no admissions after 2027. @heraldscotland.bsky.social www.heraldscotland.com/news/2655839...

Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!

I’m not sure how many skills I’ve really developed by being a professional historian, but my god I can eyeball a piece of written text and immediately give you a ballpark word count as if my life depended on it

This is something I’ve noticed in recent years, and my theory is that the far right have REALLY had a number done on them by internet brain poisoning - they used to know that you weren’t supposed to mock crying (white) mothers on television, but now they really think there’s a market for it.

Eddie Burfi @eddieburfi.bsky.social · 6d ago

Just look at the glee on Nigel Farage’s face as he watches a Piddington resident cry about the overt racism she, her Caribbean heritage husband, and their two children have felt in the village during the referendum. Time and again he’s showing us exactly who he is.

Genuinely: where is the Prime Minister? Critical infrastructure has been occupied by a fascist paramilitary, volunteers who save people's lives have been threatened and it seems to have gone unremarked upon.

Dr Anke Marsh@ankemarsh.bsky.social · 5d ago

RNLI have closed (temporarily) the Portsmouth station because of these violent ‘men’. Patriot Platform needs to be proscribed now