Tessera

This could be a big problem, though hard to quantify. Two points: such is the stigma around accepting state help, and so high is the fear of the government (including seizing possessions to pay), that lots of the elderly may simply not accept social care. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

What if older people refuse help outside the family? This is the taboo that could wreck care reform | Emily Kenway

Many fear losing their independence if they agree to care workers looking after them. Any social care review must take this on board, says Emily Kenway, a social policy doctoral researcher

theguardian.com

As politics newsletters continue to come in highlighting dinghies in the Channel - yes, a problem, but nothing like as dangerous as many others - I continue to feel like I'm losing my mind. The media class have just lost all contact with reality.

Only takes half a brain to see an ocean of possible support between the Lib Dems and Reform! That Reform keep moving Right and the LDs aren't firing on all cylinders! But Badenoch keeps moving Rightwards and vacating all that space... Political malpractice. 😡 www.thenewworld.co.uk/rats-in-a-sa...

Meet the new face of Kemi Badenoch's Tories: a former neo-Nazi activist

Joshua Bonehill-Paine, selected to stand for the Conservatives in Somerset, has described himself as a “nationalist, fascist, theorist and supporter of white rights”

thenewworld.co.uk

One of the ways you can tell that the politics-facing community has completely lost touch with reality is that they think Kemi Badenoch is doing okay as she leads the Tories towards complete disaster. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/badeno...

Badenoch Slammed After Former Neo-Nazi Activist Chosen As Tory Election Candidate

Joshua Bonehill-Paine is the creator of the Crewkerne Gazette.

huffingtonpost.co.uk

The United Kingdom regularly runs trains at 170% of their capacity. Now there's not going to be a proper HS2 this will get far worse. I felt sad reading about people hoping it might get better. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

A rail nightmare: what it’s like on England’s busiest commuter-only train

This evening service from London to Crewe is hot, sweaty and heaving with people, many having to stand or sit in the gangways

theguardian.com

Can this really be true? Astonishing if so. If this lasts it's a very bad sign indeed. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Former neo-Nazi activist selected as Tory candidate for Somerset council election

Joshua Bonehill-Paine, creator of satirical Crewkerne Gazette, has convictions including for harassing a Jewish MP

theguardian.com

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

The time of the Anglosphere university as we've known it is coming to an end. Its dominance is passing. No era lasts forever.

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 2d ago

Today it's 'shortage of train crew'. Given the speed of Britain's 'fast' trains, surprised they don't ask us to stick our feet out underneath and move by running, Flintstones style. I *hate* trying to go anywhere in Britain. You work at home or within walking distance. Otherwise you don't work.

Hi, I'm on a train! And it's going to be late! That's three of three late today! And all eight of eight this week! And 100% of all trains this summer! Britain, that great economy. 🇬🇧

Hi, I'm on a train! And it's going to be late! That's three of three late today! And all eight of eight this week! And 100% of all trains this summer! Britain, that great economy. 🇬🇧

Patch Thompson @patchthompson.bsky.social · 3d ago

First train today... late! Second train today... really late and crawling! Still on my 0% punctuality this summer! That's Britain! 🇬🇧

UoH's History department is (was?) consistently top performing in terms of research and teaching. Doing everything that a higher education department is supposed to do. And yet that isn't enough.

Royal Historical Society @royalhistsoc.org · 3d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

In late 2023, the Society spent a day with Hertfordshire’s historians. We saw the quality, creativity and distinctiveness of teaching, research and engagement. We were told by a (now departed) senior manager that History was ‘a portfolio the university will guard very carefully’. bit.ly/4hLediN

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

Am never going to stop saying these things, even once British HE feels like a cold, dead moon.

*Government: we need a sense of place and stronger regional policy to bring us together! *Also government: it's okay to shut this local uni campus in an area of high deprivation! *Thick-as-mince country. No joined-up thinking anywhere. 🇬🇧 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Jonathan Dresner @jondresner.bsky.social · 3d ago

*Government: we need a sense of place and stronger regional policy to bring us together! *Also government: it's okay to shut this local uni campus in an area of high deprivation! *Thick-as-mince country. No joined-up thinking anywhere. 🇬🇧 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

University of Essex's Southend campus shuts and staff say goodbye

The university says the closure is due to financial pressures, leading to 400 staff redundancies.

bbc.co.uk

There has to be a special kind of grief when watching institutions built over generations, in a field of endeavor you gave your adulthood to, destroyed for no good reason while society apparently repudiates everything you thought worthwhile. Words fail me so often these days.

Leanne Calvert @leannecalvert.bsky.social · 3d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

Such a waste. Thinking of my friends & colleagues in History & across Hums. UH History is where I really learned *how* to teach & how to drive my teaching with my research. A dept that really cared about their students. So many brilliant & talented people in my old dept.

If you know you know @privatechand.bsky.social · 3d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

Even from across the pond, as we deal with the systematic dismantling of everything that made US higher education the envy of the world, it is so upsetting to see the destruction of UK academia. Of all the stupid things it could copy from the US this is the most evidently self-destructive.

Plashing Vole @plashingvole.bsky.social · 3d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

Definitely the case here. In two weeks we find which 9 of 12 in my group will be gone. The other 3 will then have a month to prepare and find hourly-paid replacements for all the classes across two degrees. And supervise 25 PhDs. Plus admin and pastoral care and research. Management doesn’t care.

If you're arriving at uni this autumn, or maybe dropping your kids, remember that there could be a ghostly phalanx of absent redundant staff, lost modules and degraded degrees making it a very unhappy place. It may *look* the same, but it won't *be* the same. www.ft.com/content/e5b0...

The people who did this talk endlessly about 'bad unis', 'low value degrees', 'standards' and 'quality'. In fact they presided over the creation of a comprehensive Higher Ed system where you only need to hold your nerve and you can really go anywhere with most grades. That's because they are frauds.

Fourteen out of the 'top' university History courses in the country are in Clearing. The disaster of the free-of-all can only destroy everything in its way. Most sense of order, quality, effort, value in A-Levels: all ploughed into the dirt. www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-table...

Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 3d ago

Fourteen out of the 'top' university History courses in the country are in Clearing. The disaster of the free-of-all can only destroy everything in its way. Most sense of order, quality, effort, value in A-Levels: all ploughed into the dirt. www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-table...

History Subject League Table 2027

A History degree is for those interested in studying the distant or recent past and can be combined with numerous humanities subjects

thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk

Thinking through the unedifying, un-evidence-based rush to an undefined, apparently unmodelled paradigm of 'specialisation, what's being lost/threatened? Herts History was an excellent example of performing to a top standard in REF, but also much more than that. Questions to think with include: 1/4

Itay Lotem @ilotem.bsky.social · 3d ago

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

I think this is the saddest point about the whole debate around UK higher ed right now, when we forget expanding universities was a choice about public good, not employability metrics.

Between the 1970s and 1990s the UK state made a strategic bet to expand Higher Ed. They poured in untold billions of your money. Now it's been handed over to private creditors to burn in a furnace. Then they just laugh at you: at all the taxes you've ever paid or will ever pay. True story. (2/2)

So it's farewell to the History subject area at the University of Hertfordshire, not the first nor the last to go. One of the best departments in the country, just extinguished like a snap of the fingers. Think of the waste. (1/2)

The truth is that the UK govt missed its last chances to underpin universities and support regional societies and economies in the post-Covid recovery period and then the 2025 White Paper. Those opportunities won't come again. www.ft.com/content/e14d...

Labour has harmed universities as much as Trump, London School of Economics head says

LSE vice-chancellor Larry Kramer points to domestic students’ fees, limits on international students and rise in employers’ national insurance

ft.com