The long, doleful story of how the University of Kent sank. Can't vouch for all the details, but apparently it took 7yrs, £29m in restructuring and £2m in consultancy to accept the inevitable: effective takeover. My view? You can delay, but not avoid, the inevitable. shepwayvox.org/2026/08/05/u...

University of Kent Financial Crisis: Cuts, Consultants and Merger with Greenwich

For six years the University of Kent cut jobs, closed subjects, sold financial breathing space and promised recovery. It spent £29.4 million restructuring itself and awarded at least £1.9 million o…

shepwayvox.org

Dishonest! I hate this “the law hasn’t changed, we’ve just clarified what it always meant” thing. Did you think women’s rights didn’t change when the US Supreme Court merely clarified what the Constitution “always meant” on abortion? Of course not.

Once again, I come back to the fact these guys have created a situation where one of the UK's leading, cis female athletes is scared to go to the loo alone, and the fact that they are celebrating this as a step forward for women's rights.

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 17h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

if you think the ehrc code makes women safer you haven’t read it. if you think the ehrc code is reasonable or neutral you haven’t read it. if you think @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social is a good person you haven’t read the ehrc code. the uk is now officially the most anti-lgbt+ country in the west.

They also clearly state that offering trans women inferior third spaces to get changed may be discriminatory and that fundamentally the important thing is maintaining sensitivity and dignity of everyone affected. Which would be great if EHRC didn't decide trans women's dignity doesn't matter.

web.archive.org/web/20260108... Here's an archive link of the original business guidance in case the original goes missing. In pretty clear terms the original guidance used to say stuff like "obviously, so long as the changing rooms allow privacy, trans women should be permitted to use the womens"

For anyone confused about the response to the EHRC guidance today, compare the guidance on trans people in single sex spaces with the guidance released in 2011 after the Equality Act 2010 was originally published assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a79b7...

As a human rights law academic, I'm ashamed of this country today and I'm ashamed of our supposed equality commission.

Equality and Human Rights Commission@equalityhumanright.bsky.social · 17h ago

Our code of practice for services, public functions and associations comes into force today. It provides practical guidance on how the Equality Act 2010 applies to services, public functions and associations. Find out more: https://ow.ly/alIf50Zwrkx

Amnesty UK just excluded “A Growing Threat – the Anti-Rights Movement in the UK” from Internet Archive. "Like a Snowball: The Growth & Impact of the Gender Critical Movement in the UK" is still up. I've added alternate archives of all five pages & documents. www.transgendermap.com/issues/group...

Happy Segregation Day everyone! Today will eventually go down in history as an infamous mistake and breach of human rights but not before it's caused huge amounts of pain and trouble. This Government will be remembered as the worst for trans rights ever, as bad as Thatcher's Section 28 if not worse.

🚨🚨Today the EHRC Code of Practice goes live. Our voices have been ignored. We will not stand for this. We will not stop until our rights are restored. The CoP does not change the law. Inclusion can happen. The vast majority of the public do not want this. WE WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT 🏳️‍⚧️✊♥️

Natacha@natacha.bsky.social · yesterday

From @greenparty.org.uk

Green-run London councils to resist new trans guidance on single-sex spaces Lambeth and Waltham Forest councils have already signalled they will resist new guidance on single-sex spaces over risk it leaves 'trans people open to discrimination' I knew there was a reason I supported the Green Party!

Green-run London councils to resist new trans guidance on single-sex spaces

Lambeth and Waltham Forest councils have already signalled they will resist new guidance on single-sex spaces over risk it leaves 'trans people open to discrimination'

standard.co.uk

Here’s a PDF. Worth a few minutes of your time. users.wpi.edu/~zrbutzke/Do...

Adam Rawnsley@arawnsley.bsky.social · 2d ago

Today, August 4, 2026, is the setting of Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” about a fully automated house continuing on after the family who lived there and the world around it died in a nuclear blast.

He was also a thoughtful, kind man. I knew him. His stories are rooted in the trauma of watching a fatal car accident. He never drove. Never owned a phone. Never used a computer. He thought man should not create what could destroy him. He wrote, "not to predict, but to prevent 'possible' futures."

I love Ray Bradbury. So much more than just Fahrenheit 451. A great writer.

Rosie Duffield and co.

"Bluesky is a political echo chamber" okay but I'm mostly here to chat with fun internet people and post art and make jokes, I cannot stress how much I don't care

Coming up with a post-hoc theory section when your results are weird:

I would love it if these statements were connected, and the true function of narwhal tusks is *actually* 5G

Rusty Foster@rusty.todayintabs.com · 2d ago

I’ve been in Greenland more than two weeks and I finally found the wifi. Here’s the finest two-toothed narwhal skull in the world.

Rod Liddle was a stone-cold arsehole who actually said in a national newspaper that he couldn't be a teacher because he would inevitably try and shag the kids Apparently his editor has said, 'he challenged conventional thinking' If you mean 'was wrong in every conceivable way' then, yes

I’m not speaking ill of the dead. On the contrary, I’m speaking ill of the way he behaved when alive. Now he’s dead he’s much nicer.

As Rod Liddle has died, I notice this column I wrote in 2019 about his attacks on people with M.E. is on the most read again. Rebekah Brooks, of News UK, described Liddle today as “provocative”. In reality, he spread lies about very sick people for cash. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Rod Liddle vilifies disabled people. I’m tired of the hate. We all should be | Frances Ryan

Whether it is ME patients or another target, huge swathes of the media have normalised hatred of minorities for years, says Guardian columnist Frances Ryan

theguardian.com

The TERFs grieving Rod Liddle because of course they'll blindly forgive the man with a vile history of domestic abuse and violent misogyny.

Fraser Nelson reckons Rod Liddle was “the greatest satirist since Swift” while Michael Gove is comparing him to not just Swift but Orwell. Amazing the comparisons you can get if you’ll pump out exactly the racist opinions even they are too squeamish to commit to print.

ARSES, SHOWN

WTAF have I just seen?!

the synthesis between the zoonotic disease and lab leak theories is "covid was the result of a sinister experiment to create biological weapons, conducted by a bat", and I don't think we've thought about that possibility to enough

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.

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.bsky.social · 4d ago

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)

Damn... 300% higher yields for peppers 200% for tomatoes. 65% lower water use for jalapenos. #agsky #agrivoltaics ,🌱🌞🔌..

hoergen@hoergen.bsky.social · 4d ago

*American farmers slid solar panels over 62,000 acres of farmland, and the biggest payoff had almost nothing to do with electricity* #Erneuerbare #Renewable #Solar #Photovoltaik energiesmedia.com/solar-panels…

This is something I now hear regularly from almost all my trans friends. The tension between wanting to stay but not feeling safe. The tension between fleeing or fighting. The “what if where I go becomes just as bad?” It’s utterly shameful that law-abiding people feel they’re being forced out.

Lee Hurley@hleehurley.com · 4d ago

Drinking espresso martinis, discussing with my fiancé at what point we need to flee the UK. I don't want to leave my home. My family. My friends. With every passing month, it feels more and more inevitable. We are losing so hard and I can't see how it stops.