Few people understand that the UK university system is in crisis, but even fewer realise that many of the people losing their jobs are amongst the best in their fields

Glen O'Hara@gsoh31.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)

This should be self evident but clearly isn’t. From @lewisgoodall.com

Glad someone senior from the sector is pushing back. Labour MPs need to understand the serious real anger from graduates and the people who produce them. And the dangerous financial situation they have allowed to fester, or indeed worsened, in one of Britain’s leading sectors.

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

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

ft.com

Bordeaux, France, has now recorded more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than during the entire 105-year period from 1920 (when observations began) to 2025. This is deeply shocking.

I know it's not news Kemi Badenoch is not across the detail, but this is an absolute shocker. She says the UK's net zero plans are 'perversely increasing carbon emissions'. In 2019 when net zero targets were adopted emissions were 45% below 1990 levels. Last year they were 54% below 1990 levels.

Good news. But Rayner's point that it is un-British and unfair, as well as economically and politically counterproductive, to change the rules retrospectively applies to other workers on medium- skilled work visas (technicians/chefs/etc) www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...

Foreign care workers could be exempt from tough new visa rules

Andy Burnham is considering an exception to Shabana Mahmood’s reforms that increase the timeline for permanent residence from five to 15 years

thetimes.com

And good luck finding businesses to offer meaningful work experience to hundreds of thousands of 14 and 15 year olds. As ever a failure to acknowledge that our big challenge with vocational ed is our labour market.

Laura McInerney@missmc.bsky.social · last wk.

Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ve thought through how this will be staffed, funded, and the class size implications for GCSE options. They learned that from the last time, right? RIGHT? www.tes.com/magazine/new...

The Times corrects its splash story headlined "Migrant care workers bring dozens of family members." The Times got this totally wrong. It then used its own error as the basis for an editorial calling explicitly for forced expulsions of people living here legally. www.thetimes.com/comment/regi...

Said this before, will again. Badenoch is the most dangerous figure in British politics. She's not as extreme as Farage or Lowe, but her impact is more pernicious. She actively prevents the British centre-right from adopting moderate positions, and thereby facilitates the radicalisation process.

A very good point as usual from @jamesbowes01.bsky.social The main objective of Mahmood's proposals was always to kick out care workers (as she has more or less said). That was always an economically, politically and morally bankrupt policy. Without it, the whole package falls apart.

When the story of why humanity didn't stop climate change is written, it will feature front pages like this. Even as the skies blacken with climate change-induced wildfires, right wing media continue their relentless crusade against measures to tackle it.

This is revealing but *not* because @zannymb.economist.com shows Musk up as a raving psychopath. Fine, but hardly news. It's because *she* describes Alice Weidel - the openly racist leader of a far-right party infested with neo-Nazis -as a "perfectly thoughtful person."

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 2w ago

At one point she notes that AfD, the German political party that Musk supports, has "real neo-Nazis." Musk literally just shrugs.

Several of those who took part in this disorder primarily object to policing violence - from people with a violent history + a violent present - masquerading as a grievance about two-tier policing & sometimes as protecting women

The Guardian@theguardian.com · 2w ago

Most people arrested during Henry Nowak protests had been reported for domestic abuse

It's funny how no-one ever asks where the money is coming from when you announce a cut in immigration.

Imagine Grant Shapps - Grant Shapps! - being too ideologically inflexible for the modern Conservatives.

James Heale@jaheale.bsky.social · 2w ago

Exc: Grant Shapps believed to be one of at least 10 ex Tory MPs who have failed their assessments as Badenoch overhauls selection process spectator.com/article/gran...

Worrth remembering that Andy Burnham has a long record of being anti-immigration. He's kept Shabana Mahmood in place because he agrees with her

the real discrimination is doing anything to fight discrimination, you see apnews.com/article/eeoc...

US civil rights agency moves to end demographic data collection after 60 years

The Trump administration is seeking to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment ...

apnews.com

As Ed Miliband leaves his post as energy and net-zero secretary, a final tally: There have been an incredible 251 newspaper editorials attacking him and his approach to net-zero since the start of 2024 That amounts to two editorials a week, mainly in the Sun, Daily Mail, Times and Daily Telegraph.

„Die Probleme der deutschen Wirtschaft haben im Wesentlichen nichts mit dem Klimaschutz zu tun. Und für mich steht Klimaschutz dem Wirtschaftswachstum nicht im Wege.“ Interview PIK-Direktor Ottmar #Edenhofer @faznet.bsky.social. www.faz.net/aktuell/feui... (€)

Ottmar Edenhofer: Warum der Klimaschutz nicht der Wirtschaft schadet

Sollte man den Klimaschutz zurückfahren, um die Wirtschaft zu stärken? Was hat Fridays for Future falsch gemacht – und was die CDU? Ein Gespräch mit dem Klimaökonomen Ottmar Edenhofer, einem der…

faz.net

Unless this “honesty” involves the recognition that immigrants are *not* the root cause of the UK’s problems *but* actually a part of the solution to them, this will be completely pointless. I cannot stress this enough. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Burnham to say UK must be honest about its challenges as he prepares to become PM

Labour leader will visit king to accept role on Monday and will start making cabinet appointments that afternoon

theguardian.com

Badenoch just said, on national TV, that UK's carbon emissions have gone up "in total" because of the 2008 Climate Change Act. They have, in fact, declined by more than half. Did #Kuenssberg break in to point this basic fact out? Of course not

An import point that most people don’t fully grasp. Generating electricity from renewables like solar and wind eliminates this wasted energy. We can deliver more energy services with vastly lower primary energy consumption.

Jan Rosenow@janrosenow.bsky.social · 3w ago

Two-thirds of global energy is wasted, mostly as combustion heat. Electrification gets rid of most of that waste rather than replacing it. From my keynote at the Eurelectric PowerSummit.

To state the obvious, there two things are not compatible.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Times reporting that Andy Burnham succeeded in persuading Shabana Mahmood to become Chancellor because it would give her more control over cutting immigration

If true, we get 3 things. None good. 1. The direct negative growth/fiscal impacts of cutting immigration. 2. A Chancellor who prioritises their own personal/ideological obsessions over the UK economy. 3. A PM who through myopia or weakness chooses 1 and 2.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Times reporting that Andy Burnham succeeded in persuading Shabana Mahmood to become Chancellor because it would give her more control over cutting immigration

If true, this *is* genuinely something the gilts markets should panic about!

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 3w ago

The Times reporting that Andy Burnham succeeded in persuading Shabana Mahmood to become Chancellor because it would give her more control over cutting immigration

These years of anti-immigration hysteria we're living through right now are going to look utterly incomprehensible in the coming era of closing schools, ageing populations and massively understaffed public services

Josiah Mortimer@josiahmortimer.bsky.social · 3w ago

Wow. The Department for Education has just published new projections which estimate that the number of pupils in state-funded schools in England will plummet by more than 9% by 2031 amid falling birth rates And yet this issue receives probably 1,000th of the coverage the immigration debate receives

A self-confident imperial elite does not expend so much energy screaming at everyone else about its own superiority. The vibe around so many American thought leaders has something of the mid-00s neurotic Muscovite about it.

So much American discourse about the UK reads like the projection of anxieties of decline among America's elites on to a supposedly easy target

Or much of a drop in public support. Fascinating example of elite consensus switching despite popular opinion.

Arieh Kovler@ariehkovler.com · 3w ago

In two years Net Zero went from broad political consensus to politically toxic, without any particular scandal over the policy.

"A closed country will be poorer. A country that underinvests will not grow. A state that refuses to reform tax will ration ambition. And a Labour government afraid to say these things will discover once again that caution, too, has costs." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Burnham must learn from Starmer’s mistakes: Labour was elected to transform the economy, not just stabilise it | Jonathan Portes

Devolution, tax, the EU and immigration: these are all opportunities for growth if Burnham abandons the excessive caution of the past few years, says economist Jonathan Portes

theguardian.com