Sam

ugh

some took the job title of Crime Commissioner at face value

A strike is looming. Management have offered: no compulsory redundancies before 31st October 2026, on the condition that there is no strike before this date. But gives carte-blanche (in principle) for redundancy date of 1st Nov with no effective union opposition. So unlikely to be accepted.

University of Sheffield latest:

Circa 100 voluntary-severance applications have been accepted.
Could save circa £7 million staff costs.
But the VC wants £18 million savings in next financial yr, so presumably another ~160 jobs.
Restructuring in academic depts is coming ...

Ghislaine Maxwell lied about Trump never going to Epstein's house (directly contradicted by her email correspondence with Epstein), and she was rewarded for that lie with a transfer to a cushier prison. The coverup is happening in plain sight.

possibly true, but a lot of the modals you describe have resigned from the Labour Party since it has gone out of its way to alienate them.

Also, how dare you, I'm early 50s.

I think we should also understand the Sky move to buy ITV as part of this strategy.

I would pay an extra £5 on the BBC Licence Fee to remove the half-hourly immigration-hype reports on 6 Music that masquerade as news.

I’m old enough to remember when the Director General of the BBC categorically didn’t resign after one of its flagship politics shows literally photoshopped Jeremy Corbyn with a Soviet hat and painted red with the Kremlin in the background like some kind of Cold War-era communist mural.

Almost every film director I can think of is named as having cited the film as one of their favourites.

Re-watched "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" tonight. It really is a one-off. With an innocent, hopeful vision of a different world at its heart. It has influenced some much in film and TV since 1977, from Jurassic Park to Stranger Things.

International students are not unwanted migrants. They’re wanted, needed & required for the survival of UK academia as it stands. Yet they’re constantly scapegoated in anti-immigrant political rhetoric. They’re falsely taken for granted. It’s not only unfair but also stupid & destructive.

so The Economist is still hot for phrenology. We'll get you some calipers for Christmas.

if the US Government bails out tech companies while also letting people starve, well ... it's going to get very ugly indeed

UK transport secretary says full electrification of railways ‘not affordable right now’ Heidi Alexander says focus will be on other projects such as HS2

Govt scraps all electrification investment. Midland Main Line to stay forever diesel Leicester Nottingham Derby Sheffield. Hugely embarrassing and inexplicable
www.ft.com/content/5ecd...

for a marketing phrase (like this) swap the words "Shared Thinking. Independent Ambition" and it could well be a more accurate description of the managers

I'm not really a video person, so I tend to only watch clips if the creator is at the very least a close family friend holding a gun to my head.

In this case I'm glad to hear I dodged the special effects - and probably genuine good young people being used for marketing.

tldr: It's going to be another Titanic success

I'm over-thinking it. I'm harshing the vibe. The fact that a golden thread looks pretty, is expensive but snaps quickly when put under tension is not the relevant metaphor here. Look, why can't you just support our new doomed initiative? After all, your job security depends on its success.

For starters, you can't "articulate our golden thread". If you mean "put in many jointed segments", why would you do that to a thread which is meant to be a smooth continuum? And if you mean "explain", my first question about the golden thread would be: why is the thread made from gold??

A ChatGPT subscription instead of a VC would certainly save a lot of money. As long as its prompted to be "deeply authentic".

Working in an organisation whose values differ profoundly from your own can be a major source of stress.

But it's not that exactly. Because the marketised university does not have values. It just has processes, marketing and a bottom line.

Marketing BS of the first water.

How's work, you kindly enquire?

Well, when I received this all-staff missive from the Vice-Chancellor, I nearly threw my laptop across the room.

Otherwise all good, apart from all the redundancies.

Time for Lib Dems to boycott Twitter and challenge the Government to do the same.

My view on history was neatly summarised by Rudge in The History Boys.

Doing nothing is not an option,
and something must be done.
Here is something! So it stands to reason
That this thing must be done.

every day the world gets stupider

scratch an economist, find a phrenologist?

I helped make a film, out this week, called “Rovina’s Choice,” about the deaths this man without conscience or accountability has caused — already 600,000, ⅔ of them children.

"Baloney" rules court on sandwich charges

Heartbroken to share the news that recruitment to Undergraduate Music courses at the University of Nottingham has been suspended.
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