Rebecca Smyth, PhD

V excited to be omw to the Roccella Summer School organised by my brilliant friend Emma Scali (#ElenaFerranteReference) of @milcmanchester.bsky.social and Raffaella Nigro. Making ZINES. Drinking GRANITA. Finally learning about INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY.
www.roccellasummerschool.org/programme

UCU members outside BCU

🚨 Lobby the BCU governors! 🚨

On Wed 16th BCU governors are meeting for an update on the current review, which has put 342 staff at risk of redundancy & cuts student support in multiple ways.

Join our lobby: 1pm outside Parkside Building

Bring your solidarity and your sun cream! #SaveBCU

I read this in Baby Billy Freeman from the Righteous Gemstones' voice - "c'mawn nah!"

It's true! Such a good piece 👏

Me every time I read an article written by @jtheilen.bsky.social

Screenshot of an article in The Guardian with the headline "King Charles to receive £132m next year after crown estate makes £1.1bn profit." Picture of smiling King Charles in a navy pinstripe suit, white shirt and light blue tie above it.

Screenshot of body of same newspaper article detailing how crown estate has a portfolio of London properties and rural real estate worth FIFTEEN BILLION. Tragically this is down 0.5 billion from last year

There just might be another source of a few billion that might go some way to cover the £4.8 billion deficit 👀

He left Venezuela for the US, dreaming of a career in cosmetics. He was deported to a Salvadoran prison | CNN A year ago, Andry José Hernández Romero left Venezuela to seek a better future in the United States.

Andry’s story, if you’re unfamiliar.

www.cnn.com/2025/05/28/a...

And if you're in the UK, email your MP to ask them to oppose the Bill. takingthepip.co.uk/write-to-you...

but really I think you'd be better off engaging with the above-mentioned groups, reading amazing work by disability scholars (The Disability Archive at the Centre for Disability Studies in Leeds is a good starting point, ditto International Journal of Disability and Social Justice, ijdsj.online).

I did an LLM and PhD in human rights because I felt otherwise I didn't have anything to offer human rights activism. As time goes on, I realise that my empathy and anger were and always have been more than enough. If you want the in-depth legal/socio-legal analysis, I can provide that no bother;

Instead you should talk and listen to disabled people. You should engage with resources by @crips-against-cuts.bsky.social @dis-ppl-protest.bsky.social @disrightsuk.bsky.social @nsunnews.bsky.social Scope and many others. Scope's Disability Price Tag report is a helpful starting point.

You shouldn't need legal and economic arguments to convince you of the sheer wrongness of the current Government's approach to disability, welfare, and addressing the profound health crises gripping England (largely driven by spiralling poverty largely driven by 40+ years of neoliberalism).

Think about how rubbish it made you feel when at your lowest someone said to you, "Have you just tried thinking positively?" or otherwise implied that it was your fault that things were the way they were, that you were inherently wrong and broken and the problem.

Mental health patients could get job coach visits, says minister Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall says trials of the idea have produced

Punishing people for being disabled is wrong. Framing it as getting people into the workforce is wrong. Thinking that people who have been hospitalised due to mental health conditions should get job coach visits is warped.

They should be free to use their brilliant mind and big heart to do all the other things they want and need to do day to day. So should everybody, disabled and non-disabled alike.

A dear friend has spent weeks pushing their body and mind to the limit doing this work. PIP assessors would see this as them proving their ability to work without supports. Anyone with a modicum of human decency would see it for the cruel waste of their brilliant mind that it actually is.

I could develop a big long thread about all the human rights, legal, economic, and policy arguments against the Bill and Paper, but honestly it doesn't deserve the energy. I'm so angry that disabled people, activists, policymakers et al are having to waste time, energy, and heartache doing so.

It has been one culture shock among many to see just how deep the hate for disabled people runs in politics and discourse here in England. The Green Paper and "Welfare" "Reform" Bill typify it.

I'm not saying it's much better in Ireland. But I think there's more of a positive attitude to human rights there. And for the most part we've embraced the radical idea that disabled people, trans people, and the other groups of people so often vilified here are in fact human and deserve respect.

I am in the near-constant horrors at the profound hatred for disabled people in this country.

I'm posting this as part of the online protest against the Universal Credit & Personal Independence Payments Bill. TLDR: This Bill needs to die so that disabled people don't. #DisabilitySky #TakingThePIP #WelfareNotWarfare #DisabilityRebellion #CripsAgainstCuts

Calling all abortion nerds! @whiterxbbit.bsky.social would love your submissions by 1st September! call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/06/...

Transgender campaigners call for European rights body to report on UK Alliance of groups wants Council of Europe to investigate implementation of supreme court ruling on biological sex

www.theguardian.com/society/2025... this and Budapest Pride and the impending failure (🤞🤞🤞) of the "welfare" bill made me feel quite emotional and hopeful this morning.

Feminist judgments project (FJP) call for proposals (CFP)! Because it's fun to chant "FJP CFP FJP CFP FJP CFP", and even more fun to challenge traditional disciplinary boundaries ✨

The hope and hilarity here on Bluesky this morning, mm mm mm

Northumbria police destroy Battle of Orgreave and other miners’ strike files Force says it disposed of papers last year despite forthcoming inquiry into scenes of violent policing in 1984

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... "Force says it disposed of papers last year despite forthcoming inquiry into scenes of violent policing in 1984" - can't help but feel that "despite" might be a "because"

🚨Feminist judgments in refugee law project is GOOOO! 🚨call for abstracts for a special issue proposal 🚨 Read more and submit here:

Zachi Brewster (she/her) — Dopo | Abortion Support for Her/ Him/ Them Language(s): English, Italian Location: England/Italy-based + Virtual support (international)

More on Zachi Brewster and Dopo www.wearedopo.com/directory/za...

And now some of my favourite humans all together on a panel! @luberropizzarossa.bsky.social and Zach Brewster and Naomi Connor and @rishie.bsky.social, chaired by @joestrong.bsky.social 😍😍😍

Gorgeous first panel at Doctors for Choice/Abortion Talk conference: bodily autonomy, foregrounding sex worker, trans, radical anticapitalist perspectives. "It's a collective, interconnected struggle…We need to all go together, all the time with every tool we have." (Justin Hancock, Bish)