Benjamin Bland

Hey everyone, here's the news, if you aren't a high earner, entrepreneur or a "skilled frontline worker" (whatever the fuck that means) the "Labour" Party says you aren't contributing, you're a taker!

De La Soul - Cabin in the Sky album cover. Illustration of two people walking in the sky with their heads stuck in the same cloud, upon top of which a birdhouse sits.

'Good enough that you could pitch it as a fitting finale for an entire era of rap, the album actually creates the opposite problem: it’s too alive to be an ending, too rich with ideas and sonic pleasures. These guys might just have to keep on going.'

De La Soul - Cabin in the Sky

buff.ly/KlsHTMR

it’s not surprising that The Rest Is History have approached the murder of five women as a fun whodunnit, but it is still pretty grim

Let's hear it for The Rest is History Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland are defining our national story

So cool that the absolute ascendancy of banal reactionary historical platitudes is coterminous with the extinction level event unfolding in history departments on both sides of the Atlantic. www.newstatesman.com/culture/radi...

The chief horror is the rewriting of the human rights gains we've made since WWII to frame only 'contributing' migrants (whether asylum seekers or not) as worthy of life & safety.

But I'm also here to call BS on the 'Britain welcomes high-skilled migrants' thing. I do not feel welcome here.

I am glad to see my article 'We Hear About it All the Time: Norwegian Muslims' Merging Stories of Racialisation and Recognition' published in @bjsociology.bsky.social
To read the article, click here:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author...

@crexuio.bsky.social @unioslo-svfak.bsky.social

The ‘Danish model’ is the darling of centre-left parties like Labour. The problem is, it doesn’t even work in Denmark | Cas Mudde This week’s local elections are the latest reminder that when social democrats move rightwards, they’re making a mistake, says academic and author Cas Mudde

Cas Mudde spells out what has become largely the consensus among researchers: moving right on immigration will not weaken the far right nor strengthen social democracy. If your reaction is "but in Denmark" please at least familiarize yourself with Danish politics

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

📢Call For Papers📢
Sociability & Political life

Marc Jaffré & I are organising a conference! We're asking: can there be politics without sociability? How have friendship, intimacy, socialising & informal attachments been central to political projects & movements?

Get your abstracts in by Feb 14th!

Starmer government in "morally indefensible policy" shock

Tommy Robinson is claiming credit for the language/policy being used by the Labour government (about deporting people found to be refugees once their home country is deemed safe)

Researcher Safety and Vicarious Trauma: Recommendations for Universities, Supervisors, and Researchers - C-REX – Center for Research on Extremism with Clare McKendry, University of Waterloo

Don't miss next week's C-REX/CANSES webinar: "Researcher Safety and Vicarious Trauma: Recommendations for Universities, Supervisors, and Researchers" with Clare McKendry, moderated by @audreygagnon.bsky.social. Nov. 20, 2025, 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (CET), Online www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/englis...

No, I'd say it's racists and those pandering to them.

Mo Farah would not have been a British citizen for the 2012 Olympics if Labour had introduced their new asylum plan.

Homelessness figures higher than data suggests, research shows Official data for England underestimates the scale of the problem, according to research for charity Crisis says.

Homelessness can be sorted so easily that it's existence is purely down to the elite wanting to maintain a deterrant for worklessness

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"Labour defines the university as an economic engine, and then suspends the laws of capitalism to expect more output without new investment."

🤷🤷🤷

Reality not big on the agenda of Labour when it comes to #UKHE

This term card is on 🔥🔥🔥
📍📍The London History of Anticolonial Political Thought Seminar📍📍
⌛️Seminars are hybrid and take place in-person in London & Zoom, 5:30-7:00pm (GMT).⌛️
📲To sign up to our mailing list for the seminar, please email discourseonanticolonialism@hotmail.com

So excited to read this! Whole contents list looks fascinating but particularly intrigued to see Desmond's (which I've been using in teaching lately) and the IBA (which I've been doing some archival work on) in there.

The men who raised the flags Nigel Farage says this summer’s movement was led by ‘ordinary people’ expressing their patriotism. That’s not what we found

Really detailed and thorough reporting but dismayed by the “bothsideism” about the flags. *Very few* people - even people without criminal records or neo-Nazi affiliations - who put up flags this summer did so innocently regardless of their stated motivations.

Conservatives have today ditched their Mass Deportation Bill, 5 months after Chris Philip tabled it in the Commons, but a week after it was dubbed the Idi Amin Tribute Act, as it proposed Deportations of settled & legal migrants on a scale never seen since 1972 & never proposed in a democracy before

With the rise of fascism and of the sea levels, we absolutely do not need any more people actually understanding human societies and the environment...

That Labour enables this through their failure to act is ghoulish.

This is really poor by BBC researchers and producers. Goodwin hasn't been an active academic for a number of years, yet is described as one (thus legitimating his relentless Reform activism and constant bad faith misrepresentation of evidence). 1/?

Normalisation? Musk saying civil war inevitable in UK (at least third time) + socalising violence (the second time) is mostly not considered newsworthy.

He wrote: "It is time for the English to ally with the hard men, like Tommy Robinson, and fight for their survival or they shall surely all die"

Olivette Otele Prize 2025/26 Open for Submissions! The Institute of Historical Research’s History Lab is excited to announce the call for papers for the Olivette Otele Prize for the 2025/26 academic year. The prize offers the chance for fast-tracked publication of an article and a cash prize of £250 and is open to Black UK-based PhD students working in history or related disciplines, exploring any place or period.

Olivette Otele Prize 2025/26 Open for Submissions! We invite you to submit an abstract of no more than 400 words for a 40 minute paper by Friday 28th November 2025 to ihrhistorylab@gmail.com. Timeline: Abstract deadline of no more than 400 words due by 28th November 2025 Shortlisted scholars will be notified by Friday 19th December 2025 and asked to submit a full paper of no more than 8000 words by Friday 27th February The winner will be announced by the end of March 2026

Prize and Recognition The winner will receive a £250 cash prize, will be invited to speak at History Lab’s annual conference in summer 2026, and to submit their paper to Historical Research, the leading generalist historical journal and flagship publication of the Institute of Historical Research. Shortlisted scholars will receive a £30 book voucher and the opportunity to present their research at a History Lab seminar.

About the Prize The Olivette Otele Prize was created in 2020 in response to the Royal Historical Society’s ‘Race, Ethnicity and Equality Report’ which highlighted racial inequality in the field of history. The prize was named after the UK’s first Black woman history professor and was designed to both raise participants’ profiles as well as financially reward labour involved in academic research. We look forward to reading your applications!

📢CFP: Annual Olivette Otele Prize 2025/26!

Our annual prize for Black UK-based history PhD students is now open for submissions!

📆Key dates:

- Abstracts due on 28th November
- Notifications on 19th December
- 8000 word essay due on 27th Feb

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"If you wanted to design a policy that would cause human misery and be about as popular as typhoid in a jacuzzi, it is difficult to imagine how you could do better than this. This is a more extreme policy position than, say, the BNP’s 2005 manifesto"

Turn on the caps? 100% yes, for the benefit of everyone at every level of UK higher education’s system

Starmer and Labour talk about "delivery" but they've been in office for more than a year, with a huge majority, and have barely managed to legislate on their manifesto pledges. For example: Where are we on the employment rights bill that would outlaw this action by Solent? Why hasn't it passed yet?

This essentially means you cannot marry or form a long term relationship with a foreigner - if they fall sick, have a baby, lose their job, or just decide to take a break and write a book about cheeses of the West Country, they can be deported.

"These proposals would mean deporting greater numbers and a greater proportion of the population than former Ugandan President Idi Amin's deportation of Ugandan Asians."

The City and Port of Hull : official handbook : [Edit.] H.R. Wright : City of Hull Development Committee : A. Brown & Sons Ltd. : Hull : nd [1931]. A rather fine official handbook, published by local company A. Brown & Sons Ltd. on behalf of the City's Development Committee, giving details of the municipal amenities and services as well as of the port, docks and associated industries. This is a rather fine bold, pictorial cover showing the Old Town surrounded by the modern industrial city situated on the north bank of the River Humber and being approached by both air from the left and sea by liner from the right. Sadly it is uncredited. The land is shown in black, the sea blue and modern Hull by a series of rising red and white structures around the old walled city.

The fine UK east coast city of Kingston upon Hull #Yorkshire is in the good news bracket today having made Nat Geo's cut for one of the top 25 global destinations in 2026 - & it is worth a visit. Here's the cover to the 1931 Official Guide #Hull

↘️ flic.kr/p/2rB53Kv

"Original features have been reinstated, including floorboards, an ornate ceiling rose, cornicing, and a Victorian fireplace This exceptional four-bedroom house can be found on Talma Road, a residential street lined with Victorian townhouses near Brixton Station. The house, which has a large private garden, has been extensively remodelled and extended; the volume-enhancing design places a strong emphasis on light and the footprint of the house now extends to just over 1,500 sq ft internally The Building During the 1970s, the house was home - for a time - to activist Olive Morris, a prominent community leader in feminist, Black nationalist, and squatter's rights campaigns. Talma Road was one of several Brixton residences she occupied during her activism, and her legacy is now formally recognised with an English Heritage Blue Plaque on the façade, a quiet but powerful marker of the building's place in local and political history. The Tour The honse nrecente a emart farade to the ctreet with ite delirate icing and nitched hav windou The

1.4m

Olive Morris's former squat and centre for the Brixton Ad-Hoc Committee against Police Repression.
£1.4m

themodernhouse.com/sales-list/t...

www.decolonisingthearchive.com/remembering-...