Nicholas Allott

A Danish lesson for Labour on how to stop migrants and start winning Like the home secretary, I visited recently to learn how the centre-left is riding high and reclaiming the asylum debate from the populist right

Denmark has *far* worse outcomes - economic, social and integration - than the UK.

Just a fantasyland for those who want an excuse for their own xenophobia and/or are incapable of doing the hard work of confronting the UK's real problems.

www.thetimes.com/world/europe...

Rich alludes here to the wisdom of the judges at the Nuremburg trial: “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

‘If I think about what this means, I want to cry’: what happens when a city loses its university? When Essex University’s Southend campus opened, it was a message of hope for a ‘left behind’ UK seaside town. Its closure will be felt far beyond its 800 students, some of whom will not get their degr...

Excellent article but stark reminder that for all the perceptions of universities as ivory towers for elites, they are actually vital hubs in towns n cities supporting local businesses and providing key services as well as education….

I suppose the easy thing to say is that we don’t see them _as_ binary. More interesting: I suppose in some cases we see both stars - where the light from both combined is responsible for the percept; conversely, when one star is very faint, we only see the bright one. Physics >> semantics

Le Guin wrote an essay about it, ‘From Elfland to Poughkeepsie’ where she quotes Eddison, Tolkien and Kenneth Morris.

s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/EB/...

Britain’s deprived areas need attention for their own sak... Numerous studies warn about pockets of deep poverty, but little is done by sitting governments until they feel under threat

“Much of the commentary reads as if improving high streets is not a good in itself, a measure important in enhancing people’s lives, but is primarily a means of undermining the Reform vote or staunching Labour’s decline.” My @theobserveruk.bsky.social column: observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Cutting staff at a neighbouring Uni is bad for the whole coastal South East. Aside from London, what industries or large employers are there? Visit a seaside town in the winter?
How is this 'levelling up'?
14,000 jobs in HE lost last year. Where is the government support?
#AcademicSky

Thank you! I'm glad you like it. Mostly luck, and a very handsome subject.

Black and white cat, loafing

Hallo!

Wise words from Howard Zinn on the anniversary of his passing...

No system beats First Past the Post for creating scenarios in which people inadvertently help their opponents. It's ideal if you want to strongly disincentivise talented, morally motivated people from going into politics (something Britain has successfully done for centuries).

“Airport Book Brain is therefore not just a problem of political leadership, but of intellectual self-discipline. It asks whether we are willing to tolerate slower progress, weaker slogans, and messier arguments in exchange for decisions grounded in reality.”

Excellent article
“The danger is not merely that bad ideas occasionally slip through. It is that the system gradually loses the capacity to recognise what a good idea even looks like.”

You Are Reviewer 2 by Matthew Murray 🦇 A solo d6-based

midnitelibrary.itch.io/you-are-revi...

Dr Kareem Carr man: i wish to publish @kareem_carr Jan 21 reviewer 2: your paper is no good man: i'll do anything to improve reviewer 2: it's simple. you must read the work of the great scientist Pagliarini man: *bursts into tears* but i am Pagliarini Andre Pagliarini @apagliar Jan 21 a first: in rejecting an article I submitted to a journal, reviewer 2 noted I failed to engage the work of one Andre Pagliarini Jan 21, 2026 • 3:47 PM UTC

I just thought everyone should see this

UK drops target for international student recruitment Government to encourage education providers to open campuses overseas as it focuses on reducing migration

In any other context, requiring a high-productivity sector to offshore the production of its highest value-added exports would be seen as the economic illiteracy it so obviously is...

www.ft.com/content/a23c...

Knut Hamsun, a Norwegian writer, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920.

In 1943, he sent Joseph Goebbels (Hitler's propaganda minister) his Nobel Prize medal as a gift.

This ought to be a huge national news story. But the quiet dismantling of a key sector barely registers outside HE. Maybe someone will care when the local economies that Unis sustain start to go bust too. Important story from @patrickjack.bsky.social & @timeshighered.bsky.social

@nature.com doesn't mind publishing "thoughts some dude had in the bathtub" as long as they're on language, apparently.

This craven cowardice is not only morally repugnant, but also completely at odds with the Royal Society’s own code of conduct. By failing to uphold the code, Sir Paul Nurse looks like he’s himself also breaching it - both are bringing the Society into disrepute. royalsociety.org/-/media/abou...

Tell me we should trust AI to give us the facts. Tell me it's a future we can put our faith in. Come at me. I'm right here, waiting.

The Containment-Liberation Complex U.S. interventions have had disastrous consequences.

“Between 1898 and 1994, Washington effectively acted to change governments in Latin America at least 41 times, a tally that includes neither many unsuccessful efforts at regime change nor the invasions, filibustering, and gunboat diplomacy that took place the previous century.“

Greg Grandin:

text of crime of aggression

rome statute of the international criminal court, article 8bis: crime of aggression

The US can destroy a European's life with the swipe of a pen This week's US sanctions against European lawmakers and privacy activists is a major escalation. And it shows the dangers of Europe relying on American economic infrastructure.

The outrageous sanctioning of EU lawmakers and citizens in order to pressure democratically-elected European governments to change their laws shows just how intent the US government is on controlling Europeans' lives.

We must go into 2026 with eyes open.

Does extracting £10,000 a year from one’s tenants count? One does have to write an occasional letter to one’s estate manger.

#philsky
Funded postdoctoral positions (FCT) at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Porto – Call for expressions of interest:

If there was an academia wrapped it would say: ‘you read these articles, those abstracts, half of this book, a third of that one, maybe a chapter from this…’

Black and white cat, starey

Black cat, starey

Britain could have joined Erasmus five years ago; an agreement on funding was completed between negotiators but vetoed “at the very last minute” by Boris Johnson. From Stefaan de Rynck’s book