Sunil

(And yes - it is almost always women who end up disproportionately negatively affected by all the systemic factors above. It’s so wrong and incredibly depressing - the system makes what is already challenging punitive on talent and hard work)

As I and others discovered to our cost, you also don’t get any kind of employment rights - eg protection against bullying or illegal harassment (unless you fancy taking up an Equality Act claim against a multi-million pound organisation with well-paid lawyers). And no taxable benefits obviously.

Just double checked. UKRI stipend from Oct 2026: £21,805

NLW (aged 21+): £12.71 per hour, which for a 40 hour week over 52 weeks is £26,436.

After tax/NI that is £22,553 - or £748 more than someone on a PhD stipend. If living alone, they edge ahead due to council tax discount.

Still v poor tho.

I know, I received the stipend myself some years back, and I included that in my calculation.

When I did mine you also didn’t get sick leave, though this changed in 2019.

Don’t have exact numbers to hand as it was on my computer, but can dig out.

By the time you factor in eg deduction on council tax, a PhD student on the stipend is paid approx the same as someone on the minimum wage, despite having to be significantly more qualified and be successful for competitive stipend funding - to have less rights. It is pretty poor.

Somewhat related: I happened to be looking at the recent UKRI PhD stipend announcement the other day. The minimum stipend is within £700 of the national minimum wage for over 21s, even after tax/NI. And you don’t get NI contribs, or max working hours, or childcare or other taxable benefits…

Somehow I never saw it when it first aired. Currently 5 episodes into series 1…

Cc @thebeautyoftransport.com @doublearrow64.bsky.social

Underground Roundel Double-Sided Totem (12026) About this product: Illuminated Station roundel taken from Colindale restoration project. Perfect statement piece for the home or garden. Has electric cabling attached, untested.  Grade A: Good Cond...

Rather sleep deprived this morning which may explain my gut reaction of “ooh, that looks cool, I wonder if…” to the TfL Museum Shop email offering the illuminated totem sign from Colindale station for £5000 @dcjlegrand.bsky.social @multiplexing.bsky.social

www.ltmuseumshop.co.uk/vintage-shop...

BES data in 2017 (but suspect the pattern holds for others) - a simple cross-tab of “party voted for last GE” vs “party voted for this time” is always insightful. Som very but interesting swings across parties regarded as polar opposite - it’s picking apart the underlying ”why” that’s interesting

Another night, another “wake up at 2:30 and not able to get back to sleep”. gah!

I also never knew this despite more than a decade living on Tyneside - and having been to Chile, including to Valparaiso, last summer this is a lovely story to come across! Thanks for sharing!

Good luck! hopefully it’ll work out sooner than that. thanks for the link - hadn’t come across that one before but know several sites have an archive of recent data!

Curious on the economics of new laser printers. I bought secondhand HP laserjet 4100 in 2005 for ~ £50 and it is still rocking. Did look at a new printers last year when the laser assembly failed, but found most new lasers seem to have v small capacity toners giving a running cost higher than ink?

Arghhh! 😩 surely a simple check of their on time data should prove your case…? (I always take a screenshot of the RTT data for this reason)

TPE will repay a certain amount after a 15 min delay if their service caused you to be late at your destination, even if you bought the ticket from an operator where delay repay only kicks in after 30 mins.

Another comparable journey, 29 min delay cause by operator w 30 min threshold = nada

One of the more bizarre consequences of fragmentation is Delay Repay. You have to submit a claim on the delay repay website of the operator who caused the delay (on a multi reason journey) - these are just rebadged versions of the same underlying site. But they have different rules (15 min vs 30)!

It wasn't that one, but a similar idea.

I can’t remember where I saw it but there was a great website or social media thread that gave tons of examples of terrible user interface design. Things like “enter a phone number“ with the input being a “+1” button to increment a number you couldn’t otherwise change…

Oh god, conveyancing solicitors are even worse 😫

I’m thinking of a new Synology NAS - any reflections on the 1825+? Mine is only a 215j so nothing special, but trying to get a lay of the land - a lot happens in a decade!

I was told by a university Registrar “we knew there was something going on in X dept (not smoke without fire) but no one had made a formal complaint, so there was nothing we could do”

Would that person have required a formal complaint if they’d suspected theft, or embezzlement? Wilful ignorance

Going though box of hard copy journals - Sociology, BJPIR, Political Insight etc - from 2016-2019.

Skimming through before recycling to save space - reading the piece on Brexit and public engagement by UKICE penned by @anandmenon.bsky.social is fascinating almost a decade later

Unfortunately I’d only saved the ethos link in my reminders list (“download thesis on XYZ”) rather than a full citation, and it’s not an area I’m currently active in - I’d need to go back and figure out the full citation and work it out!

Oh no, I hadn’t realised it was to be metadata only. There’s a thesis I have wanted to read for a while, and I keep checking back to see if it’s available - it isn’t important enough for me to request it, but if it were available I’d read it!

Utterly at a loss for how to resolve it - engineers replaced the drum in late summer but one new shirt bought <3 months ago has 4-5 pinholes on upper part of sleeves despite only being washed <5 times.

Can’t afford to keep buying new clothes 😭

When I booked it was a full half day; it was narrowed on the day.

Main problem is that our (not cheap) Bosch serie 6 washer dryer keeps putting pinholes in our clothes. Many are in older T shirts which could be transfer damage from counters/belts, but also happened to new shirts in other places…

Idle thought: eligibility criteria for research funding is often ridiculously inflexible and really screws over anyone who wasn’t fortunate enough secure a post swiftly after their doctorate. 4 years post-viva submission, if you’ve had to do other things to earn money, isn’t reasonable.

Still incredibly impressive, especially live on national TV 😱

Waiting for a washing machine engineer in a 3 hour window is… very annoying when you’ve got things to do