Christ alive!

Watch this space on Thursday 👀

.Alex Andreou & Naomi Smith. On a new podcast. Holy fucking shit.

Wrote a long old-fashioned thread about the decision govt has to make on international students. Please read. Look, I'll be fine whatever, but I've told you the unvarnished truth at every stage of this snafu and I'd just like to be clear what we're talking about here. 👇

It is so gratifying to see this band doing so well and playing in the kind of venues they deserve.

Genuinely hilarious

Exemplifies why I support EU and want UK to rejoin. Nothing to do with the economy - it’s to spread democratic values & resolve conflict. The original Schuman declaration aimed to make Franco-German war unthinkable and it succeeded. Europeanism is a deeply humanitarian endeavour.

Labour on TV this morning: Starmer cooking and Streeting self-deprecating. There's a lightness to the party at the moment which contrasts with the seething end-of-Rome anxiety of government ministers.

Starmer does this chattier stuff really well, (cf. the ITV Life Stories interview fairly early on in his leadership, the various podcasts he does), and Labour will try to make sure that's most of how we hear from him during this very long election campaign.

Here is why many of us in UK HE are upset. A year or 2 ago the current govt asked unis to increase foreign students. Now with 6 months to an election, where change is likely, members of the same govt are asking for precisely the reverse policy to be suddenly implemented.

The Tories'/Tory think-tank's concern about uni quality is an afterthought. You can tell that the starting point is xenophobia, because otherwise they would be asking 'what can we spend all these foreign student's fees on other than the crap woke courses?'

Imagine being so dimwitted a parent that you put your child in this woman's school.

#TelAviv tonight: Tens of thousands are back on the streets calling for Netanyahu's ouster.

▪️ Rallies held as War Cabinet Min Gantz issues an ultimatum to Netanyahu.

▪️ For the 1st time, Opposition Leader Lapid speaks at Tel Aviv rally.

The Tories have decided that universities 'create' Labour voters and/or woke leftists and that basically drives what they're spewing out about higher education. Same as with council housing in the past

This is the key thread to read on the thread to local unis around the country.

So let me get this right…the genius election winning machine which is the Conservative Party seems to think that letting a few universities go bust is a…good thing? Proper GLWT territory.

And now we have some coverage, by the excellent Chaminda Jayanetti

theguardian.com/uk-news/articl…

The soup quote is excellent.