Ben Phillips

Something deeply troubling & shocking is happening at Exeter University*, where a mass cull of staff is planned, even though it's in surplus. No good justifications given. @jamesgdyke.info provides the details: www.technosphere.earth/the-bonfire-... *Disclosure: I have a Visiting Fellowship here. +🧵

Heartbreaking and infuriating to see this proposed at the institution which I attended as an UG a decade ago (and chose for its stellar research reputation) and recently returned to on a temporary contract.

Unis as critical parts of national infrastructure have been passed over to ill-equipped management teams with very narrow remits - to smash and ruin. Is that a good idea in the era of national competition, economic stagnation and Cold War 2.0? 🤔 www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-u...

The University of Exeter has become the latest Russell Group university to announce major job cuts, insisting it “must” take action to reduce financial pressures. Juliette Rowsell reports #highered #jobcuts https://ow.ly/K8bq50ZfYlY

'The University of Exeter is proposing to cut about 150 staff roles. A spokesperson for the university said it was "consulting with colleagues over limited and specific potential changes across some areas of our academic faculties".' 1/4

Despicable: Uni of Exeter putting over 500 staff at risk of compulsory redundancy. Thoughts are with all Exeter branch comrades. #UCU #UKHE

Along with almost all of my colleagues in history, this afternoon I got an email telling me that I am at risk of redundancy. It looks like the University of Exeter sent this email to the vast majority of people in Humanities and Social Sciences Faculty. Bit hard to breath right now.

A grim day in a grim week in a grim month for UK higher education, with Dundee, Exeter and Hertfordshire all making major announcements of planned redundancies. Shrinkage of the research & teaching base by the invisible hand's visible fist is not an 'us' or 'them', SHAPE or STEM phenomenon. 1/2

These cuts are terrible for all impacted, but they will be an absolute death blow for humanities and social sciences teaching and research. (If anyone has kids planning to come to Exeter for one of these subjects next year, you might want to know about this.)

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

Wes Streeting has resigned to take the job he was born to do…regional sales manager for Moss Bros

Good to see Chelsea back to winning ways, no doubt re-energised from taking the last month off.

An ancient curse upon the inventor of the box hedge

They should have stopped the Top Gun reboot with Maverick, this looks shit

Even the Spoons coffee machine is happy the Greens won

MATTHEW BADLOSS IS IT

This does seem like the obvious conclusion with the UKHE Covid class action. If students didn't get the teaching they paid for, their degrees are academically invalid and that's what needs fixing. (You'd hope their current employers would agree.)

Yeah, quite key: it's not £21 million that is going directly to those 6500 students... The only ones winning anything (other than maybe £2000 per student) are the firm raking in the £7 million and the people keen to crash universities. Grim day for #UKHE.

"If McSweeney has a genuine talent, it's as a con man."

I see Starmer had a productive weekend grappling with his conscience then

Your tiniest violin please, garçon

Always enjoy when you follow the advice and put your local radio station on because there's an extreme weather event in progress and they're just playing eighties dance classics as if nothing's happened

you can’t kill an ideology: manchesterism lives!! the people demand burnham thought

If shock troops were firing tear gas at random people in Walthamstow all day then, yes, I do think I'd find it within myself to deploy the five or six clicks of a mouse that would be necessary to order a gas mask online, yeah.

oomf who is a librarian had to take down the David Walliams poster at work today and said it felt like pulling down the big Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad in 2003

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

It’s giving

A few weeks ago there was a flag waving guy regularly stationed on an overbridge right by the A38/A380 split just outside Exeter, one of the biggest accident blackspots in Devon and exactly where you want more distractions

Please sign the petition below in support of colleagues at Nottingham, where courses in the highly respected Dept of Modern Languages & Cultures have been earmarked for suspension.

Totally unserious comment from a totally unserious minister. Every bit as bad as her Tory predecessors. Except, perhaps, they might have acknowledged the huge job losses we're seeing across universities.

British carbohydrates are the best

Presumably David Cameron will be writing a furious letter of complaint to Nuno Espírito Santo about the Maccabi Tel Aviv decision.

A reminder that it took UEFA less than a week to ban Russian clubs from European competitions back in February 2022.

Counting down the days until I can once again start inflicting the Nigel Hess Christmas piano classics album on my friends and family

Respect to EE for following up the obligatory 'calls may be recorded for training purposes' message with Dua's Training Season as hold music

Settling down in front of the telly to watch Chelsea do some competent defending, can't wait

It is the last day of my autumn sale, if you want to pick up a bargain! #embroidery www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Comm...

First day of term and I just tried to sign into the office printer with my British Library readers ticket. Start as you mean to go on.

'I was glad it was a very hot, sunny day with bright blue skies, because otherwise the deserted, ruined church with legends connected to it of fiends and black dogs breathing fire might have spooked me a little.' open.substack.com/pub/deepdown...

I've written about Church Going (in the Larkin sense) and tenuous literary connections in Devon and beyond. Warning: contains pictures of churches open.substack.com/pub/deepdown...