"oh you don't get me I'm the end of the union": lol brexit is how we're all gonna die

Labour 'beset by anti-capitalism"? To quote Johnny Thunders, ,"Yeah? So? What's it to ya?"

it takes a first-class poker face to say you have full confidence in Chris Grayling without a punchline.

Soubry is complaining about the dearth of big beasts in the Conservative Party, bit of a self own really.

Read “beasts” with an extra letter and it seemed plausible

https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/05/b9/57/b0/nando-s.jpg

Whenever I'm reading anything that reads like delusive bullshit writing to me, the internal reading voice in my head is Chris Grayling's.

baroness Warsi talking to deaf ears again, maybe she'll be the next to jump?

Yeah cos the Indie Kids really give one fuck about Islamophobia

they like peri peri chicken, what more do want?

would strongly disagree with Warsi on everything probably, but it's having some integrity that would mark her out as unsuitable for the Shed 7 gang.

She’s an idiot but she’s right on this. Obviously howling into the void, though.

It’s mostly a case of nobody caring but the islamophobia of the Conservative Party, all the way to the top, from policy to on-the-ground campaigning is so endemic it hardly counts as news.

her dad's bed factory is just down the road from me. She's obv a massive Tory knobhead, but I respect her for standing up to them dickheads unlike her Ayn Rand loving colleague who wants to deport himself.

was walking down shaftesbury avenue today on my way to the golden gate bakery in chinatown to get an egg tart, and there was a group of about 100 chanting people with union jacks, wearing hi-vis, 'marching' down the road, flanked by a few policeman, telling everyone they could stick something or other up their arse. they were belligerent but bedraggled, looked miserable, and I wasn't really clear what belief they attached to really. i mean i know there are plenty of leave people, and many who are feeling betrayed by the current political process. but i don't really understand how they've ended up in a gilets jaunes group, what their intent is, or who is making use of them. they looked like a very minor or obscure religious sect tbh.

I believe the answer is "Facebook" but shrug

It's "real England" white nationalism n'est-ce pas?

Facebook is v enabling, tho I'm not blaming it

i don’t think it’s quite that jim, and think NV’s got it right. it just all seemed so paltry and incoherent, its own futility in display, but they are not the only ones in the current climacteric of whom that could be said, and we are all afflicted.

facebook + real england white nationalism + james g0dd4rd far right opportunism leveraging (i) nascent brexit delay betrayal narrative and (ii) yellow vests iconography and ideas of generalised public dissatisfaction at politics generally and politicians in particular

U.K. university funding is going to be something to keep an eye on over the next year or so - a combination of the impact of hostile immigration rhetoric, Brexit and bad management:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-47419418

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/09/reading-university-in-crisis-amid-questions-over-121m-land-sales

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/06/failing-universities-bailouts-michael-barber-office-for-students

The weird thing about the Yellow Vests in the UK is that for a bunch of far-right nutters they don't seem to mind having a swing at the police (and the police are more than happy to respond).

count dankula getting a show on the new BBC scotland channel ? seems good and normal

Agreed. Bad management seems more important here than falling enrollment or loss of EU funding : in Reading’s case it’s financial shenanigans that are pulling it down, similar to what is or will be happening to many American universities in the near future. A difference is that the most likely to fail universities stateside are private.

xp

xp I was on a bus in central Manchester a couple of weekends ago when these idiots started wandering about in the road, stopping the bus and the rest of the traffic. The police turned up and moved them along. They really were the halt and the lame, a sorry-looking bunch. One of them had a QAnon logo on the back of their hi-vis jacket. All pretty weird and dispiriting.

those Democratic Football Lads Alliance folks love brawling with coppers as well. There might not be enough "intelligent" silverbacks among them to do some inspirational Jimmy Pursey/Caesar style speech, and they'll get back to braying the fuck out of each other again at some point.

Agreed. Bad management seems more important here than falling enrollment or loss of EU funding : in Reading’s case it’s financial shenanigans that are pulling it down,

It’s definitely bad management but the political context is important. In Reading’s case, they took in astronomical debts in order to open a new campus in Iskandar - which has just lead them to write off £30m . The combination of pressure to run universities like businesses - with cycles of borrowing and investment to try to ensure perpetual growth - and the political squeeze on international students leads to things like Reading’s Malaysia venture, UCLan’s ludicrous £53m outpost in Northern Cyprus, etc. There is a sense of a bubble getting ready to burst and volatility around Brexit, etc, runs the risk of accelerating it all.

right right right. I was thinking of all of that as bad management but the managers are being pulled in bad directions by UK university policies.

What is the bubble here, though? Is it that there are universities for which student demand is now too low for them to continue to stay open?

think there are lots of concerns about universities going on building sprees, issuing bonds to finance these, where repayment/financing is contingent on continued steady growth of student numbers. in the long term, there are questions about sustainability of that strategy

aiui, demand would still be enough to keep everyone afloat under normal circumstances - the problem is that so many universities have borrowed against future growth potential which now looks unrealistic. I can only think of one university that has gone out of business (University Of Wales) so it would be a pretty big scandal if any of them folded but Michael Barber’s comments about the government not being willing to prop them up in the event of crisis points to the idea that it’s a credible risk.

Xp

ok I see. so this is capitalism's imperative of growth.

honestly I am a dummy who has never understood why institutions can't just stay the same size, why growth should be an imperative, but I guess that's why I'm not a capitalist.

there were changes made in the UK to how they were funded and so I think they've been pushed into making these moves

aiui

yeah I know about the REF but I would have thought that would only affect funding at research universities, of which there are what, maybe 10 in the UK? not at Reading or other mainly teaching places. but I dunno.

The ref affects every university.

i know one successful university where the aggressive push for expansion is forcing funding for new campuses to be found by reducing the cost structures and capabilities of areas normally associated with further education - research structures, library services. even to the slightly absurd extent that there aren't sufficient toilets in older parts of the campus to meet the new demand.

another university relied heavily on european students, and have now seen a substantial drop - decimation might be more appropriate - of applications, and are rapidly trying to pivot their courses to attract money from Asian countries, specifically China, Japan and India.

I'd strongly concur with SV's point above about the market likely to see some consolidation.

well, SV didn't say likely, but i do think it's strongly possible.

is the UK likely to give student visas to Asian students, to make up for lost EU students?

this is a question stateside as well of course

and here in France, where the gov recently proposed charging non-EU students 3000 € per year in fees, whereas at present they pay the same as EU students (about 300 €). though unis here are deciding one by one not to follow the gov's proposal on that, in typical French fashion.

Three hundred euros a year in fee? That seems...very cheap?

The government has made it harder to get student visas, has stuck with strongly negative messaging around student immigration and has cut off routes to limited-time post-study employment - all of which has seen numbers from most Asian countries (particularly India and Nepal) tank. However, the potential shortfall has mostly been met by an increased reliance on students from China over the last few years. The thing that would shake the sector more than anything would be a downturn in the Chinese economy, tbh.

There is a suspicion that they’ll loosen the requirements, or at least take a very different tone, to try to get some of the students they’re currently missing out on back, in the event of large numbers of EU learners deciding to go elsewhere, though it remains to be seen how effective that would be.

Just by comments I've read about the French tuition fees and their benefits system on here. I get the feeling if Macron tried to impose UK level austerity on them, there would be some serious bastilles getting stormed. Forget about those high viz numpts - this would be the real thing. Well perhaps.

must be nice not living in a neolib hellscape

still being social conditioned into thinking not killing disabled ppl and ultra low tuition fees are hard-left utopian policies in the UK.

Yes, it really costs about 300 € a year to go to university here, whether you're local or a foreigner! I imagine our universities would be very attractive globally if our courses weren't all in French.

My previous employer, in the USA, recently took out insurance to guard itself against a downturn in Chinese enrollment, who pay a little more than the max tuition chargeable to USA students. I suppose that could be an option for UK unis.

US engineering giant Bechtel is suing the £56bn railway company over claims its procurement process for the development of the station, which will link with Crossrail when it opens, was unfair.

more expensive Grayling incompetence ahoy!

xunts the most dangerous man in britain

Tom Watson writing a letter(!) to the boss of google asking him to remove Tommy Robinson's youtube page. Not sure if this is something he is doing on his own time, or in his role as important man

Forgot to googleproof Watsons name

pumping iron is something he does often on his own time these days apparently. Big tech are shitting themselves!