At least 15 Reform councillors have been suspended, expelled, or have quit since being elected earlier this year, with at least five facing criminal investigations, @bylinetimes.bsky.social can report bylinetimes.com/2025/09/02/s...
Deputy Head, Humanities, Cultures and Environment and Associate Professor of Christian Theology at the University of Chester. Latest: God’s Patience and our Work: Hans Frei, Generous Orthodoxy and the Ethics of Hope (SCM 2024).
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At least 15 Reform councillors have been suspended, expelled, or have quit since being elected earlier this year, with at least five facing criminal investigations, @bylinetimes.bsky.social can report bylinetimes.com/2025/09/02/s...
Kevin Maguire: "If you're put up in a hotel & you get meals you get £10/wk.. all these terrible myths.. free iPads.. myths & lies have gone mainstream & we've got to challenge them.. we've gone back to the worst aspects of the 1970s where racism is becoming mainstream" Well said
The #SeasonOfCreation starts tomorrow! If you're planning services for the month and need a little help, seasonofcreation.org has ideas to take you through all 5 week of celebrating 'Peace with Creation'. seasonofcreation.org @SeasonCreation
Sorry, but wtaf? This does absolutely nothing but ensure that even more people, including children, have to use irregular crossings, and blocks people who even this government have recognised are refugees from being with their families. This is utterly sickening from Labour. 1/
Interesting & important reflections. Missing from the picture? The perspective of 'non-leadership' university staff. If NSS results have any validity, we're remarkably successful at creating levels of satisfaction that would make other large organisations & government envious. Might be a resource.
Life’s getting a bit more crap here if you are a person from an ethnic minority 🧵
www.thenation.com/article/acti...
This is the best thing on this site all week, thank you.
Excellent from Rowan Williams. ‘A lot more work needs to be done to make audible the voices of actual individuals in the system, a lot more listening to the ordinariness of what they want and what they are afraid of.’
News from another genocidal conflict
If "mass unrest" ever happens, that will be an important news story. But this fevered speculation every week on what *might* happen is downright irresponsible. It's misleading, it's fear-mongering & it makes the press look like an apocalyptic cult, gathering every Friday for the end of the world.
Very very good letter in the FT magazine this morning pinpointing what humans definitely do when we “learn” and why machine LLM “learning” isn’t that. (And also why LLMs take up so much more energy than we do for thinking.)
Spectacular article, all the major insights captured, but an early one here into how sincerely these men care about protecting our women and girls.
This!
What is the red line for European governments, in terms of Israeli policy in Gaza - the red line after which they would stop treating Israel as misbehaving ally, "a democratic country exercising self defence"? If mass starvation and annihilation of entire cities don't cut it, I'm really not sure.
This headline is inaccurate. It is people granted refugee status who will have their lives wrecked again by an idiotic, unworkable policy, pushing homelessness for refugees NOT people seeking asylum onto councils Be cruel & appease racism is the actual Govt strategy www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
A courteous but very impressive rebuke to Nigel Farage from the Bishop of Oxford. "I heard no compassion in what you said...". "I disagree profoundly with your attempts to ... increase fear of the stranger in our communities". Do read. blogs.oxford.anglican.org/an-open-lett...
Unemployment update: For the coming months I'll still be writing a Bonhoeffer book for T&T Clark, trying to think of it as my sabbatical (unpaid). Hit me up if you know of one-off teaching or preaching gigs anytime in 2026.
Collapse of critical Atlantic current is no longer low likelihood, study finds - Scientists say ‘shocking’ discovery shows rapid cuts in carbon emissions are needed to avoid catastrophic impacts #climatecrisis #AMOC www.theguardian.com/environment/...
"The closure of Religious Studies and other departments at the University of Oregon and Virginia Tech also come with serious *cultural* costs that ripple into the future." required reading for all humanists, not just those of us at UO, IU, and VT.
As Farage pledges to open up Britain for fracking, hilariously the Reform-led council in Lancashire says “oh, there’ll be no fracking HERE” Self-serving shambolic hypocrisy, borne out of knowing that fracking is deeply unpopular in Lancashire - and everywhere www.bbc.com/news/article...
Times editorial calmly discussing the practicalities and politics of Farage’s plan to ‘sieve’ UK population - with no consideration of the threat to minorities and danger to the rights of everyone. Normalising a recipe for an authoritarian ethno-nationalist terror, ICE-style.
This is disgraceful
The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine have sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging that ChatGPT contributed to their son’s suicide, including by advising him on methods and offering to write the first draft of his suicide note.
Reform still letting racists stand for election - and in this case not condemning the racism.
Not read the article but this is a good thread on pedagogy in the humanities
Another approach for Labour than full-bore retreat to 'yes, immigration is a problem, yes it is a squalid experiment, we hate business and commerce' is available and has worked in the past. www.theguardian.com/politics/200...
The Labour response to Farage policy of leaving the Refugee & Humam Rights Convention should not be “he won’t deliver”. It should be “this is not morally right” (not “British values” even). Voters want to see authentic consistent leadership. Not debate the workability of cruelty.
It reads like a silly summer story to fill a gap tbh
One of two very good threads by Adam on this. A startling number of people - responding, in part, by the tone set by their government - just have this very complacent 'oh, no, this plan will never work'. I mean, 1) it could but also 2) they will definitely try.
This piece by @anandmenon.bsky.social sums up superbly what many people who either aren't 'White British' (or because of their skin tone don't pass as such) are feeling right now. It's a deeply uncomfortable read, but then it's a deeply uncomfortable feeling for them. Do read if you get a mo.
So many comments noting that plans for mass deportations are unworkable miss the point of such headlines in shaping the political narrative around ‘legitimate concerns’ and securing power. It is as if many learned nothing from the false promises of £350 million a week for the NHS leading to Brexit.
Read this, it’s important. www.bbc.com/news/article...
And the winner is …. UCL that increased its u/g offers by 65%. Where are you going to put all these students, UCL?!
Er, no. Churches, even established ones, should choose their own ministers, because their primary loyalty and purpose isn’t for the state far less a particular government. That freedom is the condition of their faithfulness, their service to their neighbour and their witnesses to the state. 1/
In any case, the perception that an ABC had been chosen by the PM in a meaningful sense would undermine all trust in them and those forms of influence available to them, as well as the credibility of their public voice. 3/3
Also, this piece probably overestimates the power of the office of ABC in relation to the complex mix of institutions that is the C of E, the limits on what can be done with its ‘assets’ - and overlooks what is already being done. 2/
Er, no. Churches, even established ones, should choose their own ministers, because their primary loyalty and purpose isn’t for the state far less a particular government. That freedom is the condition of their faithfulness, their service to their neighbour and their witnesses to the state. 1/
Well, they do say three's a crowd.
I look forward to participating in this important conversation about Catholic social teaching about migrant justice alongside scholars, immigration justice activists, and four Catholic bishops at Georgetown University on September 11, 2025. Join us in person or via livestream.
‘The faith presence at the rally testified to a growing religious pushback to Trump’s immigration policies.’ Finding these acts of protest and witness - and the integrity they enact - so powerful. Another side to Xy in the US we’d do well to keep attending to.
Natalie's book will be out tomorrow - looks an amazing read. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I don’t want to be too shrill about this but I think the BBC, ITV and Sky have disgraced themselves in their coverage of the anti-refugee protests. A massive failure of judgement. But now we know the next time a progressive protest “isn’t news” that it’s nothing to do with numbers
After 800 people attended across 8 protests on Friday, up to 2000 across a dozen modest protests on Saturday, "UK braces for more protests" is an absurd headline Largest protests & counter so far this weekend well below 500 people (but a much larger Gaza protest on Friday night mostly unreported)
BBC continues to have a persistent editorial problem in hyping & exaggerating scale of asylum protests (even at odds with its own reporting) How can a report quoting the police saying "about 150 people attended" a protest and counter-protest have the headline "hundreds join asylum hotel demo"
This is why I will be using my vote in 2029 to stop the right taking power. Nothing is more important.
NEW on our Substack: Help your HEC reps decide what we should do next for our pay dispute! Please see the linked form, fill it in, & pass to your contacts. The form is open until 5pm Friday 27th Aug in advance of HEC on Monday 1st Sep. Please repost #ucu ucucommons.substack.com/p/help-your-...
guys you don’t understand, the schools go back week after next so you’ve got seven days to give the british press the riot they want or this whole summer will have been a total waste of everyone’s time
Three thoughts. 1 - Should be "claimed" not "says" 2 - BBC online puts anything remotely tendentious in inverted commas. So should be "political prisoner" in inverted commas. 3 - The prisons are full of nasty, deluded criminals with bullshit reasons why the court was wrong. Treat her like them.
Her sentence was upheld by the Court of Appeal. It’s worth reading the judgment to contextualise Connolly’s reported remarks.
To be clear, she was not a political prisoner. She ‘pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing "threatening or abusive" written material on X.’ She advocated setting fire to hotels housing immigrants. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Genuinely baffled as to what Bertie Jenrick would have to do for any of the one in ten Tory MPs from an ethnic minority to go “steady on”. Turn up at their house in a Klan robe?
About 210,000 people will do Park Run this weekend, in 1346 different events I wonder how many - if any - of the 30 attempts to hold an asylum protest will be as big as the nearest parkrun
Robert Jenrick claims he would have been able to detain and deport over 50,000 people if the government had left the ECHR. This is an absurd fantasy - detention capacity was 2,200 - Rwanda capacity was 500 Those claims were bound to be processed; the delay just cost hundreds of millions on hotels
I have not heard anything at all from government ministers nor the opposition nor many media outlets about the dangers of this epidemic of sweeping casual racism. It is sometimes seen as comical - as with Rupert Lowe and the rowers - but it is dangerous and dehumanising
More evidence of the crisis we're facing in higher education: Closing the religion and culture department at Virginia Tech. Because, you know, religion is not an important force in the world that we need to study and understand better. And then people wonder how our democracy collapsed.
The attack on higher education in the US, which is being largely done in the name of "fighting antisemitism," is inevitably going to lead to a lot of universities deciding that Judaic Studies programs need to be cut for budgetary purposes. Killing Judaic Studies to fight antisemitism.
Why England is suffering water shortages and the prospect of worse. Is UK gov doing enough to address the causes and risks? Has it connected the dots btw this, housing and data centres -already in tension? www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...
D.C. TODAY…
Looks like UK trees and shrubs are going into autumn early with the heatwave but this will have negative impacts on birds and pollinators. BBC News - Leaves falling, berries ripe, but it's hot. Is autumn coming early? www.bbc.com/news/article...
A friend told me I need to shamelessly make sure people see #Heiresses daily so here’s today’s reminder that it’s available for pre-order now! uk.bookshop.org/p/books/heir...
Argues the path to peace involves pressuring the UAE and Egypt, who have economic interests (primarily from gold mining) in the conflict through its main protagonists.
‘The finds suggest Great Britain in that era was more globally interconnected and diverse than many previously suspected.’
It would be a very significant restriction on free speech & counter-speech if you CAN say "I wouldn't want to live next door to an Afghan/a refugee/a Muslim/a Romanian" but you can NOT counter by describing political statements as xenophobic that a great many people would see as clearly xenophobic
Dr Kandiah is correct, though. One only needs to read Jenrick’s statement. Note his language: “backward countries,” “broke in.” This is more than “concern about the threat of illegal migrants.” His issue isn’t with immigration but with the origin of these immigrants, and he says so plainly
As Frances Ryan says, this is a race to the bottom, and the only winners will be Jenrick and Farage
The employment rate of non-EU born migrants exceeded that of the UK-born for the first time on record. Confirms other evidence that recent migrants (even if they did not arrive on work visas) are very likely to be working/have high employment rates.
BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen has confirmed that the entire Al Jazeera team in Gaza City has been killed.
"Turning the issue of “broken Britain” into one of immigration deflects from the real problems facing the working class and the poor, obscures the real causes, and lets off the hook those who are responsible for breaking Britain." @kenanmalik.bsky.social observer.co.uk/news/opinion...
Very few people seem to understand university finances and, distressingly, this includes many academics and most policymakers. This is an attempt to condense the key points you need to know. open.substack.com/pub/profseri...
It’s a model of public engagement, and engaged scholarship, providing the understanding for the questions of value it provokes and demands of us. 2/2
Recently finished this brilliant book by @helenczerski.bsky.social on the ocean as complex, wondrous planetary machine with and through which so much life is interconnected, including many human stories. It’s bursting with learning and passion for the subject and so so readable… 1/2
There was a time when mainstream politicians and leaders of various stripes would have called this out for what it is, far right racism Now it’s being regularly and nonchalantly peddled my members of the shadow front bench in the House of Commons
Something has gone very wrong with British politics that almost 500 of people have been arrested at a Palestine Action protest, when we should be standing collectively as a society against the cruelty and devastation on the ground in Palestine www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...
I’d love to see @rosatkins.bsky.social explore this topic for BBC viewers/listeners/readers.
www.euronews.com/green/2025/0...
Currently reading Silent Spring (published 1962), so this story hits particularly hard. Of course we’ve moved on in 63 years, and novel chemicals are more regulated, but I guess we have scaled up everything dramatically so the problem is just as serious overall. www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Just bumping this letter I co-signed under the leadership of @tonyvaughanmp.bsky.social I have met the EHRC leadership twice now and am unimpressed with their 'interim update', their wider reasoning and their interpretation of the Supreme Court judgement.
Aid access to Gaza has improved thanks to resumed fuel deliveries but is still below what was agreed between the European Union and Israel, says an EU report seen by POLITICO.
Credit to the Guardian here for making clear the link between escalating climate impacts and continuing food price inflation in its story here. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
‘The Quaker testimony against war could not coexist with the violence slavery required.’ The resistance of black enslaved people forced that reckoning on Quaker communities, this blog argues.
Making my way thru Robert MacFarlane’s Is a River Alive, and its stories of threatened water-and-multiple-species systems alive together, and the acts of imagination, organisation and experimentation in ontology and law undertaken to protect and revive them.
There's a lot wrong with British democracy, but three things we should defend with iron determination: - no party involvement in appointing judges; - non-partisan drawing of constituency boundaries; - limited party spending by comparison with the US - though this is now very much at risk.
I beleive we will see a scaled down version of this plan, that would not amount to full occupation of Gaza City, Dir al-Balah and the Mawasi (these are the 14% of Gaza Strip where civilians have been concentrated in). In other words, more of the same. And "the same" is starvation and genocide.
On our lead story tonight:
The head of the Anglican church in Korea had put out a statement calling for her release, so this escalated quickly.
news.sky.com/story/it-is-...
‘We are organisms, not computers.’ On how research into the brain is captive to a picture that doesn’t really fit us. aeon.co/essays/your-...
And the reason why Black people were hypervigilant about it all is because Jim Crow is very much within living memory and the end of chattel slavery's only two long human lifetimes away for us. My mom is older than Ms. Ruby Bridges. She had me just 12 years after the Civil Rights act was passed.
124/ The Labour right is the tinman (needs a heart), the Labour soft left is the lion (needs courage), the Labour hard left is scarecrow (needs a brain), while Blue Labour is Dorothy (just wants to get back somewhere black and white).
Should Britain remain a member of the ECHR? Yes 58% No 29% Much party/media pressure on the leader of the Opposition to shift to the side with half of the support! Often predicated on the mistaken media/political assumption that is the popular side of the argument (Sunday Times)
An aerial view of what the Gaza City area looked like this week. Taken from a Jordanian military aircraft, by our colleague Heidi Levine.
Thrilled that the story of Lela Harris’s stunning portrait of Miss Lambe from #Sanditon has made it to the BBC news. You can read more about her incredible work and how my research on the Lady’s Magazine, fashion plates and Austen intersect with it here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Fd up with doomer takes on the UK? Here’s some positive stuff www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...
Marine climate interventions offer hope but carry risks. Innovation outpaces regulation and monitoring, risking ineffective or harmful actions. Responsible governance with ethical, inclusive, and evidence-based principles is crucial for leveraging the ocean’s potential in fighting climate change.
Also, threat of compulsory redundancies with no transparency about the basis for them is quite something… (see petition)
Important paragraph in here: faith groups have been vocally critical of Israel's recent actions in Gaza since it began, but the ELCA has joined a growing number of Christian denominations that are specifically describing it as a genocide. Earlier this week, a global group of Quakers did the same.
Fantastic flowers beginning with H
‘Our genocide’: Israeli rights groups abandon their restraint on Gaza After months of hesitation, B'Tselem & Physicians for Human Rights-Israel assert that Israel's assault on Gaza is intended to erase Palestinian life — both now and in the future. www.972mag.com/btselem-phri...