Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
There will be be (forced) mergers
Fundamentally that doesn't change the money in vs money out problem the sector has - it just means that the better run institutions will be dragged down by the worse ones.
Because of the way student loans are already designed to function as a graduate tax and never be repaid, if the government decides to increases tuition fees, that won't actually be paid by students, but from the government's coffers as increased levels of write off at the end of the student loan terms. This is almost certainly why the government doesn't want to allow fees to increase by more than token amounts.
The reality is that far too many people are going to Uni to do low value courses, when they should be going straight into the workforce (in many cases, aged 16 to go and do apprenticeships). This is a stupid and unsustainable waste of lots of money and of people's working lives, and it's the fruit of yet another one of Blair's moronic deeds. The challenge is unwinding the current mess in an orderly way...
You're going to be AMAZED to hear that, despite the funding crisis in academia, vice-chancellors' salaries continue to hit new records:
Of course, entitled public sector managers will decimate the services they're in charge of before sacrificing their own pay.
And the entitled public sector manager par excellence, with his own pension by Act of Parliament, will naturally show no inclination to investigate what's going on.
Interesting intersection of "work from Home" "distance learning" and "AI" - does the combination of all three make lecture halls, lecturers and large University campuses a thing of the past? Maybe not today....but soon....
I think the whole WFH thing may be a massive own goal for the middle class middle and upper management who both benefited from it - they had a nice home to work from and had already "learned on the job".
New recruits in a cramped bedsit they couldn't wait to get out of, who haven't learnt on the job, or how business personal interaction worked were disadvantaged.
If they're not needed in the office, maybe they aren't needed at all.......
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The model may have been a faulty one, but it was working.
The last Government in their panic over small boat immigration effectively killed funding from foreign students for the entire university sector through a range of tightened visa regulations.
At the end of the day why go to an unwelcoming sh*thole like Cardiff (or elsewhere in the UK) when universities in New Zealand and Canada are happy to take money from the Saudi, Chinese and Indian Governments?
Has Phillipson made one statement about any of this?
If she has I have missed it.
She seems to be spending all her time arguing about how many items of clothing should make up a school uniform while the HEI sector burns to the ground.
Has anyone told Reeves yet that HEIs were an actual genuine UK growth story?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
Its not AI driven, its most likely down the lack of an increase in tuition fees for far too long. Universities suffer from inflation like anyone else and need electricity etc. Nottingham and Manchester are examples where student recruitment has deliberately chosen foreign students at the expense of home as they produce more income.
I suspect that the scare at Cardiff is a bit overblown - probably a freeze on recruitment, some job losses, potentially closing some courses if they are not economic.
There's a long standing urban legend that the Cambrian Line only survived cuts as it passed through six marginal Labour constituencies.
The Welsh universities will be bailed out and change will be pushed back. Too many of the constituencies around them will either already be marginal or will become marginal at the next election if the local UK student population drops.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The model may have been a faulty one, but it was working.
The last Government in their panic over small boat immigration effectively killed funding from foreign students for the entire university sector through a range of tightened visa regulations.
At the end of the day why go to an unwelcoming sh*thole like Cardiff (or elsewhere in the UK) when universities in New Zealand and Canada are happy to take money from the Saudi, Chinese and Indian Governments?
Has Phillipson made one statement about any of this?
If she has I have missed it.
She seems to be spending all her time arguing about how many items of clothing should make up a school uniform while the HEI sector burns to the ground.
Has anyone told Reeves yet that HEIs were an actual genuine UK growth story?
Unless the government reinstate previous terms for student visas, it is all over for the sector. And I can't see that occurring when we are still fixated with small boats crossing despite there being no correlation whatsoever.
Posters come on here and explain that "Reeves is shit" and she has done little to prove otherwise, but are comment free on the disastrous legacy left by the previous administration in so many foreign revenue generating sectors. And, I won't mention Brexit.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
Its not AI driven, its most likely down the lack of an increase in tuition fees for far too long. Universities suffer from inflation like anyone else and need electricity etc. Nottingham and Manchester are examples where student recruitment has deliberately chosen foreign students at the expense of home as they produce more income.
I suspect that the scare at Cardiff is a bit overblown - probably a freeze on recruitment, some job losses, potentially closing some courses if they are not economic.
But its not AI that is the cause.
I guess the public and most MPs will only finally wake up when a uni actually declares bankruptcy.
Although no one in the sector knows what the plan would be if one did do so.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
There will be be (forced) mergers
Fundamentally that doesn't change the money in vs money out problem the sector has - it just means that the better run institutions will be dragged down by the worse ones.
Because of the way student loans are already designed to function as a graduate tax and never be repaid, if the government decides to increases tuition fees, that won't actually be paid by students, but from the government's coffers as increased levels of write off at the end of the student loan terms. This is almost certainly why the government doesn't want to allow fees to increase by more than token amounts.
The reality is that far too many people are going to Uni to do low value courses, when they should be going straight into the workforce (in many cases, aged 16 to go and do apprenticeships). This is a stupid and unsustainable waste of lots of money and of people's working lives, and it's the fruit of yet another one of Blair's moronic deeds. The challenge is unwinding the current mess in an orderly way...
You're going to be AMAZED to hear that, despite the funding crisis in academia, vice-chancellors' salaries continue to hit new records:
Of course, entitled public sector managers will decimate the services they're in charge of before sacrificing their own pay.
And the entitled public sector manager par excellence, with his own pension by Act of Parliament, will naturally show no inclination to investigate what's going on.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
There will be be (forced) mergers
Fundamentally that doesn't change the money in vs money out problem the sector has - it just means that the better run institutions will be dragged down by the worse ones.
Because of the way student loans are already designed to function as a graduate tax and never be repaid, if the government decides to increases tuition fees, that won't actually be paid by students, but from the government's coffers as increased levels of write off at the end of the student loan terms. This is almost certainly why the government doesn't want to allow fees to increase by more than token amounts.
The reality is that far too many people are going to Uni to do low value courses, when they should be going straight into the workforce (in many cases, aged 16 to go and do apprenticeships). This is a stupid and unsustainable waste of lots of money and of people's working lives, and it's the fruit of yet another one of Blair's moronic deeds. The challenge is unwinding the current mess in an orderly way...
You're going to be AMAZED to hear that, despite the funding crisis in academia, vice-chancellors' salaries continue to hit new records:
Of course, entitled public sector managers will decimate the services they're in charge of before sacrificing their own pay.
And the entitled public sector manager par excellence, with his own pension by Act of Parliament, will naturally show no inclination to investigate what's going on.
What a surprise !!!
Trebles all round, at the taxpayers expense.
PhD proposal - “Relative performance of University Vice Chancellors - human, chimpanzee, Komodo dragon and small rocks”
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
Labour's 1.5 Million new homes won't cut it, assuming they can even hit it.
Listening to The Rest is Politics (occasionally) I note that Rory Stewart is practically incandescent about the migration figures, asking this question as well as others.
Park the racism / jingoism for a moment and just look at the numbers - we can't possibly sustain the Tory migration figures since they Took Back Control.
At the same time, we don't have the workforce to build 1.5m new homes. Which means we need migrants to fill the gaps in the labour market whilst we both make construction desirable and train people to do it.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Great spot. I figured the previous "research" was bound to be compromised, and lo and behold...
F1: working on something and just noticed Isack Hadjar (new Racing Bulls driver) was 5 when I started tipping on F1 in 2009.
Earlier, I noticed Hulkenberg's literally old enough to be his team mate's dad.
Lol, we comment at work now about we're old enough to be various new starters parents and grandparents.
It’s no fun when you realise you are close to becoming a grandparent.
I remember when I opened by eldest’s first bank account, within a week I got an email from the bank telling me it was never too early to start saving for grandchildren. I was 42 at the time.
I said at the time cutting WFA was a political disaster.
Anyone with an ounce of political sense could have told Reeves to think again when this popped into her head. Or at least map out how to do it in a gradual process that doesn't hit so many people at such a low threshold.
I pointed out at the time the reason you have universal benefits is that it’s often impossible or blooming expensive to find a suitable dataset to use
Would be simpler to up WFA, if anything, and at the same time make it taxable. (The increase needed to allow for that at the lower income end.)
And do something about bloody DWP and their inability to administer the income tax liability of the momey they pay out - i.e. P60s.
Labour's 1.5 Million new homes won't cut it, assuming they can even hit it.
Higher occupancy of existing homes.
Ceteris paribus This means housing goes up in real terms doesn't it ?
under the laws of supply and demand, it should do, yes.
More suburban semis converted to HMO's and more shipping containers in back gardens FTW.
If govts want to increase the population to the level they increase it then they should plan for it rather than just make noises about not wanting to but ploughing on anyway.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
There will be be (forced) mergers
Fundamentally that doesn't change the money in vs money out problem the sector has - it just means that the better run institutions will be dragged down by the worse ones.
Because of the way student loans are already designed to function as a graduate tax and never be repaid, if the government decides to increases tuition fees, that won't actually be paid by students, but from the government's coffers as increased levels of write off at the end of the student loan terms. This is almost certainly why the government doesn't want to allow fees to increase by more than token amounts.
The reality is that far too many people are going to Uni to do low value courses, when they should be going straight into the workforce (in many cases, aged 16 to go and do apprenticeships). This is a stupid and unsustainable waste of lots of money and of people's working lives, and it's the fruit of yet another one of Blair's moronic deeds. The challenge is unwinding the current mess in an orderly way...
You're going to be AMAZED to hear that, despite the funding crisis in academia, vice-chancellors' salaries continue to hit new records:
Of course, entitled public sector managers will decimate the services they're in charge of before sacrificing their own pay.
And the entitled public sector manager par excellence, with his own pension by Act of Parliament, will naturally show no inclination to investigate what's going on.
What a surprise !!!
Trebles all round, at the taxpayers expense.
PhD proposal - “Relative performance of University Vice Chancellors - human, chimpanzee, Komodo dragon and small rocks”
I think Vice Chancellors are somewhat unfairly maligned. They are managing large complex organisations with thousands of staff. What are equivalent people in other trades paid?
At Bath we had an issue where our ex ex VC was the highest paid in the country. This was an issue because Bath was not the best Uni in the country, rather was a top 10 Uni (on most league tables) but only of middling size (in student terms). It was not unlike Ipswich Town's manager being paid more than Arni Slot at Liverpool.
Certainly the winter fuel allowance cut has hit Labour hard with pensioners and led to leakage to the Conservatives and LDs especially. Indeed Labour are now fourth with pensioners in some polls.
Immigration has also led to further leakage to Reform as the chart shows and the increase in NI on employers and in IHT on farmers to the Conservatives
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Kids won’t take on massive student debt if there aren’t good, high-paying graduate level jobs at the end of it. And there aren’t
So this isn’t just a “foreign students” issue (tho it is that, as well). This means falling demand
Also, uni courses are less desirable because the whole experience has declined. Online teaching, less social life, etc
A perfect storm indeed
There is no falling demand. Our applications for pharmacy are up 10% on last year, which was up on the year before. The Uni as a whole is up on last year (but not by as much).
Most teaching is blended - some online material and a lot in person (course and Uni dependent). And the social lives are fine - why do you think they are having less?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
On thread: I was running the line at a junior football match at the weekend. Leafy Cheshire against WWC Manchester. As linesman, I got to eavesdrop on both sets of conversations. The Cheshire conversation was about disappointment with Labour "most of us had just been hanging on until Labour got in, thinking things would improve, interest rates would come down, but it's just getting worse ... Reeves hasn't got a clue"; the Manchester conversation somewhat earthier and angrier, and focused on the Christmas party which had been cancelled because the venue had been turned into a hotel for illegal immigrants.
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
Interesting. Another place where it would useful to get the current formguide is the school staffroom, where traditionally in most (state school) places, any support for the Tories (let alone Reform!!) can't be said out loud, while Labour, apart from not being lefty enough are sanctified. How is it at the moment?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
Kids won’t take on massive student debt if there aren’t good, high-paying graduate level jobs at the end of it. And there aren’t
So this isn’t just a “foreign students” issue (tho it is that, as well). This means falling demand
Also, uni courses are less desirable because the whole experience has declined. Online teaching, less social life, etc
A perfect storm indeed
There is no falling demand. Our applications for pharmacy are up 10% on last year, which was up on the year before. The Uni as a whole is up on last year (but not by as much).
Most teaching is blended - some online material and a lot in person (course and Uni dependent). And the social lives are fine - why do you think they are having less?
I imagine a degree like Pharmacy at a sound uni like Bath would be one of the last to suffer - indeed you may never suffer, and I hope you don’t. I never wish ill on my fellow PBers
It WILL start with crappy Arts course at the University of Lidl car park. And spread from there
I said at the time cutting WFA was a political disaster.
Anyone with an ounce of political sense could have told Reeves to think again when this popped into her head. Or at least map out how to do it in a gradual process that doesn't hit so many people at such a low threshold.
I pointed out at the time the reason you have universal benefits is that it’s often impossible or blooming expensive to find a suitable dataset to use
Would be simpler to up WFA, if anything, and at the same time make it taxable. (The increase needed to allow for that at the lower income end.)
And do something about bloody DWP and their inability to administer the income tax liability of the momey they pay out - i.e. P60s.
Remember my plan - 3p on income tax while keeping the WFA. It meant pensioner got a little extra that meant only those receiving £20,000 in income would lose out
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
And then see students revolt. Students would be hit by a rise in tuition fees while Labour's core NHS vote would benefit from a rise in salary.
Far better would be to link fees to graduate earning premium of course and cost of course, the one size feels fits all courses model is clearly failing
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
“”He’s an intellectual and like most intellectuals, he’s quite stupid’, as Mme. De Merteuil put it.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
Is that last entirely true, though ?
It's possible to imagine a solution with fewer places, for higher value degrees, which charge realistic student fees. The getting there would be extremely painful for the sector, but it might be inevitable ?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
Looks like the forecast is 5 million, in round terms, net migration over that period with births and deaths being similar.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It seems to me that universities are like foreign holiday destinations. At the first hint of trouble or difficulty all the potential customers can, and mostly will, go elsewhere and it is cost free to do so. At which point you don't have a product. So controlling the news story, until you actually go bust, is essential. Enough bits of speculation will inevitably cause the very thing they want to avoid.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
Terrific band, great lyrics. Hanging on in Quiet desperation is the English way is a favourite lyric of theirs. Different LP.
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
Looks like the forecast is 5 million, in round terms, net migration over that period with births and deaths being similar.
I expect deaths will be exceeding births at the end point of that; a trend which will continue in the long run. But the net difference is going to be tiny compared to net inward migration, certainly to the mid 2030s. Who knows what happens after that.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It seems to me that universities are like foreign holiday destinations. At the first hint of trouble or difficulty all the potential customers can, and mostly will, go elsewhere and it is cost free to do so. At which point you don't have a product. So controlling the news story, until you actually go bust, is essential. Enough bits of speculation will inevitably cause the very thing they want to avoid.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
A friend I used to work with set up his own business. Import from Eastern Europe of small volume machined parts for machine/equipment manufacturers in the UK of which there are still a fair few and not wanting extended supply chains into China.
The plan was for his son to take it on once up and running. His son, nice lad, worked with him a few times, decided Engineering wasn't for him and became a teacher after a couple of years.
Kids won’t take on massive student debt if there aren’t good, high-paying graduate level jobs at the end of it. And there aren’t
So this isn’t just a “foreign students” issue (tho it is that, as well). This means falling demand
Also, uni courses are less desirable because the whole experience has declined. Online teaching, less social life, etc
A perfect storm indeed
There is no falling demand. Our applications for pharmacy are up 10% on last year, which was up on the year before. The Uni as a whole is up on last year (but not by as much).
Most teaching is blended - some online material and a lot in person (course and Uni dependent). And the social lives are fine - why do you think they are having less?
I imagine a degree like Pharmacy at a sound uni like Bath would be one of the last to suffer - indeed you may never suffer, and I hope you don’t. I never wish ill on my fellow PBers
It WILL start with crappy Arts course at the University of Lidl car park. And spread from there
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
Literal blinkers?
Absolutely no chance that some chap with multiple names will start selling “Sheepul, take off your blinkers. Your country is being stolen/overrun and They are hiding it from you!”
Complete with TikTok clips made from colourised Nazi films about minorities, probably.
Kids won’t take on massive student debt if there aren’t good, high-paying graduate level jobs at the end of it. And there aren’t
So this isn’t just a “foreign students” issue (tho it is that, as well). This means falling demand
Also, uni courses are less desirable because the whole experience has declined. Online teaching, less social life, etc
A perfect storm indeed
There is no falling demand. Our applications for pharmacy are up 10% on last year, which was up on the year before. The Uni as a whole is up on last year (but not by as much).
Most teaching is blended - some online material and a lot in person (course and Uni dependent). And the social lives are fine - why do you think they are having less?
I imagine a degree like Pharmacy at a sound uni like Bath would be one of the last to suffer - indeed you may never suffer, and I hope you don’t. I never wish ill on my fellow PBers
It WILL start with crappy Arts course at the University of Lidl car park. And spread from there
Except it isn't - Cardiff is a big player.
Read the articles. Apparently it has shifted en masse to online education which is part of the problem
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
Terrific band, great lyrics. Hanging on in Quiet desperation is the English way is a favourite lyric of theirs. Different LP.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
One thing education should inculcate is that being good at something requires continuing hard graft, even if you're talented. (It didn't, for me.)
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
Our son turned two last week. Its amazingly expensive (worth it). Nursery costs are eye-watering. There is now funded nursery care but its only 15 hours a week at his age (30 when he turns 3). We are lucky to have the space - not so easy in smaller accommodation.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
I doubt many noticed because it's so small, but my alma mater of Lampeter, the third oldest degree-awarding institution in England and Wales, went under last week.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
Terrific band, great lyrics. Hanging on in Quiet desperation is the English way is a favourite lyric of theirs. Different LP.
Same LP. Same song!
I annoyed Mrs RP a few years back when I asked where my 30s had gone - the 10 years had got behind me. She pointed out that we'd had two children in that decade. And we had! But I had had to work so absurdly hard with long hours to pay the bills that I felt like I'd missed it.
This is the burden of modern life. I've done reasonably well in my career. On paper we have a Lot. A big house (relatively). Nice car. Our kids have stuff we could never have hoped to have the 80s equivalents of. But the price has been my time. With my various consultancy / YouTube / ecommerce business interests I work 6 days a week and some weeks could do 7 days and still not cover it all off. The only way to possibly cope has been to drop politics (practically speaking, not formally).
Roger Waters has aged into an absolute tosser. But his lyrics about the nature of life written in his late 20s are Huge. Massive. Crushing.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
Sigh, here we go again.
This is just the beginning
“Staff at Cardiff University fear huge job cuts are about to be announced by a senior management team that has already spoken of an ‘immediate existential crisis’ ✍️@Ship”
You may not care, entire towns and cities are gonna be gutted by this
I think there's a tendency for people to believe that Radical Tech will destroy the things they dislike. In this case, for you, Universities which you don't like because they are incubators of progressive values. I'm trying to be more objective. Apply logic rather wishful thinking. Ask not what I want to happen but what is likely to happen.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
Literal blinkers?
Absolutely no chance that some chap with multiple names will start selling “Sheepul, take off your blinkers. Your country is being stolen/overrun and They are hiding it from you!”
Complete with TikTok clips made from colourised Nazi films about minorities, probably.
There could be some of that yes. But I'm looking at the upsides of all this. It's coming so I think that's the best mindset. Challenges = Opportunities.
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
Terrific band, great lyrics. Hanging on in Quiet desperation is the English way is a favourite lyric of theirs. Different LP.
Same LP, actually. Different song though.
We are both in error.
I thought Leon's lyrics were from a track on Animals. I was wrong.
Both Lyrics are for the same song, Time
Time (Edit) Song by Pink Floyd Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown Waiting for someone or something to show you the way Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking And racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say Home, home again I like to be here when I can And when I come home cold and tired It's good to warm my bones beside the fire Far away, across the field The tolling of the iron bell Calls the faithful to their knees To hear the softly spoken magic spells
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
A friend I used to work with set up his own business. Import from Eastern Europe of small volume machined parts for machine/equipment manufacturers in the UK of which there are still a fair few and not wanting extended supply chains into China.
The plan was for his son to take it on once up and running. His son, nice lad, worked with him a few times, decided Engineering wasn't for him and became a teacher after a couple of years.
45 or so years ago my elder son knew what he wanted to do, something needing an apprenticeship. So he went off, did it, got a job afterwards and then decided he needed a degree to do it properly. So he went and found a Uni that would take him and enjoyed his course. However neither of his children have the same focus. To be fair, I didn't, either.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
Terrific band, great lyrics. Hanging on in Quiet desperation is the English way is a favourite lyric of theirs. Different LP.
Same LP. Same song!
I annoyed Mrs RP a few years back when I asked where my 30s had gone - the 10 years had got behind me. She pointed out that we'd had two children in that decade. And we had! But I had had to work so absurdly hard with long hours to pay the bills that I felt like I'd missed it.
This is the burden of modern life. I've done reasonably well in my career. On paper we have a Lot. A big house (relatively). Nice car. Our kids have stuff we could never have hoped to have the 80s equivalents of. But the price has been my time. With my various consultancy / YouTube / ecommerce business interests I work 6 days a week and some weeks could do 7 days and still not cover it all off. The only way to possibly cope has been to drop politics (practically speaking, not formally).
Roger Waters has aged into an absolute tosser. But his lyrics about the nature of life written in his late 20s are Huge. Massive. Crushing.
Yes, I mistook Leon's lyrics for a song on Animals.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
If we could do it all offshore, then this would be a great idea.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
Our son turned two last week. Its amazingly expensive (worth it). Nursery costs are eye-watering. There is now funded nursery care but its only 15 hours a week at his age (30 when he turns 3). We are lucky to have the space - not so easy in smaller accommodation.
Grandson One and his wife are in a similar position. Their son is a similar age and they both work, and need to bring work home (teachers). I'm sure they'd like another child, but there are lots of things against the idea.
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
A friend I used to work with set up his own business. Import from Eastern Europe of small volume machined parts for machine/equipment manufacturers in the UK of which there are still a fair few and not wanting extended supply chains into China.
A total fucking degenerate I sailed with on Invincible has a racket where he orders a 40' container full of model railway bits from China once/year and then makes a handsome living selling them on eBay. Seems like easy money for those that aren't prone to boredom.
We once went to a happy ending massage place in Mong Kok to get some sports injuries seen to and he paid one of the women to let him lick a giant African's jizz off her hand. For a laugh.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
If we could do it all offshore, then this would be a great idea.
Its already happening - British Uni's opening campuses in the Far East for instance.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
And then one day you find, ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
Terrific band, great lyrics. Hanging on in Quiet desperation is the English way is a favourite lyric of theirs. Different LP.
Same LP, actually. Different song though.
We are both in error.
I thought Leon's lyrics were from a track on Animals. I was wrong.
Both Lyrics are for the same song, Time
Time (Edit) Song by Pink Floyd Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown Waiting for someone or something to show you the way Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today And then one day you find ten years have got behind you No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking And racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say Home, home again I like to be here when I can And when I come home cold and tired It's good to warm my bones beside the fire Far away, across the field The tolling of the iron bell Calls the faithful to their knees To hear the softly spoken magic spells
Dark Side of the Moon had some weird juju magic going on
Pink Floyd were a great band, but on that one album literally everythig came together perfectly and took them beyond greatness - like multiple planets aligning with a million stars. From these superb lyrics to the great tunes left over from prior sessions to the ideas they had in the studio as they recorded, to handy session singers and musicians sitting in the Abbey Road cafe that they lassoed into recording - especially the amazing vocals on Great Gig in The Sky
It could have been just a very very good album, but they lucked out, as did everyone else
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
Hasn't he also done an edict forbidding gender change from now on, ie it won't be possible to be trans in America?
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
What would be the point of doing that if they won't get the money back anyway.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
My younger son is 17 and has a few months left in education. Doesn't want to go to university but understandably has no clue what they want to do with their life (for you are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today...)
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
It was the other way round for me. A couple of years ago my son, then 19, came up with an idea for a small business. I was working for a company that I didn't particularly like, and he suggested I work for him instead. Since I was otherwise financially secure (mortgage paid off, a decent stash of savings), I decided, fuck it, packed in my job and started working for him. I obviously earn far less, but it's a lot more fun working with my son, and one day we may even become profitable
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
And as others have pointed out, while appointing as Defence Sec a drunkard, alleged sex pest and likely white supremacist.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
Yeah, we're also reasonably healthy (per the financial reports). Partly due to a substantial research focus and also due to processes over the last few years of voluntary severance etc, which has reduced the teaching staff and also trimmed some of the courses, the ones that were always marginal anyway.
ETA: And cancellation or scaling back of some capital projects, which may come back to bite in due course.
President Trump, who has never served a day in the US military, just issued an executive order claiming that the 15,000 trans people serving in our country's armed forces lack the honor, honesty, humility, and selflessness necessary to do their duty. https://x.com/AriDrennen/status/1884124773694980467
The quote in question comes from the Executive Order "Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness", see https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prioritizing-military-excellence-and-readiness-2/ It forbids "medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria" and "shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex". and gives the SecDef (or Homeland Security for the Coast Guard) 30 days to do it.
It states pretty baldy..Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false “gender identity” divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service. .., which is demonstrably untrue.
And as others have pointed out, while appointing as Defence Sec a drunkard, alleged sex pest and likely white supremacist.
None of those qualities are traditionally rare in the upper echelons of US government. DJT just doesn't pretend to care about it.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Looks like the paper is 99.9% bollocks with a 0.1% interesting grain of an idea to me. It's strange how academics can get away with imposing their totally slanted views onto their piblished 'academic' papers.
But, freedom of speech and all that - is it worth getting het up about?
It's an extremely rambling way of saying that AirBnB usage has grown faster than trend in predominantly black neighbourhoods, and that most renters are white.
Apart from adding "computational hermeneutics" to my bullshit dictionary, a waste of five minutes of my time.
You mean that AirBnB usage has grown faster in poorer, cheaper neighbourhoods?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
Insofar as the 'poorer' and 'majority black' correlate, yes. There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
Given the author talks of “bodegas” - this is the US.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It's New York, and the article makes a lot out of the striking differences between how black hosts and white hosts in those neighbourhoods advertise on Airbnb (and differences between black and white reviewers). How strongly those differences really support the conclusion is a bit open to question, but I think it's an interesting observation, and the article is not just about Airbnb and gentrification.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Have you looked at overseas fees?
Gordon Brown stopped Oxford doing, basically, this.
Oxford had realised that due to the rise of China, India etc, there are vast numbers of (equivalent) 4A* students out there.
So they were planning Foreign College Oxford. Charge fees a bit less than US Ivy League. Deluxe accommodation and facilities. Use the huge fees to hire the best academics.
Sorry to labour my point, but here is another gem from the author of the paper that the previous header was based on. It is about the impact of AirBnB:
"The analysis shows how white entrepreneurs attempt to attract guests through a form of colonial discourse: exoticizing difference, emphasizing foreignness, and treating communities as consumable experiences for an outside group. White visitors, in turn, consume these cultural symbols to decorate their own identities of touristic consumption, describing themselves in colonial tropes of brave white adventurers exploring uncharted territories: glorious conquests no longer over gold and ivory, but over sandwiches at a local bodega. This situates Airbnb’s marketing at the urban frontier in a longer history of colonialism and racialized expropriation."
That paper opened my eyes. I've let out my spare bedroom on Airbnb a couple of times and I'm shocked - SHOCKED - to discover that I was taking part in a system of colonialism and racialized expropriation. I thought I was just trying to make a few spare pounds with an otherwise unused asset. I promise to spent the whole of the next year on my knees to atone for my unacceptable oppression of ethnic minorities.
And I still can't believe that the author of the paper blames all of society's ills on the far right but gives the far left a free pass.
Did this guy get paid a shedload of cash to come up with this crap ?
If it’s any consolation this kind of crap is completely doomed in our Brave New World. No one will commission it, no one will pay for it, no one will care
You will be able to generate this stuff instantly for zero pence by pushing a button, and it will be “better” - and endless
An entire edifice - academe, academic publishing, the university sector - is about to collapse. See Cardiff university right now - on the verge of bankruptcy. Many more universities will follow it into oblivion. Most of them in fact
AI isn't what is destroying Cardiff and other universities - it's lack of income relative to expenditure.
The last Government not increasing fees whilst also reducing overseas students was the final straw but universities have been a slow moving train wreck for the past 2 years. The only question was where the true scale of the problem would be reveal first.
It’s a perfect storm. New technology is just going to make the storm way more severe and destructive
The collapse of universities will be an epic spectacle
The universities have loaded themselves with debt and spent it on administration, it’s a pyramid scheme waiting to come down in an era where their actual product, of learning and research, has been massively democratised.
They’re now mostly selling scarcity of accreditation through the admissions process.
Talk on X of the entire Welsh university sector crumbling into dust
It will massively impact towns and constituencies where this happens. And it will happen
I remember when a teacher training college closed in my small home town. That was big and bad. These are UNIVERSITIES. Grim
The govt doesn’t have the £££ to bail them all out
Cardiff annual deficit is around 35 million. Pretty sure the Government could find that kind of money (even across ALL universities).
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
As I understand it this would only kick the can down the road. We did this: 1) Slash government funding for universities 2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps 3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots 4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students 5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
The Treasury has stopped selling off student loans.
Because nobody would buy them at those default levels?
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
How about we sell university places to foreign students at five times the cost to a UK student? Sounds like good business.
Is it if they bring along a family of economically inactive dependents who then need to be housed and have access to services we provide ?
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
You're right and it is the same in business as well. The moment people think there's a problem your customers look elsewhere and your suppliers put you on pro forma.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
The current rules heavily tilt defined benefit pensions towards investing in the safest possible financial instruments - effectively gilts or the highest quality corporate bonds.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)
This could be a nice little test case for how transparent, honest and open our Labour government is. If over this period deaths will slightly exceed births, then the 5M rise is entirely migration based - an average of 500K pa.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
Yes, Reform will win in 28-29, for this reason and others, as things stand - and as you say, there is no sign of Labour changing any of this, not radically
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
Out of interest, as the scare stories of the death of Cardiff Uni are floating this morning, I thought I'd look at their job vacancies. 18 academic posts (quite a few as post docs), 46 professional services. Not the sign of imminent disaster there. I suspect the unions and some staff as over-reacting to the series of meetings today.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
It's been eloquently pointed out to you that any university teetering on the edge of bankruptcy will do its best to pretend everything is totes normal and fine, as any hint of trouble will send future students fleeing, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
I've worked at Universities all my life, I know what they do. I suspect that Cardiff are about to announce job freezes, voluntary severance packages and a desire to lose a certain number of jobs. I think there is a media/twitter storm being blown up partly because the Unions are doing this and because there is an information vacuum at the moment. Pretty sure more will come out today.
On Cardiff we currently only have media speculation. Up to is doing the heavy lifting in the potential job losses. We'll see.
It is going to happen. Cardiff have no money. Neither does any other university.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
Totally wrong. Not everywhere is in debt. Bath is pretty healthy (relatively). Sadly its partly because fewer of us do a lot more than we used to.
I can assure you Cardiff are up S**t Street. All the University of Wales Colleges are also in big trouble. Trinity St David's have just closed the Lampeter campus.
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
Are you just talking about Wales then? Tough times everywhere, but its incorrect to say that no other University has any money.
It is not unique to Wales, although I can speak with more authority on the trouble at universities in Wales.
And ignore people who work at Universities not in Sh@t Street?
Comments
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/average-vice-chancellor-pay-rises-ps325000-despite-sector-crisis (£££)
Of course, entitled public sector managers will decimate the services they're in charge of before sacrificing their own pay.
And the entitled public sector manager par excellence, with his own pension by Act of Parliament, will naturally show no inclination to investigate what's going on.
I think the whole WFH thing may be a massive own goal for the middle class middle and upper management who both benefited from it - they had a nice home to work from and had already "learned on the job".
New recruits in a cramped bedsit they couldn't wait to get out of, who haven't learnt on the job, or how business personal interaction worked were disadvantaged.
If they're not needed in the office, maybe they aren't needed at all.......
If she has I have missed it.
She seems to be spending all her time arguing about how many items of clothing should make up a school uniform while the HEI sector burns to the ground.
Has anyone told Reeves yet that HEIs were an actual genuine UK growth story?
There might be some real, interesting stuff in whether AirBnB is creating a more rapid gentrification at the intersections of richer and poorer neighbourhoods. Because of the rapid cycle - people comparing prices vs crimes maps vs cool coffee shops on a daily basis…..
• from an estimated 67.6 million in mid-2022
• to an estimated 72.5 million in mid-2032
https://x.com/ONS/status/1884172618632421411
I suspect that the scare at Cardiff is a bit overblown - probably a freeze on recruitment, some job losses, potentially closing some courses if they are not economic.
But its not AI that is the cause.
The Welsh universities will be bailed out and change will be pushed back. Too many of the constituencies around them will either already be marginal or will become marginal at the next election if the local UK student population drops.
Posters come on here and explain that "Reeves is shit" and she has done little to prove otherwise, but are comment free on the disastrous legacy left by the previous administration in so many foreign revenue generating sectors. And, I won't mention Brexit.
Labour's 1.5 Million new homes won't cut it, assuming they can even hit it.
And Good Morning everyone. Although it isn't here; pouring with rain ATM, although no doubt someone will welcome it.
Oy it could actual raise the tuition fees in line with inflation, as it has done for NHS salaries.
Although no one in the sector knows what the plan would be if one did do so.
What a surprise !!!
Trebles all round, at the taxpayers expense.
Ceteris paribus This means housing goes up in real terms doesn't it ?
Obviously these were just snippets. These are normal people mainly talking about their kids and football. But it was striking to hear politics discussed at all in the real world. I still find it slightly jarring to hear peoplebeing openly critical of Labour (aside from the Corbyn era). For my whole lifetime, my experience in real life has been that only people who know you very well are openly critical of the Labour Party lest people think they are Tories.
The BBC characterises this as "The action does not immediately ban transgender service members." ...
Park the racism / jingoism for a moment and just look at the numbers - we can't possibly sustain the Tory migration figures since they Took Back Control.
At the same time, we don't have the workforce to build 1.5m new homes. Which means we need migrants to fill the gaps in the labour market whilst we both make construction desirable and train people to do it.
I remember when I opened by eldest’s first bank account, within a week I got an email from the bank telling me it was never too early to start saving for grandchildren. I was 42 at the time.
And do something about bloody DWP and their inability to administer the income tax liability of the momey they pay out - i.e. P60s.
More suburban semis converted to HMO's and more shipping containers in back gardens FTW.
If govts want to increase the population to the level they increase it then they should plan for it rather than just make noises about not wanting to but ploughing on anyway.
At Bath we had an issue where our ex ex VC was the highest paid in the country. This was an issue because Bath was not the best Uni in the country, rather was a top 10 Uni (on most league tables) but only of middling size (in student terms). It was not unlike Ipswich Town's manager being paid more than Arni Slot at Liverpool.
Immigration has also led to further leakage to Reform as the chart shows and the increase in NI on employers and in IHT on farmers to the Conservatives
So this isn’t just a “foreign students” issue (tho it is that, as well). This means falling demand
Also, uni courses are less desirable because the whole experience has declined. Online teaching, less social life, etc
A perfect storm indeed
There might have been a very interesting paper to be written about the central point, given further research, but this wan't it.
1.5 million homes will barely cut into the declining ratios of properties to people.
Most teaching is blended - some online material and a lot in person (course and Uni dependent). And the social lives are fine - why do you think they are having less?
https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1883794741617373436
1) Slash government funding for universities
2) Replace this with tuition fees which the government then caps
3) Universities are short of cash and fill the hole with foreign students paying £lots
4) Cities like Sheffield fill up with expensive student apartment blocks occupied exclusively by Chinese students
5) People get the hump and so we reduce the number of foreign students which creates a funding crisis and imperils the entire institution
Lets assume that we jack tuition fees up to £15k a year. This isn't paid by the student, its private sector cash - tuition fees sit as an asset on the balance sheet of whichever company buys the debt. The default rate on these loans is already high (40%?) and increasing the size of the loan only increases the size of the money eventually written off. Which reduced the number of investors willing to stump up the cash which the universities need to operate.
Do I have that roughly right? If so its the British problem - we can't afford the cash to pay for it in the short term, we can't afford the damage to our economy in the medium to long term in not paying for it.
IANAE on university tuition fees at all, in my day only the top 5 or so percent went to Uni. I got an apprenticeship. However it strikes me the current fees system is not fit for purpose at all and is crying out for reform. It is not reasonable to expect min wage shelf stackers to pay for peoples higher education when over half go to Uni. However the current system needs reform.
I Also think for some professions, like the Junior Doctors, as part of their pay offer some sort of fee forgiveness should be looked at.
Where majority black correlate to “the poorer bit of town” very, very well.
It WILL start with crappy Arts course at the University of Lidl car park. And spread from there
Far better would be to link fees to graduate earning premium of course and cost of course, the one size feels fits all courses model is clearly failing
I started a (currently very small) business last autumn with him in mind to build it (ecommerce). There's definitely something here, but it needs time and focus I don't have. He has the time, I have the business nous. Could be a good option for him, but he needs to want to graft.
But on a serious note, there are a number of structural issues around having children now. Especially housing, benefits and breakdown of relationships. If we want more babies (white or otherwise) there are a number of issues around our tax and benefits system that needs addressed.
So in this vein, the main thing I foresee is the total collapse of the far right. Why? Because it won't be too long before the combination of AI and VR means you'll be able to wear e-contacts allowing you to transform your immediate environment. In particular a "no foreign" or "get your country back" setting which will make everything look nice and normal, turn mosques into churches, burkas into dresses, hijabs into baseball caps, etc.
Imagine the political impact of that. Why would anybody feel the need to vote for far right parties when they can simply pop that tech on every time they leave the house and the problem is sorted? The answer is they won't. It's game over for the far right populists. If I were them I'd be thinking urgently about retraining and a change of career.
It's possible to imagine a solution with fewer places, for higher value degrees, which charge realistic student fees. The getting there would be extremely painful for the sector, but it might be inevitable ?
No one told you when to run: you missed the starting gun
Some of the simplest most powerful lyrics in all British music
The plan was for his son to take it on once up and running. His son, nice lad, worked with him a few times, decided Engineering wasn't for him and became a teacher after a couple of years.
OK, so lets assume that we raise tuition fees to £12k or £15k. That is cash which the government now needs to find up front, and will then need to write 40% off. The larger the tuition fees the larger the financial black hole.
A huge debt hypothecated to students. Creating a burden on the government to fund. With a large proportion never to be repaid. As universities are starved of cash.
I'm a big advocate of the blank sheet of paper approach. Nobody would design this structure because its absurd. Can we put something more sensible in place?
Absolutely no chance that some chap with multiple names will start selling “Sheepul, take off your blinkers. Your country is being stolen/overrun and They are hiding it from you!”
Complete with TikTok clips made from colourised Nazi films about minorities, probably.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pension-reforms-to-go-further-to-unlock-billions-to-drive-growth-and-boost-working-peoples-pension-pots
Working people and businesses are set to benefit from new rules that will give more flexibility over how occupational defined benefit pension schemes are managed, as the government continues to remove blockages that are inhibiting its growth agenda that will improve lives of working people across the UK.
Hosting a meeting with leaders of Britain’s biggest businesses in the City of London today (Tuesday 28 January), the Prime Minister and the Chancellor will set out the details of changes and tell some of the country’s leading CEOs that Britain is back and open for business.
At the roundtable, the PM and Chancellor will outline how restrictions will be lifted on how well-funded, occupational defined benefit pension funds that are performing well will be able to invest their surplus funds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78x4l9lk43o
Shame. A great place when I attended in the 1990s, but it's been dying a slow death for a number of years.
I annoyed Mrs RP a few years back when I asked where my 30s had gone - the 10 years had got behind me. She pointed out that we'd had two children in that decade. And we had! But I had had to work so absurdly hard with long hours to pay the bills that I felt like I'd missed it.
This is the burden of modern life. I've done reasonably well in my career. On paper we have a Lot. A big house (relatively). Nice car. Our kids have stuff we could never have hoped to have the 80s equivalents of. But the price has been my time. With my various consultancy / YouTube / ecommerce business interests I work 6 days a week and some weeks could do 7 days and still not cover it all off. The only way to possibly cope has been to drop politics (practically speaking, not formally).
Roger Waters has aged into an absolute tosser. But his lyrics about the nature of life written in his late 20s are Huge. Massive. Crushing.
I thought Leon's lyrics were from a track on Animals. I was wrong.
Both Lyrics are for the same song, Time
Time (Edit)
Song by
Pink Floyd
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death
Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
However neither of his children have the same focus. To be fair, I didn't, either.
Although TBF when I was at University College Cardiff in the 1980s it went bang and had to be bailed out by UWIST. The Government was involved in the rescue and one of the conditions was Principal of UWIST Aubrey Trotman-Dickinson, a personal friend of Thatcher was installed as Vice Principal of the new University of Wales College, Cardiff.
I'd also note that the 18 to 46 split is reminiscent of the discussion last night about the ballooning of admin at Unis. Not all will be that - it will include technicians and portering too, but it is striking.
Nearly all migration is under state control. It can't be done without state permission.
The government could tell us that this projection is great, there are reasons, it is all carefully planned for, it happens because the state wants it to happen and is good for the UK in multitudinous ways which we will now list for you.
If they do something else (and I think they will) we are being as deceived as we were under the Tories.
I'm trying to think which radical reformist party will gain on account of the continuing state obfuscation but I have forgotten their name.
We once went to a happy ending massage place in Mong Kok to get some sports injuries seen to and he paid one of the women to let him lick a giant African's jizz off her hand. For a laugh.
Pink Floyd were a great band, but on that one album literally everythig came together perfectly and took them beyond greatness - like multiple planets aligning with a million stars. From these superb lyrics to the great tunes left over from prior sessions to the ideas they had in the studio as they recorded, to handy session singers and musicians sitting in the Abbey Road cafe that they lassoed into recording - especially the amazing vocals on Great Gig in The Sky
It could have been just a very very good album, but they lucked out, as did everyone else
The best album ever made? I reckon so
This is the same across the country. You can pull out one or two examples of relative successes, but even those are unsustainable under current funding and immigration policy.
ETA: And cancellation or scaling back of some capital projects, which may come back to bite in due course.
The fact Cardiff are still advertising jobs means absolutely zero, in that light
Gordon Brown stopped Oxford doing, basically, this.
Oxford had realised that due to the rise of China, India etc, there are vast numbers of (equivalent) 4A* students out there.
So they were planning Foreign College Oxford. Charge fees a bit less than US Ivy League. Deluxe accommodation and facilities. Use the huge fees to hire the best academics.
This makes sense on at the individual fund level, but absolutely no sense whatsoever at the national level: Pension funds have the longest possible time horizons - they’re the ones who ought to be investing in national infrastructure & reaping the long term benefits.
There’s been a weird double-think in much of the UK for the last few decades, where much talk is made of “growth” but at the same time every part of the system has been constrained to allow as little economic growth as possible. For economic growth to happen somebody, somewhere has to do the actual work: houses have to be built, roads maintained, computer programs have to be written, and so on & on. Preventing pension funds from funding that work helps nobody.
(Economics types will recognise this as an example of the fallacy of composition that Keynes railed against.)