Beedster

Very good points 👍

It was inevitable in HE, it has been systematically over-employing both academic and non academic staff in line with various government agendas (e.g., widening participation) since the early 2000s, and since the Brown Report, the numbers have never (and would never) add up. Too many institutions also offered degree courses because they could (i.e, they attracted students) not because they should (i.e., they gave students a useful qualification), and recruited too many students into these courses in a bums on seats as opposed to match capacity to resources/quality assurance model, which meant that they inevitably recruited too many staff also. Then student numbers dropped, especially in the poorer courses at the poorer institutions. Why did this happen? I worked at 8 UK universities over 25 years, most senior leaders wouldn't last 5-minutes in the real world of business, and most middle managers would simply never get employed anywhere but in HE, where all too often they fail, move sideways on 'Internal applicants only' type roles, fail again, and move sideways again. So UKHE is a disaster now, largely thanks to political manipulation for sure, but also to weak institutional and sector policies and leadership; VCs were too ready to take the cash 20 years ago without thinking about the consequences down the line.

Yep, that's about the truth of it mate Re enabled, I read a lovely piece the other day that likened his relationship with the Republican party to an abusive marriage; the republicans married him out of self-interest and now are in too deep and can't extricate themselves despite seeing everything they believe in abused on a daily basis. But it will turn, I have great faith in the idea of the self-interest of the many wealthy people will eventually outweighing the self interest of the few wealthy people, so he will be gone, or at least rendered impotent

I completely agree, and anyway there are three major problems with Trump's plan to return America to greatness 1. He hasn't got one 2. He hasn't got one 3. He hasn't got one

Two f***ing big ones, for that 🤣

....which might not be a bad thing. The only thing worse than an unpopular egotist in power is a popular egotist in power.... I genuinely think that he and his gang of clowns will be found out and reined-in well before 4-years, I just pray that he doesn't do too much damage in the meantime

...and perhaps the 'Special Relationship' we hear so much about between UK and US was much like a romantic relationship between a neurotic and a narcissist, one falsely believing and hoping that they're really important to the other, the other knowing that the only important person in this relationship is themself....

Trump got them out and they won't be going back to Rumania or UK on his watch. Musk is also a fan and has suggested that they have a role to play in future UK politics. Now of course the reasonable response would be "They're criminals, how could they play a role in politics......?"

That's quite a pessimistic view Pete, you could be right, but it's still quite pessimistic. Re America's allies never trusting them again, I think we as a nation look at the USA through rose tinted lenses, the rhetoric is 'Land of the free', the Constitution etc, but as a country it's tended to act with a mix of mercurial and often disastrous foreign policy, blatant and backfiring economic self-interest, and often pathological disregard for many of its own population. A very old a dear friend, now long gone, was a pilot in the RAF and had on several occasions to take part in joint NATO exercises with US forces. He said he and all his follow pilots dreaded them as the US military was the least organised, least well disciplined, yet most arrogant about it's own status of any that he had worked with. During exercises they had to be constantly vigilant to potential accidents resulting from poorly trained personal to poorly maintained or unsuitable technology to aircraft being where they shouldn't be to friendly fire (and he had some very good examples of each). No joke, he said he'd prefer actual combat to exercises with the US military. OK, one person's view, but I think the US - in military terms at least - was far less the leader of the free world and more one part of a delicate balance.

Just the type of lads Trump would no doubt prefer to be back in the US

Two more members of Team Trump.....?

Something I struggle to understand is the idea that while several large US companies appear able to have substantial revenue from the UK yet pay little tax, UK business owners/businesses are deserting the UK and appear unable to play the same game? It's probably a daft question for which there's an extremely simple answer 🤔

Which is the truth, a clever government has to walk a very fine line between sufficient tax to support society and sufficient private/corporate wealth to support business. Most go too far in one or other direction, but I guess that's short-term party politics for you?

I didn't suggest it was, I was simply saying that they would survive with lower profits despite what they say. The fact that I probably pay more tax to HMRC that Amazon hasn't escaped me Al

The majority of them Steve, and too many politicians on all sides keep big business sweet because it's big business that's going to provide their massive pay-day once their political career is over

You're sounding a lot like the friend in question As I said to him, is that the government, or just the world? I think it's the latter, although I'm happy to be convinced otherwise.....

There are books on science being sold on Amazon that have been written entirely using generative AI. It's not just kids. In fact because education systems are so aware of the need to protect kids from web-based harm and make them very aware of misinformation, conspiracy theories etc, many kids are in fact less vulnerable to misinformation - be it AI or human - than many adults. It gives me some hope 👍

Generative AI works on the information that's out there, and what's out there is not the consequence of tech - intended or unintended (tech is simply the medium) - it's the consequence of the information vacuum that @tegs07describes. And that's the big challenge with AI, not that it can take jobs away or deprive wealthy musicians of royalties, but that it is propagating and thereby reinforcing the misinformed database - largely social media - from which it is learning

I agree but that's a completely separate argument. A friend and i had beer the other day. He's not left wing and has criticised Starmer's government from day 1. He was in reflective mood, because he's starting to see that the logical consequence of the hostility towards, the undermining of, and erosion of institutions such as government (and science, and........) is, well, Trump. And he f*****g hates everything about Trump and the way the World is turning. So yes, you are 100% right, we are as a society so overly critical and sensitive to the slightest deviation from our expectations of institutions that we are inexorably moving towards the same place that the USA finds itself.

Yes, and that decline has not been organic, it has in part, possibly large part, been the result of the systematic use of disinformation (what used to be called propaganda) against institutions by organisations and individuals whose interests are affected by those institutions. It's not all right wing fanatics either. Let's take science for example; cigarette manufacturers systematically undermined and discredited medical science, as more recently have people such as Coca Cola, fossil fuel companies likewise discredited bioscience, academics in social sciences have disputed the relevance and the epistemic value and even validity of the 'harder' sciences such as biology. Political parties and their followers have disputed scientific fact to promote their agendas, financial institutions dispute scientific fact to benefit their clients, manufacturers of plastics dispute scientific fact to maintain their bottom line and shareholder wealth. I could go on, but the reality is that this abuse of science has been going on - certainly in the systematic form I describe - for well over 50 years and has in part created the vacuum you describe. The point I'm making is that it wasn't organic; people didn't just 'lose their faith in science', it was taken from them by the predictable effects of the accumulation of systematic abuse of the integrity of scientific data

That's the systematic hostile action I was referring to. The conspiracy theorists et al haven't 'stepped into that vacuum', they have actively and purposefully created that vacuum to their own political and ideological ends. Nothing about this is organic; yes there are some helpful fools along the way who might be simply and naively repeating things social media, but they are being used by far cleverer and more strategic individuals and organisations. Either way, they are all part of the systematic undermining and abuse of truth, knowledge, freedom, and choice.

I'm guessing if you have a broken piece of kit it's a good way of replacing if FOC.... Worst decision eBay ever made was not allowing sellers to leave negative feedback for buyers

I lost a claim with eBay when I sold a fully functional DigiDesign interface and had it returned as faulty, the return being demonstrably a different unit in terms of serial number and condition from that in the photos in my listing. But when I pointed this out to eBay.......... The buyer claimed that I had in fact not sent him the item in the photos and that I was scamming him 😡 I realised I wasn't going to win if someone's prepared to be that devious and gave up. Ebay were not interested at al, they algorithms had made up its mind. As someone said above, careful who you sell to

And history of course repeats, and in my view is a far better predictor of human behaviour than any of the behavioural sciences (or put another way, history is the most reliable behavioural science). This book is worth a read... ...because when you see how Stalin and Roosevelt largely sidelined Churchill and in doing so engineered the cold war - as well as a territorial and econiomic legacy that in many respects led directly to Russia's claims to Ukraine - it's hard to not see parallels with Trump and Putin now....

Take your point and not disagreeing with the sentiment, but a lot of people have vested interests in that view, diplomats and military because is brings their roles and importance front and centre, ex-prime ministers because it brings them attention as well as their being able to promote a sense of 'this wouldn't have happened on my watch', and intellectuals because having opinions is what they do and on any one scenario the opinions of intellectuals will be sufficiently divided for a significant percentage to be saying something simply because it's the opposite of what another significant percentage of intellectuals are saying. Yes, war is a possibility at present, but not because these groups of people say it is, but because it's f***ing obvious it is and why; the two most powerful countries in the world are being run by borderline psychotic megalomaniacs and because the (largely European) governments and multi-national agencies that would previously have kept them in check have been weakened to the point of impotence by organic decay and systematic hostile action