Dan

Labour MPs just voted to expand free school meals to half a million more children, lifting 100,000 children out of poverty.

The Tories and Reform UK voted against.

Only Labour will give children growing up in our country the best start in life.

|Country Joe McDonald (1.1.1942-7.3.2026). He wrote one of the great anti-war songs Country Joe McDonald who wrote one of the great anti-war songs, I Feel Like I’m Fixin to Die Rag, about the Vietnam War has died aged 84 Country Joe McDonald – Wikipedia A determinedly political si…

wp.me/p15p2Q-gi8

Vice-chancellor calls for review into student loans for those without A-levels Adam Tickell, of University of Birmingham, says money is loaned to people who ‘are not really capable of graduating’

VC B'ham Uni fails to spot over half a century of open access at @openuniversity.bsky.social. Claims students without A levels 'are not really capable of graduating'. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

May local elections. Farage's business (not really a party) generic leaflet (2 photos of F-word, lies about undocumented humans) nothing local, or positive, about it vs Labour Council listening to locals, regenerating city & MP @chriscurtis94.bsky.social trying to make financing of education fair.

Radical Object: A Song Born of Women's Protest How did a protest by a group of women from a Christian anarchist movement inspire a 1960s American folk song? Victoria Peretitskaya explores the origins of the song, the protest and its feminist legac...

www.historyworkshop.org.uk/womens-histo...

In 1995 Betty became 1st woman Chancellor of the @openuniversity.bsky.social and said, in 2002, that being associated with OU was 'next best thing which happened to me after being speaker'

Image © Stuart Lamb / Arts in Redditch

Image © Trustees of the Paolozzi Foundation

Image © Stuart Lamb / Arts in Redditch

Image © Trustees of the Paolozzi Foundation

UPDATE: We’re delighted that the Eduardo Paolozzi mosaics at Kingfisher Shopping Centre in Redditch (1981-83) have now been Grade II listed, following support from C20. They're the first Paolozzi murals and only the second post-war shopping centre to be partially listed, after Milton Keynes (1979)

‘The University of the Air – celebrating 60 years of Harold Wilson and Jennie Lee’s vision' - LabourList The next decade will determine whether the UK expands opportunity and drives inclusive economic growth or watches while the gaps and division widen. The OU stands ready — as it has for 60 years — to c...

Wilson called @openuniversity.bsky.social his monument. If you seek his monument, look around you at the millions, your mum, auntie, neighbour, who have benefitted from its teaching, learning and research labourlist.org/2026/02/the-...

‘The University of the Air – celebrating 60 years of Harold Wilson and Jennie Lee’s vision' - LabourList The next decade will determine whether the UK expands opportunity and drives inclusive economic growth or watches while the gaps and division widen. The OU stands ready — as it has for 60 years — to c...

HAPPY OU ANNIVERSARY! Today marks 60 years since the ‘University of the Air’ White Paper paved the way for the @OpenUniversity - and I am proud, with Milton Keynes as host city, to celebrate Jennie Lee and Harold Wilson’s vision for access to learning.

labourlist.org/2026/02/the-...

His work on philanthropy was so important to my PhD. And I was lucky enough to be on a pub quiz team with Frank at a conference - the quiz was obviously about the history of philanthropy!

If you missed the news about Elsevier and Wiley (and doubtless the rest to follow) remaking themselves as AI companies with plans to profit from selling AI summaries of academic work back to the institutions that produced the original work:
bsky.app/profile/benp...

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again.
#Pinks #ProudBlue

‘Leave things better than you find them’: the volunteer army cleaning New Zealand’s remote hiking huts Armed with rubber gloves and cleaning supplies, helpers trek through the wilderness to spruce up remote huts dotted across the country

Many of these huts are marvellous and this initiative is to be welcomed www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

Aged 22. Sent to the front days after enlisting.

MP Emily Darlington taking a selfie with children at a local school

I just voted to lift 450,000 children out of poverty. That’s a Labour government in action

Good that my Labour MP @chriscurtis94.bsky.social marked 60 years from Labour's White Paper on The University of the Air by telling OU staff and students that the OU's open policy remains 'vital'. Contrast with Reform which wants to cut educational opportunities.

*Most support staff move from frontline to centre
*Central 'pools' for any support
*Faculties now merge
*Middle management stripped out, centre grows again
*Compulsory redundancies (a)
*Degree numbers radically slimmed down
*Pension moved to much worse scheme
*Compulsory redundancies (b) (4/4)

*Early retirement encouragement
*New degrees chasing novelty, but with no new resource
*Whole subject areas slimmed via...
*Voluntary severance (b)
*Travel and research funds abolished entirely
*Whole subject areas abolished via...
*Voluntary severance (c) (3/4)

*Special meetings with top brass guests
*Lecture on 'no alternative'
*Recruitment freeze
*More topslice of income from centre
*'Restructure' and loss of department
*Talk of 'cross cutting synergies'
*'Lower recruiting' courses cut
*Course mergers
*Module choices cut
*Voluntary Severance (a) (2/4)

Beyond a tiny hardcore of rich universities, if you are an employee in UK Higher Ed you will be somewhere on the treadmill/ slippery slope below. You'll recognise exactly which step you are on at this moment. Take a look. 👇

Opportunity to see some marvellous banners and learn about context

A pile of books, all the same, copies of Chartist Lives by Mark Crail

#Chartism #C19th #History
It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that I am busy trying to flog copies of Chartist Lives. It’s full of amazing stories and it’s £19.99 in hardback, £9.99 in paperback and just £8.99 for kindle.
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0G3Q7PR7Y

"Minnesota" - Marsh Family adaptation of "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)" YouTube video by Marsh Family

The response from the Marsh family to attacks by ICE, perhaps acts as a reminder that, while Stephen Miller wants to provoke a riot and then invoke the Insurrection Act, many citizens prefer to fight fire with water www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRHx...

The day a poet is murdered by ICE by Hannah Eve Levy

When writing about recent developments in the USA, hannaheve.com manages to neither swear nor despair.

Their choice of ‘Ordinary World’ foregrounds how far the US has descended into authoritarian chaos while the videos of the shooting of Renee Good would have made 'Girls on Film' edgy in a horrible way.

100 years of fake news: the accidental radio hoax that te... A century ago, a priest’s satirical BBC broadcast convinced listeners that London was under siege. It became a global sensation, and Orson Welles was listening...

Precursor to Sommerfield’s 1935 novel Mayday? observer.co.uk/style/featur...
@20thccommunism.bsky.social
#20s30s

UK govt consulting until 12.02.26 using online survey. Aim: to make permanent residence (ie indefinite leave to remain) less available via cruel, costly, xenophobic means. Amnesty recommendations as to how to respond: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

Guidance for responding to 'A Fairer Pathway to Settlement' consultation We are Amnesty International UK. We are ordinary people from across the world standing up for humanity and human rights.

UK govt consulting until 12.02.26 using online survey. Aim: to make permanent residence (ie indefinite leave to remain) less available via cruel, costly, xenophobic means. Amnesty recommendations as to how to respond: www.amnesty.org.uk/resources/gu...

Joseph Whitworth, an undervalued figure in industrial history, died on this day 1887, aged 83. His work paved the way for modern mass production.

George Jacob Holyoake, the great Owenite socialist, co-operator, secularist and Chartist, died in Brighton #OnThisDay 22 January 1906 aged 88. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery.