https://freespeechunion.org/universities-failing-to-promote-diversity-will-face-funding-cuts/ This means that a quarter of all research funding assessments will now be dictated by institutional culture, rather than academic output and impact. In other words, academics may find themselves under heightened pressure to conform to specific ideological frameworks, potentially at the expense of scholarly independence and the open exchange of ideas. […] Notably absent from the new REF criteria is any reference to academic freedom – despite mounting evidence that UK universities are restricting scholars’ ability to research and discuss topics such as the clash between trans rights and women’s sex-based rights.

Driving over the tops just now, I came over the brow of a hill and got an almighty shock at the sight of the huge red moon hanging on the horizon. It’s not up yet here, so have some stars instead, but if you look out in an hour or a bit less you might see Regulus hanging next to it.

Glad to see the Spectator has republished this: I read the pre-paywall part of it the other day and thought the whole thing would be worth a look.

The Spectator

The Rotherham cover-up

‘Rotherham’ has become a catch-all for sex crimes that took place across the UK, not just in the town of Rotherham.

The specific kind of crime that ‘Rotherham’ represents is absolutely racialised, and it is not rare. Rotherham itself is a small town. By a conservative estimate, 1,400 children (the vast majority girls) were abused over a 15-year period, representing a very substantial minority of white girls living in Rotherham at the time. A 2020 study by academics from Reading and Chichester universities estimated that 1 in 73 Muslim men in Rotherham were prosecuted for their involvement in the abuse, with an unknown additional number evading detection. Almost everyone in Rotherham knows someone involved, either as victim or perpetrator. It should not surprise us that, during last Summer’s race riots, the town was the site of some of the most serious violence. But a post-industrial northern town like Rotherham feels a very long way from Westminster. ‘Rotherham’ as a synecdoche doesn’t just represent the racially-motivated sexual torture of adolescent girls, it also represents catastrophic elite failure. https://archive.ph/SQMVD

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I succumbed to the lure of 15p sprouts. @Boo Boo Smidge :doge: 🇬🇧 :potato-queen: is right, supermarket sprouts have got crap. Very glad I also bought some from the greengrocer for Christmas dinner.

UnHerd

A food apocalypse is coming

A lot of people assume that somewhere in Britain there are sheds full of food that we’d distribute in a disaster. Surely there is a grain or butter mountain somewhere? Surely the UK government has a plan for such a crisis? Nope. No sheds. No stores. No mountains of food. No plan. All politicians say that food security matters, but no one admits that basically we don’t have it. Britain probably has less than a week of food supplies. The only food in the UK is what’s on the shelves of our supermarkets now, and what’s in their lorries on the way to the shops. Oh, and whatever you have in the fridge, plus a few crops growing on UK farms or stored in barns, and whatever is edible and roaming around in fields. And perhaps you could hunt or forage if you have a gun or a trap or two.

Brrr. I’m starting to wonder if my decision to not salt the steps was right, the flurries are showing no signs of turning to sleet.

I just heard a segment on the news about the Syrian music scene, and they played some snippets of very interesting fusion electronica. It seems a very long shot, but can anyone point me at some artist names?

UnHerd

The private police patrolling London

Such is the national mood. Trust in the police is at an historic low, with crime recently surging to the fourth-biggest issue in the country. Yet in this vacuum of order, Hadley Wood offers one potential solution. For £100 a month per household, a firm called My Local Bobby will be your private police force, patrolling the lanes and back alleys, responding in 30 seconds to a break-in and even picking your wife up from the station in the dark. I spotted them myself, crawling by in patrol cars as I strolled the empty streets. Behind them, meanwhile, is a team that’ll privately prosecute criminals through the courts, with a conviction rate of 100%, a service recently used by Reform UK after the alleged assault of a police officer at Manchester Airport.

@polarisera boosted your post 🙈 🙉 🙊 I am now seeing (some?) Bluesky content on Nostr, but I’m drawing a blank at getting a link to it over the bridge. Eg: @aoc@bsky-social.eclipse.pub

What (man’s) name would Tolly be short for? I’m drawing a blank other than Ptolemy, which seems unlikely.

University of Exeter News

Pioneering river restoration declared a success delivering incredible benefits for nature and people within 12 months of completion

A year on from the completion of a three-year project on the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate in Somerset to reconnect a section of a river to i...

The ‘ctrl alt delete’ of the river was the first large-scale attempt to reset a UK river to fully reconnect its waters with the surrounding floodplain by filling in a 1.2km managed, straightened and deepened section of the River Aller to transform the area and dramatically create seven hectares of waterscapes and wetlands (equivalent to more than ten football pitches). […] “The twists and turns and numerous flow paths that are now present in the floodplain as the water wends its way over the site through thick vegetation, act as a filter to capture sediment eroded from upstream. “The development of habitat to include faster flowing riffles and gravel beds has also been key for benefitting fish and other aquatic species. The site has moved from a very simple, static system with little opportunity for wildlife to one with significant dynamic complexity which has seen an explosion in life. “Put simply, the system has moved from a very tidy area with little for wildlife to a messy complex jumble of waterscapes and diverse habitats that is full to the brim with a huge variety of plants and animals.”

As you may know, even within these islands there are differences of opinion between people about which vegetable is a turnip and which is a swede. It was* to remove this source of friction that a chap^ by the name of Gilfeather crossed the two plants to create the imaginatively named “Gilfeather’s Turnip-Swede”. *I am making this up. On checking, I find it was a naturally-occurring hybrid. ^Ditto, but I’m right: he was called John. I do wonder if it was his Mrs, having pulled it out in order to prepare dinner, was the one who said “Husband John! Be this thing a turnip or be it a swede?” Tonight, I get to see how it tastes. Dog has already approved.

Do we think this means “go to the garage tomorrow” or “mention it to the garage when the car goes in next week to have its bottom polished”?

I’m on two different WhatsApp groups that are mostly made up of women in their sixties and older. One is rural Shires ladies who are often involved with things like the WI and the church flower rota. It’s normally very apolitical, but just lately has been full of memes about Starmer killing off old people and locking people up for social media wrongthink. The other is London liberal Rejoiners, who had a field day over the election result and have been mysteriously very quiet for the last few weeks….

The first time today I heard a BBC newsreader refer to “new French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal“, I figured it was a slip of the tongue, but I’ve heard it at least twice more since. Are they trying to make people think that the election result has been respected, or something?