Again: Britain (not just this government but all of the recent ones) has a problem with knowledge work. Fishing, steel are manly proper jobs with a Victorian sense of place and history. Creative industries & HE are treated as secondary; derided or ignored. - ThreadSky

harkaway.bsky.social • 65 days ago

Again: Britain (not just this government but all of the recent ones) has a problem with knowledge work. Fishing, steel are manly proper jobs with a Victorian sense of place and history. Creative industries & HE are treated as secondary; derided or ignored.

Reposted from Prof Katherine Schofield 🇬🇧🇦🇺🇪🇺

This. An emergency recall of parliament on a weekend for British Steel. Nothing at all for UK HE which employs far more people, has already shed 10,000 academic jobs, with several institutions on the brink of collapse.

A reminder: we train all the doctors, teachers, engineers, nurses, lawyers &c &c

Comments

jacinto.bsky.social•65 days ago

Coincidentally, yesterday was the 45th anniversary of the release of Judas Priest’s British Steel album

guym.bsky.social•65 days ago

That is a quality fact. 👏👏👏

jacinto.bsky.social•65 days ago

Glad you liked it. I picked it around the bluesky. Actually from an Iranian professor I really admire.

lemmas.bsky.social•65 days ago

Games Workshop contributes more to the UK economy than fishing

carlos8.bsky.social•65 days ago

Ties in with this piece:
https://www.economist.com/britain/2025/04/09/zombie-politics-how-dead-man-dominates-british-politics

markhaddon.bsky.social•65 days ago

Living in the past.

recombobulating.bsky.social•65 days ago

I think there's still a lot of upper to middle class nostalgia for times when academia and the arts were something they could just do as a nice little hobby, without all these vulgar lower class ideas going around contradicting them.

berkeleyeve.bsky.social•63 days ago

academia, the arts, theatre, docent at the museum...

steve-vio.bsky.social•65 days ago

Can we not have both? Those great graduate engineers need materials to get their ideas built and welding is a good skills based career.

katherineschof8.bsky.social•65 days ago

Exactly this. It’s not a zero sum game. But Labour apparently thinks it is.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

Wouldn’t that be nice? So like I say: save British Steel, but then save HE too?

steve-vio.bsky.social•65 days ago

I work in both the FE and HE sectors and I hate the way both the gown and skills community put each other down. Neither can exist without the other and both need to keep the quality high (there has been some issues with that)

steveprior.bsky.social•65 days ago

Sadly this government like the last and the one before that all the way back to Thatcher, still believes in trickle down economics.

steve-vio.bsky.social•65 days ago

This is true to some extent, but the correction to inequality won't happen overnight, it needs a slowly escalating equalisation of tax on passive income with earned income. That's quite a bold gambit for a government.

steveprior.bsky.social•65 days ago

The how is well above my paygrade. But the need is essential. Food banks alone in a developed economy in 2025 should be the signal that our economic model has failed.

timclare.bsky.social•65 days ago

Yeah I mean in fairness I don't feel like the entry level employee in steel or fishing is exactly lavished with genuine support either. If you look at what the system rewards, our incentives all say the most noble work is in financial services

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

No indeed

aaronhughellis.bsky.social•64 days ago

I saw a great quote once from an Irish civil servant saying that politicians are only concerned with professions that appear in children’s books (farmers, fishermen, nurses, etc)

fionnuisce.bsky.social•64 days ago

The decline in opportunities for elephant cowboys these days is a shameful reflection on the values of this country, and this government aims to do everything possible to make elephants cowboys again.

ladyof7.bsky.social•64 days ago

Adult: What do want to be when you grow up?

Child: A train passenger.

Adult: That's not a job.

Child: Michael Portillo.

Adult: Goddammit.

clinteldorado.bsky.social•64 days ago

I went to school with a lad who lived on a farm. In Y1 we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. His response? “A tractor”.

In his defence, two other boys gave the answer “A police car” and “A fire engine”. I suppose that’s what happens when you have a careers chat with five-year olds.

fionnuisce.bsky.social•64 days ago

And that boy grew up to be Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

jxwhite.bsky.social•64 days ago

That walrus only became a dentist because of its tusks.

And I will not even mention my concerns over having a fox be a ticket inspector for rabbits…

lefayexe.bsky.social•64 days ago

What do I want to be when I grow up?

harkaway.bsky.social•64 days ago

That’s superb.

onviewlesswings.bsky.social•65 days ago

I think it's easier to dismiss that which is not held in the hand, & Dunning Kruger more readily kicks in for those on the outside of knowledge work looking in. But there's a danger of pitting the brain against the arm in this kind of discourse which ultimately plays into our overlords' hands.

sailorbp.bsky.social•64 days ago

A relative retired from teaching and research in a humanities topic at a UK uni, they tell me their former department is an empty husk. It is coasting on a reputation that will not be sustained now that they pushed out the people who actually did research and teaching. They had lucky timing

patricksamphire.bsky.social•65 days ago

I think part of it comes from there being so few working class or even lower middle class MPs. They have this odd idea of what "real" Brits are, based on no real experience or understanding. It's a fantasy of anti-immigrant no-nonsense factory workers who they are all chasing after.

davidcox65.bsky.social•64 days ago

Touch of blue Labour?

harkaway.bsky.social•64 days ago

Never really know what that means except that people apply it to people I think of as being right of me and left of the Cons.

davidcox65.bsky.social•64 days ago

Bit more organised than that from Wikipedia “Blue Labour is a British campaign group and political faction that seeks to promote blue-collar and culturally conservative values within the British Labour Party”

harkaway.bsky.social•64 days ago

Huh. Today I learned. I imagine that’s part of it, though I’m wary of the suitcase term.

alwaysrv.bsky.social•64 days ago

That’s true, but tbf, the steel industry in particular has national security implications. It’s not just about job losses

harkaway.bsky.social•64 days ago

Yeah, I got into that down-thread. It’s not that it’s bad to save steel - I think the Obs piece this mornings makes that clear - it’s that it’s bad to blow up universities and creative industries.

suw.bsky.social•65 days ago

Annoyingly, it's not as if there aren't MPs and even PMs who haven't done knowledge work. I mean, 'lawyer' is the very epitome of knowledge work.

wordsandchaos.bsky.social•65 days ago

I can't help thinking that turning London into an economic black hole hasn't helped. Amusing because, from experience, people now won't work in London because of the cost. People we interviewed at a previous job literally turned positions down because they couldn't afford it. Which is indicative.

eyebrowsofpower.bsky.social•65 days ago

"People turned the job down because they couldn't afford it" : yes, that means your salary offers are way too low.

matthewperren.bsky.social•65 days ago

I *think* it means that businesses are finding that the cost of being located in London is too high.

barryrichards.bsky.social•64 days ago

Yeah, but this about restoring universities to their rightful place in UK society: to provide an easy halfway house for rich people’s kids between ‘public’ school and highly paid employment without competition from people who have more intelligence and aptitude but the wrong school tie.

rogger.bsky.social•65 days ago

It feels a bit like the “we won the war you know” glory days twaddle from a generation born after 1950, or the advertising version of Christmas, pandering to a simplifying comfort fantasy rather than dealing with a messy reality.

parallax2112.bsky.social•65 days ago

Utterly stupid. Other than niche industries (see Sheffield steel), manufacturing is dead (killed by Thatcher). The creative industries are the drivers of profit.

persenon.bsky.social•65 days ago

This is coincidentally why my country is committing economic suicide.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

I suspect it may not be unrelated, alas

urbaneclectic87.bsky.social•65 days ago

Might also be because those in govt are by and large thick...

urbaneclectic87.bsky.social•65 days ago

Both main parties are stuck in the past. Labour in Age of Heavy Industry. Tories in slave-owning landowners circa 18th Century. Should we be surprised? I don't hold with the fascists but we do seem stuck in the past.. With them too come to that..

angusmain.bsky.social•65 days ago

I was amazed to see that Agriculture and Fishing only contribute 0.6% to the UKs economic output, yet seem to wield enormous political clout. Arts and education contribute far more.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

It’s infuriating. I’m *from* a fishing & agriculture area, and it needs infrastructure and investment it never gets because the population is comparatively tiny and once again Westminster does *not* care.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

But that does not mean that the country should sideline important, successful industries that are a huge chunk of the economy and our culture! It means you engage properly with the needs of the region!

angusmain.bsky.social•65 days ago

I guess the real story in that chart is that most industries are economic chicken feed compared with Real Estate, which is presumably focused in the big cities.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

It’s a prejudice which suits both sides of the aisle. To the Right, increasingly, “the professors are the enemy” as we know. To the Left, the creative industries are a safe target - knowledge work isn’t industrial labour so it’s not “core” left. Never mind the numbers or the societal consequences.

philedwards.bsky.social•65 days ago

A former UCU member writes: the Left looks at HE and sees 100+ heavily unionised workplaces under sustained attack from management.
What the current Labour leadership sees, on the other hand, seems to be something out of a Daily Express leader column.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

Yeah, that’s fair, although I don’t think it’s quite that cut and dried - and part of this mess is the ongoing “who he’s to define the left?” thing

philedwards.bsky.social•65 days ago

A former UCU member who thought UCU talked a good game but didn't really get what the job was about (but thanks for all the pay rises) writes: not saying the Left have the right take on HE, just that they're not the enemy atm.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

Oh, if we’re talking the left of Labour as opposed to “left of the aisle” it’s a different equation - though it’s not unknown for a line to be drawn between middle class knowledge jobs and industrial jobs with weird implications for everyone

philedwards.bsky.social•65 days ago

The trouble with "left of the aisle" is that the aisle has a tendency to move!

mattneilhill.bsky.social•65 days ago

University-educated politicians weaponising anti-intellectualism along the lines of "We've had enough of experts" a decade ago (feels like a long bloody decade) has probably helped a little in making this acceptable, although I realise it's been going on longer than that.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

In the US, education is under siege. Here it’s just being allowed to fall apart because it’s not steel.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/10/trump-columbia-consent-decree

victoriadecapua.bsky.social•65 days ago

in the US, education is going sheep in a minefield.

dextersaysmeow.bsky.social•64 days ago

Don't go to Colombia. They don't protect their students/and will turn a blind eye to them being dragged off by the henchmen of a fascist regime for exercising their First Amendment rights. This is what they've earned by not resisting. They are complicit. Alumni, cancel your donations/endowments.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

So sure. Steel is a strategic imperative, go fix it. But then have a word with yourself. Help HE sort itself out and quit trying to sell creatives down the river to big tech. Be a bloody Labour government, not a VC client state.

cdanby.bsky.social•65 days ago

Why concede even that? Steel is a cheap commodity widely produced. There's a weird fetishization of particular industries.

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/steve-vio.bsky.social/post/3lmmkiol4sk2r

harkaway.bsky.social•65 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/persenon.bsky.social/post/3lmmzjdn4ss2r

harkaway.bsky.social•64 days ago

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/12/the-observer-view-on-british-steel-saved-for-now-but-for-how-long?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

damienmiller.bsky.social•65 days ago

Australia's Labor party has the same problem. I think it's because they are so enmeshed with a trade union movement that still sneers at such jobs

acap42.bsky.social•64 days ago

Vichy Labour

womaninterrupted.bsky.social•65 days ago

Authoritarian playback. Attack Education, The Legal profession and Businesses

womaninterrupted.bsky.social•65 days ago

Playbook!

pmcghee.bsky.social•65 days ago

I'm guessing the kind of intelligence provided by Universities (Bletchley style) is more important than steel for tanks and warships these days.

alek.bsky.social•65 days ago

There is so much talk about re-industrialization; but our collective imagination of “industry” is stuck in the previous era: we see steelmills, coal mines, car factories. And forget that they are today full of researchers, chips, and robots.

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