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frasermacdonald.bsky.social
Geographer, historian.
122 posts 2,401 followers 436 following
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Posts 22 Comments 28

How long before the university puts out the inevitable ‘we’re dooooomed’ finance story that will seek to justify new cuts? Should the worst happen, let's be clear: redundancies are an admission of management failure.

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

I’m late to it but this @danigaravelli.bsky.social piece on prison suicides in Scotland is truly an eye-opener. Absolutely extraordinary that state-run prisons in the UK have Crown immunity.

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

This is a very grim account of what’s happening at Cardiff University – an early intimation of what’s to come in UK higher ed. Our only strength is in industrial action. ‘They say cutback, we say fight back!’, to use the old slogan.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

We got here by incremental normalisation, Scotland’s Holyrood Magazine cover being just another step along the way. No consequences for those responsible. Now we are at Nazi salutes.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

i am proud to say that after many years of therapy i am resilent, mindful, and fully equipped to face whatever 2008 has in store for me

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Britain is so bleak right now.

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

The sad thing is that email and admin have taken over academic life so much that many of us have to squeeze in the poisoning of minds on evenings and weekends.

submitted 7 days ago • 15 comments

Don't think the quiet part has ever been louder than in the "Palestinian refugees accidentally allowed into Ukrainian refugee program" story

submitted 11 days ago • 6 comments

It’s so hard to even keep track of all the cruelties that are now perpetrated – deliberately, knowingly – on the most vulnerable. But we need to be honest with ourselves: Labour want this.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I often wish that academic writing had greater literary ambition but Banville on Sebald revises my usual complaint. To describe these essays as ‘the spade-work left over from a life of academic toil’ is just … rude.

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

This is it. (via @davidgraeberinst.bsky.social)

submitted 19 days ago • 1 comment

One of the words on this list is “historically”.

submitted 20 days ago • 25 comments

Every time I see Starmer's photograph I think: 'he didn't even pay for his own glasses'. (+ the guy who did pay isn't going to let us have a democracy).

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Today’s trade diplomacy returns us to this peculiar story from before Christmas. Maybe Labour thinks this is 4D chess played well – as long as the dignity of Na h-Eileanan an Iar constituents doesn’t count.

submitted 21 days ago • 1 comment

Odd thing. I never knew Jeremy Hardy but I spent this afternoon sore/sad that he isn’t alive. He had such a unique cleverness. I threw his name into this app and found this tweet. He is missed. Linda Smith too.

submitted 23 days ago • 1 comment

Adding a week of coffee grounds from our local cafe to the compost heap. It's good to feel the heat of transformation. Change is possible. A spent force is the substrate for future abundance.

submitted 30 days ago • 2 comments

I honestly didn't expect the end of American empire to be quite this stupid.

submitted 31 days ago • 1 comment

We need nationally organised non-compliance with REF. As Marla says in The Wire: “the game is rigged but you cannot lose if you do not play.”

submitted 33 days ago • 1 comment

More courage and power here than in the entire Democratic Party.

submitted 34 days ago • 1 comment

So much this.

submitted 35 days ago • 0 comments

I don’t know if anyone has checked in with the Labour Party recently, but Corbyn and McDonnell are to be interviewed under caution for attending a protest while David Lammy is now praising Trump as ‘gracious and generous’.

submitted 35 days ago • 1 comment

‘Literary reputations always have a life of their own, but I struggle to reconcile Nan Shepherd of Cults with the cult of Nan Shepherd.’ A Diary by @frasermacdonald.bsky.social: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments