Ross Gibson
LightNews LightNews
banner
rossgibson.bsky.social
Ross Gibson
@rossgibson.bsky.social
220 followers 130 following 250 posts
Social work and trade union stuff.

Personal account which certainly does not reflect the views of my employer.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Ross Gibson
thisisyourparty.bsky.social
🚨MEMBERSHIP NOW OPEN!🚨

This is Your Party - it's time to take it into your hands.

Join as a member now ⬇️⬇️
September 24, 2025 at 12:22 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
ducuuo.bsky.social
Do you think staff at the University of Dundee were misled when we were told there would be no redundancies? Or when he told us they hadn’t said there would be no redundancies?
November 10, 2025 at 8:36 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
ducuuo.bsky.social
Very strong turnout this morning on the first of our five days strike.

On Friday, in a meeting with the interim Principal, he confirmed his ideology is to cut as many jobs as possible.

Support our action to save jobs and save the University!

#SaveHE #SaveDundeeUni #WeAreTheUniversity
A group of over 40 people stand listening to speeches at the front of the Tower Building at the University of Dundee. The people are on a picket line for Dundee Universities and College Union. Many are wearing pink hats with ‘UCU’ on the front.
November 10, 2025 at 10:24 AM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
uniteucu.bsky.social
ASOS which is "work in the same way you’ve done for years" is not irresponsible. It's protecting our members until a fair & equitable hybrid policy is agreed.

UCU SMT then deducting 100% of daily pay from staff taking ASOS & undermining its own policy?

Now that’s irresponsible.
Photo showing an article from the latest Private Eye on the Unite dispute which exposes UCU management's hypocrisy, in particular highlighting a quote from an SMT member that strongly suggests our action short of a strike (ie, continue doing your job but office attendance remains voluntary as it has done over the last five years) is somehow irresponsible.
November 3, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
kennyf1283.bsky.social
Screaming into the void "It's called guising!"
October 31, 2025 at 6:27 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
rossgibson.bsky.social
I am shocked that a university Principal would lie through his teeth.
ducuuo.bsky.social Dundee UCU @ducuuo.bsky.social · 15d
Yesterday our interim Principal, gave evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee.

He stated that he had never ruled out redundancies.

Judge for yourself.
October 30, 2025 at 6:00 PM
rossgibson.bsky.social
I am shocked that a university Principal would lie through his teeth.
ducuuo.bsky.social Dundee UCU @ducuuo.bsky.social · 15d
Yesterday our interim Principal, gave evidence to the Education, Children and Young People Committee.

He stated that he had never ruled out redundancies.

Judge for yourself.
October 30, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
ducuuo.bsky.social
A great videos with excellent contributions from across the UK.

Vote now. Show your solidarity for the national ballot to save our universities.

#SaveHE
#WeAreTheUniversity
October 28, 2025 at 11:17 AM
rossgibson.bsky.social
I am really worried about my colleagues within HR who are so overworked that they send emails re: job losses on a Friday evening.
October 25, 2025 at 12:37 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
howardleague-scot.bsky.social
📢 BIG NEWS! Sara Snell, Chief Inspector of Prisons @hmipscot will be the keynote speaker, talking about 'Towards Humane Prisons' at our annual Drummond Hunter Lecture on 25 November.
Tickets here: tinyurl.com/3s6yke4x.
Please spread the word!
October 24, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
theguardian.com
Grooming gang survivors risk becoming pawns in a political game that is no place for vulnerable people | Gaby Hinsliff
Grooming gang survivors risk becoming pawns in a political game that is no place for vulnerable people | Gaby Hinsliff
The chaos surrounding the inquiry stands as a warning: this is what happens when collapsing trust in public institutions, combined with point scoring, leads to paralysis, says Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff
www.theguardian.com
October 24, 2025 at 8:48 AM
rossgibson.bsky.social
Cathartic.

Vote now or you could be the next to lose your job.

#WeAreTheUniversity
October 22, 2025 at 9:10 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
unsocialtheory.bsky.social
You all do understand the British Government is effectively waging war on migrants, is that clear?
October 21, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
cecilebm.bsky.social
The University of Edinburgh is in a league of its own in UK HE:

#1 University of Edinburgh: 1800 estimated job cuts (£92 million!)
#2 University of York: 434 jobs cuts

Reminder: There is no deficit at the UoE. This is self-inflicted institutional damage.

thetab.com/2025/10/13/t...
The UK unis where students will lose the most lecturers and support staff
Are we all screwed? Discuss
thetab.com
October 14, 2025 at 7:54 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
paperghost.bsky.social
screenshot 3 is incredible
amybrown.xyz amy brown @amybrown.xyz · Oct 13
inspiring 💗💖
LinkedIn post about how a guy got a job interview at Strava by running a route that spelled HIRE ME on the map HIRE ME written on the map (looking more like HIRE NE tbh) commenter asks if the guy got the job and OP says “I don't think so. But his effort got him noticed and a foot in the door when so many others didn't”
October 13, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
cecilebm.bsky.social
Get involved. Sign the open letter. Join us.
#womenagainstthefarrightscotland #WAFRS #SUTR
October 7, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
crimsocjust.bsky.social
Excited to say that our MSc in #Criminology and Social Policy has a new start date of September 2026.

Want to come learn from dynamic researchers in a supportive and inclusive space? Find out more here:

www.strath.ac.uk/courses/post...
MSc Criminology & Social Policy Masters | University of Strathclyde
www.strath.ac.uk
October 6, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
scotssocialwork.bsky.social
Our members tell us that the concept of making a profit from vulnerable children in need of care is deeply uncomfortable. In this consultation, we emphasise the need for high-quality care services which have room to grow and develop without accumulating excessive profit.
Financial transparency and profit limitation in children's residential care, consultation response
Consultation response from SASW
basw.co.uk
October 3, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
uniteucu.bsky.social
Fifty branches, representing over 36% of UCU members, have now called for @drjogrady.bsky.social to enter unconditional negotiations & remove the threat of punitive deductions against staff.

Unite's repeated requests for such talks have had no response. Will she now listen to @ucu.org.uk members?
We call on Jo Grady and UCU SMT to: • Enter negotiations with Unite UCU without preconditions. • Stop the threat of punitive deductions for ASOS - this breaches UCU and TUC policy and only serves to undermine all of us, not least those UCU members currently involved in legal test cases against punitive deductions after taking lawful industrial action. Signed, 25, no 37, no 46, no 50 UCU branch committees (and still counting)
October 2, 2025 at 9:48 AM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
dropsitenews.com
💥Breaking: Italy’s two largest unions call national general strike after Israel’s flotilla attack

The Italian unions CGIL and USB announced a nationwide general strike for Friday, October 3, covering all public and private sectors. The move follows Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla carrying...
October 1, 2025 at 8:28 PM
rossgibson.bsky.social
Please read this thread - and the article linked - re AI.

Especially if you have any thoughts of using AI in social work, education, or anything else where humans are inportant.
olivia.science Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues. Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA). Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe. Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
September 27, 2025 at 10:38 AM
rossgibson.bsky.social
1,341,958 now.

Please sign this.
September 26, 2025 at 6:53 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
zarahsultana.bsky.social
Labour’s plan for compulsory digital ID risks creating a more authoritarian state.

Under constant surveillance, we would have to pass through digital checkpoints just to live our daily lives — with even more barriers for minorities, migrants and the digitally excluded.
September 25, 2025 at 6:03 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
martinbarrow.bsky.social
The private equity firm Apposite Capital has quietly been plundering the care system for vulnerable children and young people. Here’s how. 🧵
September 22, 2025 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Ross Gibson
uniteucu.bsky.social
Do you want to know how UCU senior management has responded to UCU branches calling on them to remove their threat of deductions? This is how.

How would you react?

uniteucu.wordpress.com/2025/09/12/u...
Screenshot of email from UCU management which reads: ASOS Attendance Form - New Weekly Survey Starting Monday 22 September, all staff will receive an email with a link to the new ASOS attendance form. This short weekly survey is mandatory for all staff, whether you were on ASOS or not. Please make sure to complete it each week, failure to do so may result in pay deductions. The cut off each week will be Friday at 5pm.
September 22, 2025 at 3:32 PM