In an effort to reduce immigration figures, the Tories made coming to the UK as a student really hard (no family or dependents visas, just for starters), and Labour haven't got the guts to reverse it. Teaching UK students loses money, as course fees have been capped for over a decade

It's a bit of a bloodbath in the UK higher education sector at the moment. My wife's job is currently at risk, despite bringing in £9.2 million in research funding this year alone. I left my paid role at the university as three years of doing two people's jobs had worn me out.

I think I'm also using it in a fundamentally different way. I'm using it more to find people doing stuff related to what I'm doing, and making contacts. I'm not actually using it as a way to get work directly.

I forgot, the place that's been full of bots and spammers for me for the past couple of weeks is here. Over half of my new followers are apparently single young women looking for 'fun', or trying to drive business to their Onlyfans site.

It depends, at least in the sectors I work in, the signal to noise ratio is pretty good most of the time.

Well it's embarrassing for Farage, and is likely to prove quite awkward for Musk. I suppose it does mean that he's manufactured a good excuse not to follow through with his offer of $100 million to Reform UK, at least while Farage is leading them.

I agree that he was definitely too naïve with regards to the 2010 coalition agreement.

At the time I gave it grudging support, however with hindsight (and a lot more knowledge of politics and psephology), I can appreciate now how bad a deal it was.

I mostly agree, in hindsight, the reliance on naval power to secure a distant empire meant that the UK was obliged to join an unsustainable arms race. Dreadnought may have been the first of her type, but all big gun battleships could easily have been named South Carolinas, or Satsumas.

I'm not sure how the UK is classed as a 'full democracy' when our second legislative chamber is entirely appointed and includes both 92 people there by virtue of their birth, and 19 senior members of the state religion. It's also the second largest in the world, with over 800 members.

I know it wasn't the intention in this case, but politicians buying the whole pub a round has such a dodgy history in the UK that it's an offense during an election campaign (it's classed as 'treating').

To be fair, Nick Clegg's political ambitions were rather derailed by the 2017 general election.

I can't really object to somebody losing their job unexpectedly, then taking an obvious attractive job offer shortly afterwards.

In life, you play the hand that you're dealt.

There has been (and continues to be) a massive decline in the UK hospitality industry. Part of that is undoubtedly due to the smoking ban. Plenty of other good reasons though, and it's the combination that's been so hard for businesses to deal with.