Hey Sheffield UCU folks! Please don't forget to vote in the national ballot on pay and job security. You should receive your ballot soon if you have not already done so.

Student attendance monitoring isn't part of a sinister web of surveillance and control, why would you even think that?

Solidarity to every UCU branch that is contemplating strike action this year from the top of Ben Nevis! To express a higher degree of solidarity you'd have to travel about 750 miles to Norway, so this was the best I could do under the circumstances!

It was a real honour to attend today's event honouring Dirk van Zyl Smit, a titan of penology and my PhD supervisor. It was an especial treat to hear about his work contributing to detoxifying criminology of its Afrikaner nationalism in post-apartheid South Africa. Congratulations, Dirk!

For context, do you remember when Paddington was treated like a psychopomp and took Elizabeth II to heaven? You don't see people talking that way about, say, Wallace and Gromit...

(Image via Alistair Green on Twitter-that-was)

When you're negotiating for UCU in the morning and presenting graduands in the afternoon...

(I mean I want negotiating in my robes, but you know...)