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Thucydides was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta… more

Thucydides
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by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
But they are loans, so students don't start paying them until after graduation. Agreed that there are major issues about support for living costs, but that's a different issue, and quite separate from the question of university finances.
August 14, 2025 at 10:49 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Leaving aside research funding via UKRI and QR funding, and the fact that tuition fees are loans that the government pays to universities up front, not a lot; there may still be residual top-ups for expensive and strategically important subjects, but pretty negligible.
August 14, 2025 at 9:50 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
According to the BBC, a factual description of the etymology of a word like ‘xenophobia’ is unacceptable when applied to right-wing politicians. They probably won’t like the etymology of ‘sycophancy’ either.
August 14, 2025 at 9:46 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Certainly, but (1) there’s a choice about which version to emphasise, (2) saying this in the context of possible university bankruptcies, it doesn’t look as if the latter sense is being taken on board, and (3) “so high NOW” suggests recent change, rather than twenty years ago.
August 14, 2025 at 8:25 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
It is not my choice to have it on.
August 14, 2025 at 6:25 AM

by Thucydides — Reposted by Michael H. Whitworth

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Oh good, BBC Radio 4 Today line is that some universities are in danger of going bust “despite tuition fees being so high now” rather than “because tuition fees have lagged behind inflation and don’t cover the costs of degree programmes”. Wilful ignorance?
August 14, 2025 at 5:47 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
I’m afraid that quote has nothing to do with Thucydides, though often misattributed to him on the Internet; it is in fact a simplified version of a line by nineteenth-century soldier and author Sir William F. Butler.
August 14, 2025 at 5:01 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Etymology is unacceptable.
August 13, 2025 at 7:26 PM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Etymology is now unacceptable.
BBC apologises over Thought for the Day ‘xenophobia’ claim against Jenrick
Corporation says Krish Kandiah’s criticism of senior Tory not appropriate for faith-based radio segment
www.theguardian.com
August 13, 2025 at 7:09 PM

Reposted by Thucydides

historyned.bsky.social
What better way to commemorate the start of the construction of the Berlin Wall, 64 years ago #otd, than by listening to this podcast interview I made with the New Books Network about The German Democratic Republic: The Rise and Fall of a Cold War State podcasts.apple.com/de/podcast/n...
Ned Richardson-Little,
Podcast Episode · New Books in History · 13/08/2025 · 53m
podcasts.apple.com
August 13, 2025 at 2:43 PM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
After the latter, several people commented that they preferred my ungrammatical but enthusiastic Denglish in the discussion to the formally correct text, so I decided that being lively and engaged trumps careful preparation every time.
August 13, 2025 at 2:09 PM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
I read a prepared text for my first ever paper for an audience outside my university as a PhD student (esp. as it was a 15-minute slot, so major risk of getting the timing wrong), and for my first paper at a proper conference (as I was terrified) and for the first time I gave a lecture in German.
August 13, 2025 at 2:06 PM

by Glen O’Hara — Reposted by Thucydides, David Bartram, Andrew Thacker

gsoh31.bsky.social
This is what I'm hearing too. A total failure of public policy all the more staggering for having been totally predicted and predictable. A disaster.
echrhawk.bsky.social Dr Stuart Wallace @echrhawk.bsky.social · Aug 13
Hearing a lot of Russell group unis are taking on staggering numbers of Home UG students to offset weaker international recruitment. This has been a recent trend, but it seems to be out of control this recruitment cycle. Downstream impact on newer unis will be catastrophic @gsoh31.bsky.social
August 13, 2025 at 12:47 PM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
I'm not sure what is making me feel more out of touch with the world this morning, the idea that one should always read a prepared text at a conference or the idea that there are right and wrong spoons.
August 13, 2025 at 11:05 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Slightly diminish a band:

Have A Good Trip Deputy Under-Secretary
petertarras.bsky.social Peter Tarras @petertarras.bsky.social · Aug 13
Slightly diminish a band:

Kilodeth
younan.bsky.social Fr. Andrew Younan @younan.bsky.social · Aug 13
Slightly diminish a band:

Black Saturday
August 13, 2025 at 10:28 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Slightly diminish a band:

Intravox
petertarras.bsky.social Peter Tarras @petertarras.bsky.social · Aug 13
Slightly diminish a band:

Kilodeth
younan.bsky.social Fr. Andrew Younan @younan.bsky.social · Aug 13
Slightly diminish a band:

Black Saturday
August 13, 2025 at 10:22 AM

Reposted by Thucydides

petertarras.bsky.social
Slightly diminish a band:

Kilodeth
younan.bsky.social Fr. Andrew Younan @younan.bsky.social · Aug 13
Slightly diminish a band:

Black Saturday
joshuaeaton.bsky.social Joshua Eaton @joshuaeaton.bsky.social · Aug 13
Slightly diminish a band:

Prince and the Incremental Reform
August 13, 2025 at 10:18 AM

Reposted by Thucydides

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by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
"Don't bother your silly little head about the possible environmental impacts of vast new data centres; they are The Future and nothing to worry about. But please do delete your old photos and emails because they might put a strain on the environment because of the water demands of data centres."
August 12, 2025 at 4:14 PM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Truly magnificent use of the passive voice to avoid talking about agency and responsibility: "Initially, the move was argued as offering universities a route to reducing government spending on higher education"...
August 12, 2025 at 3:22 PM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
All my sympathy, John. It's never easy.
August 12, 2025 at 3:20 PM

Reposted by Thucydides

francesryan.bsky.social
Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s praise for men who “protect their wives and daughters” from asylum seekers reflects the point in my column. “It’s an extension of the centuries-old racial prejudice ethnic minorities are a sexual threat to white females - and the white males who claim possession of them.”
Reform’s newest MP has praised “concerned British men” for organising private street patrols and has accused illegal immigrants of thinking they had a “right to sexually assault women”. Sarah Pochin said that private security personnel were protecting their wives, daughters and mothers from sexual assault. She also accused illegal migrants from “predominantly Muslim” countries of having a “medieval view of women’s rights fundamentally alien to our own western values”.
August 12, 2025 at 11:01 AM

Reposted by Thucydides

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by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
It's time to harvest the Szechuan peppers!
August 12, 2025 at 9:59 AM

Reposted by Thucydides

oldtrotter.bsky.social
Ramping up the rhetoric and generating a predictable response.
August 12, 2025 at 6:25 AM

Reposted by Thucydides

wjbarter.bsky.social
A simplistic use of genAI doesn't provide this training. If you let it in to the undergraduate setting then you can very quickly be training students in "how to google effectively" or "what prompt to type" and not "how to think about this problem".
August 12, 2025 at 9:05 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Well, quite. I take it you’re shouting at the inappropriate business mindset rather than at me…
August 12, 2025 at 8:51 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
It was an eye-opening moment when the then Director of Finance announced to a faculty board that staff costs were 65% of turnover, which is much higher than in any normal business and therefore clearly a problem that needed to be addressed urgently.
August 12, 2025 at 8:47 AM

Reposted by Thucydides

ncdominie.bsky.social
I don't think many of the (ex-)academics who end up notionally in charge of universities are particularly good at drawing a line between "we need, methodologically, to view things like a business to continue operating" and "we are a business and so must intrinsically see the world like one".
August 12, 2025 at 8:34 AM

by Thucydides

nevillemorley.bsky.social
Your periodic update on how the world of social media looks through the incredibly specific prism of looking for misattributed Thucydides quotes…

thesphinxblog.com/2025/08/12/p...
Plastic People
It is of course distressing to realise that demand for my opinions on Thucydides is limited… Just over a fortnight ago I embarked on one of those “One like, one X” social media things on Blue…
thesphinxblog.com
August 12, 2025 at 8:10 AM

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