Interesting to see that a review with 32 experts published in British Journal of Psychiatry last week found no evidence that ADHD is being overdiagnosed
www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/no-over...
IYKYK
'Only four in 10 UK PhD graduates remain in academia just over a year after completing their degrees with many more heading overseas for research jobs than in previous years, a major national poll suggests.' 1/3
Henri Matisse's Cat with red fish but it's Bob Godfrey's Henry's Cat in the painting
Henri's Cat (with red fish)
Full paint version, available now, link below
Can't believe Britsky is making me pre-emptively defend a show that wouldn't give me a job after I spent a day applying for it because you're frightened of seeing a sketch show with people who aren't already famous in it.
Comments off bc I know what you fuckers are like.
Dressing up as a fucking massive cockroach for world book day and phoning in sick because I’m a cockroach to see if they get the reference
The Conservatives are, after all, well placed to know a lot about this morass, since they introduced it. In 2012, the coalition government launched the Plan 2 system of student loans and raised university fees across Britain to £9,000 per annum. To put Plan 2 in simple terms, loan repayments were laid out via a seemingly innocuous series of calculations. The first to consider is the threshold at which repayments begin. If you left education with, say, £27,000 worth of debt, you would only start paying it back once you met a predetermined salary. On its face, this might not seem like a particularly onerous demand. “Low-earning” graduates would avoid being saddled with repayments before they were financially able to begin making them, while their “high earning” peers could start chipping away at their debt, and provide an income stream for the state.
As any of my fellow literature or history graduates will tell you, however, the devil is in the details. For one thing, the threshold at which someone becomes a high earner was never particularly high and, following years of inflation, is now preposterously low. Rachel Reeves’ announcement that the government are freezing the threshold at April 2026 levels (£29,385) for a further three years only makes this worse. The real living wage for London is currently calculated at £28,860, which means that any London-based graduate making just £40 more per month than the minimum needed to live there will automatically begin paying their debt. In real terms, this means practically any graduate in any form of full-time work will be paying as much as 9 per cent of their income to the state, and for a very, very long time. Worse still, the amount owed by those graduates below the threshold does not remain static – it accrues interest, year on year, whether you’re working for low wages, volunteering, taking a career break or on maternity leave, ensuring that if you do pass the threshold some time later, you will be returning to find your original £27,000 much enlarged.
If the state’s attitude to what constitutes “high earnings” makes you think it’s oblivious to the concept of inflation, let me put your mind at ease. When it comes to the calculation of student loan interest, they are very conscious of inflation indeed. Each year, the interest charged on student loans is calculated by two components. The first is the Retail Price Index (RPI), which generally records a higher number than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Governments prefer the latter, lower figure for many of their other calculations, just not when it comes to adding extra debt to every graduate in the country. To this is added a second component, a percentage tied to each graduate’s earnings, meaning that as your salary increases so too does the interest you’re paying on the loan you took out. If you think this seems like a predatory and punitive way to bilk students for as much money, and over as long a period of time, as possible, then you’re just about up to speed on this scandal, which amounts to a regressive stealth tax on every graduate in the UK. One which, it’s calculated, you would need to be earning £66,000 per year to pay off in anything like a timely fashion.
The debt burden of UK students is one of those things where, the more you look into the details, the more insane and predatory it is. So I tried my best to explain the numbers involved without making my, or your, head explode.
Ah yes, my approach to creating teaching materials
😭
date: can you take off your work gloves
Jim Henson: they have names
a shelf of books in alphabetical order by author
a shelf of books in alphabetical order by author
a shelf of books in alphabetical order by author
SATURDAY CLEAROUT!
Here are 3 shelves of my books in A-Z order by author.
You can have any 2 for £10 (free P+P).
Please share (and buy).
UK only.
Even sadder than this, I sometimes wonder if my neighbours hear the clinking and assume my life is that little bit more exciting than it actually is.
A 12 foot statue of St Patrick holding a pint of Guinness.
Pencil-necked desk jockeys at the council in Dublin have forced a pub to take down a 12-foot statue of St Patrick enjoying a Guinness before driving the snakes out of Ireland. Do you want snakes back in Ireland, Dublin Council? Because this is how you get snakes.
www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-n...
Take a moment to admire this close up of a nice furry noble beast that looks like an elongated red panda but in a lovely autumnal auburn. Little ears. Little snout. Isn't it cute. Isn't it very separate from all the things happening.
Illustration of an intentionally crudely drawn Godzilla-adjacent kaiju with a cityscape backdrop inside a circular frame. Text curves around the circle’s edge and reads “might do a little stomp as a treat”
You can just stomp around the house like a kaiju and nobody can stop you. Treat yo’self.
Congratulations to The Green Party and Hannah Spencer for such a strong victory in Gorton and Denton - Matt Goodwin seems to be blaming a dirty tricks campaign of the Greens persuading people to vote for them by having policies people wanted to vote for
Just been all middle-aged & grown up and booked a routine prostate cancer screening test, like a ruddy-bloody bloke.
/Seriously, guys. If you're over 40 & not done one, consider it. They're relatively inexpensive if booked via places like CHAPS (£20) and screening events pop up all over the place
Kansas has, overnight, invalidated the drivers’ licenses of trans people, a pointless cruelty that upends their lives
If Brits think “it won’t happen here” think again! Groups in the U.K. who want the same thing are routinely invited to consult with Labour and normalised in our press!
Trees, a path, grass, and blue sky.
It's like taking a deep breath after months of drowning underwater
Me: *nothing*
Brain *to the Archers theme tune*: I'M A TOT JE SUIS UNE TOT, TILLY TOM AND TINY
Róisín Murphy @roisinmurphy Feb 8 OK so “queer” was reclaimed. It went from a slur - to a political slogan - to a broadened identity - to a market - to a HUGE industry. The first rule of markets is expansion, and I have seen the expansion firsthand, and the cynicism behind it in my industry; the music industry. As long as a market is expanding, it is very hard to to fight its negative effects. While the money is pouring in nobody wants to critique it, even its worst excesses, even authoritarianism and child safeguarding get a slide. Quote Róisín Murphy @roisinmurphy · Feb 6 Replying to @proudbiwoman @Brig_333 and @daniellismore No one even used the term “queer” unless it was to hurt someone who was gay. There were some brilliant drag queens but they never said they were actual women. Oh and the parties were fun then. 🙄 Róisín Murphy @roisinmurphy · Feb 8 And I am not telling anyone what to call themselves.
So, Roisin Murphy makes the statement that 'no one used the term "queer" unless it was to hurt someone who was gay'.
I'm unable to ignore this.
The following isn't about making personal comments about Roisin and it's not about the merits of the word, it's about challenging a lie.
I read some research about perception of time that explained that for many of us 2020 seemed to go slow at the time but quickly in retrospect as we weren't doing lots of things to create unique memories. This feels like the opposite - stuff just keeps happening.
at last, we have invented retrophenology from the classic Discworld text Don’t Invent Retrophenology
It's so cruel that it feels like losing to have won a silver medal at the Olympics
You just can't trust anyone.
I'm finding that a cat has the opposite effect since I cannot leave a water glass unattended.
Proposal - when a skater falls over everyone has to stop until they're back on their feet.
#Olympics
Mass start speed skating finals - points system is basically quidditch at this point, surely?
#Olympics
That toy where little plastic penguins go up a moving staircase and then go wheeee all the way down a slope and back to the stairs again.
Can I just check that this one has been done to death?
Ah. So the jokes about them going upstairs in skis are not actually jokes after all. Excellent event. Top notch random combination of equipment and terrain.
#Olympics
