Poster for international women’s day - a meeting writer’s square Belfast today at 10.30am
07.03.2026 09:46
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Poster for international women’s day - a meeting writer’s square Belfast today at 10.30am
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.
UK ban on Palestine Action unlawful, high court judges rule
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
This ought to be a huge national news story. But the quiet dismantling of a key sector barely registers outside HE. Maybe someone will care when the local economies that Unis sustain start to go bust too. Important story from @patrickjack.bsky.social & @timeshighered.bsky.social
The state shot &killed people in the uk for decades, colluded with citizens to kill & has frustrated justice in uk courts ever since. Sean Browns widow awaits her day in the Supreme Court. THAT has been a warning siren ringing for decades - the colonial attitude of us being lesser stops them hearing
Mamdani: For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty
Just empire doing empire things
Letting hunger strikers die, arresting Greta Thunberg — this is not incompetence or even indifference. The UK state is deliberately making examples of people to ramp up the crushing of basic civil liberties and silence opposition to genocide
As Minister Peter Burke heads to the final #CSDDD trilogue negotiation, @irishtimes.com has published shocking revelations on the corporate campaign to lobby for EU deregulation, undermine democracy and weaken vital protections for people and the planet: www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...
I also look to the unique position of Northern Ireland and the future of business and human rights regulation under the Windsor Framework.
You can read the article here 👇
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
My article comparing the EU and UK’s approach to implementing the UNGPs, post-Brexit is out now in the Modern Law Review. Against a backdrop of escalating corporate influence over human rights, I contrast the EU’s (contested) preventative regulation with the UK’s reliance on a minimalist framework.
‘Risk exiting the market’
what a way to package the complete collapse of higher education
Sheffield Hallam University complied with Beijing demand to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project on supply chains and forced labour being dropped. It was reinstated after threat of legal action but chilling effect remains www.theguardian.com/education/20...
There are welcome signs that change is coming in the UK but any changes will need to take into account devolved arrangements too.
There are many people to thank for getting this paper to see the light of day, not least my QUB colleagues. Final article will be out in the new year, preprint below:
I compare the EU's focus on due diligence with the more passive approach taken by the UK (so far). The paper also explores the (often overlooked) role of Northern Ireland and the implications of the Windsor Framework for business and human rights.
While the broader effects of the withdrawal of the UK from the EU have been extensively scrutinised, little attention has been paid to how each jurisdiction has comparatively sought to prevent and mitigate corporate human rights abuses.
🇪🇺 📣 Is everyone bored of Brexit yet? 📣 🇪🇺
📖 If not, I have a forthcoming article in the Modern Law Review on the divergent approaches to implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights post-Brexit.
After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results:
- AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2%
- ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1%
- ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%
A day where law and justice feel far apart. But criminal law really struggles to function at 53 years of remove, when so many witnesses are dead. Injustice was assured when it took this long for the state to recognise its wrongdoing and start proceedings:
www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/courts/...
“In Ireland, data centers consume more than 20 percent of the country’s electricity. In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion. In South Africa, where blackouts have long been routine, data centers are further taxing the national grid.”
Gift link:
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/t...
Conor Gearty died a month ago yesterday. He was deeply committed to human rights law without idealising it. He recognised its power & value while acknowledging its limitations (& those of the people engaging with it). He was also an exceptional lawyer. This is a fitting final piece in the @lrb.co.uk
The UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel: Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Absent a court judgment, findings of UN COIs are the most conclusive, thus we should read these findings thoroughly.
www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...
"Sinn Féin and the DUP have stalled the nutrients action programme over fears of a farmer backlash."
The *only* thing they'll unite on: ensuring the largest lake ecosystem in Ireland or Britain, Lough Neagh, continues to die of pollution.
What a f**king disgrace.
share.google/cazBTwCid9qR...
It's ok to be a Luddite!
ITV have this headline 100% correct. It was an attempted lynching in broad daylight at a preannounced white supremacist mobilisation.
Despite being MLA for the area, the Justice Minister doesn’t engage with victims of white supremacist terror in her own constituency.
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Headline from Belfast Telegraph: Claims NI peace deal stops UK leaving ECHR ‘entirely groundless’ – think tank
For context: Policy Exchange is among the least transparent think tanks in the UK regarding its funding sources.
Co-founder and first chairman Michael Gove wrote a pamphlet in 2000 comparing the Good Friday Agreement to the appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.
People from Northern Ireland listening to English flag discourse
Headline: BBC under pressure to pull Sally Rooney dramas over vow to fund Palestine Action
Headline: Tory minister Robert Jenrick pictured with former Nazi terror chief at far right protest.
Perhaps, one day, schoolkids will study this squalid little chapter in British terror-panic history. When they do, I hope these two headlines from today are printed side by side, with clear annotation of which individual faced more outrage and condemnation.
The whole article is worth reading!
