Al Alhinai

Academic, motorsport enthusiast, and occasional music maker.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Truly shocking culture war on #BBCQT

Former Conservative now Reform UK's Suella Braverman who was born in London says,

"I'm not an English person"

Then suggests you can only be English if you have a lineage or ancestry which dates back a few generations.

A black man in the audience says he considers himself English because he was born here, and that she is enforcing a racist view that says being born here does not make you English.

Oli Dugmore, "The political function of what she was saying earlier is that you can only be English if you are white.. That is a racist point of view"

Fiona Bruce then repeatedly asks Suella Braverman to address Oli Dugmore's allegations, she repeatedly refuses to adding, "I do not call myself English, I am British Asian"

At the end, Freudian slip, "I don't consider myself to be white, er er er English. I'm Asian of Asian heritage. I don't see why that's controversial"

My view: Braverman is entitled to describe her own identity as British rather than English.

But turning that into a definition of who can be English is racial exclusion dressed up as patriotism.

A Black or Asian person born and raised here, speaking with the local accent, sharing the life and culture of this country, is no less English than anyone else.

England has never been a racial category. It is a country, a culture and a shared civic identity, and trying to make whiteness the entry requirement is both historically illiterate and deeply divisive.

Braverman has previously argued that people without generational ties to England should not claim to be English.

[Al Alhinai @almajd83]

@MenTourPilot @BBCBreaking @cnnbrk @Reuters I have a lot of respect for your content. Please don’t get fooled by propaganda. MSMs are not a good source for this story. You are better off sticking to your own knowledge and intuition.

[UCU @ucu]

“There’s no money. What they really mean is there’s no money for you.”

Green Party deputy leader @MothinAli speaking at UCU’s Wages Not Weapons fringe at Green Party Conference.

It’s time to invest in our communities, in education and in people not war.

[Sammy Obeid @SammyObeid]

FlyDubai or Don’t Buy it?

[Math Files @Math_files]

A real professor makes a simple problem look complicated, just to impress the students.😄

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

When a university says that it's going to 'save money' by 'restructuring', it means that it's going to sack lots of people, nudge lots of people into voluntary severance, and this 'restructuring' is actually going to cost millions.

[The Star, Sheffield @SheffieldStar]

Sheffield MP Abtisam Mohamed calls for Hallam University halls to be sold for social housing https://t.co/DS8QV05Txy

[21group @21percentgroup]

Vice Chancellors pontificate that UK Higher Education needs to get its credibility back

From the very people who presided over eye-watering pay rises, baffling decisions & erosion of public trust

Irony stands at the podium of the conference

https://t.co/FoD0fc4kgp

[21group @21percentgroup]

Very bleak article

Universities face an existential reckoning

Funding is tightening. AI is disrupting the model. PR disaster follows PR disaster. Executive pay keeps climbing

And politicians aren’t going to ask students & taxpayers for more money

https://t.co/ngn9G95Jug

[Pedro Rojas @SeniorManager]

Soy profesor universitario y considero importante compartir lo que me está tocando ver desde que arrancó el curso, porque es un verdadero desastre.

Esta generación de estudiantes lleva IA, YouTube, Google y toda la información del planeta en el móvil y siguen sin saber nada.

No saben dónde está Roma ni tampoco Huelva, no saben quién es Pérez Revere pero todos conocen a Lola Lolita, no tienen ni idea de historia pero sí de “stories”, no entienden el valor del dinero ni saben cómo funciona la inflación.

Antes, para ser ignorante bastaba con no abrir los libros. Ahora, asisten activamente a clases para no enterarse de nada.

Y encima son de cristal. Cualquier roce es un trauma, cualquier crítica es violencia, cualquier tarea es un atentado y cualquier suspenso es un «ataque» a su salud mental. Y si llueve no vienen a clases, no sea que se derritan.

Han convertido los retos normales de la vida en un espectáculo de victimismo. En lugar aprender a gestionar los problemas que van saliendo en sus vidas, han aprendido a pedir soluciones a los demás y a deprimirse si algo no sale bien.

Tantos años de progresismo abyecto ha resultado en esto, y después de años viviendo entre algodón, sin golpes y sin aprender a levantarse, han creado una generación de ofendiditos con mentes vacías que todavía intentan averiguar qué son.

Eso sí, opinan sobre cualquier tema con una convicción, una superioridad moral y una pasión que asusta, pero con argumentos huecos y no sustentados que son el producto del lavado de cerebro que han recibido de la narrativa woke que han venido escuchando los últimos años.

Si no fuese por ese puñado de estudiantes (con futuro) cuyos padres se preocuparon en formarlos con valores y principios, sería esta, una generación prácticamente perdida.

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

You don’t have to be a historian to see the parallels of a “dissenter” belonging to the only mixed race family in a village being denounced as a traitor and her own neighbour giving her address to a vigilante far right mob. Except this isn’t Nazi Germany, it’s England in 2026.

[LondonGreenParty @LondonGreenPrty]

Labour, once the People's Party, is now the party of Palantir.

[Marl Karx @BareLeft]

Palantir is at risk of losing their UK contracts, so they've hired this rat fuck on a massive wedge to strong-arm his mates inside the Labour Party into handing over masses of public data.

Vote Green in Holborn and St. Pancras to tell Labour NO to Palantir.

[Islamic Scientific Heritage @IslamicSH_]

@jimalkhalili explains how Ibn Sahl actually discovered Snell’s Law, 650 years before Willebrord Snellius.

[Zack Polanski @ZackPolanski]

Palantir have just bought themselves a Labour Lord with close links to the Labour government.

No other word to describe this other than corruption.

How can Watson remain a member of the House of Lords and keep the Labour whip?

[Mike Thompson @OfMikeAndMen]

When I created Raspbian for the Raspberry Pi, I was excited to help bring low-cost compute into the hands of a next generation of tinkerers and programmers.

However, I now despair that a Raspberry Pi can cost upwards of $300 because AI shortages are making personal computing unaffordable. Furthermore, bright young people are being discouraged from learning programming because they are being told it is now a commodity skill that AI will do.

I have to ask myself what it was all for. Is this the future we were promised? If so, I'm starting to regret my part in it.

[UCU @ucu]

Universities across the UK are calling their mass redundancy programmes ‘voluntary’. In today’s Sunday Times a Senior Lecturer in Humanities completely exposes that lie.

[UCU @ucu]

📰 Today’s Sunday Times exposes just a fraction of the attacks on jobs in Universities.

We know the true picture across the UK is even worse.

With record student sign ups this situation is completely untenable.

The government must intervene.

[21group @21percentgroup]

Mediocrity and ignorance have become normal, with key roles held by people who seem ill-equipped or have zero knowledge of Higher Education

There is also the chasing of headlines through constant announcements rather than delivery of substance

https://t.co/JVfUmV9xYL via @ft