Strike! Fighting for the Future of Higher Education
Solidarity with all my colleagues who stood out on picket lines today, and will do so again tomorrow and Friday, and again next year if their demands are not met. 33 universities are striking on pay and pensions; 21 on just pay and 4 on just pensions. University and College Union (UCU) has called the pay dispute ‘The Four Fights’:…
An Autastic Announcement!
To disclose or not to disclose? And if the former, when, how, and, crucially, why? These questions have nettled me since my diagnosis, on Dec 17 2020, of Autism Spectrum Disorder ‒ or, as I and many other autistic people prefer to call it, Autism Spectrum Condition. Autism might be disabling in a world designed for neurotypicals, but it…
From Indeterminate Cats to Interfaith Cathedrals
From Schrodinger’s Cat to Salisbury Cathedral, Prague castle to the Princess Royal Hospital, my cancer journey has come full circle, back to a strangely euphoric, possibly disease-free state. As I wrote in June, in the days just prior to my diagnosis, I felt both terminally ill and joyously alive; now, having just had an operation to remove four lymph nodes…
‘A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer’ . . . and Fascism
I’m home from a weekend in London where, with the help of wonderful friends and a small wheelie suitcase I celebrated the end of chemo by taking a few baby steps back into the world beyond Brighton hospital clinics – and a big breath of freedom before my operation on Dec 6th. Thanks to the success of my chemotherapy cycles,…