The above picture shows fascist thug and career criminal Daniel Thomas (a.k.a. Danny Tommo) leading a “protest” of uniformed knuckleheads (those on the right of the picture, in short trousers) outside the Daily Mail offices in London.
Fans of P.G. Wodehouse will recall Roderick Spode, the 7th Earl of Sidcup, who leads a fascist group called the “Saviours of Britain” also known as the Black Shorts. He is of course a parody of Oswald Mosley and his group a parody of Mosley’s Black Shirts (aka the British Union of Fascists).
The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting “Heil, Spode!” and you imagine it is the Voice of the People.
How prescient was that?
Incidentally, fans of historical trivia might be interested to know that the grandson of Oswald Mosley (founder of the British Union of Fascists) and Diane Mitford (a friend of Adolf Hitler, who married Oswald Mosley at the home of Joseph Goebbels) is Louis Mosley, CEO of Palantir UK.
Coincidentally, Nigel Farage went to the same school as P.G. Wodehouse, Dulwich College.
I see that the fascist mob that is nowadays given free rein by the UK police to roam the streets, block traffic, close ports, and generally do whatever they like, has now, at the behest of wannabe Führer Nigel Farage, turned its attention to the brave men and women of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Volunteers of the RNLI have had their photographs and other personal information circulated in the cesspool that is X/Twitter in an attempt to intimidate them. The reason? For rescuing people in danger of drowning in the English Channel.
Only the lowest of the low would attack these brave and selfless volunteers who risk their own lives saving lives at sea. As a regular donor to the RNLI I have today increased my contribution and will be wearing my RNLI pin badge in support of the brave men and women who regularly risk their lives to save those in distress at sea.
Incidentally, in case you were wondering, the RNLI also serves Ireland: there are 59 lifeboats based in 45 stations in the Republic as well as Northern Ireland. It also over two hundred years old. Here’s a short video celebrating the bicentenary in 2024:
If you wish to donate to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution then you can do so here.
The last time STFC had a financial crisis was in 2009 and e-Merlin might well have been cut then but survived thanks to political intervention at the highest level. I suppose that could happen again, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
It looks like it has indeed happened again. The exact quote from Andy Burnham is:
There must be a way to save Jodrell Bank, and I give a commitment today, at this despatch box, we will find it.
That sounds like an unequivocal commitment, but it raises quite a few questions. One of these is that STFC was actually planning to cut funding to the e-MERLIN project and it is by no means clear that the £2.8 million needed for e-MERLIN will actually be reinstated in the STFC budget. It may transpire that Jodrell Bank Observatory emerges as more of a heritage site than a world-class research facility, which is what it will be if e-MERLIN disappears.
And if £2.8M is found to keep e-MERLIN going without changing the overall STFC budget, then the axe will just fall elsewhere in STFC. Jodrell Bank is a special site with special arguments for keeping it open, but other targets can no doubt be found that are equally excellent from a scientific point of view, but can’t mobilize political forces to mount such a strong defence. This is no way to perform a scientific prioritization exercise. In any case it is important to remember that there are cuts and cancellations elsewhere too; see here for a full list.
I think that there needs to be a complete review of funding across all the UKRI agencies. It is deeply unfair that physics and astronomy have to bear the brunt of cost overruns at facilities which are largely used by researchers in other scientific areas. Surely their funding councils should contribute. I can accept that belts might need to be tightened, but that shouldn’t just apply to STFC.
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), of which I am a member, was planning a ballot on industrial action. The reason for the ballot is that the Public Service Agreement, covering pay and working conditions for all public service workers in Ireland, lapsed at the end of June this year (2026) and there is currently no pay settlement for the second half of this year or next year. Salaries have fallen behind inflation under the existing Agreement and some important commitment have not yet been implemented. The Government does not give the impression of being serious about negotiations on these matters.
The ballot opened today, September 1st 2026, and as soon as the link for the electronic vote arrived in my inbox I clicked it and voted ‘YES’, i.e. in favour of industrial action.
Similar ballots are taking place across all the public service unions. Yesterday, it was revealed that Ireland’s largest public sector union, SIPTU, has voted 98% in favour of industrial action. Today it was announced that 96 per cent of the union Fórsa had voted similarly. I hope the IFUT result – and results from the other relevant unions – is as strong.
If it comes to industrial action – which I hope it does not – then such action will be coordinated across the public sector.
P.S. Solidarity to former colleagues at Nottingham University as they take industrial action over job losses resulting from its proposed “restructuring”.
I don’t often post anything about matters pertaining to the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), of which I am a member, but there is something very important going on so I thought I would make an exception. In what follows, I of course speak for myself as an IFUT member and not for IFUT as a whole.
Yesterday I attended an information session in advance of a forthcoming ballot for industrial action. The reason for the action is that the Public Service Agreement, covering pay and working conditions for all public service workers in Ireland, lapsed at the end of June this year (2026) and there is currently no pay settlement for the second half of this year or next year. Salaries have fallen behind inflation under the existing Agreement and some important commitment have not yet been implemented. The Government does not give the impression of being serious about negotiations on these matters.
The members’ ballot will comprise a single YES/NO question on whether or not to support industrial action, including strike action. I think this is an important step towards serious negotiations. I will be supporting industrial action.
The IFUT ballot will open on September 1st, but only IFUT members (working in public institutions) will be able to vote. If you are eligible for IFUT membership, you should join now so that you can have your say and strengthen the collective position of higher education staff. Eligible colleagues who join IFUT by 5pm on 31 August 2026 will be eligible to vote in the ballot. You can join IFUT here. If you’re eligible, please join!
Similar ballots are taking place across all the public service unions. If it comes to industrial action – which I hope it does not – then such action will be coordinated across the public sector.
I have found this a very disappointing weekend in many respects for sports. Two Irish rugby teams (Ulster and Leinster) both lost their cup finals against French opposition (Montpellier and Bordeaux in the Challenge Cup and Champions Cup, respectively). Glamorgan’s cricketers lost their first two Twenty20 games of the season (both narrowly). And today’s last round of matches in the English Premier League saw Newcastle lose, an outcome made worse by the fact that Sunderland won.
At least however there was an opportunity to enjoy Ireland’s greatest spectator sport (after hurling, of course): the counting of votes in an election. Friday saw two by-elections, one because of the resignation of Paschal Donohoe (FG) from his seat in Dublin Central in order to take a lucrative job at the World Bank, and the other vacated by Catherine Connolly whose seat in Galway West became vacant when she took on the role of President. Neither of these are constituencies in which I could vote, but it was fun watching the results come on.
These elections, like all elections in Ireland, were held under a system of Proportional Representation (Single Transferable Vote). The constituences return multiple members in a General Election, but in the case of a by-election only one candidate is elected. This simplifies matters a bit because the part of the process that involves transferring surplus votes from candidates who exceed quota is not needed. Voters rank the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated as the lowest-ranked candidates are eliminated. You can rank all the candidates or just some. In the system employed here one ranks the candidates in order of preference with votes progressively reallocated in various rounds until one ends up with one winner.
There was also the presence of gang leader Gerard Hutch among the candidates in Dublin Central, but in the end he didn’t put up a serious challenge.
Opinion polls gave Sinn Féin’s Janice Boylan a narrow lead on first preferences, but since SF are notoriously transfer-unfriendly, I was very confident that lead would be overturned by Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats. As it turned out, however, Ennis actually led on first preferences which confirmed me in my opinion that he would win. This is how the transfers panned out.
Ennis won comfortably, and John Stephens of Fianna Fáil gaining the distinction of getting the lowest share of first preference votes that his party has ever recorded in an election. There are some bizarre transfers, e.g. from the left-wing PBP (People Before Profit) to Fine Gael. Other than that the outcome was as predicted.
Not long ago Sinn Féin were riding high in the polls and might have expected to win a seat here, especially since Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Féin leader, holds a seat in Dublin Central, but their popularity has slumped. I think that’s primarily because they have recently lurched to the right – rather like UK Labour has – and many who want a genuinely progressive alternative to the crumbling neoliberal consensus have decided that they can’t support SF which puts on the mask of a progressive party when it suits them but are quick to remove it when chasing the right-wing vote. Mary Lou McDonald is quoted as saying that there is ‘no confusion’ for voters about whether her party was left-wing or right-wing. I think she is correct there, but perhaps not in the way she intended…
A genuinely left-wing party of the size of Sinn Féin should be building coalitions and knocking at the door to power, but instead it has squandered its position by pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment, jumping on the bandwagon of the recent “fuel protests” and signing up to transphobic policies in Northern Ireland. I don’t understand why they have chosen this path, but it looks very foolish to me. I’m not the only one to think this. Is Morgan McSweeney now working for Sinn Féin?
As I write, the count in Galway West is still going on but it has come down to a contest between two unpalatable right-wing candidates so I’m not following it as closely. Oh, the Fine Gael candidate has won.
It seems that after Donald Trump shared an image of himself as Jesus on social media, ridiculous pictures of oneself in biblical settings have become all the rage. In that vein here is a picture of me downloading a paper from arXiv to read on my tablet:
I’m not sure of the recording date, but it was made in Hungary (when Hungary was still behind the Iron Curtain) so it would have to be before 1956, as Cziffra escaped to Vienna then and eventually took up French citizenship.
I suppose I should comment on the ongoing disruption to road transport in Ireland as a result of “fuel protests”. I put that in quotes because from what I’ve seen many of the protestors are the usual far-right anti-everything troublemakers who have latched onto the fact that some hauliers and farmers are struggling with the increased fuel prices arising from Donald Trump’s stupid-headed war agains Iran.
The first thing to say is that I haven’t been directly affected by any of this yet. Although the roads in Dublin have been gridlocked for four days, I don’t live there and don’t have to commute. If and when I do have to go into Dublin from Maynooth, I usually take the train and then walk. Moreover, if I did plan to travel somewhere else – purely hypothetically, you understand – to spend a couple of days away at the end of the Easter break, perhaps with another person, then there are alternatives to flying from Dublin Airport…
I say I haven’t been directly affected by any of this, but in due course there may be shortages in the shops owing to disruption to deliveries. More importantly the congestion is causing difficulties for the emergency services too. All this is reminiscent of the fuel protests in the UK in 2000, which I remember very well because they happened when we were trying to organize the annual summer school for new PhD students at Nottingham, which we almost had to abandon because of interruptions to food supplies.
I’ll just make a couple of comments on these protests before going out for dinner at an unspecified location.
One is that the Road Traffic Act 1961 states:
98.—(1) A person shall not do any act (whether of commission or omission) which causes or is likely to cause traffic through any public place to be obstructed.
(2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) of this section shall be guilty of an offence.
Parking on a motorway in Ireland is also serious offence under the Road Traffic (Traffic and Parking) Regulations 1997.
Here is a trailer with a scaffold with a posting containing an incitement to murder (from here):
Picture Credit: Dean Buckley
(I’m reliably informed that “globalist” means Jewish to these people.)
There have been four days of obvious offences like these being continually committed and the Gardaí haven’t once even tried to enforce the law of the land. They come down like a ton of bricks on, e.g., climate change protestors, but the far-right are always treated with kid gloves. Double standards or what?
I can think of two possibilities: (i) that the Gardaí are sympathetic to the Far Right or (ii) that they are scared of them. Both could be true. Either way, it is very disappointing to us ordinary law-abiding folk to find that the rules applied to the fash are not the same as those applied to the rest of us.
I’ll end with a comment about one of the ringleaders of the unlawful roadhogs. James Geoghegan is a “farm contractor” who passes himself off as an upstanding fellow but it turns out he has numerous judgements against him for non-payment of tax and cruelty to animals. He chose to put himself forward as the “PRO” of the protestors, which doesn’t seem very wise given that it was inevitable his substantial sack of dirty laundry would get a very public airing. I saw him on TV last night in an interview in which he gave every appearance of being a complete idiot, which is at least consistent.
I don’t want to tar all farmers with the same brush, but Mr Geoghegan is of an identifiable type: he hates the idea of paying his tax but is simultaneously more than happy to accept state subsidies paid for people who pay theirs. He probably hates VAT and excise duty because he can’t avoind paying them. He claims to be among the downtrodden poor but owns a fleet of vehicles. His performance in the role of victim is not exactly convincing. If he’s looking for sympathy then he’ll find it in a dictionary.
Farming is obviously an important part of Ireland’s economy and social infrastructure, but so are many other activities.
Anyway the “protestors” say that they will stay in Dublin for “up to a month”. They must be pretty well off if they can afford to take such long holidays!
I’ve just got time this evening to pass on news that the Chair of the Parliamentary Select Committee looking at he current STFC debacle (see this account), Chi Onwurah, has responded to the events in extremely frank terms. Here is an excerpt:
The full response – which is definitely well worth reading because it doesn’t pull any punches – can be found here:
This isn’t by any means the end of the story of this fiasco, but it is certainly a positive sign that it is being taken very seriously in political circles. Credit is due not only to all those who attended and gave evidence to the Committee – Catherine Heymans, Jon Butterworth et al – but also to those who lobbied behind the scenes.
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