[davidjay]

Well, this'll give the 5G death-ray lamp-post nutters something else to rage about. Expect street lights to be sawn down near you soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/ ... rveillance

To be honest I don't much like the idea of them.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Don't know if anyone else has been following the Professor Jason Arday story, but he's resigned from his professorship after Cambridge announced they were investigating him. The Guardian deserve a lot of credit here, because they found him to be (aside from the plagiarism allegations) to be a bullshitter.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/n ... ason-arday

The Guardian's instincts must have been to go full in behind Arday, because the people who'd led the public assault on him were deeply unpleasant people. Jolyon Maugham, Zack Polanski and a bunch of Labour MPs did exactly that, and now have egg on their face. But as the article by Lanre Bakare makes clear, so much was at stake here, academically and politically. Forcing a quick resignation is the best thing that could have happened.

[The Weeping Angel]

I have been following this case; being on Bluesky does have its advantages from time to time. Anyway, here is part of his resignation statement.



Or maybe he failed them by being a serial liar.

[Watchman]

Needless to say, Goodwin is absolutely creaming himself

[Tubby Isaacs]

Feed people leg stump half volleys like this and they put them away for boundaries.

At least this was resolved before there was much more egg on faces. Clive Lewis, John McDonnell and all the rest won’t care about the woman whose work was plagiarised while Arday got his Cambridge earner.

[Oboogie]

The Guardian's instincts must have been to go full in behind Arday, because the people who'd led the public assault on him were deeply unpleasant people. Jolyon Maugham, Zack Polanski and a bunch of Labour MPs did exactly that, and now have egg on their face.

A clear example of what James O'Brien calls footballafication: "a black academic must be the good guy/victim so we must all support him unequivocally to demonstrate what good allies we are".
The lesson is a clear and simple one, not all thieves and bullshitters are white.

[Boiler]

My niece had the work she'd done for her doctorate plagiarised. Needless to say, she's still pretty sore about it even now.

[davidjay]

My niece had the work she'd done for her doctorate plagiarised. Needless to say, she's still pretty sore about it even now.

I had to watch as a lot of my work was published weekly under their name by someone with better lawyers than I could afford.

[Oboogie]

My niece had the work she'd done for her doctorate plagiarised. Needless to say, she's still pretty sore about it even now.

I had to watch as a lot of my work was published weekly under their name by someone with better lawyers than I could afford.

I wrote about 60% of a BTEC course and watched as my boss (who'd not written a word) got her name put on it, no credit to myself or the other authors.

[kreuzberger]

The Guardian's instincts must have been to go full in behind Arday, because the people who'd led the public assault on him were deeply unpleasant people. Jolyon Maugham, Zack Polanski and a bunch of Labour MPs did exactly that, and now have egg on their face.

A clear example of what James O'Brien calls footballafication: "a black academic must be the good guy/victim so we must all support him unequivocally to demonstrate what good allies we are".
The lesson is a clear and simple one, not all thieves and bullshitters are white.

"Footballafication" suggests a level-playing field and the same rules applying to everyone.

Even if he has cut a few corners - which is far from set in concrete - it is a bit silly to consider Arday to have had the same blessed privileged background as yer common or garden Cambridge Don.

He can cure cancer and the common cold, or dance on Mars but he is Black. Of course, the establishment shun him.

(Just as an aside; the serried ranks of the news media have repeatedly cited Arday as being a professor. Of what? We are not told. They are not presuming that we even care, rather that we should all automatically go along with the Oxbridge narrative that "some uppity coon" is beyond his station.)

For the avoidance of doubt; I am heart-broken.

[The Weeping Angel]

He did cut corners. Also, before you feel too sorry, please remember he had a journalist arrested because they dared to ask questions about his many claims

[Oboogie]

The Guardian's instincts must have been to go full in behind Arday, because the people who'd led the public assault on him were deeply unpleasant people. Jolyon Maugham, Zack Polanski and a bunch of Labour MPs did exactly that, and now have egg on their face.

A clear example of what James O'Brien calls footballafication: "a black academic must be the good guy/victim so we must all support him unequivocally to demonstrate what good allies we are".
The lesson is a clear and simple one, not all thieves and bullshitters are white.

"Footballafication" suggests a level-playing field and the same rules applying to everyone.

Even if he has cut a few corners - which is far from set in concrete - it is a bit silly to consider Arday to have had the same blessed privileged background as yer common or garden Cambridge Don.

He can cure cancer and the common cold, or dance on Mars but he is Black. Of course, the establishment shun him.

(Just as an aside; the serried ranks of the news media have repeatedly cited Arday as being a professor. Of what? We are not told. They are not presuming that we even care, rather that we should all automatically go along with the Oxbridge narrative that "some uppity coon" is beyond his station.)

For the avoidance of doubt; I am heart-broken.

"Footballafication" in the sense James O'Brien uses it does not mean a level playing field or anything like it. It instead refers to when we allow our biases to override the evidence presented to us.
In this case that means the racists will certainly assume the "uppity coon" you describe but equally, progressives will assume persecution of an innocent man because he's black.
Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
Wiser heads look at the evidence before reaching a verdict.

[The Weeping Angel]

And by cutting corners, I mean plagiarising other people's work. Now I'm going out on a limb here, but that's a bad thing.