One thing about Brexit, the Covid-19 response & now A-levels debacle is that I'm thinking more abt the line between critical thought and conspiracy theory. Stay w/me & weigh in on this, pls.

... Take the A level response, it has been so disastrous & yet was so foreseeable and manageable. Forget the poor students (just for these purposes) & remember the wider context. I'm thinking abt, e.g., the elevation of STEM over A&H & Soc Sci.

I'm remembering attacks on universities for being centres of indoctrination, for their cancel culture, for offering a wide education vs acting as vocational training centres (nothing wrong w/them, just not the same as a university).

Remembering the endless policies - starting, but, boy, not ending, w/ £9k fees, which incidentally, would have stopped me doing what I did in the 1990s, ie to return to education as a mature student.

Or thinking abt the hostile visa environment for overseas students w/ its implications for academics - I was UG Prog Dir at the time & remember saying that if I'd wanted to join Border Control, I'd have done so.

And I'm thinking abt the effects of Brexit - on diversity of thought in the classroom if nothing else & all that follows from that.

And looking now at the place UK HE is in, with some universities on the edge of collapse, staff at breaking point and faced with a fight for student numbers to stay afloat. (So useful for your ability to focus on pedagogy!)

In the face of all that seeming incompetence, is it unreasonable to ask if this was designed to bring down a few universities and to send a msg to those that remain abt the power of govt. to decide their fates?

It looks like conspiracy theory because it's a profoundly harmful, reckless way to achieve those aims. But it's difficult too, even after Brexit, to believe a govt. could have been this stupid. (In a way, I'm being kind to Govt. to suggest there is thought behind this.)

My feeling is that we need to talk way more about British disinformation, once we apply that lens, it becomes harder to dismiss everything as incompetence & easier to see the guiding hand of malice. Does that make me a conspiracy theorist or just sensible?