Today's discussion about the news

Skipped through Eurovision this morning and Israel was one of the better entries (it's a low bar) so I might have voted for it too. One of the few where the staging added to rather than distracted from the song.

The UK entry was bland and poorly performed - apparently the guy is an established singer (and actor) but you'd never guess based on that.

There's an article in the Guardian today about how to poo. This is probably more interesting than Eurovision.

Slightly disappointed 'poop' was used most of the time, so was surprised that it did use the splendid and accurate word 'shit', but just the once, some way down.

Other than that, yes, interesting. From reading that, I wonder if my quick morning download is atypical. Not wholly convinced about the efficacy of the 'patting' cleansing technique.

One news article I definitely shan't be discussing with pupils.

Maybe it's my full fibre contract, but my download speeds are very reliable.

Is there not already a massive funding hole? Universities are laying off staff all over the place. The crisis is already here.

Deliberate policy to break the university sector, as they are trying to do with NHS, BBC, etc then? Or incompetence again?

Incompetence then. Very on-brand.

I have mixed feelings about the university sector. It is very bloated and very, very inefficient. There are armies of people in the background who you never see and achieve, objectively, almost nothing.

And I say this as someone who at one stage was one of them and felt like I was a waste of time and space, so left.

I was in tech transfer, drawing down a slightly above average salary to mooch around. I was surrounded by people with job titles inspired by terms such as "business" "enterprise" "innovation" and "development" all doing overlapping things. I personally got drawn away from what I was hypothetically employed to do, into doing odds and ends that other academic support people ought to have been doing.

If you walk around any department, in the chemical stores, facilities management, accounts, etc. I defy you to find anyone demonstrating anything approaching being "busy".

If they were businesses, there would be half as many staff.

My parents generally get very annoyed with me and say "but we're not like that" and then they go and do loads of boomery stuff and complain that the people they go to the pub with on a weekday "hold very strong views about things like immigration", which, tbf, they have the stones to say to my mum's face, but then, she's white, innit.

I recall the please turn the lights off signs as well, while the heating was on in all of the single glazed buildings in May. It was like bailing the Titanic out with a sponge.

And if you bang the drum for hard pressed university lecturers and their terrible T&C's you will be a boomer advocate. So be careful.

What am I banging the drum for? She didn't need to take the job. They didn't give her a permanent contract for 25 years so it's not like they paid into her pension either, tbf.

But the idea uni's are somehow awash with money feels an anathema to me.

Cambridge obviously gets an absolute tonne of donations, but people don't want to give money for things like teaching materials or books or a computer that isn't at least a decade out of date etc, they want to give money to a big shiny new building for the uni or for the college so they can have their plaque. They do get built, and then they slowly dilapidate over time as no-one has the money to look after them.

Amuses me when you hear all these admission stories however. So many of them must be made up. Mum was part of the admissions process, and got relatively senior in the end. The stories your hear make absolutely no sense.

There are a couple of scenarios that come to mind where a surplus of international students seems suboptimal.

At the top of the university tables, if they come and leave after they graduate, having taken a place that could have gone to a young talented British person. However, in this scenario they are helping subside the education of homegrown students. An additional issue in this case may be that the standards are relaxed for international students...

At the bottom of the university tables, I imagine it may be more about the visa than the degree, but that's possible I'll founded speculation.

Universities have probably got enough money if they spent it appropriately. At least that was my abiding impression 18 years ago and has remained the case based on interacting with them from the other side of the fence, and seeing just how many people there still are flitting around pretending to do what I pretended to do.

They also have a really problematic pay scale increment culture. It is expected annually and, when a long standing employee reaches the top, they often go to either the next scale or some newly found additional exceptional scale points for doing the same job.

It creates an entitlement culture and doesn't particularly reward performance. It also ends up costing 25% more than it should for any given role.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have international students, but I can see reasonable arguments that there should possibly be tighter limits on numbers.