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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 12h

Can it even be called a city any more when so much of it is just rubble?

Glad that they finally get to go home, and hope that this time the peace process actually facilitaes peace.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

So yes, everyone is entitled to join the Conservatives if they wish. But after everything we’ve seen, heard and lived through, some of us would rather be trapped in a lift with Piers Morgan and a bag of angry wasps than give them another term in power.

Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Finally, they want to run the country... again... yet they can't even seem to gather together the wherewithal to even spell its name right... (see the infamous choclate bar at their conference)

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

And on foreign affairs, they talk about “Global Britain” while alienating our closest partners, slashing development aid, and bouncing between slogans like a malfunctioning autocue.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Apparently, the future is whatever keeps their donors happy, though there are a dwindling number of them now... still, you could get a tennis match with Boris for a few £££££.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

On climate policy, they love to claim world leadership, then quietly delay net-zero targets, approve new oil and gas licences, and mock anyone who drives an electric car.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

The “cost-of-living crisis” was just a polite way of saying “our policies broke the economy”.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

They boasted about “record employment” while ignoring the surge in zero-hours contracts, the explosion in food bank use, and people working multiple jobs to stay afloat. Productivity flatlined on their watch, and wages haven’t nearly kept pace with inflation.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

They talk about “levelling up”, but whole communities still haven’t recovered from austerity. Local councils are literally going bankrupt, bus routes have vanished, and high streets are hollow shells of what they were.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

They promised to be “tough on crime”, yet police numbers were cut by more than 20,000 under their watch, the courts are backlogged to breaking point, legal aid was devastated, and victims are now waiting years for justice, while the prisons were left overfull and dangerous.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

They say they’ll “stop the boats”, but they spent hundreds of millions on a Rwanda scheme that didn't actually send anyone anywhere and was likely illegal. Meanwhile, the asylum backlog ballooned, and legal migration, the kind that keeps the NHS and social care afloat, became a political football.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

more importantly, the conditions they have to care for the public in were eroded beyond reason. “Cut the waste”, apparently, now means “don’t fund the workforce” in their dictionary.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

They claim to be the “party of the NHS”, but they left waiting lists are at record highs, hospitals crumbling, and tens of thousands of nurses, doctors and paramedics going on strike or leaving because pay and,

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

They talk about “stability” and “sound money”, yet the last time they tried to showcase their economic competence, we got the Truss–Kwarteng mini-budget, a market crash, mortgage rates skyrocketing, and a £60 billion hole in the public finances. Some stability that was.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

I wouldn’t touch that political dumpster fire with a ten-foot barge pole, while wearing PPE that actually works...

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

This is a free country (mostly) and I’ll defend anyone’s right to back the Conservatives if that’s genuinely what they believe in.

Of course, I’m equally free to say that after fourteen years of chaos, sleaze, and austerity dressed up as “fiscal responsibility”,

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Admin: “We think we have survived another year, but we still have another exam board to get ready for and we now need to get all the spreadsheets set up for next year”

Somewhere in the distance, the faint cry of a pigeon whispers… “Welcome Week is coming".

Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Technicians: “I fixed everything and we are stocked up for the year. It will all be broken again by September and we will somehow not have enough wound care packs but we found find that out till the last week of September.”

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

August – The Great Forgetting

Everyone vanishes. Out-of-office replies multiply like bacteria.

Lecturers: “I’ve forgotten what my house looks like as I'm at work so much, but where is everyone else?£ (They are there but have found places to hide to try and get their work done).

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Technicians: “We’re dismantling the lab for maintenance. Don’t touch anything.”

Admin: “No, we can’t move the graduation ceremony to accommodate your dog.”

Staff start Googling “jobs that don’t involve email.”

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

July – The Great Marking Migration
Marking moves from the office to the garden. It doesn’t help.

Lecturers: “How is it still not done?”

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Technicians: “Why are you all in the lab again? Don’t the students all know this by now?”

Admin: “No, we can’t move the graduation ceremony to accommodate your dog.”
Staff start Googling “jobs that don’t involve email.”

Collective state of mind: running on adrenaline, caffeine, and spite.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

June – The Broken Spreadsheet Apocalypse
It’s board season.

Lecturers: “Why is this grade missing?”

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Admin: “We’re just waiting for final final approval… from the pre—pre-exam board before we can go to pre-exam board and then the actual exam board, followed by the virtual exam board”

Collective state of mind: holding on by the strength of one wobbly post-it note.

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Matthew Osborne @matthew0sb0rne.bsky.social · 1d

Technicians: “We are totally out of consumable supplies and we have learnt to fashion catheters from elastic bands, hot glue and surgical tape.”

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