Occasional #Guardian @timeshighered #BBC columnist | #TEDx | #Psychology | #BABCP | Visiting Fellow / Scholar at Cornell, Yale, MIT 2017 | #Chess | Own Views
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Joined May 2007
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Revealing when media say "Government" is paying for free childcare places, but that "taxpayer" is paying for unemployment benefits.
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
“The most important message [the PM] has to bring to conference is that he has a plan to harness AI for government and citizens.”
Spot on from @ObserverUK.
End decline. Transform Britain.
Sign me up.
Great appearance by @KevHochard on @BBCNWT about @the_traitors_ Splendid advert for psychology and @uochester
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
I am deeply saddened by the passing of my dear friend and colleague, Jeremy Thomas, a remarkable man who helped me immensely over the years.
In one unforgettable act of generosity, he sold me Natural Nylon’s entire back catalogue of scripts for the princely sum of one pound.
I will always be grateful for his friendship, kindness and support. He will be greatly missed.
Jeremy Thomas, Legendary British Producer and Oscar Winner, Dies at 77 variety.com/2026/film/global…
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Where leading Disabled People’s Organisations stand on the assisted dying bill:
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Poll shows that @KemiBadenoch and @andyburnham are in tune with the majority of British people in opposing assisted suicide Bill. @charleshymas writes that “Two thirds of the public say MPs should “pause” the bill to legalise assisted dying until the medical royal colleges confirm any legislation would be safe.
“A poll published before the Commons vote on the legislation on Friday showed that 68 per cent agreed that any consideration of legalising assisted suicide should be halted until a bill was brought forward that the royal colleges could confirm was “safe”. “Only 13 per cent disagreed.
“Nearly three in four (73 per cent) said MPs should reject assisted-dying legislation if it posed an “unacceptable” risk to vulnerable people. “Only 14 per cent disagreed, while those agreeing rose to 80 per cent among people aged 65 and above.” See full report:
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/09… @frankcottrell_b @Tanni_GT @thelizcarr @Meg_HillierMP @NazShahBfd @Jeremy_Hunt @timfarron
I’m completely with @KemiBadenoch on this. We need legislation to provide world class palliative care and to ensure adequate funding for our hospices - a brilliant legacy of that illustrious English woman, Dame Cicely Saunders.
The last thing we need is to turn our hospitals into charnel houses.
We need compassion and care not euthanasia and doctor administered lethal injections.
And we need to protect the vulnerable, especially people with disabilities, not the promotion of suicide and the inevitable shift from a “right to die” to a duty to die.
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Jeez. This is kinda blowing up. Getting nice offers to take the show to other corners of the UK. Not sure how much extra I can fit on this trip but looking at a proper tour in January. DM if you’d like to see me at your venue: comedy or music venues work equally. It’s a fun show!
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
My new book THE FUTURE STARTS WITH US launches with a series of UK events, beginning in Glasgow on Wednesday 2 September. Join in the conversation with me and Eddie Barnes of the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow.
Tickets available here: eventbrite.co.uk/e/gordon-br…
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
The University of Cambridge can boast 126 Nobel Prizes. That’s more than any other university in the world except Harvard, and it does it on an endowment that is one twentieth the endowment of Harvard. In the Nobel ranking, Cambridge beats MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Oxford, and Yale (in that order). Cambridge, the university of Newton, Hawking, Russell, Wittgenstein, Moore, Keynes, Crick, Sanger, Kendrew, Perutz, Rutherford, Chadwick, Turing, Maxwell, Brenner, the list goes on and on, Cambridge is beyond question one of the very greatest universities in the world. The list of immense distinction continues to the present day. It is tragic, and deeply unfair, that the reputation of this truly great university should suffer at the hands one unfortunate anomaly, the Department of Education.
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Long post, sorry. But I swear, one of the disorders of this island is that whenever we do something well, we destroy it to appease an imagined reactionary swing voter in about 20 constituencies.
We do universities well. Genuinely, world-beatingly as a sector.
So naturally we're dismantling them — because "migrants," "foreigners," and "Mickey Mouse degrees."
While ignoring entirely that the sector:
1. Redistributes wealth around the country as students move between regions.
2. Delivers a massive net benefit through R&D
3. Anchors local economies — in half our towns, the university is the economy
3. Is one of our biggest export industries, with international students bringing in billions
5. Trains the doctors, nurses, and teachers as well as producing an educated population, in general.
6. Remains one of the few engines of social mobility we have left
7. Generates the spin-outs and startups every government has claimed it wants more of
8. Is among the last sources of British soft power that still commands global respect
9. And is a GOOD in and of itself, builds lifelong friendships, improves social cohesion, exposes young people to different ways of life and living. The most formative experience in many peoples' lives.
And they're not being destroyed, for the most part, by the sector itself, but by stupid decision after stupid decision by the government around how to run and fund them.
It is a genuine catastrophe, tanking our last stellar industry.
But instead of even reporting on the broader impacts this will all have, the university is just castigated as some fortress in the culture war.
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Out Now Open Access Now and Forever: “Pragmatics in Contested Interpretation: Varied Audiences, Varied Implicatures, Varied Inferences” | SpringerLink. link.springer.com/book/10.10…
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
The BBC covers the Jason Arday resignation.
There's no mention of a single lie he told, him reporting critics to the police or his links to Labour or the BBC, and no example of his plagiarism or poor writing is given.
But one of his whistleblowers' views on race is given. Twice
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
As an author, I can't bear the false sense of reality & intense social pressure caused by “perfect” photos. Heavy filters/editing set impossible standards that nobody can reach. That’s why I try to be spontaneous & natural & never stage my pictures, so you always get the real me!
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
This was an emotional @guardian column to make…
theguardian.com/games/2026/j…
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Gay men's organisations named on the list are welcome to contact me through my website. While the JK Rowling's Fund was set up to support women, JK Rowling herself is more than happy to donate to your legal fighting fund.
Prof Patrick McGhee retweeted
Once again, ordinary - yet extraordinary - women are making a difference.
Being able to change into uniform away from the prying eyes of men is not exactly an outlandish request but these women had to fight for it through the courts.
Well done @DarlingtonUnion nurses. Well done.
1. 🚨BREAKING: County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has paid £187,000 in damages, apologised, and committed to separate changing facilities for male and female staff following the Darlington nurses’ legal case.
In January, the Employment Tribunal had found the nurses suffered harassment and indirect sex discrimination over workplace changing-room arrangement.
The case, brought by seven nurses at Darlington Memorial Hospital, Bethany Hutchison, Lisa Lockey, Karen Danson, Tracy Hooper, Annice Grundy, Carly Hoy and Jane Peveller, was supported by the Christian Legal Centre, which has provided the nurses with legal, media and pastoral support from the beginning of their ordeal.
The case has become one of the most significant legal challenges in recent years concerning the freedom of female staff to access single-sex spaces in the workplace, with the nurses being compared to the Ford Dagenham workers and being dubbed ‘The Angels of the North.’
In January, Employment Judge Seamus Sweeney, ruled that the policy, which had been in place at the Trust for years allowing men who identify as women to access the female staff changing room, had amounted to unlawful discrimination.
Following extensive and at times deeply protracted negotiations, the Trust has now paid out £187,000 in damages to the nurses, which does not include legal costs, which are still to be decided at a further hearing.
This figure also does not include the Trust’s own legal costs of £603,000, and counting, spent on defending its position of allowing men into female changing rooms.
See more on our website and in this🧵to see the Trust's apology and commitments on single-sex spaces....
christianconcern.com/ccpress…