Also ‘resist’ and ‘educate yourself’ - the latter would have been good advice for Jason.
Jason Arday #3
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Before his tragic demise the focus was broadening from JA to looking at low standards in higher education - not just how DEI was applied but also whether some disciplines, that attracted the academically weak, needed to be pared back. The anger & politicisation has now overshadowed these debates & attempts to comment on this in the mainstream are too risky. Anyone who puts their head above the parapet risks a toxic smear.
I've read so much that I've forgotten where I saw an interesting comment. Basically the thrust of the point was that more intellectually demanding disciplines, physics was cited, used more concise & plain language as they didn't need to use obscure words & create inpenetrable word salad sentences to feel confident of their intellectual worthiness. I giggled at Dan Neidle's retort to one such reflexively, intersectional tweet. He didn't quite say 'yer wot, mate'.
In the interest of balance I'm trying to read more objective material that's being run up the flag pole about right wing influences in Cambridge. The Peter Thiel mention & Quillette. Suspending judgement on that for now though.
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In the Spectator - an examination of the BBC’s role
“The BBC’s coverage of the Jason Arday scandal is something of a scandal itself. The corporation spent years uncritically promoting the myth of Arday.”
archive.ph
“The BBC’s coverage of the Jason Arday scandal is something of a scandal itself. The corporation spent years uncritically promoting the myth of Arday.”
Will the BBC apologise for its role in the Jason Arday story? | The S…
archived 19 Aug 2026 08:50:29 UTC
Interesting article on narcissistic collapse and suicide (not new, but relevant) https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/lifetime-connections/202510/do-narcissists-commit-suicide
I really do hope once the furore calms down that cooler heads prevail. I think this case has highlighted how higher education institutes are currently undermined when failing to do their due diligence.
I am currently watching a Telegraph video on YouTube that was posted 12 days ago, and it’s an interview with Tim Stanley and Professor Kehinde Andrews. In it Professor Andrews does concede that he thought Arday’s PhD thesis was poor scholarship, but he stands by it not being plagiarised. The discussion then moves onto, if it was poor scholarship, should it have been passed.
Universities such as Cambridge University, should be setting themselves to the highest standard. They require excellence, that would exclude the majority of us, which is how it should be without that being considered discriminatory.
BIB- absolutely. Excellence is discriminatory - it has to be! That’s what sets excellence apart from good or mediocre- you discriminate to discern the valuable. I mean, the people yelling loudest about discrimination are at least following their own arguments by then demanding that standards be lowered to avoid rewarding excellence. That this actually shows that they think that groups who are typically under achieving aren’t capable of excellence never really seems to occur.
I am not an expert - I don't know how you fix this. I think step one would be to not import American scholarship on race, because it doesn’t translate. Britain is not America - Tomiwa Owolade is excellent on this, and I find his approach credible and compassionate. Some things definitely need reassessed because the approach at the moment doesn’t really seem to be working.
Didn’t seem to trouble The Salt Path grifters, increased sales.
It’s partially correct. A PhD thesis is submitted for examination by two examiners: one internal (ie employed by the University where the candidate has researched the PhD) and one external (ie employed by another University either in the UK or internationally). Both examiners should be renowned experts in the subject of the doctorate. In cases where the candidate is also employed by the University, it is not uncommon for there to be a third internal examiner, to provide an additional layer of scrutiny and protect against bias. The examiners produce a report. Then the viva voce takes place, where candidates typically have the opportunity to present, and are then questioned on their work. It’s a test of the researcher’s skill as well as the final product itself. These discussions can last for several hours and be extremely stressful. In the UK, they take place in private, but in Europe and elsewhere the defence is public! So even more intense.
The examiners reconvene and discuss without the candidates and then, typically, issue one of the following outcomes: Pass without Corrections, Pass with Minor Corrections, Pass with Major Corrections, Resubmission Required, or Fail. The final report from the examiners includes a list of corrections to be made and the time allowed for the candidate to make the amendments. Once the examiners (or one of the nominated examiners) has rechecked the thesis, it is finally submitted and the degree can be awarded.
I’ve no idea how Arday’s viva went. Perhaps it’s in the book. No doubt he was the first 29 year old black PhD candidate in history to complete in 2.5 years (!!) while working full time (!!!), running 609 marathons and pass his viva with no corrections.
It’s in the book, and based on the utterly ludicrous story he weaves around it, including the mean examiners who didn’t make small talk before starting, it seems fairly clear he scraped it by the skin of his teeth and it remained a narc wound for him.
That chapter is in the spoiler here. It’s quite a ride.
https://tattle.life/threads/jason-arday.53156/post-25318062
Edit: It’s also odd as duck that a thirty year old adult man with a full-time student-facing academic job at Leeds and holding down multiple other jobs, a family (a father of two by this point), and who’d already attained multiple degrees and had (allegedly) lived in Liverpool, needed his old Sports BTEC mentor ‘father figure’ Sandro to
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I don't want to sound dramatic, but the way he spoke about Liverpool has really pissed me off.
This is a city that has one of the oldest black communities in the country, had the first British mosque, has the oldest Chinese community in Europe FFS.
Yet he speaks of us as though we've never had any experience of a well educated black man. I'm not denying that black people are woefully unrepresented in education, but I had at least a handful of black teachers when I was in school and college here.
His book smacks of someone who thinks the North is one large homogeneous mass, possibly all racists, flat cap wearing, Brexit voting, slightly unsophisticated people.
If he'd actually bothered to immerse himself in the culture of the city he lived in, he'd have realised we're massively, proudly, multicultural.
This is a city that has one of the oldest black communities in the country, had the first British mosque, has the oldest Chinese community in Europe FFS.
Yet he speaks of us as though we've never had any experience of a well educated black man. I'm not denying that black people are woefully unrepresented in education, but I had at least a handful of black teachers when I was in school and college here.
His book smacks of someone who thinks the North is one large homogeneous mass, possibly all racists, flat cap wearing, Brexit voting, slightly unsophisticated people.
If he'd actually bothered to immerse himself in the culture of the city he lived in, he'd have realised we're massively, proudly, multicultural.
im from Liverpool as well and I was disgusted. He was talking about us like we’re knuckle draggers. I could hardly believe it.
I don’t believe for a second the incurious fantasist ever lived in Liverpool, spent any meaningful time there whatsoever, or even spent the night there beyond maybe (generously) a handful of times if for work reasons absolutely forced to. I’m imagining his commute was similar to that of his Glasgow back and forth-into and out of the classes he was required to teach then immediately back home to London. His entire Liverpool experience was him getting from JMU to the bus station and back, probably by cab and definitely traveling there as infrequently as he could get away with. His nonsensical imaginings and stories about the good kind (and not so good and kind) simple White folk of Liverpool and their encounterings of the exotic Black fella are just testament to what an incurious, dull, often offensive self-absorbed fabulist he was.
FFS look at his “old Liverpool haunts”
and there’s the “I lived on Penny Lane” guff. FFS. If one of his ‘I love the bands of the music of the Northwest’ bands had come from Leeds and written a bleeping song about Briggate he’d have lived on Briggate while working at Beckett and they’d have been calling the police at the shock of seeing a Black man entering a house in Leeds.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. I used to live in New York, New York (so good they named it twice) and today I’m showing my A Level English teacher around my “old haunts” Battery Park, the Tenement Museum, Studio 54 and Ripley's Believe It or Not! Times Square.
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Make me glad he didn't go into details about is time in Scotland, fleeting though it was.
Ffffffffff! Yeah… I don’t think i’ll do a PhD.
So VERY thorough. Makes it even more mind blowing how the written part got passed by 2-3 expert assessors.
Even now I am still picking up bits of the story that I hadn’t been privy to before, and one of them was the interview where he said he did his PhD in 2 1/2 years whilst working a full-time job then suffered a brain tumour just before hand in, and then had a stroke. Just incredible. The interviewer visibly looked thunderstruck.
Oh no!!I don’t believe for a second the incurious fantasist ever lived in Liverpool, spent any meaningful time there whatsoever, or even spent the night there beyond maybe (generously) a handful of times. I’m imagining his commute was similar to that of his Glasgow back and forth-into and out of the classes he was required to teach then immediately back homs to London. His entire Liverpool experience was him getting from JMU to the bus station and back, probably by cab and definitely traveling there as infrequently as he could get away with. His nonsensical imaginings and stories about the good kind (and not so good and kind) simple White folk of Liverpool and their encounterings of the exotic Black fella are just testament to what an incurious, dull, often offensive fabulist he was.
FFS look at his “old Liverpool haunts”
and there’s the “I lived on Penny Lane” guff. FFS. If one of his ‘I love the bands of the music of the Northwest’ bands had come from Leeds and written a bleeping song about Briggate he’d have lived on Briggate while working at Beckett.
Now you’ll have to excuse me. I used to live in New York, New York (so good they named it twice) and today I’m showing my A Level English teacher around my “old haunts” Ellis Island, the Tenement Museum, Studio 54 and Ripley's Believe It or Not! Times Square.
As soon as I read the Albert Dock, I cringed. Yes, those are more ‘old haunts’ of tourists not someone who actually lives there. I’ve never been to Liverpool but I know about Bold Street. I would have though if he was into his technicolour dreamcoat from Carnaby Street, then Bold Street would have been pinned on the map.The Samaritans guidance was adopted initially, but it’s just a suggestion. One which seems to have been forgotten in the last year or so in favour of sensationalist headlines and clickbait.
IPSO Isnt fit for purpose- it’s an organisation made up of newspaper editors marking each others homework. And that’s between the press who signed up to it. Complain about the Times and have the editor of The Sun investigate? Although the Guardian isn’t a member so it investigates itself.
I’m impressed by your ability to type a whole sentence whilst being high on skag and scotch, and operating the bagpipes. Now get back in your bothy and boil me a haggis. Like you do.
I hope I can make this joke if I caveat it by saying my great granny was from loon.
That's typical of the BBC. They've spent years platforming other obvious fantasists and grifters like Jack Monroe and not a medical doctor Jessica Taylor. They don't like to back down and admit their mistakes.In the Spectator - an examination of the BBC’s role
“The BBC’s coverage of the Jason Arday scandal is something of a scandal itself. The corporation spent years uncritically promoting the myth of Arday.”
Will the BBC apologise for its role in the Jason Arday story? | The S…
archived 19 Aug 2026 08:50:29 UTC
While turning out hit jobs on tattle and even documentaries because it gets in the way of their talent grifting. They clearly fail on the very basics of being unbiased and balanced.
Influencers seem to think they should be protected from unkind comments in some kind of dictatorship that lands tattlers in jail. Tattlers are unkind at times but they're often fair on all the threads I post on. One thing is they can spot a liar and grifter a mile off.
Yep, that's why IPSO need to change things. It initially worked OK but the news industry is struggling today and laying off lots of people. So all ethics and morals have been chucked out.
I think they actually like suicides as they can be sensationalist and churn out many clickbait articles.
And what I’m asking - why doesn’t anyone in Liverpool know him? Nobody is organising a vigil.
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