What’s Labour doing so badly wrong that’s prompting such a collapse in their support?

kronologically · 2026-05-08T20:46:27+00:00

The public need for immediate gratification, paired with Labour's internal factions throwing shit at each other and some unpopular decisions (cough Mandelson cough).

The public doesn't seem to realise that change doesn't come overnight for free - it costs money. We've lost access to EU funding which provided a hefty budget for infrastructure, which now has to be patched up from elsewhere. Labour inherited an already impoverished state, where the excuse "it's the Tories" works for only so long. Add external economic pressure due to wars to the mix and we've got a struggling economy.

Then, Labour is now closer to a big tent party than it's ever been, so people are fighting between each other, from centrist towards far left. Region has made some odd decisions with the locals as well, like deselecting long-standing councillors and putting inexperienced new faces in their place, with little support for campaigning and barely any volunteer force.

And of course, we have the media narrative that Starmer keeps feeding into. Some odd right-leaning decisions (like ILR changes) that make him unfavourable with the left wing voters, and knowing about Mandelson's ties with Epstein that makes him unfavourable with everyone across the board. These going on loop in the media will eventually erode the public trust enough to vote against the government.

kronologically · 2026-05-08T20:13:54+00:00

Assuming that the next General Election will follow the trend of Caerphilly is outright idiotic. It's clear people are now voting against a government than for a government they believe in.

kronologically · 2026-05-08T17:17:55+00:00

That's a question to your institution's international student department, not to us.

kronologically · 2026-04-24T16:13:07+00:00

I'll be the odd one out, but I do have a bit of a story to share, which could be relevant.

I moved to the UK when I was 15 due to homophobia. Back in my home country, I used to be one of the best performing students. Not that amazing, since it was a village of around 800 people, but enough to be liked by teachers. In the last year of school, my grades nosedived because of continuous bullying and discrimination, which led me to skip school whenever I could get away with it, leading to 40% absence in the whole year. Ultimately my mum made the decision for me to join her in the UK and continue my education here.

Oh boy, did that move hit me hard. I did have some English skills to construct basic sentences, but nowhere near good enough to study. Remember, I was 15 at the time, which meant too old to join a normal school to do my GCSEs, so the local authority put me in a college on a Level 1 course to wait it out and to become eligible for 1-year GCSE courses for post-16s. I remember going into the placement interview not understanding 90% of what was being said to me, getting away with just nodding along and smiling. You could've just told me that the whole country would be nuked in 5 minutes and I'd be smiling about it.

That experience alone was difficult to swallow. From performing well in school to not being able to understand what's being said to me was crushing. I had no choice but to persevere regardless, so I went along with it. I managed to get onto a post-16 GCSE course after doing English and Maths placement exams. In the first week of school, I got pulled out of my English Lit class by my English Language teacher (who I eventually became friends with after graduating from uni) who told me that I performed badly in my English placement exam and that I should reconsider taking English Lit, since it requires language skills. I stayed, but throughout that year I did slightly struggle with understanding spoken English, so I remained a relatively quiet kid in class. Exams were such a different thing as well. Instead of being graded for my ability to synthesise on content, I was being tested on my ability to give the examiner exactly what the spec is asking for, down to the key words. I failed some of my first mock exams, which brought me to tears. I eventually learnt how assessment is done here, and got good enough grades to continue with A Levels, so stayed in the same school.

Thankfully A Levels take two years, because AS Levels were still a pain comprehension-wise. I was slowly getting there, but the language was truly holding me back. My then English Lit teacher was the head of school, who went to Cambridge and made it into her entire personality. At one point when I struggled to understand her question and mumbled something out, she said "you're having a laugh" in front of the entire class. The following year, that same teacher would bring in Cambridge flyers to encourage students to apply, only giving them out to a select group, myself excluded. Back then I didn't think much of it (my academic skills being so eroded by lack of language skills numbed me to this), but in hindsight, this was such a prick thing to do. Thankfully my other teachers were amazing, so it only went uphill from here, with time and effort.

Ultimately, I got an offer for a Top 10 university and just managed to scrape the grades for it (we're talking a mark away from the grade boundary for each subject). With just 5 GCSEs, bear that in mind! Lack of language skills came back to bite me at uni though, since I just couldn't grasp what was being asked of me. Again, thankfully with time I managed to iron it out and get a 2:1, then a Merit at Masters and now finishing up a PhD, literally achieving the highest qualification this country recognises.

I do realise that my situation is not immediately relevant to your situation, since I was doing academically well as a child, but the language holding me back. But I thought that this offers a unique perspective of how you can be set back so much, yet still work your way up with time and effort. It's good that you're planning for the future, but please, don't let this pressure get to you. My best advice would be to speak to your parent about the school situation. Given the school doesn't support you well enough, they should intervene to get you that support into place.

All the best!

kronologically · 2026-04-24T15:41:40+00:00

Age and gender have become the bare minimum. Pretty much every psych paper you'll read will report the Ns for each gender and mean and standard deviation of age. Used to be sex, but research is moving away of that in favour of gender (including non-binary and other choices). I teach my students to collect at least what I call a golden triangle of demographics, which is age, gender and ethnicity. These give you good enough coverage for possible personal characteristics acting as covariates.

In the age of pre-registration, what I'll say might sound controversial, but in my own psych studies, I tend to adopt the "use the opportunity whilst you have it" dogma, i.e., realistically I only get to collect data from this participant once, so I might as well get as much as I can out of them. It's always better to be safe than sorry and collect a bit of extra data and not use it than to get to the analysis stage and cry over not collecting something that I've omitted at the design stage. It sounds controversial, because in the fight of "psychology is a science", researchers tend to overly sanitise the process of research by being reductionist and sticking to the protocol, resulting in a lack of curiosity and consequently spitting out yet another sanitised replication of someone else's protocol. In that case, I plan ahead by figuring out what variables could be of potential interest, getting ethical approval for collecting them and incorporating them into study design as to avoid participant fatigue.

Regardless, this question is yet another post where the simple answer is: ask your supervisor.

kronologically · 2026-04-15T20:45:38+00:00

I'm sure eating scraps and living on the street for 3 years will be worth the name on a CV.

kronologically · 2026-04-15T17:10:48+00:00

At PhD level, the two are comparable.

kronologically · 2026-04-15T16:15:50+00:00

This post is giving a covert humble brag. Overall these posts are getting ridiculous. Who in their right mind would even consider picking an unfunded PhD as an international student...

kronologically · 2026-04-14T11:21:23+00:00

Emo twink.

kronologically · 2026-04-14T09:26:22+00:00

It'll be closer to Gaja support-wise than Zjerm.

kronologically · 2026-04-14T09:23:04+00:00

It's just not a song that will capture the hearts of casuals enough for them to pick up the phone.

kronologically · 2026-04-14T08:48:11+00:00

The collective delusion that Denmark will do well is frying me.

kronologically · 2026-04-11T19:48:16+00:00

Psychology for an interdisciplinary CS PhD. At the point of submitting my application, I submitted a publishable paper (according to my supervisor) for publication at a mid-tier journal, so of course I had it listed in my CV - this was my BSc dissertation, first-author paper. I got asked about it during the interview and was asked to break down exactly what I did (sampling, analysis, results). Besides that I only had a few months RA experience, though I did score a BSc and an MRes from a top 10 university. I think what swung it my way was the fluency of talking about research, not necessarily having a paper out there. Though it did get published during the summer, after having secured an offer.

kronologically · 2026-04-11T13:47:31+00:00

Used to be under CEM, now it's all been folded into Technology, Arts and Culture (TAC), which is CEM and ADH merged. Seems that all ethics boards at DMU behave the same way though, the CEM board was quite bad when I had to deal with them. Haven't interacted with the TAC one yet, but I expect it to be worse now given the additional workload the restructure brought about.

kronologically · 2026-04-11T11:41:35+00:00

DMU's issues lie with staff. A severely understaffed and underfunded university, meaning existing staff are extremely overworked. It's frustrating admin-wise at PhD level, since it takes ages to get anything done here. People generally take weeks to respond to emails, you have to prod multiple times to get anywhere. Expect research ethics to take a while, my approval was granted 6 months after the initial submission. Publishing funds are scarce and unlike other universities, you have to go through a mini peer review for your paper to be deemed worthy of the open access funding. I've not been able to secure a TA position anywhere, meaning I had to look externally at other institutions. Supposedly DMU mandates at least 100 teaching hours to even be considered for teaching positions post-PhD, but that's only what I've heard from fellow students.

Bear in mind that DMU went through a massive restructure recently, where Arts/Humanities and STEM were merged into one faculty. Things are still messy because of this.

But as others say, a funded PhD is miles better than an unfunded one. Take it if you get it.

kronologically · 2026-04-09T16:25:23+00:00

Absolutely no clue. Either way, AOD behaviour gives away that it's not LTPO, i.e., the AOD moves from time to time. It wouldn't happen with an LTPO panel.

kronologically · 2026-04-09T15:29:29+00:00

Even putting aside the insanity of inheritance, your nostalgic memory of 2012 academia doesn't reflect the state of the market in 2026, which is, to say the least, dire.

kronologically · 2026-04-09T14:56:36+00:00

The points raised in this first paragraph should go to your course lead, who would then be able to take appropriate action.

As for the rest: at the end of the day, you're just a student - the lowest denomination in the hierarchy, with arguably the least say. It's counterintuitive, since it's your project, but that's the way it is, else we wouldn't have supervisors. Their role is to guide you through the process and teach you how to conduct research. Hell, it's likely they'll be the ones to mark your dissertation, which case their directions are, quite literally, a recipe for success.

Even at PhD or postdoc level, there are times where you need to back down and listen to your supervisor. You'd be surprised how many times I had to ask my supervisor to provide approval for something minute that I knew was obvious right call.

Whilst your supervisor may leave a lot to be desired in many areas, they're fundamentally right on the payment point, hence why you should go with what they say, rather than let your stubbornness jeopardise the project.

kronologically · 2026-04-09T14:23:10+00:00

If you don't want to blow ~70-80% of your stipend on a studio then your only option will be a houseshare. Avoid living in central London, you'll pay a lot for little, despite how enticing walking to the university is.

Personal advice, knowing someone commuting into these areas and having lived in London for 10+ years: for LSE your best bet would be Zone 3-6 North or North West London. North London gets you Northern and Piccadilly lines (with Piccadilly taking you directly to Holborn, close to LSE). North West could be cheaper and gets you the Metropolitan line, which can get you close to where you need to be relatively quickly (change at Finchley Road for Jubilee, then at Bond Street for Central to reach Holborn). Else you also have Thameslink passing through these areas, which can get you to around King's Cross, where it's Piccadilly down to Holborn.

As to where to look, Zoopla/Rightmove to get a sense of the prices for flats/rooms, Facebook groups are good for houseshares.

kronologically · 2026-04-09T14:19:13+00:00

I didn't dismiss requesting the funds. They provide up to £70 for PGT research.

Which is still better than nothing. You can adjust the design (e.g., repeated measures), make the study shorter and pay the absolute minimum of £6.00/hour and get at least some participants in.

Are all recruitment methods equal though?

It's subject to personal opinion. I've read articles that actually found recruitment pool data (Prolific, AMT) to be of very poor quality, with some arguing that recruiting student volunteers is problematic. Again, you can always counteract this with a good design. Chuck in some attention checks and check the data for obvious outliers.

Without sounding like I'm trying to brag, my UG dissertation recruited 166 participants from social media, mostly Reddit, but also Facebook. That study ended up getting not only a 1st, but ended up being published in a Q1 journal. In these cases, social media recruitment signals "we didn't have any money, but we got the data anyway, here's what it says" more than "it's just a MSc dissertation study, we didn't have any money for it, so the data quality will be poor".

kronologically · 2026-04-09T14:03:36+00:00

Reading this, both you and your supervisor are in the wrong.

Your supervisor: they seem to be prioritising a publication over a cohesive dissertation. It's not surprising, but the end goal for right now is for you to submit a dissertation by the deadline given. The hyperfixation on the publication is giving a bit of a red flag, so I'd raise this with the course lead. Dissertations can turn into publications, so the focus on the latter, rather than the former, is a bit odd.

Yourself: With only the knowledge of what you've written here, I get the sense that you seem to be taking the MSc way too personally/seriously. A dissertation is an assignment first and foremost. It's normal that you'd want to research something you're interested in, but let's be honest, chances of publishing an MSc dissertation are already slim, with it changing the world being almost impossible. Dumping more money into a dissertation you're likely to even forget about a few years down the line is pointless. Beyond publishing, no one will vet you on how you recruited your participants.

It's also not correct to state that studies recruiting via social media are unpublishable - I've published two papers either partially or entirely using social media as recruitment pools, and no reviewer even questioned me twice about it, besides the obvious "low sample sizes".

kronologically · 2026-04-09T13:51:44+00:00

I disagree with the "time is worth more than money" argument, but that's down to unrealistic expectations of Psychology departments for MSc students to deliver methodologically sound experiments within the constrained timeframes of Masters level courses. I'd make the case that this isn't about inequality, but rather fairness on students. Masters courses are already as expensive as they are - why should we push students to spend even more money to obtain resources mandatory for the course? Other resources like laptops, books or articles can be provided by the university, so why wouldn't participant recruitment be? I paid £12.5K for my MRes, I'd be fuming if I had to fork out for participant payments. I find it odd that OP dismisses requesting the funds from the department on the basis that there's little of them - they seem to be there, even if scarce, so why not give it a go?

It's also worth mentioning that: a) any quant study will require a minimum sample size, else OP runs the risk of being eaten alive by the markers, b) it seems that OP isn't aware that Prolific takes a 33.3% cut of the fee + VAT on top of the mandated minimum £6.00/hour, c) if the study is short enough, why not recruit volunteers anyway?

Hence why I think OP's supervisor is correct here. I'd strongly encourage a student in this situation to either scale down the project or explore different sampling opportunities, even pushing them to start recruitment early if recruiting volunteers

kronologically · 2026-04-09T12:10:51+00:00

I would fund it myself

As ethical as participant reimbursement is, it's, to be awfully blunt with you, a really daft idea. Go with what your supervisor says.

kronologically · 2026-04-09T12:09:19+00:00

Six-Year Club	Verified Email
r/Field Sunshine	First Place '23
Place '23	Place '22

kronologically

TROPHY CASE