@ItaiYanai I'm not sure "we would need some other way" is quite correct. But I'm sure another low accuracy, low effect mechanism would emerge, whether we wanted it to or not.

@jim_dickinson Which is to say, my solution to the problem is to, as far as possible, make my teaching accessible to most of the common adjustments we see in plans to start with, and then skim plans for things that are outside the standard range.

@AllyFogg enitrely possible. Again, this isn't a "how shall we fix this", it's a "what will happen, abscent of any particular intervension"

@AllyFogg It can be both morally wrong, and true that they only thing that would make the government change its mind is a bunch of middle-class people hammering on the door to say "Not THAT kind of foreigner".

@tuuliel_lab I'm yet to find a text book on human genetics that is suitable for my final year undergrad students. I know my predecessor found this so frustrating that they wrote one - but that is well out of date now.

RT @carla_denyer: The idea that we need to keep immigrants out of the UK is a nonsense. In reality they have been plugging the labour gaps…

@pjie2 Sheffield university managed to make its minimum postdoc salary £37k, and the sky didn't fall in, nor did grants start getting rejected. Anyway, I doesn't apply to people with STEM PhDs (for better or worse in terms of forcing up postdoc salaries).

@anton_calabrese The govn are scumbags, and their immegration policy dangerous, but having a STEM PhD exempts you from the salary threshold, so it wouldn't have been a problem for anyone in STEM postdocs/fellowships/faculty.

@NyamenSedap @professor_dave By law they already have to be. If you have a qualified British applicant for a position, you have to hire them. And yet many postdoc positions are filled by overseas people. Last time I advertised a postdoc position we didn't get a single british applicant.

@thebestestpie @professor_dave Valueble to whom? Its not really valuable to the universities. In fact most universities lose money on research. Research is valuable to society as a whole - but "society as a whole" has no direct levers to control salary.

@richardparke15 @professor_dave We've managed to up our postdocs minimum to national spine point 30 (£37k) without the roof falling in, but I do know of colleuges in other universities with grants being rejected for being too expensive when they are literally just a postdoc and a computer.

@itschrisblurton @professor_dave No, they just exempt such people from the threshold.

@MDMorgan_abz True.

@NarblocBS @professor_dave To be honest, many of us have been on strike for a large part of the last 5 years to try and get the salaries of those on the lower rungs a salary increase. I've personally sacrificed more than £10k such industrial action. Didn't make an aweful lot of difference.

@thecopperdoctor @professor_dave The minister on the radio this morning also said that the shortage occupation exemption would also stay, which includes all biological scientisits, bioinformaticions, engineers, many chemical and physical scientists. Things might be more tricky in the humanities.

@professor_dave @JamesDShipp Sheffield has been able to increase its minimum postdoc grade to spine point 30 (£37k) without the roof falling in.

@Ben_Sheldon_EGI @postyourtoast @UniofOxford @royalsociety Sheffield has been able to make its minimal postdoc salary spine point 30 (£37k) without the roof falling in.