Mark Doidge
@markdoidge
Sociologist at Loughborough University researching sport, environmental sustainability, antiracism & refugees. Member of @fanseurope & @britsoci
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command”. The denial industry has kicked into overdrive to gaslight the public in the middle of an unprecedented heatwave. They pay various egotists and crackpots to push their agenda.
What is your evidence for this? The modules on my course explicitly provides a grade for critical thinking, alongside knowledge, reading and presentation. It was the same at my previous institution. But thanks for keeping on proving why these skills are necessary.
It’s raining in June. Luckily, the right wing don’t think the climate is changing 🙄
Who looks at Reform and thinks “you know what? The Greens are the ones threatening British liberal democracy”. These people think they are liberals and therefore anything that doesn’t fit their world view to the left is extreme, but strangely anything to the right is still liberal.
And some of us thought that Goodwin was an arrogant narcissist but here he is downplaying his own sense of self-importance 🙄
We’re doomed because the right wing are toddlers. They’re doing it, so why can’t we? Because someone has to be the adults, Tim. But we keep pandering to the toddlers.
We have to stop migration to curb the far right. We have to lock migrants in camps to curb the far right. We have to reduce human right to curb the far right. We have to deport people to curb the far right. We have to clamp down on protest to curb the far right. www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec...
One of the hardest things to do in academia is to try new skills and make yourself uncomfortable. We tried new creative methodologies with football fans and, for me at least, fear of looking stupid was a big thing. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
It was incredible to attend the Hummingbird Refugee Project’s ten year celebration. It seems the blink of an eye since we started in the Jungle, and it’s amazing how it has grown and evolved into the vital service it is now. In the face of the current far-right onslaught, this is real community.
Reminds me of an interaction I had in 2020 with my constituency MP, Peter Kyle, about how appeals to patriotism have been shown to lead to far-right hate. He didn’t believe the research; probably ignores the reality on the streets as it doesn’t fit his ideology.
Reading Octopussy and saw a surprising ’footballers names in things’ @footballcliches.bsky.social
Clearly the way you build community is telling some of them that they’re strangers. Funny how Starmer & Labour always come down on the side of the right wing reactionaries. They’ve not healed the wounds of Austerity, Brexit or Covid but blame those deemed ‘foreign’. It’s as if that’s the strategy 🤮
Compare the description of a man that used his car as a weapon to the description of a woman who was murdered by a man using his car as a weapon
Labour’s strategy to increase patriotism and detoxify the Union flag is clearly working well in stopping the far right 🙄
It’s interesting that he uses the word “lying” when in a recent post he claims the Greens controlled Brighton & Hove; yet it’s easy to find that the only party to have controlled B&H Council have been Labour. The Greens have only been minority administrations, with Labour support.
Wonderful to see Sociologists’ Tales still out there for its tenth anniversary. A passion project on the reflections & insights of a range of sociologists; with @ktwamley.bsky.social & Andrea Scott, with huge support from @britsoci.bsky.social & @brisunipress.bsky.social.
Great to see James Esson, Paul Darby and Christian Ungruhe’s book from the GlobaliIng Sport Studies series from @manchesterup.bsky.social at the @britsoci.bsky.social Annual Conference
We were told that Labour needed to jettison all its principles to get in power. They won a massive majority. And this is what they’re doing with it. Horrific
It’s almost as if the focus on growth is the problem. Growth benefits the wealthy. Cuts hit the poor. Inequality weakens communities. The focus is always capital, not people. Rather than focus on growth that’s affected by global issues outside of the chancellor’s control, start building communities
When Trump was attacking people of colour and trans people, Andrew Neil gave him the benefit of the doubt. Now Trump has put us all in danger, he is a problem for Neil.