You can see how the debate is always shifted from the victims of bigotry to whether those doing the bigotry have been slighted.

Now this is big news...

Maybe it's the media coverage but there seems to be very little talk of inflation / cost of living, public services at the Labour conference? (Which actually matters far more than immigration to Labour's chance of winning the next election?)

Favor/request: Can anyone share good guidance on a website or in a document on making transit apps accessible and easy for screenreaders? I'm also looking for examples of local transit agency apps that do it well. Particularly for schedules. TIA! 🙏 #Transit #WeekWithoutDriving

Regions need to raise funding themselves and the treasury not involved is the only way forward. Yet there's nothing from this government on devolving tax raising powers.

Drop whatever you’re doing and read the last 15 pages of this 161-page opinion. I’m serious. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

On the morning of Keir Starmer's conference speech here's a new post on an odd psychopathology in British politics - our main parties don't like the people who vote for them - the dreaded Professional Managerial Class. And so they are acting out like a divorced dad seeking cooler voters. 1/n

{gtfs2emis} - Estimate public transport emissions from GTFS data: ipeagit.github.io/gtfs2emis/ #RStats bookmark from the old twitter

Great thread.🧵 Remember when Cameron said the Brexit vote would stop Farage et al? The right and the racists/xenophobes will never be satisfied. They won the vote, but UKIP still exists. All that’s happened is we legitimatised, mainstreamed and normalised what were for a time extreme views.

Agree the plan is good, but council ownership is not going to work where most councils have serious financial challenges. Here in Birmingham, the council is selling off most of it's property portfolio.

This is the problem of the "growth" mindset of capitalism. You can't just have one of the most successful companies ever. You need to be doing more, creating more revenue etc. The whole point of streaming services is to get away from this inane chatter between contents, adverts, etc.

There's going to be a critical country-defining fight in the next few weeks as to whether the new system is just a rebrand / extension of GOV.UK One Login done by GDS or is something new done by Oracle / Palantir or worse.

Terrific piece this - will tell you more about why the government is unpopular than anything you’ll read about politics this week:

There would be a very British patriotic way to argue this... It's not in the British spirit of fair play. You can't get someone to go through the process (and pay a lot) to be able to stay here permanently and tell them we've changed our mind.

Road Casualties data for 2024 in Great Britain published this week: www.gov.uk/government/s... Thanks to @pactsuk.bsky.social, there is an important new chart on the vehicles involved in fatal crashes:

Polar bears occupy abandoned Soviet-era research station

This is good but really the issue isn't necessary Farage, it's who comes after him? If Reform get in, they'll have all the same economic issues as Labour and will struggle. There's a real risk that what comes after them is even more extreme. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

1/🧵 I can make a few observations on trans rights. The new scheme is primarily for right to work purposes so it will probably not include gender markers, since the current eVisa and share code systems do not use them. But our Home Secretary is a transphobe, so please put pressure on her.

Ok this is a US thing but this happens every time I cross a road in the UK to try to work out whether drivers will give way at a junction like they should. Then there's the junctions where drivers often ignore banned turns or even red traffic lights.

Spending a decade watching a dedicated high speed railway between several of the UK's largest cities get repeatedly downgraded to what can now be described as an "electrified link" (currently being delivered on the existing line and delayed since the early 1990s) is radicalising.

Long thread: There are two main "defences" I see put forward of Labour which crop up: 1) If you don't vote for Labour you'll get Reform 2) It's all the fault of right wing media painting Labour in a bad light. The thing is that neither of these are actually a defence of what Labour is doing. 1/23

Keir Starmer to warn labour that battle with reform is fight for the soul of the nation. These are two people who I don't want to "win the soul of the nation". We've seen reforms policies and actions and are rightly against it. But what has labour done for the soul of the nation. 1/4

On this day in 1983, this one man, with one disobeyed order, saved humanity. This is not hyperbole, this is not an exaggeration. Happy Stanislav Petrov Day! www.bbc.com/news/world-e...

It would be nice if pro-Labour accounts who were like "yeehaw we're finally got Reform where we want them" after Farage's Tylenol gaffe would stop to note that not only did Starmer not hit him on this weak spot but he chose to instead echo Farage's message to a newspaper THAT NO LABOUR VOTER READS

Has the government thought through the possible next steps when you publicly name and shame people for small offences...

If I was a Labour politician who wanted to design a better right to work scheme, I'd (a) start by cracking down on employers who transfer the risk to their workers, (b) work with the unions to design a scheme that puts workers' rights front and centre, and (c) phase roll-out, like digital switchover

This and the increased severity risk of having my ID on my phone if it's stolen or hacked.

What is amazing about social media is so much it's down to the algorithm and there has been very little talk of regulation and / or giving users control over it. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

What's depressing about the UK currently is we should be shoring up systems against a future far-right authoritarian government. Yet the government is doing completely the opposite by introducing a new massive database on us all...

I've had enough of listening. Time for action on low traffic. My letter in the Oxford Times today

I think people forget that the book 1984 was a warning not an ambition... Also seriously, the last thing we need to be doing is giving way more and more biometric information when it's really fake being someone now with generative AI.

I do think that a big part of the lack of media coverage is that it's not centered on London and the South East.

Jimmy Kimmel came back last night but the dozens of journalists, professors, and others will not be getting their jobs back. We talked about that and so much more on this week's Cancel Me, Daddy episode.

This is clearly an improvement, but why not simply have the signalised pedestrian crossing cover the cycle lanes and have lights to stop the cycles? (Which would be safer and more accessible than the combination zebra /signalised crossing here)

What's with apps increasingly using Sunday as first day of week - now it's Doodle. Even though I have my zone as UK.

Sadiq Khan bringing Sharia Law to London like

What is a good policy with a terrible name...

We still have a media and political class unable to handle misinformation. Quoting something saying it's unproven or saying it's not true either in a headline, amplifies the original message. We then get a debate about whether it's true and the misinformation gets further.

Lib Dems should announce at their conference that everyone with Indefinite Leave to Remain will automatically get full citizenship if they win.

Road harm exists in every corner of our city and this one hits incredibly close to home. RIP to the victim.

We live in a "motornormative" world. What does this mean? Why does it matter? Well, it means that the world is designed on the basis that driving is the natural, normal way to travel. This matters quite a lot. More in today's blog post www.freewheeling.info/blog/motorno...

Fairly sure this is going to happen when people are going to be asked to enforce toilet bans under the new EHRC guidance and then get disciplined when they don't.

This is good but nothing about funding. Until Mayors have their own tax raising powers and can set the overall budget nothing will really change. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

🌍📢 Call for Papers!! Urban Studies seeks submissions for a special issue on Climate Urbanism, Resilience & Justice — exploring how cities confront the climate crisis, risk, & inequality. @urbanstudiesjournal.com @acuto.bsky.social  www.urbanstudiesjournal.com/callforpaper...

What counts as essential travel? How does this differ across people? What level of mobility can be sustained within planetary boundaries? These researchers get closer to answering those questions than most. Wish this kind of thinking was more central to climate & transport policy making in the UK.

Brum Parking Days. Showing what you can do with the space. Pop up games, yoga and pasta making.

The last political column I was allowed to write in the @washingtonpost.com was a criticism of Obama. His people took issue with my piece, but we were respectful. Now he is tweeting in support of me. This is how free political speech and respect for debate *actually works*. Or used to work.

This essay is a tour de force. To trans people, it reads as a grim reminder of the litany of indignities and travesties visited upon us by the UK government. To cis people, I hope, it is a bracing and sobering wake up call to how illiberal the UK and Labour have become. 1/ One additional thought:

Yesterday, we received an email from a Daily Mail journalist asking us to comment on the attempt by a trans-exclusionary group to change our party's rules. For the avoidance of doubt, or misrepresentation of our position, we reproduce our response in full here... 1/4

Councils: Bus users up to 15 minute walk to stop ✅ Drivers: have to go somewhere else to charge (like they already do to fill up with petrol) ❌