I feel I’m shouting into the void with this, but because I was actually one of the few people who’ve been following this issue really closely since it became mainstream: There was never ever a serious push to abolish the case by case single sex exemptions in the Equality Act

Went to this today and here is my absolute highlight:

Born in Częstochowa, to Bronislawa and Dawid Kozak. The Germans took their factory away. Polish nuns hid the Kozaks from the Germans. It's close to miraculous she survived. In the 1970s, she did a PhD on women munition workers in WW1 at Hull. May her memory be a blessing.

In an era of multiparty politics - first past the post is utterly broken. It is time for Proportional Representation. The climate crisis & our inequality crisis cannot wait for another general election. Failing to fix our democracy immediately will betray future generations.

Crowd at New St heading to UK Board Games Expo. Always find it fascinating how there's really big events that have no real news impact.

This feels like a rehash of plans from 20 years ago. It still seems a plan to get people into the city centre but really is that where the economic opportunities are still with working from home?

With Kemi Badenoch lashing out at HR managers again this week, here is a piece I wrote on her anti-bureaucracy encyclical on this theme a while back. It is a peculiar Marxist/neoliberal crossover. And it ignores the reality of modern risk society. open.substack.com/pub/anthonyp...

And all this is very unfortunate when one of the key drivers of weaker UK productivity is less systematic management practice. See below. And having looked into this in some depth I'm convinced it is driven in part by cultural antipathy for management. Destructive. www.mckinsey.com/uk/our-insig...

John Major is a better former PM than Tony Blair will ever be iandunt.substack.com/p/john-major...

"women can be perfectly capable of using this technology and simply choose not to" we did in fact need data backing up this incredibly obvious claim bc a LOT of companies will insist Susan from Accounting is refusing to use AI to do the books because IT needs to come explain how it works to her

I increasingly suspect that cutting air pollution is going to be a huge sleeper benefit of electrification. The kind of thing we look back on in a few decades and link a lot of positive social changes too - like the Bazalgette sewers or taking lead out of petrol

This has always been my line; the entire point of competitive sport is that some people are better than others. Categories in sport aren't really to do with sport at all - they're reflections of our subjective social beliefs. The issue is the *prior assumption* that trans women aren't women.

What would help: - Reband council tax for flats - Ensure communal electricity is subject to price cap - Look at VAT rules for resident management companies (we have to charge VAT on but can't reclaim it from source) - Need to simplify building safety regime, needs clarity on what should be done

I'm due to finish my PhD in a year, so I am actively putting feelers out for next steps. I want to stay in walking/cycling research in Norway, ideally working on planning process/cycling cultures. It's obviously a long shot on here but send any relevant postdoc/universitetslektor openings my way 💚

Been thinking last night that what would be good is a smart home which can open windows and close them based on the temperature outside

To be clear: social media is not like smoking. Smoking is bad for your health period. In contrast, SM has many positive use cases. The analogy works better at the level of the company: big tech avoids regulation & aims to get users hooked on their products. Diff seems minor but matters for policy.

Good idea... Not sure how it'll work for people that work from home.

Still despairing that I've got a new build house that we moved into December that doesn't have this... Oh and black roof tiles. At least we've got quite good solar, so could do this upgrade at some point.

Another motonormality point for @ianwalker.bsky.social: Mileage allowances have gone up but not food allowances when travelling for work. www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/chancel...

This is exceptionally good news

Wonders of the platform economy / network effects which makes it cheaper to use hotels dot com for £10 a night direct cashback plus 10-20% cashback from topcashback /quidco than book direct. Probably also a form of the Prisoners' Dilemma with the hotels themselves.

As we look poised to 'follow the clamour' and (try and) ban social media for under 16s remember 42 child protection charities and online safety groups, alongside academics and bereaved families want us to 'follow the evidence' instead. mollyrosefoundation.org/childrens-an...

Been thinking on this... the issue with social media isn't regulation... it's the business model which encourages bad use. Fix the model and tax them accordingly to outcomes and the companies will sort themselves out.

Just be careful if you get it to 88mph as you might get end up in a different time to when you were expecting.

Nick is wholly right here, and the only thing I fear about aging is that I might one day become one of those people who thinks declaring I haven't heard of something or somebody is the same thing as being intelligent.

Advert on the radio, I think from the government, promoting EV Cars (good), saying they can now go from London to Sheffield without charging (good) but they're advertising it'll only cost about £5 in electricity (hmm) : unrealistic driver future expectations and cost compared to public transport?

I've got trains from Munich to Birmingham today via Paris and London. Only problem I had was on Avanti getting back to New St. The train is in part delayed because of heat affecting the rails. Dealing with climate change is a big resilience issue.

All this because a human rights lawyer doesn‘t want to use the Commons majority he has to correct the Supreme Court with legislate.

Inspired by @hpsvanessa.bsky.social earlier, here's my latest Linkedin job suggestion. Never done anything to do with Policing...

From last year and, happily, some of these problems being fixed. (The heat pump one and the tourist taxes)

Managed to get a cheap deal on Paramount+, got an email saying my deal about to expire and need to manage my account via this link. Click on link, takes me to app. App says I need to open it in a browser. Sigh.

@ianwalker.bsky.social another motonormality one for you. Westminster Council leader worried about pick pocketing and phone snatching if Oxford Street pedestrianised.

Fake citation Matthew effect is a new one for me, but it tracks.

4 years ago, we opened the Elizabeth line 💜 Today, it’s the UK’s busiest railway - transforming journeys across London and beyond, making them faster, smoother and more connected than ever. Here’s to many more years of moving the city forward.

Section 28 was passed on this day in 1988. It didn’t come out of nowhere. It came from a society where 75% of people thought homosexuality was wrong. It came from a society that believed ignorance was better for children than any knowledge of lesbian or gay lives. 🧵 1/16

"Rivers are surprisingly difficult to measure, making this one of those questions to which there may be no right answer. And since I love those, let’s dive in." In search of the world's longest - and shortest - rivers

This will be like the Horizon or Windrush scandals but a 100x times worse. Simply because the LLMs will hallucinate or not be able to handle anything new arising.

See my investigation from this week www.opendemocracy.net/aabortion-re...

A good summary of how trans rights have been dismantled in the UK. Plus also how little safeguards we have more widely to stop the slide into authoritarianism. As none of this has happened by an act of parliament, no debate. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...

Stop looking for Burnhamism - in six years, I’ve never found. Watching the mayor up close in Manchester, I’ve seen his unusual gifts and glaring weaknesses. Would he make a good prime minister? Our weekend read - by @joshih.bsky.social manchestermill.co.uk/stop-looking...

If I had a massive government majority, I would have federalised the UK. Give Wales and Scotland proper powers along with regions in the UK...

Really fascinating checking in on Facebook (I rarely do) but still on a lot of JQ accounts. Lots of talk of the towing of cars for the Villa Parade. BBC asking for people affected so they can do a story etc. I get it was handled badly and there should have been much better notice.

What worries me is that for certain groups - the inconsistencies are the point. The ultimate end game is to say "all this doesn't work" and use it as an excuse to get rid of the Equality Act and get us to leave the European Human Rights Convention.

I am so furious about the toilet BS, which creates a totally bizarre environment in which nosey people can stop anyone from having a wee. What sort of govt feels good about creating the means to stop people having a wee? We need more free public toilets, not ways to make it harder to go to the loo

Absolutely this... If we accept this, the it's not long before we accept exclusion based on class, race, sexuality, religion, etc. (Remember it's not that long ago that a lot of facilities in the UK were segregated by class and / or race).

Really fascinating thread on the privacy vs traffic enforcement of ANPR. Personally I would like to see more stopping the ability to break the law at source so we need less cameras. Eg speed limiters on cars instead of speed cameras.

What's amazing about this is the assumption many people make that the lottery will be around for the rest of your life to pay the weekly amount.

Our solarpunk orienteering larp is debuting in Edinburgh on Saturday September 5th! Sign-ups will open in the coming weeks, but you can find out details on time, location, how we'll select players, and cost (it's free) right now!

Absolutely as it would encourage families with cars to try the bus. You could also have given X family tickets free and sold it as every family doing their bit to help.

great explanation