I stumbled upon an interesting essay about EU communication problems this week, so I’ve tried to connect it to my experience in my #CrossBorderRail project in this response Communication about something that matters can cause discomfort in the Brussels EU bubble jonworth.eu/my-railway-w...

We have very few actually public, free space in the UK and this discourse seems more about controlling who gets to use that space than anything else.

@betterstreetsforbirmingham.org @johnmunro.bsky.social things a bit different in NYC but just imagine how good it would be to have local politicians here taking a stand on pavement blocking like this. (Plus also we really need a WM mayor that is powerful enough to do things like this)

Artemis II splashing down exactly when predicted, to the minute, after traveling like 700,000 miles is why we need dedicated bus lanes tbqh.

I get the economic argument here but I do think people forget how what was life like before the internet / phones / smart-phones. Just think about how things how hard it was to do things like banking and travel, then look at how much more choice there is for tv, music, entertainment food now.

The government’s next shot in internet age-gating ping-pong: a revised set of Henry VIII powers. publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbi...

One day I would like a story like this not framed from drivers perspective, how about something like: "People using buses, walking, wheeling and cycling rejoice as 3,100 badly parked drivers no longer inconveniencing them" ?

If a company refuses to support a product anymore, it should be mandated to make the supporting software open-source. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

One of the big issues with UK politics is there is far much too much focus on cost and not the value of what it achieves.

Because national government NEVER chooses to fund schemes with poorer BCRs for political reasons or to fulfill manifesto pledges. How could anyone suggest that national government would ever consider such a thing! Where are my fucking pearls? I need something to clutch!

I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty remarkable. Earth and Moon in one NASA photo. ht @astrokatie.com

@ianwalker.bsky.social Motonormativity in action...

Good thread (and good quoted thread here as well). I like trams too but for them create growth - they need to connect high growth industries. Traditionally a tram would enable travel to a city centre to do that. But what happens with working from home?

In the field we call it privacy labour - shifting the responsibility to the person whose privacy is being violated, not to the party doing the violating. www.w3.org/TR/privacy-p...

The ICO has a reasonable metaphor here but not in the way it thinks. Road traffic is dangerous because the vehicles and infrastructure is designed to be dangerous and not to create a safe space. Same thing with the internet - the risk comes from the platforms, algorithms.

This is a good piece. We simply accept 1000s of unnecessary deaths because we won't force all of us who drive to accept we have a dangerous machine in our hands. And then fail to enforce that fact as police have basically stopped policing the roads. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Ok so a mini thread time and also why the Shadow Transport Secretary response is a bit frustrating. There's an ironic thing with motorways, that actually going slower might mean getting there quicker. It actually reduces the risk of congestion on a busy road.

Ultimately this comes back to local government / council funding - these are increasing as a way of supplementing limited funding.

Risk of being too radical for the UK but we really need mandatory individual room thermostats. I suspect it'll help a lot with these kind of issues, as people can keep the rooms they actually use heated. We've just moved into a three storey new build and it's daft that it doesn't have it.

If the Gov's guiding principle is that its going to respond to this crisis in a progressive manner then to be coherent it has to resist siren voices calling for action on fuel duty which proportionately benefits the better off

there was a time the old heads remember when the internet existed and capitalism didn't realize what it could do to the place yet the problem is capitalism the internet used to be beautiful and can be again

Anyone supporting the Lib Dem calls for fuel duty cuts seriously needs to stop and think

Holiday advice: It's pleasant to get a train to Europe. You just have to turn travelling into a core part of the holiday - lunch in Paris, dinner in Bordeaux, trip to Spain, week on beach etc. It's limiting, but very enjoyable & decent alternative to a flight you won't be able to afford by summer.

This is the challenge - we've got used to doing holidays by cheap flights. London to Copenhagen by train is doable - we did it year before last. But it does currently need an overnight stay in Brussels, so adds time and cost.

Let's get these tested and then make them the default for all junctions. It's not good enough that 60%+ of drivers don't stop like they should at junctions.

Banning children from social media is like building car-centric cities and then forcing children to take traffic safety classes. We need social media platforms and spaces designed safe for children, not adults who create shit and then try to regulate the children.

🔴 London Assembly Police & Crime Committee report has criticised ‘unacceptable levels’ of violence against women and girls and hate crime on public transport via @itsinternational.bsky.social www.itsinternational.com/news/bus-dri...

Integrated Transport Strategy: looks good and great to see technology a focus. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69cd39...

Demand for heat pumps and solar panels is surging. Meanwhile...... www.bbc.com/news/article...

Having been thoroughly miffed by Google's approach to designating cycle routes, I went and traced them all for myself. There are just shy of 300km. Only 21km are on blue-route modern separated cycleways. 38km are on quietways, the mystical cycle markings in the middle of the carriageway.

“Australians can now live & work freely in the EU for 4 years and vice versa That means they now have 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 EU rights than British people. Free movement offered millions of us fantastic opportunities but Brexiteers slammed that door shut, most shamefully on their own children”

If the Olympics wanted to be fair they would do something about the different funding and training facilities. But what I find sad about this is that it wasn't seen as an opportunity to introduce a range of categories like the Paralympics which could encourage wider participation.

Not only is this an insult to the EU, it's everyday sexism where the man is referred to by name and the woman isn't.

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This doesn't look unreasonable. At first I balked at the selfconsumption numbers but of course with such a tiny system you are going to get high selfconsumption, and he did model it properly afaict. Overall a capacity factor of 11.7% in the UK seems a bit high but not wildly so.

Great to see (especially since I have a small shareholding in the company)

please share, especially since I don't have access to the science feeds with my alt account!

"To help restore people’s pride in their communities, the government is today also giving the green light to a further 16 road schemes" Nice new by-pass top of my list for what would make me proud of my community, obvs. www.gov.uk/government/n...

if you want to know the history of this kind of policy, I made a podcast two years ago that explained why these tests make no sense, how they were already used and eventually abandoned by the IOC in the 80's and 90's, and the devastating impacts they have on real athletes: www.tested-podcast.com

I don't get why and how Seatfrog can sell Standard Premium for Avanti West Coast upgrades for £42 when on the train it's £24

A tourist levy is one of those taxes where I can't believe it's not been done already across the country. It's fairly simple to collect and mostly won't be noticed by people paying for hotels.

An LA Court's ruling on Meta and Google exposes the real causes of online harms. Engagement-driven design and data-fuelled advertising business models put people at risk. Yet the UK government's approach to online safety has focussed on keeping kids out and locking adults in to toxic platforms.

Totally agree - but also things like this are not that useful if they don't include funding

A lot of people clap and cheer at Arkell v Pressdram style legal letters. But the most deadly legal letters are calm and polite, and this one is lethal.

Another one for @ianwalker.bsky.social...

In my experience the best way to convince a normal person (i.e. someone who might even be weakly "gender critical" but does not hate trans people) of the importance of trans inclusion is to ask them to think about the life they would want for their own child if they were trans.

Just imagine the outcry if Tesco closed off all the car parking... And assuming this is the Spring Hill one, they're also pretty bad at closing off pedestrian entrances.

I made a daily game where you try to guess a UK rail station! loconundrum.aaronc.cc

Commuting in West Yorkshire: Associations between traffic climate, commuting stress, and travel satisfaction osf.io/preprints/ps...

One aspect of the current situation that doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of attention is the impact of prolonged high gas prices on the residual value of the big ol' SUVs that the legacy automakers have been pushing for a decade. It's potentially a big deal. (threadlet)