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

Sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories is really bad and grounds for withdrawal as a candidate. But being mates with the leader of the British Union of Fascists is also really bad and I can’t help noticing a) what we’ve heard more about and b) who’s still running.

"People will want to declare their sex when: applying for a job" Just casually tossing out all the sex/gender anonymisation methods in application screenings to ensure women actually get hired because that might stop you outing and isolating the transes...

I don't think it's a good idea to legally privilege someone else's discomfort over another person's rights.

finding it hard to put into words just quite upsetting I find the idea of Google getting rid of the "ten blue links" format of search entirely, genuinely feels like your landlord announcing he's removing your kitchen and replacing it with a bouncy castle, I need my kitchen, let me keep my kitchen

still not quite over the fact that i watched 15 year olds get sued for millions of dollars for downloading twelve songs and now we all have to accept AI slop because every tech company in the known universe decided that IP laws don't exist now that they're inconvenient for them

I hope this isn’t true. There are times when it’s more important to put country before party. This is one of them. Burnham’s longstanding commitment to a fairer voting system could transform our democracy & counter the dire threat of a Reform UK government elected on a minority of the vote

LabourList’s polling is consistently a few points off to the left of the actual membership. Streeting could be as high as 27 per cent!

Published today & free to download by chapters or whole text, my @LSEPress book with Tim Monteath, Denisa Kostovicova and Hannah Boroudjou *Doing Open Social Science* press.lse.ac.uk/books/e/10.3... helps qualitative & quantitative researchers make their work more reproducible & robust

I gave an interview recently about the importance of making nightlife more affordable for young people, and some of the feedback was, what a woke interview. And I think: so much of the current moment is just indulging people who don't want anyone else to have nice things.

Mandatory gender pay gap reporting since 2017. In 2025, Monzo, Nationwide, Santander and TSB all reported wider gaps than the year before. Sunlight, it turns out, isn't a disinfectant. Interview with yours truly on my annual one-woman IWD campaign: www.the-heard.co.uk/blog/sharon-...

All the 'why is everyone so mean about poor decent Keir Starmer' stuff ignores the fact that he's helped create a climate where things like this happen. His critics are not outraged by him out of gratuitous crankiness, this kind of thing genuinely matters a great deal.

Hi @mozilla.org you can start by linking to and crediting the 8000 word article by @robin.berjon.com and me which you have said is the inspiration for your conference. Ideas are meant to be shared. <Work> is what writers, artists and technologists do to live. Work needs credit and support.

Wake up! The House of Commons Education Committee says fifty - yes fifty - Higher Education Institutions are at risk of insolvency within the next three years. Wake up! committees.parliament.uk/work/9012/hi...

now thats an anecdote with a punch, from Gillian Tett www.ft.com/content/c0ae...

Just 16 per cent of councillors in 2025 were elected by a majority of those who turned out – down from 65 per cent in 2021! (From More In Common analysis of last year's locals) www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

These results are messy and alongside other work today I'm struggling to work out what it all means BUT it is clear that with a more fragmented politics we need a much better understanding across the board of what local councils/ mayors actually do-what they are responsible for and what they are not

Can it possibly be the case that the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) are making a statement about today's elections by publishing a note on conspiracy theories today?? Of course not. post.parliament.uk/conspiracy-t...

"By December, Cooper had quit as leader and been expelled from the party following allegations of racism. His replacement was also accused of racism and quit within days of being chosen." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

📢 I've written about 'left-behind' places & what we can do in the @financialtimes.com 📢 We have a clear understanding of the drivers, but we have failed when it comes to solutions Exhibit A is Germany -- support for AfD is concentrated in East despite *trillions* being sent since reunification👇

You cannot, in fact, just tell the DWP that you think you’re depressed or ADHD and have them throw money at you! That is not how it works, or has EVER worked.

Exhibit A: in a recent antitrust filing, Meta argued it isn't a social media monopoly because it isn't really a social media company anymore. Only 7% of Instagram time and 17% of Facebook time is spent on content from friends or followed accounts. The rest is algorithmic video from strangers.

Farage has many more retired voters than the Greens, so may have a lower number of "working people" than other parties. (The Greens have many more student voters than Reform). But this is rhetoric to undermine the legitimacy of ethnic minority participation

Note the assumption, from Farage, that "ethnic minorities" are not "working people". "The working class" is almost always imagined on the right as old, white & male - never as young, black or female. It's a fantasy version of class politics, that's totally out of kilter with the working population

How much of the money that should go into NHS services in your area but instead goes to private shareholders? @chpithinktank.bsky.social have crunched the numbers (and it’s a lot) www.nhsprofitmap.org.uk

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

The fabulous Jane Wheeler on the design of the award-winning @sohotheatre.bsky.social in Walthamstow showing that AI is no match for the humble model box www.thestage.co.uk/opinion/peop...

Writing a great Impact Case Study can take as much time as writing a research paper. In today's post, Marta Natalia Wróblewska PhD shares ten practical observations from her experience as "Impact Ninja": researchonresearchinstitute.substack.com/p/the-art-of...

The Dream Team failed. Total shock. We sent two of our most mediocre real estate developers and a fraud. Who could’ve guessed this outcome?

I'm sorry, but this woman posting photos of her dog at a religious event in Spain and then having to frantically clarify a few days later at their "supersausage_charlie" Instagram account is something out of a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode.

According to a Canadian company that analysed 50,000 office workers’ calendars, the average worker attends 13.6 meetings a week, up from 7.5 in 2019, before Covid struck. Typically, workers spend more than a quarter (27%) of their working week in some form of meeting www.thetimes.com/life-style/w...

Diversity enriches our perspectives. Telling the stories of our communities, reading the tales from another's. #Reading #Books #BlackCulture #BlackExperience #African #AfroCaribbean #Authors #Bookshop #England

Happy Easter!!

A longer one today - bring coffee. Labour has driven down migration dramatically - but it’s hitting care, the NHS, housing and the wider economy, while Reform voters remain unmoved and Labour voters become pissed off. A losing strategy on every front.

US social media is getting smaller, angrier, and more Republican. @pettertornberg.com analyses American National Election Studies between 2020 - 2024 and shows the evolution of a smaller, more polarised and less diverse public sphere @lseimpactblog.bsky.social

Regular reminder that RELX -- owner of academic publisher Elsevier -- is one of those brokers providing data to ICE.

Make no mistake that any weakening of FOI is an attack on all of our civil liberties, and would be a clear example of democratic backsliding. It is clear that the government is now seriously considering an attack on your right to know. www.ft.com/content/2c34...

St Patrick described himself as a refugee ("profugus"). He was a Roman Briton, trafficked into slavery in Ireland as a teenager who chose to return in adulthood as a missionary. He was elevated to the role of Ireland's national saint in the 7th century by the church of Armagh. Happy #StPatricksDay ☘️

One of the more dispiriting elements of the funding lottery atm is having to constantly write up 'concrete' and 'ambitious' medium-term collaboration plans when neither you nor many of your colleagues have any sense of job security past the immediate future.

My local council plans to close our outdoor pool (after a decade of outsourced neglect) so if anyone on here has contacts who’ve fought that and won, preferably without making the pool pricey and inaccessible…. i would *love* to hear from you (my email is in bio).

'we should all be able to celebrate...the flags that represent the nations of our union'. Is it too much to expect the Education Secretary to add 'we abhor racism and will do all we can to make sure all children, whatever their colour or creed, feel safe'? www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

I simply refuse to believe this isn’t a Chris Morris sketch:

On the back of being quoted I was contacted by a research administrator at a different Uni. She wants to stay anonymous. She has worked on this call all weekend. She didn't feel able to say no. Nor did the researchers. Unlike them she will not benefit in any material way if her Uni wins this money.

Isn't it weird how those who keep telling us about "broken Britain" want to make us more like Donald Trump's deeply polarised America? ht @stephenkb.bsky.social

Well done to the majority of UK universities. It's about time government(s) and public bodies did the same. The majority of UK academic institutions now no longer post on X - LSE Impact share.google/Uo7ZscsQl4tS...

This blog post by @davekarpf.bsky.social is really worth reading and reflecting upon.

I think this is broadly right. A key contradiction of online culture is 'everything-slop' vs 'niche-craft'. Niche was King in early online days (before corps took over). But niche is economically viable for many. Something similar is going on with political commentary (& I guess, everything else).

Matt Goodwin would now be the MP IF - only white British people are British + could vote + tactical voting failed But Hannah Spencer is MP because - Greens won with BOTH UK-born voters + foreign-born - Ethnic minorities UK-born+ naturalised Brits = equally British - Reform's 29% was never enough

This story has been puzzling, because im still not clear exactly what is meant to have happened where, or why DV insists there was egregious family voting but the council seems so sure nothing was raised with them on the day (bar one concern, I’m told, which apparently turned out to be innocent)