The Independent Inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes is vitally important. It also essentially ignores the specific problems faced by boys in a way I'm truly shocked by. 🧵

This is obviously right. At the same time, I do think the fact that we’re generally cool with body-shaming men (e.g. Rayner on Sunak, AOC on Miller, mainstream comedy in general) is a Bad Thing that tells vulnerable young men we’re not on their side

Great to see the BBC tackling this - men are often sidelined in fertility conversations and by fertility services. I think the answer is designated advocacy for men in areas like these. 🧵https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2w4kz7z1ko

Listening to an old BBC interview of JG Ballard from 2002, as one does. Extraordinarily prophetic and deeply unsettling - he'd have loved 2026.

It remains mad to me that when ”playing advantage“ you don’t get to have the shot and then revert to the free kick if it doesn’t lead to anything. It’s almost never an advantage and incentivises both diving and fouling!

We don't really know if social media bans work. But the problems they look to tackle are real, and are a major factor behind worsening gender relations. 🧵

Boys do not need to be taught differently than girls. But we do need to change the way teachers think about them. 🧵

How we measure things matters. It’s time to adjust the Census question so that “English” is not only available under “White”. Decades of seeing “Black British” on forms took British out of the conversation- time to do the same for English

Great to be on BBC Radio 5 Live yesterday talking about Gareth Southgate and whether we need to "teach boys differently". (We don't! This is an area where doing better for boys is most obviously not a zero-sum game - what narrows the gender gap improves outcomes for girls in absolute terms too.)

I love Gareth Southgate, and it's great that he's taking the underperformance of boys at school seriously. But there's good evidence here and the answer is not to "teach boys differently." It's actually the opposite. What works for everyone works best for boys. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Much of this is great. But there’s a problem. If real men serve, what does it mean when a man can’t? If he gets sick? If he’s the one that needs help? This line of thinking lies behind men’s tendency to die deaths of despair, to resist seeing a doctor or a therapist or their friends.

The gender pay gap begins when babies arrive. This is, in the words of Claudia Goldin, ‘mainly, but not entirely, due to a reduction in hours of work’. Dads, if anything, work longer hours, while mums’ hours crater. It is often assumed that this reflects what dads want. This is not true.

I’ve written a book! Coming out 19 November (International Men’s Day), 'What A Man Is Not: New Rules for Masculinity' aims to transform how we think and talk about men. Pre-order it here: www.waterstones.com/book/what-a-... (Pre-orders dictate what bookshops stock – they make a BIG difference!)

Work-from-home increases birth rates, but firms seem to hate it. So despite a pro-fertility coalition growing in US politics, no politicians openly supports work from home www.nber.org/papers/w30569 via Mike Konczal

Why would they believe that? Their problem has been that the consensus that racism is bad created a social cost for them. They hd to be careful whom they spoke to; a reputation for racism could be ruinous. Even in my lifetime that wasn’t always true. People worked hard to build that consensus. /3

There is a serious failure in UK govt, politics & media to take sufficiently seriously what Musk said & meant with "fight back or die" = Violence (interethnic civil war) is inevitable so pre-emptive violence - vs migrants, minorities & political opponents - is necessary to avoid existential erasure

Again, I really do have concerns about exactly how Justin Webb is acquiring his knowledge of US politics or what prompted him to make this exact point.

I increasingly wonder if this is down to so many government people still using X and mistaking that for an actual measure of public opinion. Poll after poll after poll has shown that British voters don't like small boats but they hate street violence and open racism much more.

Sir Robert Worcester, legendary pollster and founder of MORI (now Ipsos UK) has died at 91. He taught so many people so much about the value and importance of opinion polls in modern democracies - everyone in our industry and politics owes him a debt of gratitude.

yeah this does not bode well either for this season or for next summer (or indeed January). Need to start preparing dickhead-mitigation plans for each transfer window in the same way you do for players going off to afcon

What a strange comparison. “£3bn, or half the suspiciously large GDP of a small island with roughly the population of Lowestoft” www.nytimes.com/athletic/651...

I think an underestimated factor behind the rise of open, old fashioned racism on the right is the legitimation of blood and soil nationalism by well-meaning but myopic parts of the identity politics left

Season killer unless, a la Woltemade, his/Wilson’s replacement is already on the plane to Newcastle and we just don’t know about it yet. Disastrous long term either way. Dreadful, embarrassing decision making at the highest level throughout, publicly shitting the bed for the second summer in a row.

If he means it, let him rot. As with parenting young children, you can’t have the message be act like a dickhead and you get what you want, or you’ll end up with a bunch more dickheadery

A lot of replies here telling on themselves on what they think feminism is. A genuine parallel of feminism for men would be an extremely good thing

Others have noted that this means foreign-born people are LESS likely than UK-born people to be in prison. What I want to note is that The Times is now referring to foreign-born UK citizens as ‘foreigners’. This includes Boris Johnson, Sir Mo Farah, Emma Watson, Rory Stewart and little old me.

Great as always from @jburnmurdoch.ft.com. Fits with my general feeling that it’s not enough to point at a graph and tell the public “I think you’ll find”, if they are witnessing certain types of crime rising without consequence. (Also as ever it depends on where you are) on.ft.com/4mq2HbL

This is very good. The Boomer idea that Millennials could buy a house if they only quit their avocado and coffee habits is understandable, because it *was true* for them. They did have to scrimp and save to buy them; they earned far less! It’s just scrimping & saving nowadays doesn’t touch the sides

Are you watching Rupert Lowe, Matthew Goodwin, Konstantin Kisin? Your theories took a hell of a beating!

Idk if this was a guy venting about women in an equivalent way it would rightly be called out as sexist.

As someone on the high functioning borders of this, I feel happy for people who feel validated or that they understand themselves better or accessed help through diagnosis, but I do worry if there are negative impacts too both for those diagnosed & folks with less labelable neurodiverse tendencies

Absolutely incredible graphic from 1880 tracing the history of political parties in the United States.

Review of parental leave and pay is great, but the framing is all wrong: it is not about being "generous and supportive," it is (or should be) about basic equality, and addressing what is currently flagrantly sexist government policy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The enjoyably scouse grammar on this sign spotted in Liverpool

Obviously spectacularly sexist against men, but the really weird thing is the assumption that you take the leave together rather than dad swapping in so mum can return to her career, which is the whole point from a gender equality/pay gap pov and also financially necessary for most families

Our latest report looks at five 'anti-supply measures' that are a major bottleneck on urban housebuilding and the 1.5m new home target - a quick thread below on what they are, why they're a problem, and how to fix them:

A brilliant tool - but don't look at it if you have a deadline today.

Pretty much exactly what Tooze predicted two days ago adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

I know it's been posted elsewhere on here today, but this is the best post final bit of content. I love this way too much. #NUFC

And, of course, most dads - even employees - get the statutory paternity leave of *two weeks*. And then we wonder why a) people aren’t having more kids, and b) the default assumption remains that childcare is the responsibility of mums

If you want some non-reactionary thought on a solution: bsky.app/profile/harr...

Strong agree. The history of feminism gives us a solution 🧵

My thoughts on @deonandan.bsky.social, whose instinct on Tate and how progressives win back young men I think is right, and answers to the responses of @wagatwe.com & @notalawyer.bsky.social

Strong agree. The history of feminism gives us a solution 🧵

If you want some non-reactionary thought on a solution: bsky.app/profile/harr...

If you want some thoughts on an actual (liberal, feminist) solution may I recommend my thread (and hopefully one day published book) bsky.app/profile/harr...

So: I have a book on submission about masculinity and I think this is right.