Well, I've had a busy few weeks and have been elected as a councillor in Todmorden West ward on Calderdale Council! Time to start opposing Reform with everything I have got.

🎉🥳 We won ALL THREE SEATS in Todmorden West for the first time! Congratulations and well done, Oscar, Sarah and Jamie!!💚💚💚

A magnificent day here in the North! Walked the Rochdale Canal towpath from Todmorden to Hebden Bridge and it was absolutely gorgeous. Saw several "Vote Green" signs, along with this. West Yorkshire is making hope normal again! #Greenwave

New open access article from our NIHR-funded 'LTNs in London project' in which we use go-alongs & focus groups to explore how LTNs influence resident experiences & perceptions of travel @ersiliav.bsky.social @jwfurlong.bsky.social www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/phr/publishe... 1/

Something I don't think the UK boasts about enough - and a great rebuttal to Reform and the Tories' anti-net zero propaganda: The UK is home to 7 out of the top 10 biggest offshore wind farms in the world. 10 of the top 20. And 6 in 10 of the largest ones in the world currently under construction.

“if everything is all in one place then it would use less energy” Some work that didn't get enough attention is when we explored laypeople's ideas about sustainable urban design by having them play SimCity and build the best and worst cities they could imagine www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

This is trash. I respect our Oxfordshire Lib Dems as they are delivering progressive transport policy which favours walking, cycling and buses (see congestion charge). But this national LD nonsense? No. Public Transport costs have risen far faster than driving, we need to rebalance.

Another day closer. A little Reform meltdown and a LD bounce and I think it's possible.

Does anyone know of a case study about Wales vs Oxfordshire 20mph roll-out? The former was National and caused huge amounts of hysteria, the latter was PC led and got almost no drama / press (beyond local newspapers).

By my reckoning, this current *projection* would see Labour's relationship with former coal mining areas completely finished. Of former coalfield seats, they'd win 4: - South/West Yorks - 0 - South Wales - 0 - East Mids - 0 - North East - 1 - Scotland - 1 - Lancashire - 1 - West Mids - 1

Yes. I was at the game tonight. It obviously wasn't all the fans or anything like that. But it was loud, there were several thousand and they knew why they were doing it. Embarrassing. And determined that these people won't own football or my football club.

Well, no, they’re not just as wrong. The bigger error is not seeing that “trying to win over voters from a party on the opposite end of the spectrum, whose values your core voters oppose” is not same as “chasing voters from party on same side ideologically whose values your core voters like.”

Turns out that an absolutely disgraced political scientist is also absolutely awful at politics. And this political scientist is here for it! The spell is not over but good riddance for now, Goodwin 👋 Congrats to the Greens. Stunning victory. Dont let them tell you it was easy. But it is deserved.

This is not a reasoned political response. Labour has spent two years making all the voting groups who backed the Greens feel unwelcome and unheard, and now attacks them for daring to back someone else. They believe Labour isn’t listening and Starmer seems determined to prove them right

Pretty rich of Keir Starmer to suggest Hannah Spencer is "more interested in dividing people than uniting them". His island of strangers speech of course was *all about* unity. Likewise his party's demonisation of people legitimately protesting about the UK arming a genocide.

The Lords debated the safety of cyclists this afternoon, and it was – with a few exceptions – as crap as you'd expect. Mix of victim blaming, poor understanding & assumption that zone 1 London is a valid national example. DfT minister Peter Hendy was disappointingly bad as well.

Great piece from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social, which touches on one of the big theories for why English-speaking countries do especially badly at housebuilding: Adversarial and litigious common law systems (Anglo) vs judge-led civil law systems elsewhere. samf.substack.com/p/build-the-...

It was believed in medieval times that hedgehogs had spikes so they could roll over fruit to carry home to their children, which is not true but is a really cute idea

Net migration is falling rapidly, we are very soon going to be having policy debates about how to cope with the consequences of an aging population combined with low levels of immigration.

This is what we’re doing to people. We are the bad guys.

🌟PSA Mackenzie #BookPrize Shortlist 2025-26🌟 Congratulations to Dr Jamie Furlong @jwfurlong.bsky.social & Prof. Will Jennings @drjennings.bsky.social for 'The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales', published by OUP @academic.oup.com ➡️ buff.ly/X13TKjK #Books #Politics #PoliticalStudies

*Not so fun fact. Matt Goodwin was my dissertation supervisor. Only briefly mind. I swapped after he said that my idea - a study and survey on the politics of the homeless (less than 1% vote) - was of "no academic interest". I got a 1st 🎓

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

New @ecfr.eu global data show vast majority of people around the world do not see US as an ally • Just 25% of Brits think US is an ally that shares their values, with share dropping to 16% in ten EU countries • Data show how Trump's actions hurt US's global reputation over long run (except in India)

Views of Twitter/X in Britain Favourable 14% (3% very favourable) Unfavourable 65% (37% very unfavourable) By gender Men 16-65 (-49) Women 10-64 (-54) By 2024 vote Reform 23-46 (-23) Cons 17-57 (-40) Labour 10-76 (-66) LibDem 6-79 (-73) Green 5-89 (-84) YouGov: V similar Jan 2025/Jan 2026

The day when all our dreams come true is getting closer.

Copley, Halifax, West Yorkshire: I wonder why kids don't play on the streets anymore...

Many older people with reduced mobility say they feel ‘hurried’, ‘rushed’ and ‘unsafe" when walking around their city.

Debates on Low Traffic Neighbourhoods often focus on disabled people's experiences. In a new paper led by @ersiliav.bsky.social and @tricyclemayor.bsky.social, we use videos/interviews to explore the impacts on disabled people's everyday walking and wheeling. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Absolutely amazing chart from @peterkellner.bsky.social's piece in @thenewworldmag.bsky.social today: www.thenewworld.co.uk/peter-kellne...

We have created cyclability scores for every postcode in London in this paper out today. As you can see... there is really substantial spatial variation across Greater London! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article.... I used to work for the Labour Party under both Corbyn and Starmer. Right now I am ashamed of the Labour Party. Trans women will always be women no matter how many petty and cruel laws you make.

How much #AirPollution is created when you burn wood? 👉 Defra approved/#Ecodesign stove = 400 times more polluting than a gas boiler. 👉 Open fire = 4000 times more polluting than a gas boiler. Please think twice about burning if you don't need to. #WoodBurning

Just as you thought food delivery companies couldn't inflict any more misery on society: Instead of using lowly-paid gig economy contractors to deliver groceries, they're replacing humans with robots, who, in turn, force humans off the pavement into road traffic.

I really cannot recommend this excellent piece on Hammersmith Bridge highly enough

For those of you in the UK, especially if you are a UK citizen, can you please take part in the consultation on changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain (Settlement) that were just proposed by the UK government. We need as many people as possible to reject these proposals. www.gov.uk/government/c...

It’s hard to believe we live in a western world where: – One government won’t seize the electronic devices of a sex trafficker – Another government will seize jewellery from asylum seekers Both are a failure of basic duty of care. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

New data shows that since @mayoroflondon.bsky.social launched the Direct Vision Standard lorry safety scheme in London we've seen: 📉a 50% fall in people killed & seriously injured by HGVs ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️six fewer fatalities every year tinyurl.com/j3475ua3

Voters desperately want better public services. They know that requires higher taxes and expected it. So why did Labour tie themselves in knots? Why make their own job harder? Why pretend you can fix public services without raising taxes? Why are they still scared of it? Inexplicable.

Can’t wait to hear fuel duty get frozen again in the budget in ten days or so!!

UK rail electrification in three graphs, for folks who prefer their information in graph format

It's Monday morning, so time to share my new Substack: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle... (caution: I'm very far from being a sociologist so pls do provide feedback)

Last Friday, new English Indices of Deprivation were released for the first time since 2019, measuring relative deprivation in 33,755 areas of England across multiple domains. How do these geographic disparities relate to voting patterns in the UK’s last General Election? A short thread 🧵

This is really poor by BBC researchers and producers. Goodwin hasn't been an active academic for a number of years, yet is described as one (thus legitimating his relentless Reform activism and constant bad faith misrepresentation of evidence). 1/?

It is way past time for the UK government & the BBC to get off X & for Musk to be treated as a threat to national security. The world's richest man is using his site to promote civil war, ethnic violence & the overthrow of an elected government. You won't win him over with another conference on AI

Reflection on on how cycleways materialise mundane pedestrian infrastructure. This is a bus stop on the newish Chorlton cycleway. I've seen so many posts about it on social media. Largely around accessibility concerns. So here's my thoughts: 1/

Burning of wood and coal in homes contributes to almost 2500 deaths a year. Stopping unnecessary burning would save the NHS millions of pounds, but current laws fail to address the problem. See piece by Sally Howard for @bmj.com www.bmj.com/content/391/...

Green national paradox? How the far right turned Sweden from a (reputed) pioneer of climate mitigation to an obstructor, by Andreas Malm, Kristoffer Ekberg, Christina Englund, Johanne Tagmose Grønkjær, Martin Charlier, Olivia Medin and Ståle Holgersen www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

why did this take two fucking days though? did the Prime Minister have his notifications switched off? was he stuck in the bath? why, exactly, is this obviously true thing something that apparently needs running past the boss anyway? what is *wrong* with their comms operation?