Liz

Solidarity! Love to you both

The question for those opposed to 20mph speed limits in urban areas is very simple: why do you want to kill children?

It’s *that* time of the year to repeat the message that once caused my face to be the centre of a window display of fans in the Chichester branch of Rymans.

School fees leave families on £100k ‘with less than minimum wage’ The analysts behind the calculation say professionals like doctors and lawyers are being priced out

I too am left with "less than minimum wage" once I've deducted my expenses from my income
www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

'Supersize SUVs much more likely to cause fatal injury to cyclists and pedestrians' Sports utility vehicles account for more than half of new cars bought in UK

Pedestrians who are hit by SUVs are 44% more likely to be killed than if they were hit by a conventional car, new study finds. Children are 82% more likely to die when hit by an SUV than by a car. In children under 10, the risk of death was 130% higher.

Regulate vehicle size now.

105 cyclists/yr are killed by cars in the UK.

Cars kill or seriously injure 1,233 child pedestrians (u16) per year.

Changing the law is meaningless because so few people are killed by bicycles. The only effect will be to give drivers an even greater sense of entitlement to endanger others

A political cartoon with the word VICTIM spelled out by showing six Donald Trump's making each letter with his body. Like how people spell YMCA with their bodies when dancing to the song but, in this case, spelling out VICTIM.

One puzzle of Trump’s trade war is that he simultaneously argues America is the greatest country on earth and a victim of global trade. That contradiction suggests a deeper insecurity, understood less through policy than psychology and ideology. 🧵 1/

The core trilma here remains the same - the govt needs to accept one of three things: high student migration, higher domestic student fees (or higher taxes to fund universities) or university bankruptcies. Those are the only options, given where we are. Pick one.

France Introduces ‘SUV Tax’ To Curb Sales Of Heavier Cars French legislators are technically targeting all cars over a certain weight, but in the age of the SUV boom there are no prizes for guessing which body type is really under fire

What can be done about car bloat? Look to France and Norway, which tax new vehicles by weight.

At the local level, the District of Columbia ties registration fees to vehicle weight, and cities like Paris and Montreal require SUV and pickup owners to pay more to park.

I find this whole fear of public transport so utterly fascinating. It's visceral for a lot of Americans who seem to have absolutely zero fear driving, whereas I am terrified almost any time I get on a freeway in this country

NEW! MCCS are awarding a limited no of 100% fee waivers for 2025–26 for students who are the first in their family to attend university on these MAs:

• MA Cultural Studies

• MA Gender, Media and Culture

• MA Race, Media and Social Justice

Full details: www.gold.ac.uk/fees-funding...

‘It’s not the parents’ fault’: digital rights campaigner Beeban Kidron The film director turned crossbench peer on battling Big Tech to safeguard children and how losing her voice gave her an insight into power

“It’s not the parents’ fault.” The risk is that we let “Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg be Mum and Dad”. Digital rights campaigner Beeban Kidron, in an important and moving interview with @emmavj.bsky.social on.ft.com/4j5hEyb

Really shocked to hear of the passing of Caspar Melville. A great academic and huge font of knowledge on music and the music industry. And a really nice guy too! Here's my @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social interview with him about 'Its a London thing' newbooksnetwork.com/caspar-melvi...

Mate you live in the heart of north London…

Agree!

📣 Job Alert! Fixed-term Lecturer in Media, Communications and Cultural Studies (specialism social media and/or platform studies) at our brilliant department @mediacomgold.bsky.social Closing date: January 5th jobs.gold.ac.uk/vacancy/lect...

Ageing, static and skint: Nine charts that explain what's going on with London transport How the ability to travel around the city shapes the capital, its residents, and the lives we lead.

Fascinating deep dive into London’s transport data by @jim.londoncentric.media:

Changing Britain through the frame of snooker This paper considers snooker’s rise to popularity, and its relative decline, through the frame of recent British social history. The paper situates an ostensible decline in snooker spectatorship an...

tis the season. there’s A LOT of snooker on TV. but what, i hear you ask, can snooker tell us about gender, class and urban space in britain? well… www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Stacked economization: a research program for the study of platforms Conceived as a sequel to our papers on economization and marketization (Caliskan and Callon 2009; 2010), This article presents a research program for analyzing platforms. Caliskan and Callon (2009)...

OUT TODAY!!! Stacked economization: a research program for the study of platforms @koraycaliskan.bsky.social Donald Mackenzie and Michel Callon www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I am here!

Movie tunes huh?