Vic McGowan

“Take away the greed of the private landlord housing market … because that is killing people”: Examining the political economy of housing and health inequalities in four English coastal towns Health inequities are avoidable and unjust differences in health arising from how society and the economy are structured. These inequalities are drive…

Final version of my my paper out now. I highlight how neoliberal governance drives housing related health inequalities, requires comprehensive policies to protect tenants, invest in social housing, and tackle wealth accumulation in the housing market. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks @caraleavey.bsky.social hot off the press new paper from my ethnography of coastal towns highlighting how the political economy of housing is exploiting and harming vulnerable people and deprived communities www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Funded by @profbambra.bsky.social @wellcometrust.bsky.social grant examining the north/south health divide. Keep an eye out for upcoming papers from my comparative ethnography of coastal towns focusing on housing and regeneration.

We examined narratives from Tim's PhD interviews in Middlesbrough and South Tyneside and my ethnography in Hartlepool, Hastings, Torbay, and Blackpool highlighting how health inequalities are not inevitable, they are a form of violence inflicted through political and economic choices.

A Cycle of Social Violence: a novel theoretical framework for explaining how structural, slow, and symbolic violence interact to produce and maintain health inequalities in England Health inequalities are a form of violence, produced and sustained by political, economic, and social structures that systematically disadvantage cert…

New paper from Tim Price and me examining how structural violence interacts with slow and symbolic violence to produce and reinforce health inequalities. Combining data from two qualitative studies across 2 deindustrialised and 4 coastal towns.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Excellent upcoming event 👇

Since 2010, we have lost: • 200 Museums • 244 Courts and tribunals 279 school playing fields • 451 homeless services • 600 police stations • 673 public toilets • 750 Youth centres • 793 Playgrounds • 800 Libraries 926 football pitches 1,086 Swimming pools 1,416 Sure Start children's centres 8,000 Bus routes, and 25,000 NHS beds.

It was never “austerity”. It was a massive transfer of wealth from poor to rich.

(Figs via We Own It / @cathobbs.bsky.social)

How privatisation works (and Thames Water is just the latest example).
1. A government takes a national asset built up with taxpayers' money and the work of public servants over many years, and hands it, for a fraction of its value, to a private company.
2. In doing so, it creates a monopoly.
🧵

Great to see @profbambra.bsky.social has made the move 👋

Congrats! I'll have to persuade Clare to make the move from twitter!

Anyone from a working class community could have predicted this. Probably did predict it. Same goes for Sure Start. But we shout into the void.

“They're not mentally ill, their lives are just shit”: Stakeholders' understanding of deaths of despair in a deindustrialised community in North East England The rise in mortality in high-income countries from drug, suicide, and alcohol specific causes, referred to collectively as ‘deaths of despair’, has r…

New paper from Tim's PhD. "They're not mentally ill, their lives are just shit" exploring stakeholders' perspectives on deaths of despair in Middlesbrough.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

After the riots, Keir Starmer should tell us the truth about our country. This is why he won't | Nesrine Malik The violence exposed racist narratives based on lies. Yet where is the counter-argument, asks Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

👏"we have laid at the door of immigrants the consequences of an entire economic model that has defunded the state and privileged big businesses and private capital, and concentrated asset accumulation in the south of the country with no foresight or plan"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

“Power, control, strain”: Lay perceptions of health inequalities across England's ‘North South divide’ People in the North of England live shorter, less healthy lives than those in the South. Despite the significance of this ‘North South health divide’,…

New paper from our Wellcome Trust funded research examining health inequalities between the north and south of England. Participants discussed political and economic structures as central to understanding regional health inequalities

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"The UK is a wealthy country, but it's also quite an unfair country, our resources are not equally distributed and deaths of despair are one avoidable consequence of that unequal distribution"

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-...

Only 10% of UK levelling up funds spent, say MPs - on.ft.com/4caC8mJ via @FT

From starving students to emaciated pets: why are hunger and poverty the UK’s new normal? | Zoe Williams The Conservatives have taken pragmatic, everyday charity and kindness and used it to shore up the cruel state they have created, writes Zoe Williams

"That’s what I’ll remember and never forgive about this century’s Conservatives: that they took pragmatic, everyday generosity and kindness, and used it to shore up a state that was cruel, and everyone in it more precarious"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Yeah it's a bit quiet, need a few more chatty Cathy's to make the move. We shouldn't have to resort to the extremes of actual real life conversations!

well this looks nicer than the old place!