Beth Kitson

'people are being denied a social home due to fears they will not be able to keep up with their living costs, and the report found 71% of housing associations said the benefit restrictions were a key reason for this.'

A perruquier stitches a wig in the 1920s

A wig-maker sews hair on to a bench wig - photographed by Charlie Bibby

Behind the scenes in Ede and Ravenscroft's wig-room, 1920s vs 2025 www.ft.com/content/e035...

It wasn’t until the beginning of the 18th century, a hundred years after Beaumont’s first wagonways, that Newcomen’s steam engine solved the flooding problem and other inventor-adventurers worked out how to use coal instead of wood to smelt iron. It was another hundred years again before it was all put together – the coal, the iron, the wagonway and the engine – and the railways proper came into being. (Wrought iron rails were developed at Bedlington Ironworks, just west of Blyth.) Not till the close of the 19th century was Blyth fully at the core of the Victorian industrial meta-machine: mining coal, shipping coal for export, building ships. This span of time could be framed, from the distance of the 21st century, as a slow, almost organic process, an accidental consequence of an aristocratic scramble to maintain grandiose agriculture-based lifestyles after a series of 14th-century catastrophes. It could be framed as five hundred years of greed, selfishness, pollution and merciless exploitation of the poor by the rich. Or – these are not mutually exclusive – it could be framed, as it usually is in this country, as the triumphant progress of British ingenuity, perseverance and practicality towards general prosperity and a liberal, enlightened nation.

James Meek on the ghost(s) of the industrial revolution.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Half of UK novelists believe AI is likely to replace their work entirely, report finds A new report involving hundreds of literary creatives from across the UK fiction publishing industry reveals widespread fears over copyright violation, lost income, and the future of the art form, as ...

“The brutal irony is that the generative AI tools affecting novelists are likely trained on millions of pirated novels scraped from shadow libraries without the consent or remuneration of authors"

www.cam.ac.uk/stories/gene...

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Arthur showing his library card. For more joy, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyxEDSnegTU

me all day

For the first time in a long old while, I have finally lived somewhere long enough to join AND use the local library, is this what happiness looks like??

'This is a context in which it is important to have a more consistent sense of priorities than the government has so far maintained.'

When literally everything becomes television, what disappears is not something so broad as intelligence (although that seems to be going, too) but something harder to put into words, and even harder to prove the value of. It’s something like inwardness. The capacity for solitude, for sustained attention, for meaning that penetrates inward rather than swipes away at the tip of a finger: These virtues feel out of step with a world where every medium is the same medium and everything in life converges to the value system of the same thing, which is television. I don’t have the answers here. But we should figure it out soon. The marble is still spinning, but it is reaching the bottom of the bowl.

'Everything is Television'
www.derekthompson.org/p/why-everyt...

Even just looking at the chart titles here has reminded me how everything is now content and everyone is a content creator.

What does the left want? A wealth tax. What will that accomplish? Very little | Aditya Chakrabortty Imposing a 1% levy on the super-rich isn’t a policy, it’s pantomime. Tackling inequality in Britain will require much more far-reaching changes, says Guardian columnist Aditya Chakrabortty

'Concern over a deeply unequal society and a lopsided economy is where the wealth tax-ers and I start – but doing something about it requires deep-rooted changes to give more people a fairer share.'

Aditya Chakrabortty on the wealth tax

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Bad Bridgets podcast about crime among Irish women in US inspires film Margot Robbie’s company to make movie based on Northern Ireland academics’ stories of poverty and prison

I think this counts as successful research impact. Turning your archive work into a bestselling trade book, which is then optioned as a feature film. www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

A List of Things Said to Have Been Ruined by Women

🧵

I had never considered patient satisfaction as anything other than an outcome on its own. Fascinating (if unsurprising really) to read the direct impact on health outcomes, that @samfr.bsky.social cites: bmjopen.bmj.com/content/3/1/...?

English councils to remain poorer than in 2010 despite funding rise, says report Exclusive: Impact of austerity cannot be undone by end of parliament despite above-inflation funding, analysis finds

EXC: English councils will still be poorer in 2029 than they were in 2010, according to the IfG.

Report finds councils are increasingly providing social care and little else. Libraries, youth services, parks, all falling by the wayside.

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

Reminded of @stephenkb.bsky.social's excellent column on AI and the curriculum.

"It is knowledge that allows you to deploy and use your skills."

www.ft.com/content/1369...

Academics at prestigious university 'rely on charities for food and showers' Unprecedented demand on income is leaving lecturers at Oxford University on the brink - those in need seek support, food and even a shower from charity Oxford Gatehouse

And on housing and academia: "But we have had Oxford University academics seeking our help simply to eat... The cost-of-living crisis is an obvious factor, but housing, particularly the complex rental market, is also a big driver."
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news...

Desperate to see an updated chart for Shania please

Rising Unemployment Among Black Women Is a Bad Economic Sign "Black women are the canary in the coal mine on the health of the economy," write Cooper and Opoku-Agyeman.

'Because Black women are overrepresented in public sector jobs, the Trump Administration’s massive cuts to the federal workforce have likely contributed towards over 300,000 Black women leaving the labor force between February and July.'

time.com/7315624/risi...

The rise of paid work: Are we really still the “Voluntary Sector”? | PBE We recently published a new paper on the true economic contribution of civil society to the UK economy. (Spoiler alert: it’s big! At least £40 billion.) Among the many new stats in that report, there’...

Civil society has reached a milestone: we estimate that for the first time, paid hours now exceed volunteer hours.

Do we need to slow the tide and re-emphasise volunteering, or do we accept the sector is becoming more professional?

Explore these questions in our new blog: pbe.co.uk/insights/the...

If the energy of 'protecting women and girls' was truly channelled into something meaningful: investing in refuges or shelters, support services, therapeutic mental health services, prevention programmes, legal protections and culture change - real work of safety and justice could happen.

www.bigissue.com/opinion/asyl...

Beyond ‘beyond GDP’ | PBE By Hetan Shah I was involved in some of the calls for improved measurement of wellbeing in the early 2000s. Two decades on, sometimes the debate feels like it has not moved on sufficiently from those ...

‘Let us not risk getting trapped in the last war.’ My piece for @pbe.co.uk on why the wellbeing v GDP framing has run out of road
pbe.co.uk/insights/bey...

In the year to June 2025, 92% of refugee family reunion visas were given to women and children. More than half went to children. Two thirds to people from Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iran and Sudan. It helps integration and provides a safe route. Family reunion should be easier, not harder.

"As the basis of their analysis, the authors relied on a 1932 book by French historian"

🌈The lack of accurate data on LGBTQ+ folks is pervasive

We're often invisible. Historic exclusion, categorisation challenges, and the potential harm of data collection have all played a part, hindering policy, research, and support services.

This report looks to fill in part of that data gap ⬇️

Parkrun is by far the largest charity - by volunteer numbers - in England and Wales.

Nations of joggers.
register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/sector-da...

"Imagine a football team which measures its success only on the basis of the goals it scores and doesn't count the goals it concedes. That football team could be losing right through without recognising it."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggo0...

Great new evidence from Rachel Gomez on the longterm impacts of children’s mental health.

For the geeks among us…it goes beyond looking at correlations and shows that improvements in mental health as a child lead to better outcomes, even after controlling for a host of other factors.

we invite expressions of indifference