Danny Yee

Labour risks election wipeout unless it improves Britain’s high streets, study finds Decay of town centres a top issue among voters especially Reform UK supporters and is fuelling resentment against Westminster

Labour keeps talking about saving the high street without naming the real problem. Car dependency. You cannot fix town centres while planning everything around driving. The internet is permanent. Retail only survives where footfall is dense, local, frequent, and cheap to access.

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.

This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.

Auschwitz took time.

£10 million would have covered half of it - from St Giles to Oakthorpe Rd maybe - but that would still have been huge. The major block is getting enough car traffic off the road that the bus companies will accept losing the bus lanes.

Oxford needs to be building like this, not using up its last sustainable locations for low-medium density housing. This is 12x the planned density of Land South of Grenoble Rd.

It’s 24 hectares, so this is about 50,000 people per square km - up there with central Barcelona.

A lovely bird logo and a decidedly less than lovely X logo

Oxfordshire County Council is leaving X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter. It says it is “deeply concerned about the rise in online hate speech and abuse targeting women and girls… we must make clear and principled choices about how we communicate”.

Well done! Steady progress towards making Didcot a 15-minute town.

Ed tech is profitable. It is also mostly useless Independent research identifies few learning gains

Blistering piece on ed tech in @economist.com.

‘Although ed-tech companies tout huge learning gains, independent research has made clear that technology rarely boosts learning in schools—and often impairs it.’
economist.com/united-state...

This would be over less sensitive bits of the city and not actually that high. But probably it would upset bats, or something like that.

An overnight minimum of 36!

There have been people calling for one for years.Redbridge to the Westgate, to get all the tourist coaches out of the city centre.

Book cover. Battle scene with cavalry. Text "JEREMY ARMSTRONG" (small upper case, white) above "CHILDREN OF MARS" (large upper case, gold) and "THE ORIGINS OF ROME'S EMPIRE (small upper case, white).

_Children of Mars: The Origins of Rome's Empire_ (Armstrong, @oxfordunipress.bsky.social ) dannyreviews.com/h/Children_M... (my review) - "The Roman Republic was a federation of elite families who worked together for mutual benefit, but in a highly competitive environment"

When Space Runs Out: Rethinking the Role of the Car in Dutch Cities Dutch cities are changing rapidly. One of the aims of this blog is to document that change, and there is plenty of work ahead. Much of what I record involves changes to streets: a before-and-after …

"The car is being pushed out of Dutch cities because doing so offers answers to several of the challenges these cities face today." bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2026/01/21/w... (Bicycle Dutch)

Americans Are the Ones Paying for Tariffs, Study Finds New research contradicts President Trump’s claim that foreigners are footing the bill.

“Foreign exporters absorbed only 4% of last year’s U.S. tariff increases by lowering prices, while American consumers and importers absorbed 96%.

“Rather than acting as a tax on foreign producers, the tariffs functioned as a consumption tax on Americans.”

www.wsj.com/economy/trad...

Or consider that the prioritisation of motor traffic at every junction in Oxford has taken away from much of the population their freedom to cycle (and in some cases walk) many trips.

Alders is great! Definitely needs more cycle parking nearby, though.

Who funds the Free Speech Union? Toby Young’s outfit went to court to hide its donors. Today we reveal that funders include US anti-abortion groups, Brexit politicians and Tufton Street insiders.

It will not surprise you to learn that Toby Youngs 'Free Speech Union' has obtained a High Court injunction banning the publication of a list of its donors open.substack.com/pub/democrac...

If the speed limit were lowered to 20mph and the carriageway reduced from 7.2m to 6m, that would free up room for wider cycle tracks.

The biggest problem is that the provision just gives up at either end (at the Hollow Way and Old Rd junctions) and lacks continuity and priority over side roads. The cycle tracks are also too narrow, and lack buffering to a 30mph road.

I want to do an audit of the Slade at some point.

And Wood Farm. Also needs side-road entry treatments with continuous cycle tracks with clear priority, on raised tables.

Is this on the Slade?

Want people to have more children? Invest in proper walking and cycling infrastructure, and high quality public transport.

🚨 BREAKING:
A legal bid to halt Oxford’s congestion charge has been turned down. The High Court today refused an application for judicial review by Open Roads For Oxford Ltd, which had raised £60,000 “from private donations, transfers from aligned funds, and our GoFundMe campaign” to bring the case.

cycling on Queen St and Cornmarket In 1999, the council blocked cycling (in the middle of the day) on Cornmarket and the eastern end of Queen St; in 2017, with the redevelopment of the Westgate Centre, cycling was blocked at the same h...

See wanderingdanny.com/oxford/2025/... for my thoughts on Queen St and Cornmarket.

At the moment they're not allowed to.

Not sure how a "disabled cyclist permit scheme" could work. Unless the person cycling is very clearly disabled - and sometimes even then - people will yell and and abuse them for cycling if that's not generally allowed.

Get the Dutch to rerun the 1688 Conquest? Can rejoin the EU without any Article 49 issues - as an extra province of the Netherlands - and we might get some decent cycling infrastructure as well.

Orange book cover. Inset white rectangle containing large white "Religions of Early India", smaller "A CULTURAL HISTORY", above a black and white carving and w hite "RICHARD H. DAVIS".

Richard Davis' _Religions of Early India: A Cultural History_ (@princetonupress.bsky.social) offers a nice combination of broad themes and illustrative details, in their social and political contexts. dannyreviews.com/h/Religions_... (my review)

Grey book cover, author in black "CHARLES FERDINAND RAMUZ" above larger title in white "Great Fear on the Mountain", above small square colour painting of an alpine view. Then "Translated from the French by Bill Johnston" above "archipelago b ooks".

_Great Fear on the Mountain_ - a novel of an Alpine village and the mountain above it dannyreviews.com/h/Great_Fear... (my review)