Harry Rutter

Postdoc vacancy in an interdisciplinary team of food-system researchers based in London and Oxford, supervised by Dr Marco Springmann!

Deadline for applications 12th August my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

Screenshot of email from FixMyStreet with title “New FixMyStreet updates on report: 'Pedestrian crossing not working at A34/A420 roundabout'” showing two new reports reiterating the same point

Hello @oxfordshirecc.bsky.social - can you please urgently ensure that the pedestrian crossing traffic lights at the A420/A34 roundabout are fixed before someone gets killed by a driver without the decency to stop - as I very nearly was yesterday on my way to Wytham Woods.

Screenshot of FT article with headline “Non-dom exodus hits London market for butlers” and subheading “Demand for high-end domestic staff has fallen since the Budget ended tax loophole for wealthy UK residents”

Hi there @financialtimes.com - I think you should know that the HTSI team seem to have staged a coup and taken over the main paper…

Trump’s inaugural fund received $19m from fossil fuel industry, analysis shows President raised $239m for inauguration – more than previous three inaugural committees took in combined

Fossil fuel industry gave $19m to Trump’s inaugural fund, analysis shows

- In his inauguration speech, the president pledged to “drill, baby, drill"

- Biggest donors: Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum

Storyby @dharna.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I very much support the excellent piece by Lucie Nield and Catherine Homer. It's just depressing that it still needs to be said...

The single most important intervention to tackle obesity… - International Journal of Public Health International Journal of Public Health -

Spot-on, and as they rightly point out, this isn’t new(s). I wrote back in 2012 that “obesity is the outcome of a complex web of social, cultural, environmental, biological and psychological influences.” Sadly this message still needs to be repeated… link.springer.com/article/10.1...

"The High Cost of Free Parking" by Donald Shoup. A present for the WODC planner in your life this Christmas

Unusually, all West Oxfordshire District Council’s car parks are free of charge. WODC budget documents show that council tax payers, including those without cars, pay up to £120,000 a quarter to subsidise “free parking”. A recent survey identified a further £170,000 of outstanding maintenance.

I'm so sorry to hear that Jim. My deepest condolences. Love to you and your loved ones.

In the last year, to May 2025, the average costs of running a car fell by 0.1% while the cost of public transport increased by 5%

I’m with you! ‘Naturally he read Greats’ is up there with the, er, greats…

That's my horse and yours too

That's my horse! Further ways in which the upper classes use public money to stay in their huge, expensive houses. Featuring tax breaks, eight paintings in Longleat which turn out to belong to all of us, and posh people not talking about slavery.
open.substack.com/pub/susannah...

Thank you for yet another excellent, incisive piece.

Hard to believe that the Scott obituary you linked to wasn’t satire…

Thank you!
You may be interested in this discussion of the absurdity of the beg button approach recently in response to a post from
@ianwalker.bsky.social
bsky.app/profile/harr...

Sounds great! Please can it also activate straight away, without forcing pedestrians to endure a delay after pressing the beg button...

Thanks! And yes to all that :-)

...and drivers need to respond to traffic lights whether or not a pedestrian has pressed a beg button.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I am totally unable to see any benefit whatsoever to anyone, merely costs to pedestrians, from imposing a delay between pressing the button and lights changing.

A Vision Zero approach should work to eliminate, or at least mitigate, the danger imposed by those kinds of drivers. But imposing a delay on pedestrians before crossing the road, rather than on drivers after, makes no difference whatsoever to drivers...

Yet another spurious 'rationale' that doesn't stand up to the faintest scrutiny!

Exactly! The beg button delay doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny, but somehow it is everywhere.
Someone once told me that it is a default setting in the equipment, which is even more infuriating if true...

Completely agree.
The stupidity of the enforced wait - for drivers as well as pedestrians - was reinforced this morning. I pressed the button in anticipation of a long wait, but the road cleared so I crossed. Drivers were then kept waiting at an empty crossing 30 seconds later.
No one wins!

Default programming of pedestrian crossings that forces pedestrians to wait before the lights change in their favour actually makes no difference to drivers compared to delay being after people cross, so it's not even motornormative, but it comes from car brain.
Can't find a policy though - sorry!

Cycling in Oxford: A Tale of Four Schools.

58% of the children at Cherwell secondary school in North Oxford cycle to school; it may have the highest cycling rate of any UK school. In contrast, just 10% of children at Cheney secondary school cycle to school. THREAD 1/N

Screenshot of part of an email from Jonathan Olley at YouGov that opens with 'Hi [First Name]'

@yougov.co.uk - please tell Jonathan Olley that if he wants to send me spam email he should probably address it to 'Harry', rather than '[First Name]'...

Screenshot showing Prof Fiona Bull from WHO describing the seven policy action areas in the toolkit: 1. Integrate walking and cycling into all relevant policies Embed walking and cycling objectives across transport, health, environment, education, and tourism policies. Establish clear, measurable targets and crossgovernment coordination mechanisms. 2. Provide safe and connected walking and cycling networks Develop well-connected, well-maintained infrastructure that links homes to key destinations (e.g. schools, transit, workplaces). Integrate green spaces and apply inclusive and sustainable urban design principles. 3. Design inclusive and safe streets for all Use human-centred design principles to create streets that accommodate all users, including pedestrians and cyclists of all ages and abilities. Implement safe system approach to improve road safety including best practice legislation to reduce speed limits where necessary. 4. Improve safe road user behaviour Enforce speed limits, tackle distracted and impaired driving, and promote safe use by all road users. 5. Protect and prioritize walking and cycling Create, maintain and protect allocation of road space to walking and cycling, implement pedestrian zones, and enforce parking regulations. 6. Facilitate integrated transport options Ensure walking and cycling are part of a seamless transport experience through integration with public transport and shared mobility services. 7. Promote and incentivize walking and cycling Create a culture of walking and cycling through communication campaigns, events, financial incentives, and workplace and school programmes.

Excellent @who.int webinar launching their impressive new toolkit for promoting walking and cycling.
www.who.int/publications...

Great to hear mention of the WHO HEAT tool during the discussion.
www.who.int/tools/heat-f...

🤣

Does it include wondering who invited the idiot who got the BMI threshold wrong?

Space Syntax Professor Bill Hillier spent most of his career at The Bartlett, University College London, where he founded and developed, with a team of colleagues, an original research programme that set the study...

🚨'Space Syntax: Selected Papers by Bill Hillier' now available open access. Includes papers on architecture as a professional and research discipline through to later papers presenting a theory of the spatial structure of the city and its social functions.
uclpress.co.uk/book/space-s...

This is excellent, thanks for posting. Great to hear it again, but this time without the noise pollution from all the drones flying around…

doing archival research for a paper on processed foods and single-use plastics, and it is striking how companies like Coca-Cola have been able to delay meaningful environmental action by making the same voluntary commitments over and over

This is from 1999, but could literally be from last year

Please explain how you reconcile freezing fuel duty with your net zero commitment, and your explanation of how it could conceivably provide an overall benefit to society.