Cicely Marston

If you're in Oxfordshire...
#LocalElections2026

This is an attack Gillick Competence, and without a doubt the beginnings of an assault on the supply of birth control to young people.

I was 17 when I started taking HRT. If you’re over 16, then by English law you can legally consent to your own healthcare.

Is this the only leader of a party who unequivocally says they support trans people? ✊

Impossible to beat the raw ingredients in this one. I tried to say something sarcastic but it came out almost the same as the news report 😳

There are more important things to notice, but look. On truth social you can “reTruth” a post. Almost makes me want to join to try it out
#philosophy

Delivering the delayed Oxford station bridge replacement before and during the 8-day blockade | New Civil Engineer Replacement of the bridge over Botley Road in the centre of the city is a key part of the Oxford Station upgrade being delivered by Kier and Network Rail.

We have endured the Botley Road closure for so long. Add that to the list of things like the lock downs that we never anticipated!
Here's the technical account of what has been going on, in New Civil Engineer.
www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/deliv...

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

🎉🎉🎉

OpenSAFELY news: you can apply to do non-COVID research, from today! | Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science We are delighted to announce that - from today - you can submit applications to the OpenSAFELY service for non-COVID-19 studies.

OpenSAFELY is open from today! Huge thanks to all who supported this vast collaboration: whole population GP data; in a productive platform; innovative privacy protections; unprecedented support from professions, privacy campaigners; &c

Now it's over to users!

www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/02...

Well said. Great article

I quote the work of @drjengunter.bsky.social who has used her Substack and social platforms to expose the doctors in the sex offender’s network

Doctors were complicit in Epstein’s abuse—survivors must now be our priority A spectacle around Jeffrey Epstein’s depravity is overshadowing rights and justice for the survivors of the sex offender and his network, which included doctors, writes Jocalyn Clark The theme for I...

Two things are being overlooked in the #EpsteinFiles

The complicity of doctors

The extent of violence

My new piece @bmj.com #IWD #Epstein #Healthwashing #VAW

Also: “after” the pandemic there has been very little reckoning with the massive worsening of academic inequalities in Covid, which will likely also be worsened by successful legal cases

long Covid. I have huge sympathy for what all students went through, and I hope the ones bringing this case find peace. I wish it didn’t have to be like this though.

It’s heartbreaking that this case implies the students have no sense of what their teachers went through to deliver their courses, or perhaps don’t care. People worked in their bedrooms with toddlers climbing round them, after bereavements where they could not attend funerals, while sick with

The students claiming uni Covid compensation 'for the principle' Dozens of universities have received legal letters over what students say they missed out on during Covid.

This is causing despair in academe. (1) We were forced to close during Covid. We had no choice! (2) We're not service providers like a restaurant, we are institutions of state. (3) We did everything we could. (4) This will cripple current students' education.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

NEW

How Palantir captured the Ministry of Defence

How a close read of public domain documents show how MoD was commercially colonised by Palantir

By me, at FT

www.ft.com/content/5207...

Will be avoiding springer nature journals. So dodgy.

We’ve got a paper, long delayed, where we look at pandemic impacts on academics. It’s appalling what people went through (and people qualify their own pain by saying “others had it worse”). There hasn’t been a time to grieve/remember/process what happened

Article on benefits of Reeling in Cherwell (should be available online soon)

Regular readers will already know how much I love country dancing and I am very into this article in today’s Cherwell (Oxford Student Newspaper)

“Unlike so much at Oxford, this is a place where mediocrity can flourish”

I drew a face on a paper plate. Who could even begin to understand how it perceives the world or what it dreams of?

W(h)ither scholarship?

Nice work. Existential questions solved in record time with AI! This truly is the future we dreamed of (in hitchhikers guide to the galaxy
anyway)

To: COLOM, Olivier From: Jeffrey Epstein Sent: Tue 6/18/2013 10:51:29 AM Subject: Re: I can;t even think of the smell of black shrimp. ugh 2013/6/18 COLOM, Olivier < I like shrimp. But not so much if it's too pink, although I'm definitely more into white than into any other color I like your philosophy De: Jeffrey Epstein [mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com A CoLon, oy, June 18, 2013 12:32 AM Objet: Re: no, some are like shrimp, you throw away the head and keep the body 2013/6/17 COLOM, Olivier As long as you don't have any hammerhead ones... I like white sharks De: Jeffrey Epstein [mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com] Envoyé : Tuesday, June 18, 2013 12:00 AM À : COLOM, Olivier Objet: Re: as two are russian, i guess some might refer to them as white sharks 2013/6/17 COLOM, Olivier < The King of Saudi Arabia has a few white sharks in his at his Jeddah palace. I totally prefer yours. Sure I would enjoy the view. De : Jeffrey Epstein [mailto:jeevacation@gmail.com Envoyé: Monday, June 17, 2013 11:47 PM EFTA À : COLOM, Olivier Objet: Re: on my island in the caribean, with an aquarium full of girls

In one email exchange, Jeffrey Epstein and Olivier Colom, former aide to French President Sarkozy, compared girls to marine life.

Epstein:

“some are like shrimp, you throw away the head and keep the body”

“I can;t even think of the smell of black shrimp. ugh”

(www.justice.gov/epstein/file...)

and concerning that this alone would undermine the rest of the review. As this paper describes, though, this is far from its only problem. 4/4

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

p.s. I had not seen that the review recommends gagging ethics committees on these matters. As the ex-Chair of an ethics committee, the idea that a random person with an axe to grind could demand that my committee ignore certain ethical questions is so bizarre 3/4

It's disappointing that academics spend time debunking neo-fascist rubbish seeping into the public consciousness, but here we are. Once again: "Biological sex" is not a simple binary, and it is not scientific or 'clarifying' to assert that it is. 2/4

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers | RGS Journal | Wiley Online Library This intervention argues that the UK Government–commissioned ‘Sullivan Review’ of data, statistics and research on sex and gender implicitly promotes the erasure of trans and gender diverse people fr...

Here's a great, and short, paper on the problems with the Sullivan Review into sex and gender in research and data. 1/4

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

and concerning that this alone would undermine the rest of the review. As this paper describes, though, this is far from its only problem. 4/4

rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...