Ann

"However, the Government does not support mandating a national change, as many roads are unsuited to 20mph by the nature of their function or geometry and could unintentionally reduce safety."

This government is not very good at this stuff.

This constantly repeated scenario of hundreds of thousands fleeing from one bombed out location only to then be forced to flee from another. What a moral stain.

Routine medical procedures can feel harder for women – here’s why When medical procedures are designed around male anatomy, women often pay the price – in pain, difficulty and dismissal.

Routine medical procedures can feel harder for women – here’s why
theconversation.com/routine-medi...

Free and low-cost energy-saving actions to bring down bills, improve energy security and help the planet Nesta commissioned Cambridge Architectural Research to model the savings that can be made through lesser-known, free or low-cost energy-saving measures

So what can governments actually do about it?

1. The most important answer is one that has been largely overlooked so far: help people save energy!
There are loads of low cost, quick measures households, and government should be unashamed about telling people about them.

The energy edit Every six weeks Andrew Sissons - deputy director of the sustainable future mission - will assess the most important signals and trends underpinning the UK’s energy transition.

What can Britain actually do about an energy crisis? What did we do right and wrong in 2022, and what can we learn?

Here's a thread on my new piece on what to do about an energy crisis...
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-ene...

I think some people who are blind from birth probably have a greater capacity for this stuff. Kinda interesting that iirc blind people more likely to be autistic too.

Explainer: UK government has announced a suspension on student visa applications from nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. Details here www.gov.uk/guidance/vis...

Somewhat tangentially: an old article on a blind software dev's screen reader set-up. 450 words per min is (I think?) between 3 and 4 times normal speed, also he's using a Finnish speech synthesizer to read both Finnish and English.

web.archive.org/web/20191230...

Please read Matt's thread on an Amazon account phishing method that generates **an actual email from Amazon**.

A woodland salamander of some kind, I don’t know if it’s an eastern red back without a red back or what. It’s very cute and small with little little hands with three fingers each. It has speckles all over it, and it is sitting in moss peeking out from behind a leaf.

Big week for little guys

I'd have a wedge of yellow cheese, the one with hazelnuts and carrots in it, and one, no two, of Granmum Gurvel's fresh crusty oat farls, straight from the oven.

The advice phone in has largely disappeared from media. It had so much value with space for people to ask for, offer and receive advice. But never as a battle or humiliation ritual. This popular and beneficial format was dropped because as fascinating as dilemmas were, they weren't gladiatorial /12

These debates felt like a set up. Because they WERE. I notice Campbell refers to 'The Big Questions'. A show I was warned against going on as it was common for experts to be pitted against the audience - and be targeted in real life afterwards as a consequence. Week on week that rolled on /5

How I've learned that certainty is the thing to really fear After five decades hosting radio phone-ins and debates, Nicky Campbell reflects on the state of public debate

I found this really frustrating to read.

Mainstream media, including the BBC, prioritised the battle of ideas/2 sides argument as a popular means of coverage. This piece suggests it happened accidentally, or even at the behest of those pushed into these scenarios /1

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Alexa Heinrich's Accessible Social is a free resource for digital marketers, communication professionals, content creators, social media users, and anyone who wants to learn how to make their content accessible for people with disabilities.

Happy Birthday to both Accessible Social, and Alexa!

Helpfully Tim Leunig accepts as a premise that more North Sea drilling won’t make oil nor gas more affordable in the UK.

But his arguments about tax and the strategic benefit of allowing more North Sea licensing are flawed in key ways (as well as in ways that James has pointed out). Long 🧵 below:

Yeah reeds are like that. Brand and strength are most important but once you are settled on that you can make more reeds work by filing them carefully with reed rush.

Coin used as Leeds bus fare was 2,000‑year‑old currency The coin was handed down to Peter Edwards from his grandfather in the 1950s.

This is the sort of thing a cashless society robs us of, the opportunity to try to get away with paying the bus fare in Carthaginian currency www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Lobbyists send legal threats to councils over anti-wood burner campaigns At least eight councils receive legal threats alleging flyers criticising wood burners are in breach of advertising codes

Lobbyists for the UK wood-burning stove industry threaten councils with legal action over public information campaigns on the harms of #airpollution

- "Straight from the playbook of tobacco" says Jemima Hartshorn, at Mums for Lungs

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Not convinced that they know what "vocation" means either because they do not seem good at thinking.

Blue Labour don't care about people who need care and won't get it, about the labour force implications of unpaid carers stepping in, or about the welfare of immigrant care workers.

All of this is super gendered, and they don't care about that either.

The social glue of conservative communitarianism is largely unpaid work done by women. We cannot build a modern social democratic settlement on this basis.

Look, either Stella Creasy wins this argument and women my age will consider voting Labour again or the party dies writing nonsense like this that ignores all of the progress made in both mine and my Mum's lifetimes 🤷🏻‍♀️

9. What care/help is the person currently receiving? (tick all that apply) Companionship Household tasks Nursing care Personal care Not applicable

Can't give an accurate answer as these options are very limited ...

Does not seem good that Defra is, visually on their map, giving a low forecast for London.

London air pollution forecast is moderate due to dirty air blowing across from the continent + but misty and low winds so pollutants not clearing + more Sahara dust:

londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/Fo...

Ah, I responded to this post at the time, I thought I had a hazy memory of this. Well, can confirm they did go bust.

bsky.app/profile/holg...

Lack of vital healthcare equipment after NRS Healthcare collapse Patients and carers are suffering from a lack of vital equipment after the collapse NRS Healthcare.

Trying to dig out some information on accessibility equipment this morning for a family friend, and find that I missed that the supplier went into liquidation late last summer.

BBC article from November 2025: www.bbc.co.uk/news/article....

Two firefighters resting, sitting on the plinth of the "Citizen Firefighter" statue.

Quite an image on the BBC live page (www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cd...; no photographer credited).

Sounds as if they've saved the station and the hotel, and more importantly, without loss of life.

Citizens; heroes.

An illustration of an owl with head slightly tilted and crescent moon above. Poem text reads "かたむいた月のふくろうとして" I am unsure of an appropriate translation.

'Owl and Crescent Moon' - Kozaki Kan, ca. 1990s.
#OwlishMonday #JapaneseArt