New bit from me & @jackhardwicke.bsky.social in the UK Coaching Research Journal. In this we briefly discuss the existing medical literature, along with safeguarding policy to ask if the costs of contact sport (preventable brain damage) are ethically acceptable. www.ukcoaching.org/getmedia/49f...

Good stuff @jackhardwicke.bsky.social blogs.bmj.com/bjsm/2026/01...

Why are we still failing to prevent brain injuries in children’s sport? - BJSM blog - social media's leading SEM voice

Key words: Concussion; Brain Injuries; Youth Sport Greek physician Hippocrates is widely attributed to saying, “The greatest medicine of all is to teach people how not to need it”. The 16th-century Sw...

blogs.bmj.com

Do you see the problem of performance sport? @jackhardwicke.bsky.social and i certainly do. So we put this special issue together. Do get in touch if you have an idea. Cheers, CRM think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issu...

There is one overriding political problem, from which all others follow. Until it is addressed, every policy advanced by governments is window dressing. www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds

Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%

theguardian.com

22 authors in a new OA peer-reviewed article in Soc of Sport Journal: Israel is committing *athleticide* in Gaza, "an indispensable component of the overall genocidal campaign enforced by the Israeli settler colonial regime and bankrolled by the US." journals.humankinetics.com/view/journal...

Mamdani: "We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him."

Contrary to popular belief, performance sport does not promote public health. A new article by @jackhardwicke.bsky.social breaks down this pervasive myth. thesocietypages.org/engagingspor...

"We are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet's vital signs are flashing red. The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer future threats but are here now." academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

The 2025 state of the climate report: a planet on the brink

We are hurtling toward climate chaos. The planet's vital signs are flashing red. The consequences of human-driven alterations of the climate are no longer

academic.oup.com

As the single most important news story this year, I can't wait to see the detailed and central coverage this will get in every media outlet we have

‘Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head

Exclusive: ‘Devastating consequences’ now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30

theguardian.com

Sooooo much wasted time from talented scholars has gone into those numbers. I realised a long time ago I can get really good work done with zero or tiny bits of funding, so im more than happy to stop wasting my time chancing something that 99% of people dont get.

ana valdivia@anavaldi.bsky.social · 11mo ago

After submitting a FOIA request UKRI, I obtained success rates by three grant call scheme and I can only say that I am disheartened by the results: - AHRC Responsive Mode 2025: 2% - ESRC New Investigator Grant 2025: 1% - ESRC Research Grant Round 2025: 1%

UK children living in the most disadvantaged areas are more likely to die in intensive care, children living in poverty projected to rise to 4.8m by 2029. Govts tinker with poverty. Push real wage/benefit cuts, don't curb profiteering, appease the rich, destroy futures.

UK children dying through poverty, data shows

A new report published by the Child of the North initiative shows that the two-child benefit cap is pushing 109 families a day into hardship.

leeds.ac.uk

news.sky.com/story/uk-mus...

UK must prepare for 2C of warming by 2050, government told for first time

The goal is hotter and sooner than most official previous advice, and is a nod to the high chance of breaching the ambitious Paris Agreement limit. National advisers on the Climate Change Committee ho...

news.sky.com

Richest 1% has more wealth than 70% of UK population combined. Top 20% own two-thirds of wealth, receive 36% of income. Bottom 20% own 0.5% of wealth, receive 9% of income. Can't grow economy or have social stability. Poverty is political choice. Which political party wants to address this?

The government must ensure fair distribution of income

'The average real wage of workers has hardly moved from the 2008 level whilst bosses never had it so good.'

leftfootforward.org

Since privatization, shareholders of water, rail, bus, energy and mail have received £200bn in dividends. Plus £bns more through intrgragroup transactions. In public ownership this would have gone into infrastructure and lower bills, alleviated poverty. Govts still don't curb profiteering.

If the government wants economic growth it must bring essential industries into public ownership

Successive governments clobber households and small businesses by hiking interest rates to manage inflation, but don’t inconvenience corporations.

leftfootforward.org

There is a paucity of good evidence suggesting that these interventions reduce substantially the risks of neuropathology that attend participation in a collision sport like American tackle football. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/u...

UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of privatised water, rail, bus, energy and mail services, mostly foreign owned. Investment neglected. Regulators useless. Often little/no competition, captive customers fleeced,, more pushed into poverty. Privatisation is one of the biggest scams.

UK public has paid £200bn to shareholders of key industries since privatisation

Analysis reveals ‘privatisation premium’ of £250 per household per year paid to owners of water, rail, bus, energy and mail services since 2010

theguardian.com

Happy Socialist Sunday #SocialistSunday

How popular are post-capitalist/socialist ideas and policies? Here's a list of studies and surveys with some striking results...

Someone who supports my work has paid for 3 books for me to give away! I'll double that - so I have *six* to give away!!! To enter just repost & comment below. I'll announce the winners on friday (1st Aug). Please do share, thanks. 🙏🤟🍻 More info on the book here - www.routledge.com/Doing-Good-S....

Thames Water shareholder funds in 1990, £1.3bn; invested ZILCH since Extracted £10.4bn dividends Paid £13.6bn interest Now borrowing at 9.75% One-third customer bills service debt Pays £200m a year to consultants Billions would have gone into infrastructure, if not privatised. Must nationalise.

Public ownership is the only way to save the water industry

Public ownership is the only viable alternative but is opposed by the government

leftfootforward.org

The follow up 'twin paper' is now published 👇. If the first one laid a solid but rather bland foundation, this one zeros in on a much more obvious set of critical issues. I think the opening line is telling - journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Approaching, Contacting, and Grasping: An Annotated Methodology - Christopher R. Matthews, 2025

Social scientific methods are not as they should be. In this extended essay, I offer a way of framing and writing about methodological discussions that can tack...

journals.sagepub.com

New research published by The Lancet finds that economic sanctions imposed by the USA and EU are associated with more than 500,000 deaths per year since 1970, five times more than deaths by war. www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

The health toll of economic sanctions

Financing for global health is the main topic of discussion in 2025, especially since the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville earlier this month. This issue contain...

thelancet.com

Our latest paper challenges a powerful myth: that investing in performance-sport straightforwardly benefits health. We explore how this belief persists, why it's misleading, and how it can influence harmful personal and policy decisions. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Destroying the myth that performance-sport promotes public health

Within this essay, we seek to critically deconstruct and destroy a rather pervasive myth – that funding and developing performance-sport promotes public health in meaningful and straightforward way...

tandfonline.com

New one. Its the 2nd of 3 that mark out some very clear foundational issues in qualitative social science. These will be really useful for PhD scholars and early career researchers that are funding their feet. Please do share, comment & ask questions. 🍻 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

What Do We Do When We Do Social Science?: Approaching, Contacting, and Grasping - Christopher R. Matthews, 2025

It is important to understand what we do when we do social science. While this might sound obvious, it is quite challenging to produce relatively detached knowl...

journals.sagepub.com

Many people, including scholars, have a warped understanding of sport. This means they struggle to develop critical thought and often reproduce myths. We want to put an end to that. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Destroying the myth that performance-sport promotes public health

Within this essay, we seek to critically deconstruct and destroy a rather pervasive myth – that funding and developing performance-sport promotes public health in meaningful and straightforward way...

tandfonline.com

Astonishing to discover that the £70m per year cost of policing football matches isn't paid by the football clubs (which are commercial businesses) www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Football clubs should pay towards £70m policing cost, Met chief says

It comes as Sir Marks calls for the creation of 12 to 15 bigger police forces as part of radical reforms.

bbc.co.uk

"83 per cent of 5-year-olds will be exposed to ‘unprecedented’ extreme heat in their lifetime" "Dangerous heat is deadly for children, warns the charity which has plotted the impact of different climate scenarios throughout their lifetimes." www.euronews.com/green/2025/0...

How will climate change impact today’s 5-year-olds?

Dangerous heat is deadly for children, warns the charity which has plotted the impact of different climate scenarios throughout their lifetimes.

euronews.com

Labour are not for the elderly, sick or disabled, the homeless, low paid families with children, and they’re definitely not for the working class. youtu.be/UWcddtfV-_E?...

Eddie Dempsey explains why RMT won't affiliate with Labour Party

YouTube video by Peeps

youtu.be

Do you ever read qualitative social science; sociology, psychology, criminology, and the like, and get a sense that the methods just don't give enough insight into what actually happened? Yep, me to, esp in relation to where scholars' ideas came from. More here: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Some epistemology from me & @drcrmatthews.bsky.social This wasn’t really about biobanding or parents understanding of it, this was more about the critique of the tools typically used to “measure” such understanding. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

‘Measuring’ methodological artefacts – thinking critically about surveys via knowledge of ‘biobanding’

Surveys can efficiently generate big datasets, but they can misrepresent participants’ understandings. Our article discusses the potential for surveys to produce ‘methodological artifacts’ when mea...

tandfonline.com