As a historian of Jodrell Bank, I agree! And the reason it is important is that it has been made to mean different things to different people at different times. Who's up for a mega thread on how and why? (I'm off for lunch now, but I'll do it after. I'll need the energy...)

John Grindrod@grindrod.bsky.social · last wk.

Really one of the most important postwar sites in Britain

We’ve got SO MUCH accessibility stuff to get angry about But it wears you down so much constantly facing barriers, we feel broken. Even the tiny barriers build up Like I haven’t even shared the shitshow of our trip to Wembley a few weeks ago

JenOnTheMove 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈@jenonthemove.com · last wk.

This bus stop is very recently rebuilt and TfGM seem to have forgot that someone in a wheelchair may want to use it.

Went to see the Tish Murtha and Kuba Ryniewicz exhibition at the Baltic yesterday. Tish Murtha’s anger at the injustice of life in a deindustrialising Tyneside is perfectly captured in photographs that record protest and everyday life. Well worth a visit.

It has rained properly here for the first time in months. A pigeon is drinking water from a new pothole on our street.

25 tonnes of nurdles, more than 1 billion nurdles, were spilled into the Tyne last week and are washing up on our beaches, north and south of the Tyne. Likely one of the largest ever plastic pollution events in the UK. There is remarkably little mention of this on here.

We now know a bit about what happens when the likes of private equity firms and REITs enter housing markets. But what about venture capitalists?  My recent paper ‘Hyperscaling housing’ has been published in the latest volume of IJURR (spoiler: it's not pretty):

HYPERSCALING HOUSING: Venture Capital, Real Estate Start‐Ups and the Race to Build a Global Residential Brand

What happens when venture capitalists try to reinvent housing in their own image? Synonymous with the rise of Big Tech, venture capitalists (VCs) are asset managers that invest in early-stage compani...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

I have a 'History Department in UKHE' joke but it's been reduced from 250 characters to 50 and is now merged with jokes from across ten other largely-unrelated disciplines while still being expected to be Just As Funny.

None of these measures will be effective. Meanwhile, Paris has made the streets in front of 300 schools permanently car free. Not all cities value the children of their communities equally.

Six Birmingham schools set for new road safety measures

Roads near the schools are set for work such as speed humps and yellow lines to boost safety.

bbc.co.uk

🚨 New on Substack: Octavia Hill: ‘a life more noble’ - in which I grapple with the tension between Hill's huge contribution to better lives for many and her resolute opposition to state intervention and women's rights: municipaldreams.substack.com/p/octavia-hi...

Octavia Hill: ‘a life more noble’

A Life More Noble (Octavia, 2015)

municipaldreams.substack.com

New Rural Design Guidance aims to help councils deliver inter urban paths... but with little money for rural authorities, can it bridge the gap between hopes and reality? open.substack.com/pub/lauralak...

Rural Design Guidance aims to help deliver interurban paths

Will it help tackle landowners and National Highways?

open.substack.com

Fascinating to see the editor of the Newcastle Journal has started a petition to dual the A1. Purportedly for road safety reasons but then the usual speed, economy reasons are rolled out.

ChronicleLive - The Chronicle@chroniclelive.co.uk · 3w ago

Berwick MP David Smith led a adjournment debate about the road's appalling safety record

It’s good to see some push back against the social media ban for under 16s. It’s been interesting to observe that it seems to only or at least mainly be young people themselves who are pointing out that we are changing what childhood is through this ban. www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

The social media ban sceptic: are we getting it wrong on kids, tech and mental health?

Psychologist Candice Odgers has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. She fears the current debate around smartphones obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of...

theguardian.com

“New pitches and leisure centres have value, but children also need ordinary places where movement does not require a booking system, a membership card or an adult with a free Saturday morning” Great write up of new campaign calling on Burnham to “… restore children’s freedom to play close to home”

The World Cup Inspires Them. Their Street Signs Stop Them

Campaigners urge Andy Burnham to ban no ball games signs and restore safe doorstep play for children across England.

sustainhealth.fit

Sure you've got your Count Binface, but when it comes to eccentric British candidates, retired Royal Navy officer Bill Boaks was a force to contend with. By all accounts Boaks was a terrible campaigner, but his single-minded dedication to the cause of road safety was a force to be reckoned with. 🧵

Why are car-centric transport systems so difficult to undo? Because automobiles represent the dominance of private property over public space. In this @urbancyclinginstitute.org essay, I look to history to uncover how we got here. #StealingCars

Stealing Cars: Property, Automobility, and the Colonial Crisis of Car Culture

Long Ride | Historian John Munro delves into the past in order to understand how the primacy of private property shapes mobility hierarchies in the present

urbancyclinginstitute.substack.com

There was an awful lot of talk about place-based strategies but very little reflection on the spaces in which children and their families live, outside their homes, in their neighbourhoods, which are both shaped by poverty and shape experiences of poverty.

I spent the day at the NE Mayoral Strategic Authority’s summit to review and refresh the child poverty strategy one year after it launched. Lots of real achievements already, and some fabulous advocacy from NE Youth Alliance Peer Ambassadors.

In the June edition of #Highways, I think about getting serious about #VisionZero, why the UK government's road safety strategy falls short and what if we included more than safety in the discussion. Digital issue available here: www.highwaysmagazine.co.uk/latest-issues

The Oxford Intersection on Environmental Change and Human Experience is seeking submissions across its different sections. I am editing 'Water' and would love to see more articles on -Rivers/freshwater More-than-human perspectives Militaries & water Trade & transport academic.oup.com/oxford-inter...

@gfearn.bsky.social on the bus man and Manchesterism tribunemag.co.uk/2026/07/the-...

Towards the Productive State

Andy Burnham’s plans for economic reform will undoubtedly face resistance from entrenched interests. The politician must act defiantly, and rebuild relations with the constituencies Starmer ostracised...

tribunemag.co.uk

North Tyneside Council is closing its outdoor education centre, High Borrans in Windermere. Owned by the council since 1967, for 60 years children and young people from North Tyneside have had free and subsidised trips to walk, climb, kayak, and play together. Another loss to austerity.

North Tyneside Council to close Lake District outdoor education centre

North Tyneside Council owns High Borrans Outdoor Education Centre but is closing the site this year.

bbc.co.uk

I originally started filming Utrecht because of its cycling infrastructure. Looking back over seventeen years of footage, I realised I have documented something much bigger: the transformation of an entire city. Blog, video and playlist:

Utrecht: Seventeen Years of Change

When I first started filming in Utrecht in 2009, I had no idea I would still be documenting the city seventeen years later. Looking back through my archive, I realised how well I can show just how much has changed during that time. Few cities transform overnight, but Utrecht has changed remarkably in less than two decades.

bicycledutch.wordpress.com

"The Univ. of Hertfordshire has decided to close all eight Humanities undergraduate programmes in English Language and Linguistics, English Literature, Creative Writing, History and Philosophy.... PLEASE sign this petition to support staff and students in Humanities" www.change.org/p/save-the-h...

Sign the Petition

Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire

change.org

I’d love it if you’d sign this. It might not prevent me and my colleagues losing our jobs, but it will draw attention to the ideological vandalism being perpetrated by the wealthy execs running our university. Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter - sign the petition below! c.org/NpvY4sR9gH

Sign the Petition

Stop Redundancies at the University of Exeter

c.org

If you're in the UK and looking at this, thinking "This doesn't look like a very good thing", please do head to pavementoverload.com and support the campaign (you can send a letter to your MP).

Humans should not be forced off pavements by delivery robots, but that's exactly what's happening. The people who pay the price are those with the least room to give it up.

NEWS: A 1960s mural depicting more than a thousand years of the history of County Durham is under threat of demolition, with C20 joining local campaigners trying to save and relocate it. The unusual pixelated mosaic design predates digital imagery by decades. ➡️ c20society.org.uk/news/moves-t...

Thankfully my daughter has a teacher training day so won’t have to go to school wearing tights today. Yes that is the uniform policy. They’ve only just relaxed rules around coats to allow them to wear a winter coat when it’s cold. And they wonder why children don’t want to go to school.

OK go on then. "I was thrilled to speak to the BBC.... " www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

North East 'lost' regeneration and jobs funds after Brexit

New analysis finds the North lost funding for regeneration, jobs and training after quitting the EU.

bbc.co.uk

This is a really interesting read for environmental historians and anyone interested in the potential shaping of research by University processes 📗

LSE Impact@lseimpactblog.bsky.social · 2mo ago

💥New | How a cartoon fox became a research method ✍️ Mariana Hernández-Montilla #ResearchMethods #SciComm #Ecology #PhDchat