richardbrown.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

New comment piece. The country needs Londoners to be housed better: www.onlondon.co.uk/dave-hill-th... #housing #london @tomcopley.bsky.social @semakaleng.bsky.social

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

Yes, and the only way a London tourist tax will work is to give the Mayor the power directly. Manchester and Liverpool tourist taxes are run by BIDs, who just ballot members and roll it out. But …

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

London is the UK's most LGBT region, but Londoners are less likely to say that they know lesbian and gay people, more likely to oppose same-sex sex education. than other Britons. My piece, trying to pick the bones out of that for #PrideMonth. www.onlondon.co.uk/richard-brow...

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

It's depressing to have to highlight these "cold hard truths" again, but some myths are extremely persistent...

submitted 11 days ago • 4 comments

IPPR North claim ‘the numbers don’t lie’, but as @geographyjim.bsky.social illustrates, they certainly include a lot of assumptions.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

I do like @gaiagps.bsky.social as a map app, but its search function has a hard time acknowledging anywhere outside USA exists.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Happy Pentecost! Here’s Nick Cave. m.youtube.com/watch?v=YKlw...

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

Zia Yusuf praised for Reform role But totally out of his depth on local government finances in DOGE This is an absurd totally false claim about Kent County Council spending 87m a year. Yusuf only needed to ask anyone at KCC to avoid such a foolish error (/deliberate misrepresentation for clicks)

submitted 13 days ago • 8 comments

London is the UK’s gayest region but is it the most gay friendly? Some #pridemonth musings for OnLondon. www.onlondon.co.uk/richard-brow...

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

London is a city of Pride - but the story is also a bit more complicated than that: www.onlondon.co.uk/richard-brow... Top piece for OnLondon by @richardbrown.bsky.social. #london #pride

submitted 12 days ago • 1 comment

I’m sure she sings for a black metal band.

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

This all seems pretty perceptive from ‘UK DOGE’ chap. There’s no pot of gold in the council chamber. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

Last minute lobbying underway for Bakerloo Line and Docklands Light Railway extension schemes. Reminded me of the Crossrail v Jubilee line extension standoff expertly recounted by @richardbrown.bsky.social www.onlondon.co.uk/richard-brow...

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Paid is important, but provided with accommodation even more so if we want to open up this type of job. 👏

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

You can hear the screeching…

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

It’s striking how much discussion there has been about this recently. Simon Reeves’ TV show, Alice Thompson in The Times yesterday and now this. (Similarly Finnish military preparedness).

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

Younger people: would fight to defend country but don’t want to do national service. Older people: want young people to do national service but wouldn’t fight to defend country.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Big day at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park as the V&A East Storehouse, innovative new home of the museum's vast reserve collection, opens to the public - the first of two new V&A facilities that will come to East London. I wrote about the Storehouse here: thisisthewick.com/culture/hist... #london

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

What did Blitz Kids and Rave kids have in common? And why are 80s youth cults suddenly everywhere again? I attempt answers in my newsletter this week. open.substack.com/pub/helenbar...

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

The TS Eliot memorial toilets - or, as I like to call it, The Human Waste Land.

submitted 21 days ago • 8 comments

Had an curious notion to listen to some early U2. 'A Day Without Me' is great, and blasts me back to childhood. open.spotify.com/track/2gFBs1...

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

While Robert Jenrick MP spends his days wandering about the underground tackling fare dodgers and going on about the capital for clicks... his constituency has a genuine problem. ● Newark crime rate: 123 crimes per 1,000 ● London 105.8 per 1,000 But you know... "Sadiq"

submitted 21 days ago • 84 comments

Lord Coe is bang on here about the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park - except it’s taken 20 years not seven, the site was not unused beforehand, and the retail complex was planned anyway.

submitted 21 days ago • 0 comments

Looks like the link expired so I will post my bleak evergreen local government rundown - updated for the Reform era - again on.ft.com/4kGJZf8

submitted 21 days ago • 2 comments

Really interesting how mask-wearing has been sustained in some communities - as a symptom of mutual care and awareness of vulnerability, as a token of progressiveness, as a marker of distrust in the authorities?

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

This by @smithnoah.bsky.social assesses how losing foreign students could damage USA. Two themes - loss of income to cross-subsidise and harm to local economies - are similar to those worrying UK pundits. Another - the risk to innovation - is less discussed here. open.substack.com/pub/noahpini...

submitted 22 days ago • 1 comment

Falling child numbers in London reflect housing affordability, for sure (as well as national trends), but is that the result of housing supply shortfalls or of "extreme gentrification". @davehillonlondon.bsky.social unpicks the arguments. www.onlondon.co.uk/dave-hill-is...

submitted 22 days ago • 0 comments

Mission-based government but the mission is bad.

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments