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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 9h

To be honest the whole block between leith walk and Easter road should be a low traffic neighbourhood. I know the Mcdonald road fire station complicates things on my street (Albert st) but there's no good reason for any other through traffic on these kinds of street. Any of them.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 11h

Is that on you or on one of your victims?

Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 13h

Yeah, mobile phones have had a number of bad effects, for sure. But as mentioned above, lots of countries have been improving their road safety over recent years, so it's certainly not a major factor.

Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 13h

And it's those fundamental assumptions here that we should question. The things we treat as totally normal now have not been normal for very long at all. We changed them ourselves, in the space of a couple of generations, and if we don't like the world we made we can change them back again.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 13h

Well, it's also all of ours, for spending several decades rebuilding our cities and re-arranging our society in ways that put cars at the centre, and far too often into the same spaces as people (including children, involving far too much speed, far too little visibility etc etc..

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 14h

bsky.app/profile/tomf...

Tom Flood @tomflood.bsky.social · Nov 8

We ask everyone outside of the car to be safe so that drivers can be dangerous.

two kids crossing the street waving orange flags.
text: instead of dulling the sharpest of weapons, we hand out the weakest of shields.

rovélo creative

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 14h

P.S. I think your phrasing "the one thing I don't see in here" was what made me (and apparently others) assume you were deliberately pushing that agenda, rather than just idly wondering.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 14h

Maybe you stumbled in here entirely unaware, but the instinct to blame the victims getting hit by cars rather than the cars or the people driving them is part of a long and storied tradition of what's sometimes known as motonormativity.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

do they have some reason- maybe good reason - to believe the business will be able to get away with charging significantly more in future? If they were still making a loss at 30% market share, and you're banking on *further* economies of scale then that amounts to chasing oligopoly anyway.

Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

Once again: their *whole model* is based on a plan that they will be able to make enough money in the future to more than offset the losses incurred over a decade in the red. Even if you think they have *already* unlocked some actual value, prices have to go up. Are all the investors crazy? Or >

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

So even if your preferred society is a bunch of independent workers freely contracting to do work if and when it suits them the tech takeover is still bad news. Never mind if you actually care about the public finances or workers rights or anything.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

If you want people to genuinely be self-employed they need to have the choice to take a job or not. That means having lots of potential clients. If there's only two and a half potential "employers" in your area you have zero leverage. Consolidation is anticompetitive and anti-worker.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

It was the opposite of consolidated, that's part of my point.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

seen it in multiple industries now. Run at loss for years till only big corps left. Stick around in countries where you are #1 or 2, and stop operating where not. Rivals consolidate. Because the goal is oligopoly (at the very least). Removing competition IS the business model.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

For the first twelve years they didnt. They were being subsidised by lots of funding (mostly from PE). What small independent business can survive ten years of being undercut by a massive loss-making rival? Never mind the fact you'd be paying employer NI on top as well.

This model isn't new. We've>

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

www.restaurantonline.co.uk/Article/2025...

Deliveroo reports first full year profit

Deliveroo has reported its first full year profit since the business launched back in 2013

www.restaurantonline.co.uk

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 15h

The model is the problem, not the split of ownership.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 16h

Well, they are arguably low compared to what it would cost to get food delivered by workers who were actually paid a living wage, given rest breaks etc etc. But even in that optimistic scenario, as James says, it's only because subsidised by Private Equity gambling on owning a future monopoly.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 16h

Exactly. If it is a good idea and providing a valuable and commercially viable service then there's no reason can't be a proper business with actual employees doing it instead. If you think it is, then you should *want* companies who just exploit tax loopholes and run at a loss driven out.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 16h

Thank you for this *much* more polite version of the reply I was just about to write.

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Reposted by Big Fez

trickyNOtreat 🎃 @trickykat.bsky.social · 1d

real shitposters only use lower case because we are anti-capitalism

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Reposted by Big Fez

Bethany Black @bethanyblack.bsky.social · 1d

Just flown in from Riyadh, and boy are my excuses tired

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Andboo Scare @andrewblair.co.uk · 23h

For sale: baby. Feet don’t fit these rad shoes I bought.

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Big Fez @bigfez.bsky.social · 22h

The kind of people moving there at the moment seem more concerned with bringing uk labour laws into line with the uae than the reverse.

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Reposted by Big Fez

David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 1d

Three newly published books argue that cars are destroying society as well as the planet.

Is the world finally ready to rein in the automobile?

My essay, in @bloomberg.com (gift link below)

‘Car Brain’ Is Making the US Unhealthy and Dangerous. EVs Won’t Fix It.

A trio of new books argue that we need to confront the full range of costs that car-based living has imposed on our cities, our health and our society.

www.bloomberg.com

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