Oona
banner
oonam.bsky.social
Oona
@oonam.bsky.social
Social researcher focused on education, previously worked in higher education charities | Glaswegian in London | Lapsed violinist
Reposted by Oona
www.joxleywrites.jmoxley.co.uk/p/airport-bo...
Great piece on “airport book brain” - the tendency of politicians to swallow simplistic solutions. Latest example the Jonathan Haidt book shaping policy on teens and social media
January 23, 2026 at 8:50 AM
Reposted by Oona
New OA In ESR

How do institutions and social norms affect tax payment?
@lucaspasin.bsky.social #Aaszekely @squazzoni.bsky.social find that in low-quality institutions contexts, social norms can trigger vicious cycles of evasion, even when evasion is socially disapproved
doi.org/10.1093/esr/jcaf057
An experimental study on institutions and social norms of tax payment
Abstract. The production of public goods, which are fundamental to well-functioning societies, requires the payment of taxes, but taxpayers have clear ince
doi.org
January 19, 2026 at 8:47 AM
Reposted by Oona
wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage
January 15, 2026 at 1:47 PM
Reposted by Oona
If anyone at the press conference is reading this, ask Jenrick and Farage about their position on the Postcode Address File. Maybe there will be a divide between the two on this!
January 15, 2026 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Oona
Reminder that in the UK an incoming radical, populist government would have immediate access to immense, unchecked executive power.

And the current government is doing nothing to protect us from that.
NEW

The UK constitution is even more vulnerable than the US constitution

In the face of an illiberal radical assault, what has happened politically in America could easily happen in the UK

By me, at @prospectmagazine.co.uk

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...
January 15, 2026 at 5:34 PM
Reposted by Oona
Even by my low expectations for Kemi Badenoch ‘violence against women and girls is something done by immigrants and nobody else’ has shocked me.
Dog-whistle and factually incorrect. Ladies, raise your hand if you were sexually assaulted by a boy at school? I’d wager this or a family member is most women’s first experience of sexual violence
December 18, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Oona
“Polls suggest the most probable result is a loss for the party’s candidate, a former government minister understood to have been handpicked by the PM.

“Among the reasons cited by analysts are frustration with Frederiksen’s hardline policies on issues such as integration and immigration.”
November 18, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Reposted by Oona
Those who hold more restrictive views on refugees are more likely to see Labour as pro-immigration, while those who hold more liberal views tend to see Labour as anti-immigration

yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...
November 17, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Reposted by Oona
This passage is key. What will criteria and fee for this new route be? How many refugees are expected to qualify? Some refugees will be unable to work or study and they will be very harshly treated under this plan.
November 17, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Reposted by Oona
Overall, we find that immigration looks important in polls because it’s highly salient, not because it outranks daily concerns.

Polling captures the salience, but requires a bit of digging to see the whole picture of public priority.

You can read more here!: www.labourtogether.uk/all-reports/...
Measuring What Matters — Labour Together
Knowing what issues are most important to the public is the bedrock of understanding voters. Ironically, its own importance can’t go understated. This report applies some overdue methodological experi...
www.labourtogether.uk
November 17, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Oona
We then stuck with open-ends but changed the question a little.

Most pollsters ask about issues facing the country.

When we ask about people's day-to-day lives, the change is starkly different.

Immigration is only mentioned in a tenth of results. A majority mentioned the Cost of Living.
November 17, 2025 at 11:41 AM
Reposted by Oona
I wonder what the EU and the French think about the UK's new asylum approach. If they feel out-competed in a race to the bottom, the French might withdraw existing co-operation on small boats.
November 17, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Reposted by Oona
"London is not a bad place to live, and does a lot better on measures such as crime than many of the populist right ... would argue. However, as so often, housing costs are a pervasive drag on liveability, pushing people into poverty, hobbling aspiration and jeopardising the UK’s prosperity."
I write about the new Index of Multiple Deprivation, and why London has generally good scores on education, health, crime and employment, but still has eight boroughs numbered among the most deprived 20% districts in England.

www.onlondon.co.uk/richard-brow...
Richard Brown: London's distinctive patterns of deprivation
The government's new Index of Multiple Deprivation has revealed concealed hardships in the capital, despite some distortions and daft debates
www.onlondon.co.uk
November 5, 2025 at 7:59 AM
Reposted by Oona
This is not normal discourse. It is not just a bit of fun for a Sunday paper interview. It is beyond the realms of the concept of decency shared across the political spectrum until last year.
October 19, 2025 at 11:35 AM
Reposted by Oona
Apropos of nothing, I really do think UK journalists and politicians need some reminding that mass deportation of LEGAL immigrants, particularly those with permanent status, is far more extreme than even Trump's America and would basically place Britain completely on its own among democracies.
October 19, 2025 at 11:32 AM
Violent, nonsensical and staggeringly out-of-touch. Proposals like this should have Lam exiled from mainstream politics by her peers.
Sunday Times interview Tory "rising star" Katie Lam

She is clear she wants lots of legal migrants to be told to "go home" so as "to leave a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people"

(The interviewer suggests she is scrapping ILR or stripping people of it)
October 19, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Reposted by Oona
Your regular reminder that scrapping ILR for people who have come here and played by the rules, which is what Lam proposes here, is a position supported by 3% of the public
Sunday Times interview Tory "rising star" Katie Lam

She is clear she wants lots of legal migrants to be told to "go home" so as "to leave a mostly but not entirely culturally coherent group of people"

(The interviewer suggests she is scrapping ILR or stripping people of it)
October 19, 2025 at 7:30 AM
Reposted by Oona
Some context: these are the local authorities that form the South East Regional Care Co-operative (SERCC). ‘Local’ doesn’t even come into it.
October 15, 2025 at 5:40 PM
Reposted by Oona
Children in care in the South of England are more likely to be placed outside their home region than those in other parts of the country, research has revealed.

www.cypnow.co.uk/content/news...
Southern regions most likely to send children in care outside home area, data shows - CYP Now
Children in care in the South of England are more likely to be placed outside their home region than those in other parts of the country, research has revealed.
www.cypnow.co.uk
October 15, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Reposted by Oona
Leunig, a former gov adviser, said scrapping it — while it would boost growth and productivity — would be “a very, very big tax cut for rich people”. One effect would be to boost house prices, making the main beneficiaries the existing owners of expensive properties in the south-east of England.
Should stamp duty be scrapped in the UK?
Conservative party says property tax deters people from moving house and stifles productivity
www.ft.com
October 9, 2025 at 5:24 AM
Reposted by Oona
Still some room just above the Vauxhall badge for "Free the Postcode Address File".
See yer da’s got a new car.
October 8, 2025 at 1:30 PM
Reposted by Oona
Also, not sure anyone who thinks this has any interest being in the Labour Party.
September 27, 2025 at 6:06 AM
Reposted by Oona
Similar for parents of ASD children. Intensely relaxed about know-nothings spouting spurious, offensive nonsense about their families.
💯 ⬇️

Pregnant women, famously unconcerned about their and their child's health and particularly welcoming of advice from non-experts and *particularly* non-expert men about what to do.
Again, the *obvious* weakness Reform has is combining its first ~10%, who are much more conspiracy adjacent, with wider mainstream appeal. This is a wedge both Labour and Tories should be kicking.

Remember how much Ref. floundered under Tice when they became the party of Covid-skepticism?
September 24, 2025 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by Oona
All political tribes can be hypocritical but the right's current level of hypocrisy on free speech is deliberate. It's an assertion of power not a blindspot.
September 18, 2025 at 7:19 AM
Reposted by Oona
Health Secretary Wes Streeting says the government must recognise and respond to a "increasingly visible tide of racism" . He acknowledges trans people feel less safe today than a decade ago.

www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
September 16, 2025 at 6:17 PM