Sat on a bench in the sun at Warwick today and found a plaque in memory of Meg Stacey. I remember Meg from arriving at Warwick as a student in 1990 but had no idea that she was the first woman professor at the University

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

To put this in perspective the average car emits 4 tonnes of CO2 a year

Dependence on food banks is the new norm in the UK.

In a rich country 14m people, including 3.8m children, food insecure. One in six households went hungry last year.

Result of low wages/benefits, unchecked profiteering, govt indifference.

1% have more wealth than 70% of the population combined.

The Gillian Rose Memorial conference. London, 18-19 June. Swedenborg House.

www.kingston.ac.uk/about/events...

Lovely obituary by Nickie Charles of Carol Wolkowitz who taught me at Warwick in the 1990s. She was a wonderful teacher who brought sociology to life

@sociowarwick.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Just spent 32 mins waiting for my call to be answered by Severn Trent before giving up. Given they make £300m in profits out of a former public utility you’d think they could do better

Great to see Sam Burgum @samburgum.bsky.social today and very much looking forward to reading his new book

When you find out your company is owned by a moron who plans to make you and all your coworkers unemployed while scraping every writer who's ever written for every publication in history to auto scribe new "content" based on whatever it is fed, from fellow auto generated content #AutoGenEchoChamber

Just posting a four-year-long state of exception

The federal civilian worker payroll totaled $271 billion in 2022.

The annual cost of permanently extending Trump's tax cuts that primarily benefited rich individuals? $400 billion.

Keep this in mind as Trump and DOGE lay off thousands of federal workers.

Umm I don’t think anything could get through the train. There’s no access even to a toilet. Michael Portillo should go from Plymouth to Edinburgh on one of his great British railway journeys. He could spend hours thinking about the merits of privatisation as punishment

True. But when one set of doors are out of service, the train is way over capacity and no space for luggage and someone pulls the emergency alarm in a toilet but there are no staff to help then you have to wonder whether resilience is the answer

Waiting for a CrossCountry train at Bristol. 200 people on the platform trying to get into 4 carriages. Arriva owned by a private equity group with 40bn assets. Why do we put up with this?

UK govt data on annual median state pension.

For retirees before April 2016
Male £11,436
Female £9,934

Post-2016 retirees
Male £11,490
Female £11,467

Median state pension is less than 50% of minimum wage.

2m pensioners live in poverty.
In 2022, 110,000 died in fuel poverty.

What future?

Cost of extending the expiring Trump tax cuts for the rich: $4.6 trillion

Cost of cutting corporate tax rate to 15%: $1 trillion

Both Trump proposals will explode the deficit and be used as an excuse to gut programs that millions rely on.

It's reverse Robin Hood.

Yes how can anyone think that this is no longer capitalism and that ‘profit’ no longer matters?

All of which is to say that the only account capable of explaining the political and ideological power of Big Tech has to start with a thorough analysis of the global economy, and, well, capital. What passes for "techno-feudalism" is merely an effect of capitalism in crisis.

Word of the week - revanchism (and likely the next four years).

If you’ve ever published anything then this might be of interest

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Feeding frenzy: Army of advisers making millions from Thames Water.

It has £19bn debt, wants another £3bn debt at interest rate of 9.75% in two instalments.

Two-thirds of £1.5bn will end-up in the pockets of debt investors, professional advisers.

As usual, customers will pay.

UK gambling companies covertly track visitors to their websites and sending data to Facebook’s parent company without consent in an apparent breach of data protection laws.

Meta uses the data to flood gamblers with ads for casinos and betting sites.

Will Govt stand up to predatory corporations?

When is a fine not a fine?
When it is levied on England's water companies.

Aug 2024: OFWAT announced £168m fine on 3 companies. ZERO Paid.

Dec 2024: £18m fine on Thames Water for paying unjustified dividends. ZERO Paid.

Regulatory indulgence emboldens companies, encourages more abuses.

Tesla earned $2.3 billion in the United States in 2024.

You'd think it paid a lot in taxes, right?

Well it paid precisely $0 in federal income taxes last year.

You want waste and fraud? Look at what some big corporations and the rich are getting away with.