Me too.

I love these shows and have even been fortunate to be a guest. One time on Free Thinking, one of the other guests asked me to do a dramatic poetry reading with her barely 2mins before we went on air. Almost certainly the first and last time I will get to do that. Sad to lose them!

It was always clear that David Goodhart's fairy tale of a struggle between rootless cosmopolitans and down-to-earth conservatives ("Anywheres vs Somewheres") was not influential because it was accurate, but because it confirmed the prejudices of right-leaning commentators. Now we have the evidence:

Manchester City cheated Premier League rules, the Commission found. Did it also cheat HMRC? We've examined the decision and leaked Mancini documents. We think City likely failed to pay £12m in tax. There should be a criminal investigation. Thread:

Interested in a PhD in historical demography/population studies at @camunicampop.bsky.social, @camunigeography.bsky.social, Cambridge University? We have 3 suggested topics (see thread): contact me to discuss, or to suggest your own idea. Apply by early December for funded places.

1/ Why did things implode so dismally for Keir Starmer’s govt? I worked for Labour in the years running up to GE 2024 and have since puzzled over this question. Last week I published two pieces, asking ‘what we wrong’. I added a third, expanding on economic fairness – a key theme from the first two.

***URGENT PLEASE SHARE*** University of Brighton management have announced today that they ‘give notice of termination of all collective agreements’. This is a fundamental erasure of workers' rights. Management have announced the termination of all contractual documents, which includes:

I’d go to this if I could.

Looking forward to discussing this at the LSE in a few weeks.

This is interesting. You get assigned to being born at a random place and time in history, to see what a typical person's life might have been like then. Unfortunately I was born in 1403 in the valley of Mexico and died at age 4 from dysentery.

So, the performance of ordinariness is actually a rather low-risk strategy for elites to obtain legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. But it also has the potential - if it is done via the frame of class - to reinforce economic inequalities between elites and everyone else.

The final question we examined is whether these performances of ordinariness change how much elites should earn. Should elites from working-class backgrounds be paid more than elites from middle class backgrounds? Yes. But what about elites with ordinary as opposed to posh tastes? No.