Category: Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
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Are you consciously weighing up the difference around you?
Karen McShane is one of the most inspirational women I know. I am proud to know her as a friend and colleague. It therefore saddens me that she has been given an amplified sense of being othered by a recent supreme court ruling. We have been taking important steps forwards…
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Tea ladies
No disrespect to tea ladies, but have you been mistaken for one? Our brains can be very quick to judge and form impressions. When you go into a meeting or interview, how conscious are you of being wrongly judged or of being too quick to judge others? Search online for…
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Teaching doublespeak to children using DEI as an example
Imagine trying to educate children on helping create a better world. Would you use doublespeak to do so? Let’s consider an example. Good morning class. We’re going to be talking today about diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s a phrase that has three parts. Let’s look at each one shall we?…
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Mother Nature issues Consecutive Disorder prohibiting list of words
In a remarkable turn of events, Mother Nature has issued a Consecutive Disorder in which she has identified a list of words that now appear to be prohibited from being used. The courts are scrambling to establish whether or not this is legally enforcible with many businesses and politicians nonplussed…
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Making difference invisible – an enduring feature of society?
Making difference invisible seems to be an enduring feature of modern society, as does making sure privilege is protected. I remember the posts I’ve put on LinkedIn that get unusually high traction. In March 2021 I posted (https://lnkd.in/edE8p7HR) while I was half-way through reading ‘Invisible Women’: “Half the population hidden…
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Digital Genocide
I have been an academic throughout my career. I am shaken to the core by what I have just read. A researcher in the US federal system has just had an opinion piece published in the BMJ (one of the world’s oldest general medical journals – formerly called the British…
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The Gulf of Fragile Masculinity
It’s like being forced to watch the second series of a poorly produced Netflix drama. I had a look on Google Maps and it currently says ‘Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America)’. I found the meme below on Bluesky. And the four-year period is barely underway. Today is a day…
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Avatar – an allegory for colonialism
I’ve just watched Avatar. It hit me hard between the eyes compared to the last time I’d watched it. Having just read a book on colonialism I now appreciate its purpose as an allegory (a story with hidden meaning). Greedy humans – corporate and military together – have found a…
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Looking for the light in a dark age
This is a personal post in an awful week. Today my contribution to Local Transport Today’s 2025 ‘deep thinking’ initiative is published. I’m sorry to say fellow transport planners that it is a sobering take on our problems or predicament. It’s called ‘Looking for the light in a dark age’.…
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Lighting a candle
You can listen to this video here. Or it is available via the LinkedIn Post. Dear friends and colleagues, 20 January is nearly upon us. This is a personal post in which I just wanted to reflect some brief thoughts for this particular day. When I’ve been engaged in public…
What the hell is going on? 