A criticism of universities during the current crisis is they are rentiers who have created this mess. A rentier is someone who makes all their income from monopolizing property assets. The argument is, universities rely so much on rental income from halls they were forcing... ...students to go back. I know quite a bit about property finance (I am on the board of a housing association) and have a fairly good understanding of my own institution's accounts, which will be similar to other institutions who own their own halls of residence...

That's the whole fucking point of a low traffic neighbourhood 🤦‍♂️

I thinking about this last night, as I was dodging cars on Easter Road at 18.30. Back in lockdown @danc00ks0n showed that Edinburgh had seen the greatest reduction in travel to work of any city in the UK.... ... I took this to be an indication of the structure of the economy: much work could be done at home, or was stopped entirely (leisure and tourism). Edinburgh's roads are now ridiculously busy. There's a day long traffic jam on Great Junction Street. It takes an hour or more...

Eurovision Again-ing again 😀 It's like watching the titles to Triangle or Bergerac #EurovisionAgain

Anyway, next project! 2020's Lego man

My mum's learned helplessness with technology is getting really bad and I really don't know what to do. She just gets in a massive state of frustration and anxiety and contacts me in an utter state about things. I know the way for her to learn is to play with the tech and... ...build learning loops for herself. But she doesn't have the confidence. So she wants me to tell her how to do things step-by-step, but she either doesn't do it again, so the learning doesn't stick, or a dialog box pops up, changing the routine, so she panics...

Thunks - the LTN concept does seem to work at creating modal shift. I thought an impediment to it being deployed in Edinburgh is that we weren't blessed with an inner ring-road. But, could you be bold enough to do it in Edinburgh and use the bypass as the distributor? 🤔 So all cross-city traffic, unless it's a bus, would have to use the bypass. So if I wanted to drive to Cramond, say, I'd have to drive out to Musselburgh and then all the way round the bypass. Or cycle there in 20 minutes.

How lockdown has changed me: I was ravenously hungry after lunch and pondered popping to little Tescos to get some Oreos. But instead I whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies doing so made me think - I sometimes wonder if I'm spending more time making and consuming food during these months of working from home? I never did count up how long I spent grazing at the eateries on campus, or waiting for the kettle to boil in the staff room...

Beware if you're shopping in Lidl - these are lurking in the random aisle of shit ready to keep out and attack you, forcing their way into your basket They're not having a good day...

I ended up thinking how ridiculously contradictory the UK Government HE policy is as I drifted off to sleep last night: they create a market in HE and students chose business, arts and humanities and social science degrees. But now it's choice, but not choice like that... ...so how, in a classic case of a free-market Conservative government copying the best bits of Actually Existing Communism, they're going to force universities to focus on STEM. Which means we'll end up with people doing engineering degrees who don't really want to do them?...

A decade ago, when I was a civil servant, I have been reminded that I discovered the HOTSTUF Principles of Decision Making and they were as daft as you'd imagine. And I can't find them anymore 😭 That was when the UK Government took policymaking seriously, and I was sent on an excellent course run by the National School of Government (that ceased to be, shortly after this)

The piece about Edinburgh in today's Graun is pish.

However it did get me thinking. I probably would've nodded along to it in agreement about six years ago, so what's changed? I think the insight that there's more than one "Edinburgh" is right and there's obviously friction between the tourist Edinburgh and the local's Edinburgh, but the local's Edinburgh it portrays is one I increasingly find irritating....

Allowing shops to be converted into houses under permitted development rights. Because converting offices to houses worked soooo well:
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politi… And, here's a thing - back in 1948 when the Town & Country Planning Act came into force uses were fixed on that date (1 January, IIRC). In many cities, large houses in the inner city had become very unfashionable over the previous 50 years as the suburbs grew...

Over on the Fazzbook, @gemcarey mentioned this article. Main thought from a UK-perspective and the &age of our income that comes from government - across the whole country governments get A LOT of HE for not very much money:
theguardian.com/australia-news… @gemcarey (to which the response is - UK governments should invest to international levels, not that UK HE is a paragon of efficiency that should be copied globally)

So, for what it's worth, this is my solution to the "when can kids go back to school" issues that are emerging (becoming an issue with attempts at timetabling at the uni): governments can borrow at effectively negative interest rates at the moment, as central banks... ...are just buying the bonds they produce to fund the expenditure. Governments are now beginning the bollocks macho talk about funding "shovel ready" projects, which always means willy-waving bridges that take years to build...

My statue-take: this idea that there should be a democratic process to decide to take them down, laughably presumes some thought, with democratic legitimacy, was putting into putting them up in the first place. Take some of Edinburgh's classics... ...George IV - put up because he thought about visiting once. Scott monument - erected by public subscription, these days barely anyone knows who he is. Statue in West Princes St Gardens - there because Paris didn't want it and no one else said "yes"...

I was so rock 'n' roll as a teenager that I had an Abigail's Party Dinner Party for my 18th. I invited a friend's mum (who was very cool, but still, most 18ths don't feature invited mums). It was a retro dinner party - prawn cocktail, lasagne, and black forest gateaux... ...we even had a bottle of Black Tower. I'm recreating this for an online dinner party 20 years later this coming Sunday.

And now I'm craving a cheesy pineappley one. Do you like Demis Roussos Angela? Do you think he's sexy?

...

Oooh, I want to join in #MuseumsUnlocked today with some of the modernist churches of Edinburgh! Photos from the first two excellent tours organised by DoCoMoMo Scotland.

First off, St Andrews Clermiston (Basil Spence) festival style with style

flickr.com/photos/2491853… Second, the ludicrously minimalist, modernist Craigsbank. 2001 A Space Odyssey called and they want their set back #MuseumsUnlocked
flickr.com/photos/2491853…

After our internet connection couldn't cope with Disney+ we're watching #EurovisionAgain from the start, so we're an hour behind you all. I shan't bother tweeting Oh, baggy bootcut jeans were such a thing back in the early noughties... 😐

The keyboard on wheels makes this #Eurovision What's he done with it?!?! #Eurovision

I was stupidly giving "stay alert" the benefit of the doubt. I wondered if it would be linked to more complex interventions we've seen in other countries e.g. you can do x and y, but not a and b even though they're similar... ...I also thought it would be linked to a clear programme of testing, isolating, tracing and support. You'd have to stay alert for that sort of intervention to work.

You'd have to be alert to what you could and couldn't do, and to messages telling you to isolate and get tested..

I'd forgotten Ukrika-ka-ka-ka-ka presented it #EurovisionAgain Oooh, that was like a Zoom call #EurovisionAgain