Sam

Yorkshire border: “keep out” Lancashire border “no you keep out” The attention to detail in #WallaceAndGromit is unmatched 🤣🤣

Welcome back 2000s 😍

When you see your taxes being spent on feeding children instead of bombing them.

Trump really saw this and was like nah it’s time for WW3

My only response to boomer housing discourse is that my nan on her final salary teachers pension gets the same monthly income I get as a teacher on the inner London pay scale

One of the great wonders of life: the astronauts on Artemis II can make video calls with perfectly clarity and reception from halfway to the moon yet try to make a call on an Avanti train on the West Coast mainline at Runcorn and you’ll be lucky to connect by Watford.

PREACH

Thoroughly enjoyed the rattled comments under this, but in all seriousness, to have a global championships back in London would be incredible for our sport. I didn't think we'd get the opportunity again during my career, the british crowd would fill it everyday. Seems silly for London to be taken out of the running, over a football team not compromising on a stadium they pay RENT for when it's only a few extra away games, everything's always all about money and never moments. let us have this moment!!! pretty please 🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🤝🤝🤝🤝💕💕💕💕

The IOC just announced their policy on DSD and trans athletes in the female category. Let's skip the outrage and go with the scientific facts: The modern debate started almost 20 years ago with the rise of DSD athletes who were winning world/Olympics (See: Semenya and others). It came to a head when DSD athletes swept the podium. The had the single biggest performance boost we can get, androgenization. Something that none of their competitors could ever have. So debates commenced... It's important to put in context how big a boost males get from simply being males. It's a larger boost in performance than if you were Lance Armstrong or Barry Bonds and hopped up on all the performance enhancing drugs known to man. That's how large it is. It's why from 100 meters to races hundreds of miles long, the performance differential is generally 10-15%. Even larger in some strength events. Every male gets this boost. It doesn't men all men beat all women, of course. There's significant overlap in performance. My wife is going to better than 99% of men in distance running. But...that boost gives each male a 10+% jump in performance that no female ever gets. We can see it in the athletic data and the progressions of men and women at puberty. So...governing bodies and experts debated what to do about it. Women were losing millions of dollars in total to folks who had a male androgenization advantage. We went from doing nothing, not much of a real policy to eventually instituting testosterone rules. THe thinking was, testosterone can be a surrogate marker. It also gave DSD athletes a venue to still compete in the male category. They could lower their T to typical female levels, and still race. There were a few problems with this. First, it obviously only took into account CURRENT T levels. A large part of the boost comes from androgens through a lifetime. Second, this was challenged in court by DSD athletes. It was a long process that led to some strange policies along the way (for instance, rules only applied to certain event groups). It was tricky to regulate and be fair, and telling someone they had to have a medical intervention to compete came with ethical issues. So that was eventually scrapped. I'm simplifying and summarizing years long backs and forth, obviously. Track and field moved to the policy the IOC just adopted a year ago. Using the SRY test as a screener. Why? It was simpler, straightforward and applied to all females, so their wasn't a separate DSD and trans policy. It also put the dividing line for segregating sports by sex instead of a surrogate marker. It's a one time screener, and then with specific follow up if potential DSD. There's an exception for CAIS athletes because androgenization has little to no effect on them. So they do not have an advantage. So what? I've seen this policy framed as immoral, fascist, and even nazism...which is crazy... But the point is...it's a result of 20 years of debate, research, and trying to figure out a solution to a tricky problem. There's a lot of people who don't know or are ignorant to the decades this has been going on. Why is it important to separate sports based on sex? Because it's the biggest performance boost we could get. If we didn't, there would be zero professional women athletes in an open category. That's how big the gap is. And I for one value and think women deserve the spotlight to compete and show off their hard work and talent. I've spent my life coaching women at the elite level to do so. You might here people say it's a ban. It's not. Every athlete still has a place to compete. You can do so in the category that matches your biology, in open events, or recreational events that this does not apply to. A rough analogy: Longevity guru Bryan Johnson can't compete in the under 18 category no matter what age score his crazy metrics say he is. We have categories and classification to ensure everyone has a chance to compete. Yes, we pick what categories are important. But it's hard to argue that sex isn't a very important one. So there you have it. It's been 20 years in the making. It started with DSD athletes with an androgen advantage winning championships and has evolved from there. It's not perfect. Nothing is. We've debated, shifted policies, etc. But lots of smart folks and researchers have been trying to figure out a just and fair solution for a long time.

The GB team will bring back more medals to that stadium than west ham have seen in their entire history 🫢🫶🏼😂

Middle distance league athletes up and down the country screaming rn when their coach makes them do the 4x400 after just finishing an 800 at the next league meet 😭

@Martina @georgegalloway I have huge respect for you but this post is misleading. The UK hasn't changed the 24 week limit for elective abortions. The recent vote was to decriminalise women in crisis who end their own pregnancies, shifting the issue from a Victorian-age law to a healthcare matter.

What an unconscionable law

How private contracts are killing our NHS with @DrAmirKhanGP

This is beyond ridiculous. Charging female athletes £185 for a "sex test" while males pay nothing is blatantly discriminatory. Surely a lawyer will challenge this - it’s a literal tax on being a woman. @BritAthletics needs to explain why fairness costs £185.

The whole of society benefits from higher education. The reform of student loans should be to scrap them completely and fund tuition through general taxation. Ministers could announce a U-turn on student loans next week thetimes.com/uk/politics/ar…

'You benefit from graduates every day! Every moment of every day!' Caller Gavin thinks it's 'bang out of order' to attack the contribution university graduates make to society.

@iownabook @IanTnf Because presumably to hit that 1:24 they would have to go out harder than Keely (or whoever) would need over the first 400 and reduce the usefulness of the pacing

@IanTnf Why would that matter? As long as you hit the intended split?

I think it technically makes it a mixed race and not allowed for record purposes. But tbqh I don't think there are any other women except perhaps Femke Bol who can pace her properly to 500 or 600m in order to get that record.

What not many people realise about UK student loans is that earners in the middle of the salary range end up paying back far more than either lower or higher earners, as they earn enough to pay the loan and interest back before the 30 year cut off, but not enough to pay it off early before the interest balloons. Someone earning £70k ends up paying almost double someone on £150k.

The Labour line defending student loans is going down so incredibly badly. Ministers are effectively saying 'sacrifice saving for a house so we can keep the triple lock'. Worst deal ever. The position isn't sustainable and the backlash from millions of grads is growing

William Hague: Britons in their 60s are the ‘luckiest generation’ in history

Suella Braverman asked for my help to get mat leave when she was Attorney General. As first pregnant AG she needed new rights. (I helped ofc, she took mat leave and returned to govt office) Depressing she now plans roll-back of rights for aother women! bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…