Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
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maryindevon.bsky.social
Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
@maryindevon.bsky.social
650 followers 660 following 810 posts
Town Planner and Geographer (MRTPI). Used to work at NASA - planning IS harder than rocket science. We can do better.
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maryindevon.bsky.social
Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦 @maryindevon.bsky.social · Oct 30
Redit discussion on flag shagging neighbours impacting house sale/price is very very lively
100s comments, fairly unanimous that England Flag Flyers are a red flag
'Course flag flyers may be flying to discourage anyone other than right wing (other than white) buying in as neighbours?
maryindevon.bsky.social
SCRAPP and SHOCK
No confidence, cause planners plan for more than just our club wanting no changes (but always wanting more 'infrastructure')
New homes drive a younger demographic. Rural areas losing schools and services. Hmmm?

www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk/news/2581769...
Residents express 'no confidence' in Somerset Council's planning decisions
Somerset Communities Raging Against Poor Planning (SCRAPP)'s inaugural meeting brought together 50 representatives from 22 different areas
www.somersetcountygazette.co.uk
February 3, 2026 at 9:21 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Tolkien to the Taxman about Poetry
(Billy Bragg's best album IMO)
twlldun.bsky.social Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 1d
Everybody’s Tolkien, obviously
ianmartin.bsky.social Ian Martin @ianmartin.bsky.social · 1d
Is there a podcast for Lord of the Rings fans called Tolkien Heads? I for one wouldn't listen to it, because it would be fucking insufferable, but still. Tolkien Heads.🔥
February 2, 2026 at 11:00 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Something else the media (which feels increasingly right leaning in what it reports) isn't talking about, amidst the "labour is adrift" narrative the talking heads keep telling themselves:
www.gov.uk/government/p...
A National Plan to End Homelessness
www.gov.uk
February 2, 2026 at 10:25 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Peak Torygraph
Screenshot of telegraph page "Labour MP who railed against housing shortage lives in council flat Apsana Begum, who earns a £94,000 salary, continues to live in public housing despite saying she “probably” did not need it" Showing, among other things, that Torygraph doesn't understand social housing tenancies.
February 1, 2026 at 9:25 PM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Another reason to not travel to USA - that casual camera snap at immigration may come back to bite you
justinhendrix.bsky.social Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 3d
A Minnesota woman observing ICE agents in her car was cornered on one-way streets. An agent approached, called her by name—citing facial recognition. Days later, her Global Entry and TSA privileges were revoked, with no explanation.
How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are
www.nytimes.com
January 30, 2026 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
josiahmortimer.bsky.social
Half of all rail journeys that Great British Railways will ultimately be responsible for will be on services run by publicly owned operators from Sunday, as London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway services join the fast-growing family of operators "owned by the public for the public."
London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway services return to public ownership
Services to return to public ownership this Sunday, bringing the country one step closer to a simpler, unified rail system under Great British Railways.  More than 8,500 publicly owned rail services...
dft-newsroom.prgloo.com
January 30, 2026 at 10:46 AM
Reposted by Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
maryindevon.bsky.social
Just discovered this most amazing tool: Antirender!
antirender.com
Also gives me a chance to share an all-time fave passage from a book - courtesy Ben Elton Gridlock (its alt texted, but best bit ⬇️)
#architecture #urbanism #planning
two pairs of architectural images. THe rendered images show sunny blue skies and happy active people. The "anti-render" images show the same architectural scenes under damp grey skeis with bare trees. The rendered images are happy beautiful places; the anti rendered are depressingly real images. Screenshot of book reads: "The architectural model is like the sluggish, hairy caterpillar that turns into the beautiful butterfly. Unfortunately, it happens in reverse. Take a stroll round something large and concrete in any neighbourhood, and then, with the image still in mind, rush round to the planning department of the local council and demand to see the original model and drawings. It will be a strange experience. For, although the dimensions of the building you have rushed from, and the model you are shown, will be the same and the colours similar, none the less the two images will bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever. "... "It is not always the fault of the architect, planners | give them impossible briefs and inadequate budgets, but they might make their failures more easy to bear if on the original models, instead of lots of pretty little trees and a tiny motor car, they placed models of hundreds of cars, three dead trees, a little discarded supermarket trolly, some model dog turds and plenty of damp."
January 30, 2026 at 9:35 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Just discovered this most amazing tool: Antirender!
antirender.com
Also gives me a chance to share an all-time fave passage from a book - courtesy Ben Elton Gridlock (its alt texted, but best bit ⬇️)
#architecture #urbanism #planning
two pairs of architectural images. THe rendered images show sunny blue skies and happy active people. The "anti-render" images show the same architectural scenes under damp grey skeis with bare trees. The rendered images are happy beautiful places; the anti rendered are depressingly real images. Screenshot of book reads: "The architectural model is like the sluggish, hairy caterpillar that turns into the beautiful butterfly. Unfortunately, it happens in reverse. Take a stroll round something large and concrete in any neighbourhood, and then, with the image still in mind, rush round to the planning department of the local council and demand to see the original model and drawings. It will be a strange experience. For, although the dimensions of the building you have rushed from, and the model you are shown, will be the same and the colours similar, none the less the two images will bear no resemblance to each other whatsoever. "... "It is not always the fault of the architect, planners | give them impossible briefs and inadequate budgets, but they might make their failures more easy to bear if on the original models, instead of lots of pretty little trees and a tiny motor car, they placed models of hundreds of cars, three dead trees, a little discarded supermarket trolly, some model dog turds and plenty of damp."
January 30, 2026 at 9:35 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Council reorganisation and elections
Essex goes ahead
I'm calling it now for reform

(course ppl voting reform don't want grown up governance - just happy to spaff stretched public purse on posturing jingoism)

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/697b37...
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk
January 30, 2026 at 8:23 AM
Reposted by Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
usili.bsky.social
Bilbo looking at his phone top on bottom is ChatGPT After all, why not? Why shouldn't I keep it? You're absolutely right — you found it, it's been with you a long while, and it's only natural to feel fond of something that's served you so well, especially when someone like Gandalf suddenly seems to want it for himself.
January 28, 2026 at 1:51 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Property118 | Rents fall and a supply surge weighs on house prices share.google/u0r05KvBI5aV...
Rents. Fall?
Rents fall and a supply surge weighs on house prices
Asking rents are slipping deeper into decline, adding fresh downward pressure to house values at the start of 2026, one index reveals.
share.google
January 27, 2026 at 6:11 PM
Reposted by Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
peterstefanovic.bsky.social
Nigel Farage racks up £151,000 in donor-funded flights to support Donald Trump

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politic...
Nigel Farage racks up £151,000 in donor-funded flights to support Donald Trump
Most recently, Farage attended an event at Trump’s Mar A Lago resort celebrating US Military Veterans just months before Trump’s vile slur dismissing the sacrifice of British troops who served in Afgh...
www.mirror.co.uk
January 25, 2026 at 7:54 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
I feel seen
sturdyalex.bsky.social Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 7d
NEW: Suella Braverman has defected to Reform UK, shocking the many people who were sure that she had already.
January 26, 2026 at 1:46 PM
maryindevon.bsky.social
As I was saying about Dawlish and tides... And this was a wave at low tide!
www.facebook.com/share/p/1AfQ...
January 23, 2026 at 7:20 PM
Reposted by Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
tobyontv.bsky.social
also, side note, but why are these deranged outbursts by a deranged racist & misogynist ‘embarrassing’ for Starmer, who’s trying to prop up a security alliance in the face of madness, and not ‘embarrassing’ for the journalists working on these stories who’ve done so much to sanewash Trump?
January 20, 2026 at 10:40 AM
Reposted by Mary Elkington 💙💛🇺🇦
sanho.bsky.social
As Ambrose Bierce once wrote, “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
January 15, 2026 at 11:10 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Cars washing away being the eye candy for weather and climate stories

Everyone: good explained as most ppl get mass of cars and force it takes to move them
Me: it's not irony, it's mother nature retribution
daryltractor.bsky.social AusPoast @daryltractor.bsky.social · 19d
Another car washing into the sea at Wye River today after flash flooding.

Video by Indi MacKenzie
January 15, 2026 at 7:49 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
OK architect/urban friends - who can give me the design brief for your favourite new local : The Truss

(please stop me from thinking dark interior with no lighting at all)
anthonypainter.bsky.social Anthony Painter @anthonypainter.bsky.social · 19d
Reimagine the modern pub by designing new watering holes based on PMs since 1990.

The Truss would be *wild*.
January 14, 2026 at 4:00 PM
maryindevon.bsky.social
These are not just any maps, these are well considered, data rich maps.
#Geography #Maps #UK
January 9, 2026 at 12:49 PM
maryindevon.bsky.social
"a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife... And with wedding packages at Pemberly starting at £1000 pounds, the time for the business of her life to get her daughters married was ripe."
quantick.bsky.social David Quantick @quantick.bsky.social · 27d
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the time sponsored by Accurist was thirteen o'clock precisely.'
unklerupert.uk Unklerupert @unklerupert.uk · 27d
‘The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Should have gone to Radio Rentals!’
January 7, 2026 at 11:02 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
BBC #MoreOrLess big omission today - stating disconnect between new build completions (120k) & land reg sales (35k) wihout noting land registry lag & fact that social housing dwellings wont show up as land reg sale - NOT EMPTY.
Here come NIMBYS saying "no ones buying these"
@timharford.ft.com
January 7, 2026 at 9:39 AM
maryindevon.bsky.social
but in other news, really enjoyed @alextoal.bsky.social blog on s106 today housingalex.substack.com/p/a-quick-hi... worth a look.
Area graph from 2009/10 to 2019/20 showing delivery of non-open-market new homes titled "the coalition sacrified social rent for higher numbers of inetermediate tenures" Graph illutrates how the Coalition and Tory gov pulled back from Social Rent affordable homes for "affordable rent" discounted rent and other.
January 5, 2026 at 9:52 PM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Travel to USA fell off a cliff post Trump election seeing the hostility in immigration etc. Hearing anecdotally today's actions are driving cancellations. Right on folks.
www.travelpulse.com/news/airline...
US Military Strikes in Venezuela Lead to Massive Flight Cancellations
U.S. military strikes in Venezuela led to FAA airspace restrictions, causing flight cancellations and delays across the Caribbean and U.S.-linked routes.
www.travelpulse.com
January 3, 2026 at 6:19 PM
maryindevon.bsky.social
Reformers very down on the UK
Gotta say if people keep wasting votes on those incompetent ideologues I may have to downgrade my fairly positive outlook on year ahead for *the uk*
December 30, 2025 at 12:20 PM