Zoe Boyd Clack

Writer, teacher, nature-lover, arch-idealist and confirmed bookaholic. Ex-Birkbeck MA in Creative Writing/Children's Literature. SCBWI_BI member.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@TimesRadio @bphillipsonMP @StigAbell This is a bit disingenuous; in reality the successful schools will become increasingly oversubscribed while weaker ones will empty out and ultimately close, resulting in more competition for the remaining places. Funding model is per child so schools need to be full.

[Janice Turner @VictoriaPeckham]

I don’t understand this government at all. Breakfast clubs are supposedly for families struggling to feed their kids & get to work on time.
Not so parents can have a lie-in or go to the coffee shop or escape their kids for an extra 95 hours.
What the hell is the DoE thinking?

[James Marriott @j_amesmarriott]

Impossible to understand our moment in history without grasping that for many people reality is increasingly a marginal phenomenon that happens around the edges of screen time.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@bphillipsonMP You have this all backwards - automating everything; pushing tech on children when we are becoming increasingly aware of its potentially damaging effects, and depersonalising a process that really needs a sympathetic, human touch. This move will harm young people.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@TomSwarbrick1 It really has been. So relieved that sanity has prevailed (for now). You’ve been consistently brilliant on this issue - measured, rational media voices very much needed atm!

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@carla_denyer Not at current levels it isn’t. Utterly unsustainable, and reducing the existing population’s quality of life.

[Prof Michael Green FCCT @Michael_S_Green]

I am absolutely incensed by the vile, bigoted & racist comments that I’ve read about the appointment of Sir Hamid Patel as interim Chair of Ofsted. He is 100% the right person for the position. X really is a nasty cesspool. It’s important that we call out this behaviour.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@giles_fraser @amwilson_opera Struggling to understand this viewpoint tbh - so, if you grow up in an impoverished area (as my father did, in Dagenham), the expectation is that you remain there, and don’t seek to escape? Should my bright, ambitious Dad have stayed on his council estate? Am v glad he didn’t!

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@audreysharp23 @giles_fraser Absolutely. I have one daughter - an only child. And I will do my utmost to ensure that she doesn’t have to care for me or my partner in old age. Our daughters deserve better than to end up as unpaid, undervalues skivvies.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@immaggi @giles_fraser Exactly this. The unspoken subtext of phrases such as ‘care’, ‘community’ and ‘extended family’ is almost invariably ‘women’.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@LBCWatchUK @NoodleMC2 @mrjamesob @LBC He reminds me of so many people I know - formerly left-leaning/moderate but now skewing right. And I’m in a liberal, cosmopolitan area of London.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@LBCWatchUK @NoodleMC2 @mrjamesob @LBC Yes, this guy is good. Very subtly showing up all JOB’s blind spots.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@LiamThorpECHO How would 15 Minute Cities work within our current entrenched class system? Nice, leafy areas get nice middle class shops/services, while poorer areas get cheap shops and inferior services, then get charged for travelling to access better ones?

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@nwpearson @portraitinflesh @taxbod Except I can’t see how this would work while we have such an entrenched class system and massive inequality between areas. 15 Minute Cities in Winchester or Walthamstow Village? Bring it on. In West Croydon or Clacton… not so much.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@D4VE_82 @portraitinflesh I mean, we’re fortunate in that we have the resources to move to a leafier, more solidly middle class area with more of the local facilities we want - planning to do so next year. But what about the many who are stuck in the less salubrious areas? Inequality further embedded.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@portraitinflesh 2/2 As in, I currently live in a mixed London suburb but travel to access nicer parks/leisure centre/cinema/shops - as do my middle class friends - as those here are run down and ruined by anti-social behaviour/vandalism etc. Wouldn’t 15 Min Cities just exacerbate all this?

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@portraitinflesh So, I’m probably being naive, and can see that what she says here is nonsense… but under 15 Minute Cities won’t nice, middle class areas just get nice, middle class services/facilities and poorer areas get poorer services/facilities? 1/2

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@Francis_Lond @akabillposters @MePeterNicholls @GerryThorne @colinwalker79 2/2 Our friends all do similar. Current area is very mixed but changing rapidly and skewing poorer. Wouldn’t 15 minute cities just end up having ‘nice’ facilities in the expensive middle class areas and less nice ones in the poor bits?

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@Francis_Lond @akabillposters @MePeterNicholls @GerryThorne @colinwalker79 1/2 This is very true where I am (another London suburb). We live here, but travel elsewhere for parks, leisure centre, cinema & shops, because local facilities (and to be frank their core clientele) don’t suit us. Moving soon to somewhere a bit leafier/more suited to us.

[Zoe Boyd Clack @LiteraryMermaid]

@WEP_UK No great loss. You have consistently been a massive disappointment on any issue that is of genuine importance to women and women’s rights. I would have been very much your target demographic, but unfortunately when it came to it you were about as useful as a chocolate teapot.