Interesting Links for 15-02-2026

[andrewducker]

1. Trans women can use women's toilets, except at work, court rules

(tags:LGBT transgender UK law wtf bigotry viacmcmck )

2. Over 50 Academics Warn That Voting System Is Not Fit For Multi-Party Politics

(tags:politics UK reform )

3. FAQ: Trans inclusion after the High Court decision on the EHRC's interim guidance

(tags:LGBT faq transgender toilets UK law )

4. Moving TV to online-only could kill radio

(tags:UK TV radio )

Comments

[juan_gandhi]

#4: I wonder what's the difference in audio quality, FM and digital over the internets.

[andrewducker]

I suspect that digital is better than FM.

The problem being the 50 million people who still listen to FM radio. Do we insist they all switch to streaming it over the internet, or that they pay for the transmitters, or something else?

[bens_dad]

We have three technologies here, not two. FM, DAB and internet over mobile data.
I believe that DAB uses the same transmitter towers as FM; mobile data has many towers with smaller ranges.
I'm mostly concerned about in-car use as my car radio is analogue (FM+RDS and older).

In general the newer technologies have better sound quality under good reception conditions but shorter range and thus more dark spots.

Filling dark spots to improve coverage by population is reasonably easy even for short range technologies, but for short range technologies, filling the last few coverage gaps by area gets expensive.

I am very resistant to having to pay by byte to listen to the radio whilst driving.

[bens_dad]

Don't know about internet.

DAB could give much better sound quality than FM, but the UK prefers to pack in more channels at lower quality.

[soemand]

Re:4. — Does boom fm have radio ads?

I’m also surprised that other tenants wouldn’t be interested in the radio towers, provided the 5g and above switch for cellphones.

[bens_dad]

Cellphone technologies need many more but much smaller towers than FM.

I suspect that a cherry-picker gives sufficient access to cell phone transmitters. Some FM towers are hundreds of metres high (though the height is really for the older medium and long wave transmitters on the same towers).

I think that 5G and similar do use the FM towers, but that they need tens or hundreds of other towers for each FM tower since the range is much shorter.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure that broadband networks can use those masts. We'll see if they can be reused.

3. Individual lockable rooms

[bens_dad]

3. Employers should consider adapting their facilities to be provided on a universal basis, in individual lockable rooms. This avoids potential claims of discrimination on the basis of sex, gender reassignment, or any other protected characteristic whilst complying with the regulations. It also increases accessibility for many disabled people, who would benefit from lockable facilities with a sink provided, but may not actually require a larger wheelchair-accessible toilet.

At a previous place of employment most of the toilets were individual lockable rooms, but for reasons related to cleanliness the administrators marked many of thede for men or women (with standard stick figures IIRC). There were no gender markers on the individual rooms with extra wide doors for accessibility, and there were two communal blocks, one each for men and for women, so as I read the FAQ the gender markers can stay but only because of the toilets without the gender markers (though they could also be safe by having four types, "M", "F", "M+" and "F+", though that might risk outing someone).

[ Also 1 and 3 appear to contradict. So much for clarifying things. ]