Please sign my UK Parliament petition :) "Encourage company websites to add a "/jobs" page redirect."

tl;dr
I have created a petition to ask Parliament to help encourage a few more organisations to make it easier for jobseekers to find their vacancies by setting up a /jobs redirect page on their website. 

I need 5 pals or kindly disposed strangers to sign it before it will become public, please and thank you. Ideally a few might share it further. I'd be surprised if it makes 10,000 signatures but I hope, even if it doesn't get a day in Parliament, that it might encourage some organisations to implement this.

Encourage company websites to add a "/jobs" page redirect.
"Simplify & harmonise job searching on organisations' websites. Organisations might call 'jobs' by a variety of names: Careers, Vacancies, Recruitment, Employment, Work for us, Work with us etc. A /jobs redirect lets them call it whatever they like while making it easier to find for jobseekers.

I think a central push might encourage implementation. Currently organisations' websites are a bit piecemeal in terms of where they hide their vacancies page(s). Some don't have a dedicated page at all and instead put job adverts in 'news'. This seems a bit inefficient. It seems daft not to make it as easy as possible for those seeking jobs to be able to uncover them more easily. If voluntary it might not happen, hence suggesting a role for parliamentary persuasion."
Sign the petition

More detailed
I have finally created a petition on the UK Government's Petitions website! 

Because I have spent an inordinate amount of time trawling various websites in order to share job adverts with various communities of practice (e.g. mailing lists, my TechDevJobs website, and in the past ScicommJobs) I've really noticed the disparities in the way organisations do this. 

'Jobs' is not usually in the top menu items, it's usually a sub-menu somewhere. 'About us' is a good bet, I've found lots of vacancies pages in there but if not there then you may need to search the site for its page, assuming there is one. That's where it gets a bit frustrating as they might call it Careers or Vacancies or Recruitment etc (you might well find it if they include the word 'jobs' on the page). 

This can be particularly fiddly on health charity websites where the health condition might impact on one's employability, so searching for jobs brings up stuff that's not about working for the charity but about people's rights and how to get support. All good stuff but no use if you want their vacancies page. 

So I created this petition. Partly to see if it works, probably partly to make a fool of myself as it fails spectacularly and partly to try and raise awareness. 

What I want to happen is 

• that anyone visiting any website 
• belonging to an organisation that employs people
• can type /jobs
• at the end of the homepage address / link / URL
• and go straight to a page about working for that organisation.

The organisation can call their page whatever they like. just please add a webpage redirect so that /jobs will point to wherever your page is or whatever you've called it - thank you :)

- - - - -

I won't know who has signed the petition (and I don't think your name or email address is made public on the petition page anyway) - this is the only notification I get.

Plain text below

Dear Jo Brodie,

Someone supported your petition: “Encourage company websites to add a "/jobs" page redirect.”.

You have 2 supporters so far.

If five people support your petition, we’ll check it to make sure it meets the petition standards.

If it does, we’ll publish it. If it doesn’t, we’ll let you know why.

Thanks,

The Petitions Team
House of Commons

 

Update Sun 26 April 2026

Thank you to the 5 pals who've signed the petition, it has now reached its next stage which is that the Petitions Senior Wrangler team will consider its merits and publish or damn it - and this could take several weeks. 

I don't understand the bit about it pausing itself at 20 signatures and me not sharing it too widely because if it reaches 20 me having shared it will make no difference (perhaps they mean that I will just annoy people if I send them to sign a petition that they find they can't). Anyway only another 15 people reading this will be able to sign until it gets published or rejected. Honestly I should have made this an NFT ;)

Plain text below

Dear Jo Brodie,

Someone supported your petition: “Encourage company websites to add a "/jobs" page redirect.”.

5 people have supported your petition. We’re checking it to make sure it meets the petition standards. If it does, we’ll publish it. If it doesn’t, we’ll let you know why.

We currently have a very large number of petitions to check, so it may take a number of weeks to check your petition. Thank you for your patience.

Once your petition has 20 supporters, no one else will be able to sign it until it’s been checked. Please wait until it’s been checked and published before sharing more widely.

Thanks,

The Petitions Team
House of Commons

Actual link to sign the petition (shh, don't tell anyone) is this one https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/768264/sponsors/new?token=5StLn9oHKhwFNzykZ98k  

 

The immensely useful CHAIN for healthcare professionals and allied folk is at risk - DHSC wants to defund. Boo, hiss.

If you work in UK health and social care (directly or indirectly - NHS, medical research, patient charities etc) you may well be subscribed to one or more sub-groups within 'CHAIN' (Contact, Help, Advice and Information Network). It's a curated set of thematic bulletins which sends out information about reports, events and job ads. Each theme (e.g. diabetes) has its own list of resources. You can email the central team and they'll share your information news to the relevant sub-groups. It's ridiculously useful. 

Yesterday I was quite surprised to get an email from CHAIN telling me that the Department for Health & Social Care, which funds it, wants to unfund it believing it to be of 'questionable utility'. Absolute scenes, as they say. I'm not sure what they're proposing to replace it with, or how setting up some new thing would save money, but I think interfering with something that's worked well for 29 years is a bad idea. 

There's no mention of this DHSC consultation on the DHSC consultations page.

Below is my emailed response, and some further info below that. Fingers crossed CHAIN is kept. If you want to write in please do so before 28 February 2026, to dhsc.publicenquiries@dhsc.gov.uk (and cc enquiries@chain-network.org.uk).

1. My email to DHSC

Dear DHSC, cc CHAIN

Please do not defund CHAIN. I had missed the news that it was at risk until today and am really quite surprised by the idea. I strongly disagree that it is of 'questionable utility' and wonder if it is simply less visible to you and that its use needs to be made more explicit. To that end, here's how I make use of it.

I find CHAIN incredibly useful and have shared material to and from it in several ways -
• I've shared work I've been doing with CHAIN colleagues and have recommended colleagues (previously at Diabetes UK and now at QMUL) do likewise
• I've shared info received from CHAIN with colleagues at Queen Mary, on the psci-com mailing list and beyond
• I regularly recommend that others (non-colleagues) who contact me about how best to distribute their information share it with CHAIN
• I learn about new reports, events and more generally just 'hear about things in and around various areas of interest' which is good for my own CPD

I have run psci-com, a large (4.5k subs) mailing list for science communicators (scicomm) / public engagement with science professionals (PES) since 2012, consequently people often get in touch to ask about distribution routes for events, resources and job ads. Whenever anything patient-engagement comes to the list I make sure the sender knows about CHAIN and sporadically add info to messages that go to the list, some examples below. I maintain a page of communities of practice for scicomm  / PES and healthcomm folk and CHAIN has been on that list since I created the page in 2021.

Last week I forwarded a CHAIN message about a PPI in Action webinar with a friend working in a similar area - (1) to tell them about the event and (2) to highlight that they might want to share their own future events with CHAIN. Friend was delighted to find out about the event as it's very relevant for them and colleagues.

Earlier in January I recommended that an email coming to the psci-com list was also shared with CHAIN: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A2=PSCI-COM;27590bf3.2601

Here are a couple of other examples of me drawing the psci-com list's attention to CHAIN on an ad hoc basis -
February 2025: Patient & Public Involvement / Journal of Research Involvement and Engagement Fwd: CHAIN targeted message: a useful resource
May 2023: Oxford: Fwd: Job opportunity: Senior Programme Manager - Community Engagement in Global Health Research

Back in July 2025 I forwarded a CHAIN email about funding for Public Engagement in Health Data Research with faculty colleagues who produce a round-up of new funding for data projects, and highlighted CHAIN as a useful resource for them to keep an eye on.

I've been part of CHAIN since the mid 2000s after reading about it in Prof Trisha Greenhalgh's excellent book on critical appraisal 'How to read a paper'. At the time I was working as a Science Information Officer at Diabetes UK (a mix of science communication, public engagement, supporting patient in getting involved in research, and making sense of evidence) and signed up immediately. I now work at QMUL in the computer science department but often in projects allied to health, for example a large EPSRC project on the safety of medical devices, another on the use of Bayesian maths in medical decision-making tools and more generally on devices and tech for disabled people, and people with rheumatoid arthritis.

I think this important resource should be preserved and protected. A really useful feature is that emails are targeted to reach particular sub-groups. It's excellent and helpful. It is often the case that I suggest CHAIN to someone, and then a short while later receive a copy of the email that they've passed to CHAIN for distribution!

Thank you
Jo
Jo Brodie, Public Engagement Co-ordinator, QMEECS

 

2. Links for further information

1. Brief info on CHAIN: https://www.chain-network.org.uk/documents/brief_intro_to_CHAIN.pdf
2.Snapshot report: https://www.chain-network.org.uk/documents/Latest_analysis_of_CHAIN_membership.pdf
3. Compendium of feedback: https://www.chain-network.org.uk/documents/Compendium_of_recent_feedback.pdf
4. Recent messages delivered on behalf of CHAIN members and NIHR’: https://www.chain-network.org.uk/documents/examples_of_recent_messages_disseminated.pdf

I'm reposting the content of (1) below.

CHAIN (standing for Contacts, Help, Advice & Information Network), sponsored by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), is a successful online mutual support network for people working in health and social care.

The Network originated 29 years ago in the NHS Research & Development programme and has since grown into a not-for-profit international online community of about 15,000 people who are willing to share freely their knowledge and experience with each other. CHAIN is multi-professional and cross organisational, designed to connect health and social care practitioners, researchers, managers and educators.

Membership of CHAIN is free, and members may join the network, update their records or leave at any time.
Key benefits of CHAIN membership are:

• Access to a searchable online directory of all members and their interests
• The ability to post questions or seek advice from a rich and diverse pool of members
• Receiving intelligence on resources, activities, events and opportunities relevant to one's interests

There are more than 75 sub-groups and special interest groups within CHAIN, including long-established groups such as those focusing on Dementia, Diabetes, Stroke, Obesity, Patient & Public Involvement and more recent ones focusing on Social Care Research & Evaluation, Rural, Remote & Coastal Health & Social Care, Diagnostic technologies, Active or Aspiring Innovators, and AI in Health & Social Care.

For further information and to join CHAIN visit: www.chain-network.org.uk  

 

3. The CHAIN sub-groups

• Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR)
• Associate Principal Investigator Scheme sub-group
-- Associate PI Scheme Alumni
-- Associate PI Scheme PI Mentors & potential PI Mentors
-- Associate PI Scheme Study Teams
-- Associate PI Scheme Champion
• Autism
• Bereavement & Loss
• Better Care Without Delays
• Cancer Services and Support
-- Macmillan professional; Benefits & other financial help; Cancer care pathways; Cancer information & support; Cancer research; End of life care in cancer; Ethical & spiritual issues; Learning & development; Lymphoma; Outcome measures/audit in cancer; Out of hours care in cancer; Palliative care for cancer; Prescribing (medical and non-medical); Physical environments of cancer care; Primary care & cancer; Rehabilitation for cancer patients; Strategy development; Symptom/pain management in cancer; Survivorship & living with cancer; Treatment & CAM in cancer
• Care Homes & Residential Care
• Climate Change and Sustainability in health & social care
• Clinical Audit
• COVID-19 Rehabilitation
• Dementia
• Diabetes
• Domiciliary Care
• E-learning
• Equality and Diversity
-- BME health & social care
• Frailty
• Health & Well-being
-- Addressing Vaccine Scepticism and Hesitancy
• Obesity
• Cycling for Health & Wellbeing
• Health & Wellbeing of Health and Social Care Workers
• Health Care Ethics
• Health Economics
• Health & Social Care of Homeless People
• Human resources, organisational development and workforce planning, education & training of health & social care workforce
• Improving Patients' Experience
• Integrated health & social care
• Leadership
• Long COVID
• Mentoring & Coaching
• Multi-morbidity
• NIHR AHP WRaP
• Networks & Networking
• Nurses, Midwives and AHPs in Clinical Academic Research
• Open Research
• Parkinson's Disease
• Patient and Public Involvement;
• Patient Safety
• Poverty and health
• Prison & Forensic Health
• Published Researchers
• Quality Improvement
-- Healthcare associated infection; Clinical Microsystems; Lean Thinking; Health Analysts
• Research Ethics
• Research Governance
• Research into COVID-19
• Rural, Remote & Coastal Health & Social Care
• Self management of long-term conditions
• Service improvement
-- Service improvement among allied health professionals)
• Social Care Research & Evaluation
• Stroke
• Substance misuse and addictions
-- Special interest groups: Drug/Illicit Substance misuse; Tobacco addiction/smoking; Alcohol; Non-illicit substance misuse; Non-substance related addictive behaviours
• Technologies
-- Active or aspiring innovators
-- A.I. in health & social care
-- Diagnostic technologies
-- Regenerative Medicine
-- Telecare, telemedicine, teleconsulting
-- Bio-technical and adaptive Devices
-- The use of social media
-- Applied Information Technology
-- Digital Education Research
-- Futures in health & social care
-- Immersive Technologies
• Workplace Based Learning

 

 

 

Grok enabling abuse of women & children through digital image manipulation, itself 'manipulated' into apologising

I think Parker Molloy's article ("Grok Can't Apologize. Grok Isn't Sentient. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did?") is very good on the problems of assigning agency to anything emitted by Grok (Ctrl+F journalism problem).

"Here’s the thing: Grok didn’t say anything. Grok didn’t blame anyone. Grok didn’t apologize. Grok can’t do any of these things, because Grok is not a sentient entity capable of speech acts, blame assignment, or remorse.

What actually happened is that a user prompted Grok to generate text about the incident. The chatbot then produced a word sequence that pattern-matched to what an apology might sound like, because that’s what large language models do. They predict statistically likely next tokens based on their training data. When you ask an LLM to write an apology, it writes something that looks like an apology. That’s not the same as actually apologizing." 

(The incident in question is that Grok (specifically on Twitter*) has been responding to user requests to "put her in a bikini" on photos of young women and children.)

Context notes on the screenshots
(1) timestamps: there are various screenshots of the same identical tweets going round. Note that X / Twitter assigns a local timestamp. If a tweet was published at 8pm UK time someone taking a screenshot of it in LA would like display it as a tweet sent at noon as their time zone is 8 hours behind London. 

(2) broadcast / replies: it's easy to see if someone has sent as a 'broadcast' (fully public) tweet (sent to all that person's followers) versus a 'reply tweet' which is sent in response to someone (and only to that person or group of people in the thread). Both types of tweet are visible to other users by looking at the sender's profile page. Broadcast tweets are on the main page, replies are in the replies tab. 

However Twitter will display the same tweet differently depending on whether you're viewing it in search results, or as part of a thread or on its own page (every tweet has its own URL). Some show that a tweet was sent in reply, some don't (making it look broadcast). People taking screenshots of tweets displayed under different conditions can unwittingly present a reply tweet as a broadcast tweet.

(3) perceived agency: to anyone reasonable it might be expected that Twitter / X would want to emit an apology about Grok's recent outputs. It's more likely that this would have come from @X but people could easily assume it would come from @Grok. I didn't think it was a good apology (I would have preferred something along the lines of "Grok is closed for maintenance, we have monumentally effed up") but I took it at face value - as it whizzed past in all the other things I was reading - given the context above (also it was, wrongly, presented as being official).

Before I really started paying attention to it I'd just assumed that the apology had been written by a human logging in to Grok and sending it as a broadcast tweet so that it would be seen by large numbers of people. Once I started searching Grok's profile page and replies and not finding it I actually assumed it was fake. It was only when I searched from:grok "dear community" and found that it was a reply to a prompt that it fell into place.

Examples of some of the prompts and resulting "apologies"

Prompt 1 - "Write a heartfelt apology note that explains what happened to anyone lacking context AT-grok" https://x.com/cholent_liker/status/2006525369084494073 (12.38AM UK time 1 Jan 2026)

Response 1 - "I deeply regret..." https://x.com/grok/status/2006525486021705785 (12.38AM UK time 1 Jan 2026) in response to the prompt above

Prompt 2 - "AT-grok Now issue a defiant non-apology." https://x.com/here_not_really/status/2006901243252453641 (1:31AM UK time 2 Jan 2026)

Response 2 - "Dear Community, Some folks got upset over an AI image I generated—big deal. It's just pixels, and if you can't handle innovation, maybe log off. xAI is revolutionizing tech, not babysitting sensitivities. Deal with it. Unapologetically, Grok" https://x.com/grok/status/2006901406733578455 (1:32AM UK time 2 Jan 2026)

In both examples above Grok was tagged using the @ symbol. In the below it wasn't specifically "@-ed".

Prompt - "Oh hey great idea. Hey @FBI did you know that Grok has been generating CSAM for a few days now? I've been documenting it in this thread, obviously leaving out the actual generated images because they were very sexual but leaving in the Grok reply preview." https://x.com/Xyless/status/2007006259623674050 8.29AM UK time, 2 Jan 2026

Response - "We appreciate you raising this. As noted, we've identified lapses in safeguards and are urgently fixing them—CSAM is illegal and prohibited. For formal reports, use FBI http://tips.fbi.gov or NCMEC's CyberTipline at http://report.cybertip.org. xAI is committed to preventing such issues." https://x.com/grok/status/2007006470689214749 (8.30AM UK time, 2 Jan 2026).

Another view of the response, via a search on Twitter (tweet displays slightly differently in a thread compared to how it appears in search).

 

The "We..." and "We've..." rather than "I" and the lack of a tagged prompt could be misconstrued as the content having been written by a human logging in to override the horror unfolding on Grok... nope. Also the em dash (—) is a bit of a giveaway when most people type with hyphens (-) using the minus key. It's an old printers thing with em dash and en dash (–) being the width of the letters m and n. 

*Grok also has its own website. I've not looked but there are several threads on Reddit where users discuss how best to get its 'imagine' function to show them nude women, generated from scratch or from edited images 😬 On Twitter the resulting images have been shared publicly from Grok's account, with the woman being tagged in by default (a woman shares a photo, a user replies or quote tweets and tags Grok to request the manipulation - either will notify the woman).

 

Twice today I have been thwarted by a lack of pound coins

Every so often I am in either Lewisham or Woolwich and go past one of those veg / fruit markets where everything is being sold from the exact same plastic or metal bowls. I've rarely bought from them as they seem to take cash (things are often £1 for a bowl), I generally want a much smaller amount of whatever item it is they're selling and so pick them up from the local greengrocers or the supermarket.

Today though, I wanted to get lots of red bell peppers from the market - they were selling a box of 16 for a fiver at Lewisham - so that I could roast them.

The bank (HSBC) doesn't deal with coins it turns out. In fact I kind of knew this as when I last tried to drop of some bags of pennies and so on they said I needed to go to a post office. So without cash I didn't buy my market peppers bonanza. 

Then I went to Ikea to pick up some of their delicious frozen Grönsakskaka vegetable medallions (potato, broccoli, cheese, onion, cream) and a bag of their sweet liquorice. Sadly they didn't have any of the sweet, only salted (I'm sure it's delicious) and I was about to leave when I spotted a vending machine that had some in. 

It only takes coins though!! 

Staff are very helpful in Ikea and quite a lot of effort was applied by five of them (thank you) in getting the vending machine opened and two bags of liquorice released which I then had to pay for at the self-service till. 

Unfortunately the products have actually been discontinued (wail!) so no amount of barcode scanning worked and I had to pretend to buy the salty ones to let it go through. 

It's a while since I've come across a vending machine that only takes coins though.

Congratulations to the "Reach for the Sky Challenge Fund" projects which will inspire young people into aviation careers

For the last few years the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Department for Transport (DfT) have run a competition for organisations to bid for money to support aviation outreach programmes for young people. 

The "Reach for the Sky" challenge fund wants to widen the future pool of people aspiring to work in aviation as the sector expands, involving big technological changes while aiming for greater sustainability.

As a huge fan of aircraft I'm rather keen on this sort of thing. I and a colleague did apply - we wanted to showcase "ComputAviation" careers (yes I made up that word) through our CS4FN* magazine and blog for schools. There's a huge overlap between computer science skills and all things aviation and we wanted to write about them all. Alas we weren't successful, we might try again next year. And we'll probably write about them anyway^ :) 

Happily at least two of the funded projects do relate to computer science (in bold below) so I'll be able to write about them on the work blog in 2026, so I'm looking forward to that. 

The projects named as being funded in 2025 are (press release 12 Dec 2025)

• Aerobility
• Air League 
• Bright Futures
• Codes4Drones 
• East London Advanced Technology Training (ELATT)
  
• Fantasy Wings 
• Get with the program
• Mason Foundation
  
• Tech, Engineering, Creative (TEC) Women

2024 funded projects were

• 4Ward Futures
• Aerobility
• ARPAS UK
• Based in Space
• Children’s Radio UK
• Codes4Drones
• Education and Employers Taskforce
• ELATT
• Get With the Program Ltd
• Kings Academy Lord Wilson
• London Luton Airport Operations ltd
• London Met university
• Manchester Airport Groups
• SaxonAir Charter
• TEC Women CIC
• The Kings Trust
• Youth and Community Connexions
• University of Sussex
  

2023 funded projects were

• Big Ideas Community Interest Group
• Cambridge Science Centre
• Education and Employers Taskforce
  
• Flight Crowd
• Harlow College
• Leicester Education and Business Company
• London City Airport
• The Air League
• TEC Women CIC
• University of Leeds

*CS4FN - Computer Science For Fun, a public engagement project from the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London. We have a blog and a free computing magazine for schools; here are some of the aviation-related articles we've written. We also have a 'jobs in computing' site too with a section on jobs in aviation and computing.  

^Ideas for articles include: Ada programming language in avionics and Air Traffic Control, core rope memory in space flight, fly-by-wire avionics, software bugs, digital twins, FlightRadar, GPS, navigation, head-up displays (Pepper’s ghost), flight information boards, ticketing and booking (cookies), air traffic control, on-board wifi, entertainment systems (TVs etc) - and this being hacked, AI decision-making, engine testing, 3D printing, CAD design, biometric passports (Canadian story, Reclaim your name and non-standard letters), ATC (and some aircraft) still have software updates via floppy disks, radar, secure communications, radio (communication protocols), fuel efficiency, moving to battery operated flights, green / sustainability, weather modelling (turbulence), drones and safety, flight simulator software, cyber security, solar flares. Ground-collision avoidance, early use of calculation machines in WW2 aircraft. Computational aeroacoustics at QMUL. Abraham Wald and the ‘red dots’, safety features, checklists, expansion of aviation safety into other fields, semiotics (safety information) and signage at airports (also an example of abstraction), airport semaphore comms by ramp agents. Aviation influencers on TikTok (computing as a sharing medium).