Eugh, Fukuoka only place that matches Kobe for "stupidest urban planning in Japan" i.e build a giant island fill with 15,000 people then discover just giving it a bus doesn't work well. (This instead of an extra branch of the Nanakuma line guys?) www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHV7...

A large share of politics coded as “left” on this site is in fact reactionary nostalgia - an inchoate belief that times were better in the good old days and nebulous forces have taken that from us.

In 2018, then-Mayor Ada Colau called Barcelona’s new 30% inclusionary housing requirement for projects over 600m^2 a “paradigm shift,” making housing “a right and not a commodity.” It was supposed to produce 330 affordable units a year. The reality: just 31 affordable apartments in all these years.

‘A new service called Objector is offering “policy-backed objections in minutes” to people who are upset about planning applications near their homes.’ Another reminder that AI can be used for things you don’t like as well as things you like…

Stole this from @mnolangray.bsky.social , unless the 1980's had a radical pedestrianisation campaign, its clear that UK's inability to build actually means our left intact Victorian streets got us half-way to a decent system pedestrian safety. Rather dark.

Hey, @rmtransit.bsky.social don't feel too bad, we in London have only 2 lines with PSDs (Jub and Liz lines) which only do so on new build stations because reasons. None on the automated DLR!

I love that it shows how much poorer London was relative to Home counties was in 1991.

Their chief patron (Cummings) was very much involved in the deliberate bankrupting of TfL in 2019-2020, which then cascading to destroying its mid-rankers which is why 2024 stock has been a disaster.

Not just Tories, all UK factions are obsessed with US, unable to generate their own ideas or economic models. The US at its worst is still "great" in power and effect, unlike the UK, a unitary Red vs Blue political culture unlike the UK, and is not threatened with obsolesce by EU, unlike the UK

Happened before though. (N/B Its a bad book but the collapse of Sasanian irrigation complex in Mesopotamia, Khurasan and Southern Iran is underrated event).

Anyway, here's a round abound confirmation that Astana selling shells to UA

But Leeds will get its tram to nowhere and Lancashire its airport connector it doesn't need. Sheffield-Leicester corridor needs an Andy Burham or a Tom Forth to spew lies and prejudice.

Another day and another "Kyoto is too busy with foreigners", i.e. school trips have to go Toji-in instead of Fushimi Inari, and how sad that is. Eugh, I have taken my parents to Toji-in and we didn't get served tea....and they didn't have the Ashikaga Shogun statues. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qC-e...

The angel on my shoulder tells me I need to finish up my To the Pedestrian, City Center; to the Car, the World post critiquing New Left urbanism in the mold of Hidalgo. The devil tells me to do a 1 like = 1 skeet-length theorem thread to see how far I can go over an abstract algebra course.

@alonlevy.bsky.social I would rather not through hell to get Schengen and the Aqis.

1. Hard right flank of YIMBYism, because younger (under 50) right-wingers have been screwed on housing. 2. Heroic Techno-geekery is also critical to Great British Nationalism, as only Industrial Revolution allows small island to be GREAT. 3. Unionism is dying hence the Anglo.

incredible that these guys have a massive hard on for a country that, if it were a state, would rank behind kansas in terms of wealth and which would be a total backwater if it weren’t economically integrated with more functional countries

The ability to convince capital markets to hand you a trillion dollars on the strength of obvious bullshit paired with the inability to get a single human to sincerely and spontaneously say they love you is some real punishment of the gods shit.

43.3%>33.7% of the vote, on higher turnout to. Furthermore multiple options in the HoC for support on bills from different parties. Add in Provinces, Canadian minorities function kinda like coalition governments in PR system. Whereas Labour is an isolated minority in a dying multi-national polity.

I don't believe there is that much Irish

Folding album that replicates a handscroll of Returning boats on a snowy river, by Emperor Huizong (1082-1135). Really shows how long these things are, not even showing the calligraphy attached by its past owners. @craigclunas.bsky.social taught me, these things are difficult to exhibit/powerpoint.

Somehow this Namboku line vent shafts is the most Tokyo thing I have ever seen. (Between Honkomagome and Komagome stations).

Google Maps is a more impressive achievement than any given physical wonder of the world, in my opinion.

I do like @mnolangray.bsky.social observation (accurate) that in urban governance in America does not actually look like the UK. As much as whinge about gerrymandered Munis in England, we have nothing as bad as US.

Map of radio frequency interference mapped from space (via SMAP) overlaid with GPSJAM data.

This week on London Reconnections: A 21st Century Underground Rolling Stock Update! On London Reconnections this week, we bring you up to speed you on the update plans for London Underground rolling stock and also touch on aspects of line resignalling.

Understates the pragmatism of Red Ken 2.0, in order to get Crossrail over-the-hump he and a consortium of business bodies (City, BAA, Canary Wharf Group etc) put together 2/3s of the funding. Or his willingness to raise fares or pick fights (Overground longitudinal seating!).

I wonder, given the right's dependence on pensioners and the left's on graduates it makes sense. Additionally the undertaxed parts of the economy i.e. property, SME/Self-employed below VAT/CorpT/ thesholds...are centred in Red Wall/Celtic Fringe middle classes. (Also causes Southern NIMBYism).

“Nobody thought a Labour government would have to raise taxes by more than £70bn,” claims one insider in this excellent piece. Shows the problem of the climate of fear in meetings created by some of Starmer’s aides, in that plenty of Labour insiders, did, in fact, think this!

This is one for Late Antique historians. 😆

Basically 1/3 for Labour, 1/3 for Reform, 1/3 for LDs. I.e. Gerrymandered on the basis of party exclusion and to inflame social tensions. I.e. business as usual.

See this is the kind of co-worker hazing that Thamesmead extension's 1.6bn price tag is subjecting me too.

See Londoners this is what I get from my co-workers our city is so bad. Also good time to mention that I have upload DLR costs to the Transit Cost Project, so we can see how less rubbish we were (OG DLR not included as its mostly old viaduct).

Oh my god, 1.6 billion for 1.5km tunnel? And giant 1.5 billion single PM/DB contract? AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH. www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/tfl...

The conversion of the Euro-Far Right towards Pan-Europeanism is underrated trend in European politics. Its part of why they have advanced electorally. Anti-EU is foundational to Far Right politics in Europe are UK, Serbia, Turkey, Russia i.e. the rival multi-national state projects.

Devolution dividend i.e. assert that Germany shows the model, while avoiding the things that actually make Germany equal i.e. being the ground logistics centre of Europe and having its margin perpheries ethnically cleansed/depopulated. Also Blank Cheque fiscal demands are.

True, Mamdani supports building more housing, which would make him persona non grata in the Greens and Die Linke here.

“More people could have died in the past week in El Fasher, and this is without hyperbole, than died in the past two years in Gaza,” says Nathaniel Raymond, Executive Director at Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab, who joins Mehdi remotely.” zeteo.com/p/sudans-dea...

Light Rail boom spreads to Gifu where the plans are...not perfect. I mean going to Gifu-Hashima when there is an underused Meitetsu line already? Also like build a damn station 1km west of JR Gifu. tabiris.com/railproject/...

Without DEI, we would only make merit-based hires, like the genius strategist who decided to pick a fight with his boss’s new young wife.

huh I did not know that "guys" literally does come from Guy Fawkes, via the guy (a stuffed dummy) -> any oddly dressed person -> any guy

Massive nerd points at work today. Pointed out an error a slide in a presentation the PermSec was giving because it said “Director Generals” rather than “Directors General”.

You can't do this if the link between local services and local taxes is completely broken. But plundering Southern English local government through taxation, industrial policy and housing policy is the only thing keeping Outer Britain's parasitic economy going. And the Union.

Braverman gaff, stating normal UK elite opinion, white/non-white left/right that English is an inferior tainted identity compared to GREAT BRITISH. The UK appropriate everything English, leaving it only sport and ethno-racial exclusion politics, because English civic nationalism is end of the UK.

If reversing the fertility decline were my thing, I would have this tattooed on my forehead.

I mean this isn't just the Greens, its every ideology in the UK. Because the dirty reality that propertied pensioners, gerrymandered FPTP, Barnett, unequal fiscal devolution means lots of people do actually get to be "anti-bedtime" and avoid consequences by squeezing somebody else.

Fun dynamic of the budget is that the Tories did all the easy bits when it came to hosing the rich, leaving behind an unbelievably progressive income tax system www.economist.com/britain/2025...

I am not a lawyer, just a historian, but one fundamental problem with the political debate about the EU, especially in English publications is that the whole principle of the acquis communnitaire is not understood or taken seriously. The EU is a framework of rules, not an alliance.

The assumption that there is a "normal" hasn't been true since 2010. The UK constitutional order and party system are dying. FPTP was what allowed it to lumber on zombie like for a generation.