Glad it's opening. Frequency isn't great. Especially only hourly on Sundays. Need to get the "West Chord" and HS2 finished so we can increase local capacity. Also: looks like 2 to 3 minutes interchange time at Kings Norton for Cross City Trains from the South.

Screen Time.

It's a start but actually they should just ban political donations, because either: 1. They influence politicians (so it's corruption) 2. They don't influence, so it's taking money out of the company for no reason and taking away funds for more useful activities like company investment or wages.

Good article but it's not really standards that are the problem it's building control, warranties and the only real way to pursue defects is through expensive and risky legal action. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

…as per my skeet from earlier today, here’s a reminder that the original intention of the UK’s “age appropriate” legislative push (AADC & OSA) was to circumvent US §230 and regulate content, not regulate design features.

In my area of work - railway policy - a reform of rail ticketing will be proposed by the Commission this spring The draft is going to be good If this reform happened, it'd mean more rail tickets sold and a boost to the sector The danger? National rail firms bend governments' ears, water it down

This is on my list for one day

"As a parent, I am deeply concerned about what my child is accessing online. Albeit not enough to check or to install some very basic software that would prevent them from accessing dodgy material online. That's why the Online Safety Act is so important."

Underground selfie on way to St Pancras. Getting the train from Hammersmith so it's empty here. I wonder how quickly it'll fill up.

Cities are no longer just testing mobility innovation, they’re shaping Europe’s deployment agenda. 📅 11 Feb 2026 | 14:00–15:00 CET Join CitiesFirst + ERTICO for a live webinar on moving from pilots to city-scale impact 🔗https://www.linkedin.com/events/7424690989308735489 #CitiesFirst #ITSIstanbul

It's finally happened! The Sofia to Istanbul (or Dimitrovgrad to Istanbul, if coming from Bucharest) sleeper train is finally bookable online, at the Turkish Railways website! 🥳

The combined right bloc vote is still 2/3rds of what it was in 1997 among 18-25 year olds, never mind 2010.

Origin story for a British / Irish version of Snowpiercer for when the gulf stream gets diverted.

I think the mostly humbling and salient truth I was ever given about working in television is “Remember, we’re here to sell bleach first.”

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... At which point do we just decide we need a new parliament building? Maybe we could have a chamber that encourages adult political discourse instead of the hoo yah nonsense the adversarial layout promotes? Provide accommodation for MPs? Victorian theme park...

Just catching up on the situation with UKRI and I can’t claim much expertise, but worth saying: 1. Research funding is pretty crucial when you’re a knowledge-based economy like the UK is 2. Blanket pauses in funding can be very damaging www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

My favourite cycling conference-type event is taking place this summer in Lund and is now open for sending in abstracts! www.cyclingandsociety.org/2026lund/

The UK is too focused on London / SE. We need to move government out of London. Keep London as the financial capital but not the administrative one. Build a new modern building with digital voting, a chamber that can seat everyone in a proper round fashion.

Just had a conversation with the installers of the solar panels in my new build house. Confirmed what I thought our: invertor doesn't include the ability to install a battery later. So no future proofing...

The UK is built on the idea that "good old chaps" will run a lot of our social / legal infrastructure for free / at very low cost, which both is a problem for diversity of thought and is at very much at risk with people not having enough money to retire.

I always like to think in public expenditure in terms of cost per person: it's a net cost of about £60 per person, which is pretty much nothing. Especially when you factor in the huge climate risks of not doing something.

Really important note: the people killed were standing in the motorway, not behind the crash barrier. I suspect they would have done the same with a hard shoulder, perceiving it's safe. Hard shoulder would have helped but there's still a very high risk of a collision on hard shoulders.

This is my loose map of how proposed infrastructure fits together with existing infrastructure. Looks like we're not getting a cycle lane along Jennens Road or Nechells Parkway. Possibly a parallel route as part of the Mayoral Development Corporation?

Great write up for The Heath and Voce - 2 wonderful bookshops revitalising the indie scene in Birmingham. Thanks to @birminghamdispatch.bsky.social for telling the story: www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/what-happene...

Housebuilders have been given everything they want. And still they don't deliver and want more. The problem is our entire market-driven system. We've pretended it's planning but it's not (fundamentally). But there's some good news coming....

as a big fan of back to the future, the telltale game is turning out to be extremely fun and delightful, even for somebody who has only played like 1 point and click in her life (thank god for the hints, i am not used to the logic of this stuff yet)

Remember the first rule of any politician is to follow the rules they set. This should be a resigning matter

Scary stuff from my former MP (I've moved recently)

On almost everything – fraud, polarisation, radicalisation, misinformation – evidence suggests that over 60s are in much more urgent need of online protection and education than teenagers. But that issue gets zero political attention, and is a total non-starter. Nothing good will come of it.

So, with my Digital Inclusion hat on (disclosure, I sit on one of the DSIT Digital Inclusion Action Cttees www.gov.uk/government/g... and our cttee was def not consulted on this), without a solid user experience that makes it easy for ppl to access and complete these courses, it's a bit pointless

After announcing it in the summer, today the UK government launched free training courses to AI upskill workers. It's free because it's funded by big-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others, and not by local organisations in the UK who have been working with communities->

Prediction: there's going to be a huge scandal some point down the line when an LLM based tutor teaches a child something it's hallucinated and the child fails an exam.

Two thoughts on this: 1. City Skylines UK edition where the tech tree only allows the sewerage system unlock after building the theme park 2. I bet this is a good example of where how the public thinks things work is no where near the reality.

Accor live just sent me an email asking me to download their app saying that they will only make some offers available through it. As much as this isn't great business practice, I wonder if it's against the Equality Act? I assume the website will be more accessible than the App.

This will open up some great journey possibilities... #TrainsNotPlanes

Good but not great - means new leases have no charge, but existing have £250? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... But also looks like forfeiture gone? (What happens with RTM then if other leaseholders don't pay?!)

This is very good: it sums up the problems the UK has with planning: too much focused on the minute details of housing (like door colour), not enough on are we planning joined up communities. And this also is why a lot of people become NIMBYs

Our latest research shows that 1 in 5 women coaches experience harassment. Most often, these incidents are carried out by fellow coaches and the majority of harassment is sexual in nature. Read the research, conducted in collaboration with Leeds Beckett University: https://ow.ly/rChy50Y1H6J

Good article but missing perhaps a point with exception of Bristol and London: all these places are arguably commuter towns for a nearby bigger city. www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Creating opposition to the actions of the state or a political cause is rarely about changing the mind of 'the other side'. It's about making time- or information-poor people aware of the horrible shit. The 'undecided centre' is rarely neutral. It's underinformed, consciously or subconsciously.

I fear this is absolutely the point of why conservative groups are pushing a ban and not controls on harmful content, algorithms etc.

It always annoys me when a website asks me whether I want to download an app when I'm on a website. As if I did, why I would be on their website?! But Scottish Widows is even worse - click login. Popup about app, ok, click x button, that takes you back to the start, not the login!

Funny how the people who think ID checks for social media are fine are so often middle class white men huh. Almost like they can’t imagine needing a safe anony space or facing govt persecution etc. a mystery (Also they weren’t one of the 70,000 ppl whose photos & passports were stolen from discord…)

This is not just a filming without consent issue, there was also a making someone's phone number public without consent. The ICO should be enforcing GDPR against both Tiktok and the content creator.

This and then there's the Vulcans Philosophy: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.

Biological sex is never used to refer to anyone that is not trans, so clearly is a slur.

Always fascinating how inferior technology can become "cool". I've only really got into photography when mirrorless became a thing because there's no way I could get a photo right first time on film.

For folks working in transportation justice, evacuation, wildfire, and/or public health, please join us next Thursday Jan 29 for a free webinar about the evacuation of transit riders during the 2025 LA wildfires. www.lewis.ucla.edu/event/prepar... Study funded by @hazcenter.bsky.social & UCLA

We have our Nesta reaction to today's Warm Homes Plan up! What does it mean for heating, fabric and electrification? What funding is available? What gaps are there in the plan? Read all about it here: www.nesta.org.uk/blog/how-wil...

I really don't get why Burnham would stand to run as an MP now. Maybe he gets to become PM but I very much doubt he can turn the Labour party around.. Far better to wait and become the new opposition leader. Fair chance he gets in when Reform find they can't keep their promises.