I'd partly forgotten this but if you present yourself as the radical political force able to solve deep rooted problems, then you encounter a deep rooted problem and say actually, this is too difficult, I wish we hadn't bothered...it ought to be a tell. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Here's the fledgling site, with some great stories on it already: theexchange.news/welcome-to-l...

Delighted and daunted in equal measure to be joining @millmedia.bsky.social as a staff writer as they branch out to a new city. Launching in June, The Exchange will provide quality writing, features and investigations covering Leeds and West Yorkshire. Any local tips? Reach out!

Has anyone done an academic-type study on the emergence of the Kings Cross tech clusters? There was good work by @maxnathan.bsky.social among others of Tech City and Shoreditch Old Street Silicon Roundabout type stuff back in the day. Stuff like that.

Bradford has a higher business start-up rate than Leeds, Oxford, or Cambridge. But those businesses do very different things and raise much less money to grow. We are very fortunate to have such a broad base of entrepreneurialism in Britain to build on. tomforth.co.uk/entrepreneur...

An excellent, and excellently self-aware, review of three of the latest books on Britain, a reminder of how far we've come, and of our decline (or not), and our inequalities and lost potentials by @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Late to this tomforth.co.uk/densityisdone/, which as always from @tomforth.co.uk is well worth reading, but I'm not sure about the comparison made in the highlighted paragraph, given all of the European cities mentioned are adjacent to large bodies of water but neither of the English ones are.

In a rare appearance on Bluesky, I shall repeat my argument against this. It's just a case of over-analysing poor data. Use the correct data, and Britain's big cities are just as dense as Northern European equivalents like Hamburg and Rotterdam that are much more productive and support great metros.

On 21 March 2026 almost the entire US is recorded at or near record maximum temperature for this date in the 30-year record. Source: buff.ly/z2LC20Y

Yet Another Dozen -- yet more people in London and Oxford thinking and talking about how to return Britain to prosperity is the last thing we need. tomforth.co.uk/yetanotherdo...

After three decades of building, Britain's large cities have densities -- both at their cores and overall -- that are comparable to their North European equivalents like Amsterdam, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Cologne, and Copenhagen.

Last chance for this. Tomorrow.

Scotland also has the second highest wages of any region for the bottom 75% of the hourly pay distribution, only being beat by the South East at the 80th percentile and the East at the 90th percentile

We don't talk enough about how Scotland went from having lower wages/productivity than the UK average to being second only to the South East and London on both

Londonmaxxing is a good meme with a strong foundation. Business R&D in London -- especially in digital, data, tech, AI -- has exploded since 2012 on the back of decades of high public sector spending on R&D and enormous investments in great infrastructure. tomforth.co.uk/londonmaxxing/

Should you wish to know how the AI at @thedatacity.bsky.social works, but not so well you can copy us, please do come to Applied AI at Parallax in Leeds on 17 March at 6pm where I'll be giving a talk on exactly that! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/applied-ai...

Using the ONS small area GVA estimates and my population around a point tool I calculated GVA/capita for every 30 mile wide ring at increasing distance from London. The picture shows where I calculated GVA and population for to get the answer at 100 miles.

OpenSAFELY is open from today! Huge thanks to all who supported this vast collaboration: whole population GP data; in a productive platform; innovative privacy protections; unprecedented support from professions, privacy campaigners; &c Now it's over to users! www.bennett.ox.ac.uk/blog/2026/02...

So apparently one of these is 'salt of the earth, tells it like it is, speaks to the masses' and the other is not.

British Growth and the Graduate Premium. tomforth.co.uk/graduateprem...

British Growth and the Graduate Premium. tomforth.co.uk/graduateprem...

And then there were seven 👀 When I first spoke to @joshih.bsky.social in 2020, he'd just launched The Mill and was thinking of setting something up in Liverpool. Less than six years later, today we're launching our seventh title in Leeds (@leedsnewlocalpaper.bsky.social). Sign up 👉 leeds.ghost.io

At long last, we’re launching in Leeds! Ever since I started The Mill, people have asked us to create a publication across the Pennines. If 500 people pledge to become members, we’re going to hire two journalists and do it. Please share with Leeds friends. leeds.ghost.io

Fantastic piece in the @FT on London's poor record of building the homes it desperately needs. I added in another major global city* in the UK which seemed to have slipped out of the data during production 😉 giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Really good discussion this. Sounds like an excellent issue for Andy Burnham to take up on the Lovelace Labs, and Tracy Brabin for the National Data Library to Leeds. Probably much easier for govt to deliver - and quicker - than a tram.

I did a podcast about why the Lovelace Labs should be in Manchester. And other varied ramblings including National Data Library, AI Action Plan, and why Leeds wool matters. youtu.be/WQnWrJlIQRQ?...

In the absence of the list being published, is anyone I know on the National Data Library Expert Advisory Group? Or know anyone who is?

"Welcome to Decline" -- still one of my favourite graphs from last year. In the late 1970s, Britain's economic fate very clearly split in two. How much you blame Thatcher will depend on your politics, but her leadership is useful to understand the timing. tomforth.co.uk/welcometodec...

Answers to the nine most common questions I get about the (now delayed) Leeds tram. tomforth.co.uk/tramquestions/

Though ENICs are a non-starter in current context; I'd go for a local income tax. Picked it up from this @tomforth.co.uk oped. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Most Yimby, abundance style stuff just brushes away or ignores real world trade-offs. I have to say though, this one on tram financing and management is compelling. Would involve a big shift in power and resources to the local level- including local taxation. www.britainremade.co.uk/backontrack

When the Manchester Guardian calls, the people of the North heed the call. And if those people are me, we inject Manchester Liberalism, even from across the Pennines, right back in to the paper of Northern record. Get your fill. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Welcome To Decline. I constructed a historical dataset of economic growth in "The North" and "The South" of Britain and used it to show that Thatcher DID put The South on a course for convergence with the USA. 👍 And put The North on the opposite path. 👎 tomforth.co.uk/welcometodec...

Welcome To Decline. I constructed a historical dataset of economic growth in "The North" and "The South" of Britain and used it to show that Thatcher DID put The South on a course for convergence with the USA. 👍 And put The North on the opposite path. 👎 tomforth.co.uk/welcometodec...

Good morning good people. I'm on BBC Radio Leeds shortly to talk about whether the Leeds Tram has been cancelled. The kind of question that local radio doesn't typically dedicate a morning to unless the answer is pretty close to Yes. Which it is.

In fact the concentration of R&D in universities is a relatively recent development, beginning in the 1980s and accelerating in the Blair governments

this is not behavior becoming of a FIFA Peace Prize recipient.

I went to a dinner with the AI Minister and I read a paper on Lovelace Institue --- a proposal from Tony Blair's Institute on how we could fund breakthrough science better. And I wrote that all up into one incoherent mess for you to enjoy. tomforth.co.uk/nationalpurp...

Self-driving cars and why I think they might fix England's unusually weak second city economies. tomforth.co.uk/selfdrivingc...

One of my favourite podcast chats to date so far, with @tomforth.co.uk on the north-south divide. Turns out reason for the North’s poor productivity isn’t a centralised political culture causing low transport, investment, it’s because they’re drunks... www.freewheeling.info/the-freewhee...

I did a podcast episode seemingly. About the North South divide and its interaction with transport. With @freewheeling.info. So what better way for me to listen to it for the first time than on a slow train back to Leeds from Rotherham. Which is what I'll do right now.

London is a great city. It didn't invent the steam locomotive or start the industrial revolution. That's fine. Its fans shouldn't claim it did. I wrote about that. tomforth.co.uk/greatestcity...

What to see how I turned thousands of live buses into charts like this? And what it all means for mayors wanting to integrate their public transport systems? Come to see me talk about all this and more to our event at 1pm: www.centreforcities.org/event/report...

"Evil or Irrelevant: pick one." > I wrote up why I'd usually prefer to have an 'evil' company succeeding in Leeds than a good one succeeding in London. (But really it's about Stoke-on-Trent). tomforth.co.uk/evilorirrele...

Also includes a graph, for I am known for such things, on how Almere, the Netherlands' most successful new city has overtaken Lelystad, the Netherlands' most mocked new city in population since they were built on land reclaimed from the sea.

Includes a map I drew (actually traced) by hand (well in Inkscape) and styled myself (actually got Luke to help me). But it's a good map. I tried to get ChatGPT to draw it for me, but it was rubbish. So I did it with humans.

I've written about the worst city in the Netherlands. It's just 3000 words. A quick read. What Lelystad teaches us about new cities, why you probably shouldn't build them, what to do if you must,... and why you might need to. ps. Lelystad is actually good. tomforth.co.uk/newcities/

I've written about the worst city in the Netherlands. It's just 3000 words. A quick read. What Lelystad teaches us about new cities, why you probably shouldn't build them, what to do if you must,... and why you might need to. ps. Lelystad is actually good. tomforth.co.uk/newcities/

You will learn more about the ongoing furore over asylum seekers in hotels from this incredible piece by @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social than from a hundred front page headlines.