I suspect this will be popular.

"I'm so sorry that we could not have done this earlier...to have saved the loved ones in your life. But I thank you fopr the work that you have done...to ensure that this pain not be felt by others who call this same city home." — Mayor Mamdani at McGuinness Blvd. presser youtube.com/shorts/uwAYI...

Just an annoying reminder that the unquenchable American thirst for oil, and the conquest and subjugation of other nations in futile attempts to satiate it, is brought to you in large part by our land-use patterns

Extremely healthy that the same platform shapes my country’s politics more than ever and is the only way to find out if my football team’s match is frozen off.

I am curious as to who the "stakeholders" are who are preventing the UK government from acting against a white supremacist pornographer?

How many times do people need to be told that X is not a trustworthy platform?

Remaining on X is simply unsustainable now.

If you want a more strategic central state you have to devolve a lot more operational power. The more you try to control everything centrally the harder it gets.

Worked example of the crippling effects or Treasury brain here

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...

Canceling the northern leg of HS2 was an act of insane self-harm

Agreed - a panicky PM overrode cross-party parliamentary support. Completely unacceptable.

The BBC getting screwed over by the Far Right they empowered is a depressing example of consequences.

That's why we need to be talking about access to opportunity instead of fetishizing rail technologies. The access frame will help pick the great rail projects, but often the answer will be bus projects. It's the path away from expensive magical thinking. 10/10 humantransit.org/basics-acces...

This week's @freewheeling.info podcast about an award-winning, council owned bus company in one of the poorest parts of the country is a great listen. Having sat on the TfGM "board" for a couple of years in the 2010s, the challenges of reporting up to councillors rang a few bells.

Yes, and we even have a really excellent and very recent paper demonstrating that Starmer's speech on immigration *this summer* hurt Labour and helped Reform - and yet, here we are...

In attempting to oppose Reform while also sounding like Reform on Farage’s core issue - immigration - Labour risk facilitating exactly the conditions where a Reform win on a low vote share becomes possible, with Farage uniting the most anti-imm 30% while anti-Farage majority splinters

During World War Two, a food factory in Liverpool complained that the decision to requisition his premises had been made by an official. not a Minister. The court confirmed that every decision in a department is made by the Minister. This has caused trouble. www.freewheeling.info/blog/adviser...

Yet again, @serailway.bsky.social High Speed staff show how great they are. My visually-impaired daughter lost her white cane on the train. Driver of the 1040 from St Pancras to Margate delayed the train while he came and helped us look. We failed to find it, so had to return back on the same train.

"Advisers advise and ministers decide!" It's said constantly. And it's just plain wrong. So pull up a chair, & let's understand why Government culture is based on a decades-old misunderstanding of a case about a food factory in Liverpool. www.freewheeling.info/blog/advisers-advise-ministers-decide

2 in 3 of Nigel Farage’s current and former partners do not speak English as their first language.

Caroline Seton, founder of e-bike firm Forest, on being a founder and why we need much (much!) more bike parking www.freewheeling.info/the-freewhee... You can find The Freewheeling Podcast on Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t... and Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/4yFWkWG...

If you're choosing between a free bus service and a good bus service (frequent, convenient, safe, fast, reliable, clean, comfortable), "good" is always the right choice.

Sometimes think that the government should just appoint Alastair Campbell as DG of the BBC, and tell anyone who objects that they’re lucky it wasn’t Seumas Milne.

Expanding airports (while cancelling high-speed rail) is a very poor investment during a climate crisis.

Two more Conservative MP rejects hop over to Reform UK. Jonathan Gullis and Lia Nici. More and more, Reform UK looks simply as if the Tories ran off stage, then came back on two minutes lates, wearing a comedy moustache-and-glasses disguise. ~AA uk.news.yahoo.com/former-tory-...

Under Mahmood's current proposals, presumably would have been deported to Czechoslovakia in 1945, when it was "safe" again.

This is very good. You also don't need to fly for business travel: I've been to Brussels, Amsterdam, Milan and Seville all by train. What we need to do is to ensure that people have time to do it. (Which might mean we need to think about how we offset childcare for parents away on business travel)

Introduce yourself with 5 cars you've owned Corgi Mini Corgi Police Car Lots of little ones in Sim City Then nothing for the last 28 years

What did the budget mean for transport? My review: www.freewheeling.info/blog/budget-...

We're destroying both places and the planet through too much tourism. This is why we need a Frequent Flyer Levy www.freewheeling.info/blog/cheap-f...

What did the Budget mean for transport? Podcast Budget Special: www.freewheeling.info/the-freewhee... You can find The Freewheeling Podcast on Apple Podcasts here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t... and at Spotify here: open.spotify.com/show/4yFWkWG...

By all means cover the attack lines and rebuttals in the report that follows. But the actual headline here should be not be shaped by either side's partisan briefings.

My happy place is the compartment of a European train, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a history book in the other. Hence a Substack exploring European history based on my travels. Each month the story of a different period through the prism of a ride. open.substack.com/pub/historyo...

The slavish devotion to motoring is one of the most frustrating things about UK public policy over the past decades

beginning to believe I would actually vote for a dead pigeon on a stick if it just promised to restore the fuel duty escalator

On Bregman, I was there in the audience and I can’t see what the BBC have gained by removing this line except more bad publicity. I will say that no such edits or censorship occurred when I gave the Reith Lectures and free-speech defenders might want think about whether this is the world they want.

Please share this. The BBC must NOT be censored by Donald Trump!

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture. They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

The Government has announced rail fares will be frozen. Good! But that doesn't mean free public transport would be a good idea. Here's why. www.freewheeling.info/blog/why-fre...

If you’re a journalist who’s still on Twitter, from now on in your writing you have to replace “the American people want” with “troll bots in Eastern Europe demand” Being there makes your judgment suspect. I don’t care how savvy you think you are, you’re marinating in a disinformation campaign.

His article was actually about how we shouldn’t forgive Hunt, and why the British media has moved on so quickly from asking why a Tory government t was designing economic policies that bordered on negligent.

Semi-relatedly, it's not unconnected that the public find the media condescending and elitist when some of the outlets that are most supposed to be explaining this to them treat basic details as "nerd stuff" they'd, by implication, be too thick to understand.

I've realised what "See it, say it, sorted" is advertising: driving I'm at a station and there's a constant barrage of announcements about danger. *See it say it... Transport Police... Mind the gap... For your own safety..." You know what doesn't constantly tell me I'm in danger? My car

This does feel like a major crossing of the Rubicon – the world's best-funded and in many ways most powerful public health agency is now actively pushing disinformation. I know there's a *lot* going on to care about at the moment, but this one really is significant, and matters well beyond the US.

You just couldn't plan properly, because that exposes that taxes would have to go way up Ailbhe Rea tipped me over into actually hating Reeves with the anecdote that when she was warned the draft manifesto was boxing in a future Labour Government she responded; "that'd be a nice problem to have"

There is no cure for their poison except to challenge its assumptions. Nothing is gained by pretending to agree with it, or mollifying it.

A major problem for a government with an essentially performative policy approach is that it encourages / incentivises all other parties to so the same thing - what’s the point in being substantive if the actual government (whose competitive advantage should be governing) can’t be bothered…?

Tory voters want Tory governments to improve the economy while Labour voters want Labour governments to improve public services. The Tories were annihilated by their own side for failing to do what they're meant to do. Labour risk the same fate. Labour will be judged on schools and hospitals.

How should transport authorities be set up to achieve maximum integrated transport? Blog post two of two. www.freewheeling.info/blog/what-do...