Finally got hold of this book by @garethdennis.uk ! Looking forward to reading this.

#PerryBarr #BirminghamHistory A three-bedroom property for sale in Birmingham for £440 – a steal! Hold on, those are February 1939 prices. Ref - Modern House & Home, LF 41.8 #LibraryofBham

dualling the A9 WON'T make roads safer in Scotland youtube.com/shorts/kaHzz...

Just (finally) finished reading How The Railways Will Fix The Future by @garethdennis.uk whilst aboard a very crowded 2 car 168 all the way from Birmingham to London! The book itself is absolutely tremendous so I’d highly recommend it; do make sure to get yourself a copy if you haven’t already!

man's on trains again

Yep, Bitcoin is pretty much

It’s striking that Helen et al have not even paused because the global fascist movement has taken up their crank crusade as one of its core propaganda tools for ratcheting up hate. If anything, they seem to think that should now rightly extract concessions from everyone else.

the fact that YP luminaries are still debating whether being a bigot excludes you from the movement says everything I need to know about its direction of travel. I desperately wanted it to succeed but it feels like it's trying to be Blue Labour or something

love to watch television made for the pre-HD era, you could just get away with this stuff:

Two-tier policing.

why doesn’t @theguardian.com provide live coverage of trans pride when four times the amount of ppl show up for that?

Things you didn’t think you needed in your life… but still fascinating: 🚋 World Tram Driver Championships - and #Edinburgh Trams are competing! 🚃 @edinburghtrams.bsky.social 📺 Watch live: www.youtube.com/watch?v=smp0...

hi, cis folks! the WSJ endangered trans lives with false reporting yesterday. it’s still accepted as truth by many, regardless of it being false. the article’s still up with a little note. it needs full retraction. it's not even a phone call—it's email. you can do this. contact info below.🧵⬇️

This is a reprehensible attempt by both Oracle and OpenAI to mislead investors and the markets at large with a contract that neither party can actually fulfill, and it virtually guarantees that OpenAI will run out of cash in the next few years. What a joke. www.wheresyoured.at/oracle-opena...

I take great delight in the fact that all of these cheap flags are going to be tattered, threadbare and stained as hell in about a month.

Also. FAO Daily Telegraph: this is the Penshaw Monument, not the Pembroke Monument. Penshaw is in the North East of England. Pembroke is in West Wales. They’re about 350 miles apart.

how much money wasted for this liberalisation charade? in what way does this benefit passengers and cities?

Economy flatlined in July - Starmer and Reeves have bet everything on 'going for growth' and it's just not working. Time for a rethink - instead of tinkering around the edges and ripping up protections for people and nature, we need to tax extreme wealth and invest in our future

Last week, Policy Exchange released yet another report opposing high speed rail projects authored by Andrew Gilligan and - tellingly - foreworded by Reform's Richard Tice. Without context or permission, they quote me in it. So I've a few things to add.

This is EXCRUCIATING for @sadiqkhanlondon.bsky.social... You just know he'll be going back to Number 10 and bellowing at some SPADs to never let him be put this situation again. Too late Khan, you had your chance.

BREAKING: The government of #Canada announces a Major Projects Office for large, nation-building infrastructure projects. Too much emphasis on mining and fossil fuel-related projects, IMO, but one piece of good news: 🚄 the Alto High-Speed Rail project from Toronto to Quebec City has made the list.

. @paulbrannenne.bsky.social and @garethdennis.uk in good company in the @riasbookshop.bsky.social in Edinburgh

This is probably the most important building in British railway history - the Railway Clearing House. This didn't just share out ticket revenue between companies, it was a hub where officials and directors met to codify and define UK rail operations and common policy.

in swings this @zackpolanski.bsky.social upstart, bumping into our Wednesday evening slot and obliterating the competition, it's just not on, who does he think he is?

mfw my local railway isn't falling in the sea or getting indefinite speed restrictions.

Makes me feel very not good that the BBC openly refers to trans people with slurs. If you weren’t aware, to call a trans person “biologically [their sex assigned at birth]” is a slur - it’s dehumanising and inaccurate!

@garethdennis.uk entertains us with his dinosaur impression during a presentation on the future of the railways.

Why yes, I am about to deliver Part Two of my @railway200.bsky.social talk series at Hopetown in Darlington... Looking forward to seeing a good few of you there!

Does Manchester need an underground? Does rail nationalisation =good? Will @zackpolanski.bsky.social kick Farages arse? All this and more on this weeks episode with @garethdennis.uk Listen to the full episode here: bit.ly/47BwXMM or where ever you get podcasts

With respect to the candidates, it really doesn't make a difference who the next deputy of the Labour Party is. The party is so fundamentally broken - it seeks only to protect the wealth of it's donors. I spoke to The Indepedent 👇🏼 youtu.be/sTes4wqlOBQ?...

🚅 Final week of operation of the classic line Caserta-Benevento under the 18th c Aquaduct of Vanvitelli. 📍 maps.app.goo.gl/pBfeo15ueAnz... First section of Naples-Bari high capacity/speed line opens in 2 weeks, just 5yrs construction. 🚁 First week with a new FPV drone….

The first move of new Green party leader @zackpolanski.bsky.social wasn't a policy (he'd already made a wealth tax his big thing) – it was a podcast. It's a sure sign of a leftwing leader who's learned from his predecessors' mistakes. Me for @thenewarab.bsky.social: www.newarab.com/opinion/zack...

Such a catalogue of issues here that exacerbate lack of infrastructure resilience - but a 4 hour gap in some services (when temporary timetable is combined with rolling stock shortage) - must make people consider whether to use rail again www.railmagazine.com/news/indefin...

A £3.2bn underspend in UK infrastructure in 2024/25 (almost 15%) - is pretty bad. However, measuring by annual spend rather than what was actually delivered is a crap way to monitor projects.... as I think several of the Gov reviews have already found. www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/treas...

Network has published its spend report for 2024/25 - a 9.2% fall in spend from the last year of Control Period 6 (2023/24) to CP7's 1st year. 16% fall in renewals -kind of ties up with NSAR survey that found a 9.4% fall in the rail workforce. www.networkrail.co.uk/wp-content/u...

Incredible that the momentum behind this thinking is only just stalling... Maybe thanks to the incompetence of the Abundance folk given people are now drilling into their various nonsense claims. www.ft.com/content/d905...

who could have guessed that the gin shop was a complete waste of space? very glad that the pasties are back

Hopefully the BBC will follow up on this story to cover the fact the venue mentioned in it had all of its windows put out on Friday night by someone with a hammer. Seems somewhat relevant. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I like the message of Gareth’s video: just nationalising #railways won’t solve all the issues - it’s needs more fundamental change too.

It's gonna be so funny in two days time when Trump directly contradicts this in a throwaway statement to the press, he does that literally all the time because nothing is real

Look, I'm sorry, but this absolutely slaps, it's so good hahahahahaha

hocus pocus there's pizza on your focus youtu.be/L1WAOByxzYA?...

They’re attacking fundamental Human Rights in search of short-term electoral advantage, which they are deliberately trying to a make a two horse race between themselves and the far-right party, because their top advisers are right wing psychos, but also because they are craven, poll-addled morons.

Angela Rayner bent to just about all of current Labour's demands (derogatory). She has spent five years betraying her old values and making sure she toes the party line. And the party has Corbyn'd her anyway. I hope other leftwing MPs take this as a valuable lesson.

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it is both true that Rayner has to resign, and that it's extremely suspect that she's been pushed out this way

Tax aside, this is objectively a very sad end to Rayner’s political career: a teenage single mum from a deprived family who went onto be deputy prime minister. The right wing press detested her for not knowing her place. Their glee at her downfall will be palpable in tomorrow’s front pages.

On the same day in the Telegraph: