doing battle with my local briefcase boy MP on twitter dot com

broken Britain latest

this is a problem

had very much soured on cask or "real" ale back home, but they just do it better here

Thank you, New York City. Together we made history. Now let’s get to work. transition2025.com

dawg not the steakhouse wedding font

The EU is winding down freeports due to money laundering and tax evasion. Britain is expanding them. Please read and share my latest article on Substack 'The Magic Money Tree: How Brexit Unlocked Britain's Corporate Welfare Bonanza. It is absolutely explosive. open.substack.com/pub/european...

"The Communication urges Member States to assess and plan" "the Communication sets the ambition of significantly cutting the duration of popular rail journeys across Europe" That's going straight in the metaphorical back cupboard to be forgotten in Member States transport ministries

today's Labour party posting versus yesterday's Labour party posting:

This good stuff right here is why boomers are so desperate to stop millenials from entering the political arena. They know we are gonna start doing good things as soon as we get in there, and they would rather destroy the world and die rich.

Dick Van Dyke has OUTLIVED Dick Cheney

“Why should trans people build their lives in a country which continues to demonstrate its hostility? Unless the government takes urgent action, the threat won’t just be to trans people’s human rights, but also to our economy as we make life harder for business, and drive talent away.”

God showing biologists this after the proboscis monkey:

NHS Sussex are forcibly detransitioning trans people. These patients need full restoration of their healthcare, and everyone involved in doing this needs to be sacked.

I sometimes have chats with NHS managers about how to “restore trust” and it’s amazing how poorly they react to the suggestion that people who harm patients should lose their jobs.

Cars the U.K are up to 55% larger today than they were in the 1970s and there are twice the number of motors on our roads as there were 30 years ago, but anti-Low Traffic Neighbourhood and anti-cycle lane campaigners keep claiming they 'cause congestion'. Okay.

The government spends £2.7 BILLION a year on TAX BREAKS for oil and gas companies Those companies pay billions to their shareholders And then lay off their workers Think that's unfair? Tell Rachel Reeves to stop propping up oil and gas companies and back workers instead…

People can call that "name-calling" but if you lived in a street where the far-right felt they could canvas you door-to-door and watched your agemates grow up to be actual far-right politicians then it feels a bit rich to be told "you just don't get it". Honestly - I wish I didn't.

I’ve been warning families in Gaza for a few weeks that the shutdown/ end of SNAP benefits in the US may really impact their fundraising but I gotta say I’m surprised how stark it’s been. Really says something too about who has been donating 💔

Wise words from @garethdennis.uk and some stunning images out of Sydney.

The Amazing World Of Tomorrow

People can and should have nice things. If someone writes a report saying "we build transport that is too nice and that's why projects are expensive and that's why we don't build more of them" then not only should their analysis be discarded as junk but they should be pilloried.

man admires Deltic

two cool train guys with a cool train

at York Tap

taking the... azuma (photo by @garethdennis.uk)

The time Justin from @wtyppod.bsky.social met the Atmospheric Railway for real... youtube.com/shorts/w5jBM...

IMPORTANT: The Dutch invest €595 million annually on urban biking, resulting in €19 BILLION saved in public health care costs alone. That’s how smart governments do the math on investing in better mobility. Let’s be clear— it wastes public money to NOT do it. #CityMakingMath HT @modacitylife.com

Let me excerpt the concluding paragraph:

GYRO-[REDACTED]

The cover to the Railway Gazette's supplement of 25 June 1937 that details the Southern Railway's Portsmouth electrification scheme; part of a bold pre-war plan that saw the backbone of the UK's third rail electrification network still in use. @noeldolphin.bsky.social @garethdennis.uk

I wouldn't tell anyone I'd won the lottery, but there would be signs... www.bbc.com/news/article...

Two hours of tearing apart a Captain Scarlet episode in detail with @garethdennis.uk - we loved it and we hope you do too! If you don't know Gareth already - what's wrong with you? You can find more about what he's doing to fix Britain's railways here, watch his weekly Railnatter on YouTube...

I've got housework to do. So it's time to listen to a lot of @garethdennis.uk (and also me!) Also go listen to @fabthepodcast.bsky.social where we cover my favourite episode of Captain Scarlet "Big Ben Strikes Again"! It's a real laugh a minute.

at the same time that my latest @fabthepodcast.bsky.social episode drops, I see this in Derby:

Who? Who are any of these people talking about? This entire hand-wavey tactic of blurting out "some climate activists" is lazy as hell and there should be at least some small amount of shame in trotting it out, let alone at least a tiny little smidgen of questioning from journalists

It should be entirely possible and affordable to deliver this. It could create loads of jobs, free up large swathes of existing network for local/regional rail and freight and end most internal flights. One can dream.

stylised version of @garethdennis.uk's British Isles HSR proposal from Railnatter 222 (+ schematic mockup of the GB network)

When we said we don't intend to be concerned or disappointed by the Labour Government - we intend to replace them, we meant it. Yougov have Labours lowest poll ever and Greens highest ever. Keep going everybody. Join.greenparty.org.uk

*** 1 metre of rain ***

Good news! The #RentersRightsBill has received royal assent - this landmark legislation will give vital protections to the millions of private renters in the UK. A happy day. Now it's time to tackle the next crisis facing renters - affordability. That must include rent controls.

A school called Alpha that relies on AI to teach its students is also surveilling them at home, videotaping young girls in their bedrooms. This is some seriously sick shit. www.wired.com/story/ai-tea...

In Texas - The proportion of clean power is growing - The amount of power generation is growing - The volume of greenhouse gas emissions is growing Rapid demand growth means the maxim that 'more renewables' always = 'climate problem solved' is becoming more untrue than it was before......

Bis zu seiner Privatisierung galt das britische Bahnsystem als eines der effizientesten Europas. Doch der Ausverkauf in den 1990er Jahren leitete den Niedergang von British Rail ein –

Whenever I hear about the decline in standards from the old days of Decent Conservatism this is the first image that comes to mind. The man who drew this was given an OBE.

Indeed. And more than that, it's a reaction to it. What rattled elite racists more than anything about BLM in 2020 was the extent to which it resonated with the general public. They saw a major leftward shift in hegemonic cultural values, and they've been desperately trying to reverse it ever since.

The key thing here where she observes that there was unity and purpose in hounding out the left but now that’s done, there’s just… nothing there. And that’s true, there are few ideas, there’s no project and no purpose beyond sustaining themselves in office while snagging a sweet post-politics gig.

Weird, I got a bunch of questions about her involvement with Labour Together and whether she was taking money off the books and siphoning it to her own personal election fund in 2019. I guess everyone has questions these days.

"That's not possible, you can't do that. The trains have to run." Hauntingly similar conditions in Germany to those in Britain prior to the Hatfield rail disaster. Dear friends in the EU: this is not inevitable, just as liberalisation is not a precursor to better railways.

Spotted @garethdennis.uk's book on the shelf at my local bookseller (Capitol Books on K Street, Sacramento).