It should be easier to import more Japanese kei cars and sell them here, but a European ‘E-car’ good too. Some new cars that actually fit tiny British garages might be a novelty too.

Interesting Lib Dem movement on ID cards. Extremely European and sophisticated policy compared to brutish British exceptionalism of looking around for recent utility bills/sending out photos of your passport/getting a provisional driving licence to get into pubs and clubs/voting with a bus pass.

Great news for us Gatwick airport enjoyers.

Quotes and replies to this are like a portal back below the line of a 2007 Comment Is Free piece.

For some people, robotaxis feel like the symbol of the urban future. For me, it's the pneumatic garbage collection.

Good to see octogenarian American politicians about to start preaching what they practice.

One to check back in on post-pedestrianisation of Oxford Street. Can understand the concern. Will need to see the full plans, but allowing time-restricted deliveries and providing money for delivery consolidation centres and co-ordination to affected areas has to be part of the plan.

This is very good - highlights what an important step the France returns deal is. Darkly funny that it is the same deal that Robert ‘Rwanda doesn’t go far enough’ Jenrick proposed and that Rishi ‘Stop the Boats’ Sunak rejected.

Slovenia just went and raised taxes - including on pensioners - to help pay for long term care. What a novel idea!

I have no idea why grace is still being given to councils without an up-to-date Local Plan. If you want councils to maintain up-to-date plans and to build 1.5m homes this Parliament then should have said 'development up to 6-storeys is PD within LPA until LP agreed' www.gov.uk/government/p...

Finally back to - and beyond - the number of services in December 2019. If you split your time between Birmingham, Liverpool and London, somewhere around Lichfield/Tamworth is now ideal.

£560/yr increase to state pension. But Steve Webb going on about pensioners paying a sliver at basic rate from *2027*. Beware Lib Dems defending personal allowance thresholds. A big reason we're in this hole. Reeves should be cutting it, not just freezing it and definitely not exempting OAPs.

One happy customer/paid influencer from Asif Aziz’s capsule hotel chain Zedwell. Pains me to say it but the concept and execution seem good. £20 beds in central London is a great thing for the city to offer alongside Claridges. If only his practices weren’t so…questionable

This will be great. Been to the one in Munich. Need more waterparks with indoor beach/waterslide park/spa areas not just for kids. Day out including a cold beer in a tropical pool is a quasi-public health infrastructure for the long winter months. Not sure London has anything like that.

Casual 21GW wind power on a wet September evening

Liverpool have fully taken up the Fergie-era Man Utd perch of jammy, unlovable dominant force in the league for everyone else.

Broken link. But looks like half of the proposed West London Orbital routes for the Overground. With Bakerloop, TfL using Superloop as its consolation prize.

This is the sort of thing that renews my belief in either junking charitable status entirely - or dramatically narrowing it at least - and removing/limiting tax benefits.

Crews Hill just north of Enfield and Thamesmead rumoured to be the sites of two London New Towns.

Website home pages of RTE, BBC, DW, and France24 are all wall to wall Charlie Kirk. Continental humiliation fetish.

Great video showing the weight of cycling traffic and the mega-Parking Bays for Lime in central London this week.

Refreshing to see someone in the sector break cover on this.

No big city centre park? No problem! I’m a sucker for this sort of stuff, but if Manchester can pull it off it’s exactly the sort of thing that elevates a place.

Fascinating on the mechanics of the RMT strike: Lots of RMT members have been in work this week! Alternating strikes across different teams and days to maximise disruption but minimises unpaid strike days for members.

This would be great. Would also love to see 4th bottom of the PL have to play-off against a Championship team. Spurs could have had 2 cup finals last season!

Fascinating article. We need to upgrade the transmission grid to relieve N-S bottlenecks that force us to 'turn down' Scottish wind power turn-up gas. Costs hit £1bn last year. But it might be that current N-S grid capacity is enough for now, but the upgrades for future capacity reduce that by ~40%

It’s not giving off huge ‘oh, we can go as long as we like’ vibes. Lot of pressure on Dempsey, his strike managerial debut. Seems to be pushing a line that Khan and TfL are divided or Khan has lost control that’s so transparently weak no reporting has bothered to follow up on it afaict

If were a council leader in Sheffield (or Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster) I’d end every speech with ‘Meadowhall delendum est’.

Myatts Field North is fantastic. An exemplar. It’s the only place I’ve seen in person the underground bins in the UK. Slightly ridiculous quite how much the absence of hundreds of wheelie bins makes to the street scene and generally sense of orderliness.

Manchester city centre is getting bigger in the draft Local Plan. Official annexation of Ancoats.

‘London and South East University Group’ would be misleading for Greenwich and Kent Unis imo. Unless they plan many more mergers to make it less so. As local bus users or youth football team players will know, ‘Selkent’ is the go-to artificial term of convenience for this stretch of England.

39?! Where was his paper round, Mururoa Atoll?

This has all the makings of a classic. National Gallery extensions and their renovations seem to trigger aesthetic meltdowns among Kings, billionaire philanthropists and architectural glitterati. 20th Century Society and the Brutalists will have an unremarkable grey lump to try and save too.

Fantastic change of use from the current car park. On top of all the Thames Tideway foreshores and public parks that will be opening should be a great period for new spaces on the river. But still need a strategic, Mayor-led programme of widenings and boardwalks in pinch points along the Thames Path

The Government is considering a second planning bill - if they are serious about meeting their target of 1.5 million new homes, they should use it to introduce a new flexible zoning system:

Can anybody else sense the hubris? If the worry is lack of 'top tier' competition, well, we shouldn't have got relegated out of the top tier of the Nations League then. Could be playing against the best UEFA teams in the groups and then Spain/France etc. in high pressure knockouts for a real trophy.

Wonder how the strategic business case of cycle lanes changes if e-bikes and e-scooters take on more of ‘disruption-insurance’ for the transport system. Mayor would want any future plans, e.g tube automation, to have high quality cycle lanes - and bus lanes - in place along the route before anything

Really enjoyed that cycle home from work. Hope some of them stick at it. If you’re in the office 3 days a week, a monthly £38 400mins Lime Pass should let you switch 1-2 days 30mins commutes a week for same cost as the tube or train.

It's well known that Bowheads live to be 200+ years old but here's a bonkers thing that we didn't realize until we had Nick on the pod - that means a whale alive today could potentially have been alive before whaling started AND they lived through the decades of whaling & the century of recovery🤯

I've spent the day travelling around TUBE STRIKE LONDON talking to commuters and strikers and have been left unsure if "commuter chaos" is what I've actually been seeing. www.londoncentric.media/p/tube-strik...

Can we just get rid of the building safety regulator? It was a bad Tory idea that has achieved nothing positive and has only managed to result in a number of fully built blocks of flats standing empty as the BSR takes years to decide whether or not they are safe!

Instant impact. Give power of building control for these buildings back to councils. Trim a newly fangled and failing quango before lunch.

People love the Sphere. London could have had the Sphere.

Didn’t realise Hawk-Eye technology is in use at every NFL game from this season. Also live at US Open final right now. What started as a little cricket thing, owned by Wisden for a bit, now part of Sony and operating across pretty much every major professional sport in the world. HQ in Basingstoke

Wonder how many Lime passes, new e-bikes and (illegally used) e-scooter sales this inspires on top of the usual alternatives. The explosion of cheap micromobility and more extensive, high quality cycle lanes seriously lowers the barriers for people to try it and now the strikes give them a big prod.

But seriously, as @altreik.bsky.social says, it is a disastrous post, it was typical of some of the shortsightedness in 2017-9 that people rallied around 'gotta save the deputy leader role', a post that some of Tom Watson's closest allies thought needed to go by the end.

Christ. Didn’t realise this was on a purchase *this year* while DPM. Assumed it was much older. Political malpractice to not follow the recommendation to get tax advice on a matter that will benefit you to £40k while in such a role.

Nearly half of 19-29 year olds in the UK now live with their parents. In 2023–24, 51 per cent of 19–29-year-olds lived at home, up 10 percentage points since 1994–95. Take a look at how this has changed over time here ➡️ buff.ly/5TAPyDv

Millwall’s former women’s team really going for it after promotion. All while playing at Bromley FC. ‘London City’ is a dud as a name, too vague for any emotional pull. South London Lionesses would have provided the international brand but also given some local identity traction.

An interesting policy debate: should you just give institutions money to do research, or make them bid? In think-tanks, two of the most effective outfits over the past twenty years have been Resolution Foundation and Centre for Cities - both with core funding www.economist.com/britain/2025...