Michael Cook

It's always "waiting for go-ahead"!

All regions will never get exactly the same spending. It's not unreasonable that London as a transport hub gets *more* transport spending. Just not *so much more*.

Don't "cut" anything from London. Make spending decisions that will create more balanced regional economies. For example, fund Northern Powerhouse Rail before funding Crossrail 2.

Public investment should not be disproportionately targeted to already productive areas as it leads to ever-greater regional inequalities.

It's not shocking that Europe's biggest city has Europe's largest construction project, it's shocking that none of the UK's other cities have anything like a proportionate spend on public transport.

Of course tax per capita is higher in rich areas! People are richer! That's why public investment (not revenue spending on benefits but capital investment in infrastructure) needs to be higher out of London, so people can live more economically productive lives! (Everyone can't live in London.)

Map of UK showing London's high investment spending per person.

Mythical capital investment spending per person, from the same source you used.

Table of arts funding per capita showing London at the top

Mythical transport: www.investmentmonitor.ai/features/pub... (Elizabeth Line: £19bn total cost. Europe’s largest construction project.)

Mythical public spending: www.ippr.org/media-office...

Mythical arts funding:

Sure, but it's a political choice over decades to prioritise agglomeration of London investment. It's led to an overheated London supereconomy (especially in housing ) and stagnant regional economies with all the social and economic downsides.

And what would happen over a period of years if you had kept investing in the NW? (Manchester's currently growing faster than Ldn, after all). What if the agglomeration effect wasn't limited to one growth pole?

That's not correct. Invest that £ elsewhere and it wouldn't just evaporate.

Thanks, Champ. None of that changes the fact that London gets more public infrastructure investment than the rest of the country, which was the original point. Yes, London's economy is vastly bigger and more successful than other regions. That's not the same point.

But also, London generates more money because it gets more investment.

Nigel Farage currently railing against Parliament being full of "professional politicians".

He founded UKIP in 1993 and was first elected as an MEP in 1999, twenty-six years ago. Less than 5% of current MPs (31 to be precise) have a longer career in politics than Farage. ~AA

We keep being told that the perpetrators of the Huntingdon abomination are "British-born". OK. So were the killers at Woolwich barracks, Southport, Tavistock Square, Westminster Bridge, Manchester arena, London Bridge etc etc. If you insist on denying that this has anything to do with immigration policy, I'm afraid you are not arguing in good faith.

Daniel Hannan was born in Peru.

The Brownface movie? 😬

Apparently it's okay to be sick of the UK and become an immigrant elsewhere but somehow it's not okay for people to be sick of their countries and become an immigrant in the UK.

star trek: the next generation, but Computer has an obsequious attitude like ChatGPT

picard: computer, locate commander data

computer: that's a great idea, captain! it really shows initiative that you're seeking to locate a possible explanation for the behavior of the force fields. i can certainl-

Wow - those are quite phenomenal headlines given the details of the story.

Ahh look, he’s just a ‘nerdy’ guy. No harm done.

You need to scroll down to paragraph 13 of the Sky piece to find the full story!

🧵
1/9

Reform MP Sarah Pochin not in the chamber today for #PMQs it must be because seeing our faces makes her mad…

What's the title of the graph?

Your graphs just show the NE is poorer than London. We all know that

In 23/24, each Londoner got about eight times the amount of public rail spending as each person in the East Midlands. How is that fair? It's completely disproportionate.

I think you have a different interpretation of "fair share" to me. London, a wealthy region, getting more infrastructure spending than a poorer region *because it is wealthier* isn't fair. That's not how progressive taxation works.

Fine, although you were the only one sharing that myth. The actual complaint is surely that London gets more than it's fair share of spending, not just that it gets *a lot* (and that other regions could prosper if they got an unfair share.)

Other capitals don't dominate as London does. Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich don't have noticeably worse infrastructure than Berlin.

UK government and commercial HQs are in London and London benefits from the agglomeration of everything there. London benefits from serving the whole of the UK. Without the rest of the UK, it would not be the super-economy it is.

But London only funds the rest of the country because the rest of the country has inadvertently (?) devolved its decision making, commercial weight, political authority to London. If a big boy steals your dinner money, you shouldn't applaud how better fed the big boy is.

This is the Frenchest post I have ever seen! You take the most and the least ultra-processed junk you can: granola bars, Haribos, Dairylea, pork pies, a few carrot, a Twix. Norse Atlantic, is it?

Asylum seekers, housed in hotels in Manchester, are reaching out in their own words to address the concerns of the local community.

Please take a minute to read their letter, & share it with the people in your life who need to hear the truth about the people they are protesting.