James Milne

The situation in Sudan is horrific; war monitors have compared the level of violence in El Fasher to that of the start of the Rwandan genocide.

The international community cannot abide this.

Public transport investment usually has a return on investment of 4:1 (for every £1 invested, the economy grows by £4), but done well it can do even better than that

Great example here

Bus Paintings: Cambridge at night

Screenshot of “trending topics” on bluesky with Matt Goodwin listed at number one, along with a little “hot” logo.

Absolutely not, bluesky. All kinds of ick.

Went trick or treating dressed up as a Green Party activist last night. Lots of lovely, positive conversations 🙂

No candy though. Disappointing.

Thanks! I went trick or treating last night dressed up as a canvasser. It was great fun and we got a good haul of surveys. No candy though 😔

Very much a ‘surely some blood will calm these sharks’ situation

North of England lost out on £140bn for transport in ‘decade of deceit’ – study Thinktank calls on ministers to close investment gap after ‘hollow’ promises from previous governments

Source?

Cos historically that has absolutely not been the case.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

This sounds very much like “NW England hasn’t received the benefits of major public transport investment, so it shouldn’t get major public transport investment“ to me.

Again we should be spending more on public transport infra in London than we do, and then matching that spend in other regions too.

But places like York, Nottingham, Derby and Lancaster are the equivalents to those you mention for central Manchester (or should /could be).

London is Polycentric too - Croydon, Westminster and the Docklands are all about ten miles from each other, for example.

The circle around central London that extends to the far ends of the Liz line is about 16.7m, compared to about 10.5m centred on Manchester. So yes it’s significantly more, but it’s not orders of magnitude more.

We should be building way more public transport infrastructure everywhere, inc. London.

You can actually rent out a fish tank in London for quite a lot of money though, to be fair.

Yes. You get that not everyone in London uses it?

I am assuming you are quoting 10m as an often used estimate for the population of London.

If that’s not what you’re referring to please could you clarify?

Screenshot from the “Population around a Point” website showing the population within a circle centred on Manchester and extending to Sheffield and Liverpool is approximately 10 million people.

Would it?

www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopula...

Sure, but I think it’s fair to call the Elizabeth line a national infrastructure project centred on London and connecting to Reading in the way an equivalent track length could be (for example) described as centred on the Liverpool-Manchester region and connecting to Sheffield (terrain permitting).

Greens starting to hit the tipping point - and we know we outperform the models in target constituencies too.

This is the thing driving everything else

Our latest Westminster voting intention (26-27 Oct) has Labour on their lowest figure ever recorded by YouGov, with the Greens on their highest

Reform UK: 27% (+1 from 19-20 Oct)
Labour: 17% (-3)
Conservatives: 17% (=)
Greens: 16% (+1)
Lib Dems: 15% (=)
SNP: 3% (-1)

yougov.co.uk/topics/polit...

Same here in Newcastle. Car companies and 20th century urban planners have a lot to answer for. But that’s a whole other thread.

Plus in the very long term, you’ll get an RoI in the North too - it’ll just take longer. Like the point is to develop other areas to get up past the threshold where further investment pays for itself like it already does in London.

100% this.

Probably the best argument for effective regional government, too.

For sure. But the equivalent amount of expenditure on public transport infrastructure in just the Manchester - Liverpool region (for example) would have an enormous impact.

Leeds is apparently the largest city within Europe that has no mass transit system.

I could go on.

Morgan McSweeney frantically googling "how proscribe Green party terrorist"

And also the best.

Thanks. I figured it was a partnership thing and thought it might be The Economist; didn’t think to check The Times.

Alasdair Rae on X: "trying to make sense of the bigness of the Elizabeth Line so obviously had to move it north and make some maps (using correct geodesic transformation to account for shifting it northwards, obvs) https://t.co/h4mYTWwi6N" / X trying to make sense of the bigness of the Elizabeth Line so obviously had to move it north and make some maps (using correct geodesic transformation to account for shifting it northwards, obvs) https://t.co/h4mYTWwi6N

Map credit: Alasdair Rae

x.com/undertheraed...

Map showing the Elizabeth line superimposed on NW England

The length of the Elizabeth line is equivalent to that of Liverpool to Sheffield via Manchester. Which both proves your point about the size of (Greater) London and makes a good case for linking Northern cities together with much better infrastructure to help them compete with London:

Dressing up trashing the environment, deregulating the financial services industry and inducing traffic on the M25 as wins says a lot about this current Government. Help us replace them:

join.Greenparty.org.uk

Is a flat-earther an idiot or a realist? How many far-right MPs would the media report as if their rhetoric is in any way acceptable? & should Peston be deleting this post?