It’s weird that a bunch of people opposed removing statues because they thought it was ‘destroying history’ but when the *entire museum sector* is fighting for survival after a decade of cuts & now Covid they’re nowhere to be seen. It’s almost like it wasn’t about history at all.
We are sad to announce that Birmingham Museums Trust has entered a period of redundancy consultations as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Around half of our staff have been placed at risk of redundancy.
Read more:
As it’s meant to hit 40 degrees next week I’m just going to leave this here for our civic leaders.
Same city, same day, same time, but two only slightly different streets.
Banning domestic flights when there is an equivalent train journey under 3 hours is good. Adopting that policy while also opposing HS2 for the last decade is deeply unserious and stupid.
Green Party Manifesto Launch:
- 4 day working week
- Ban on domestic flights
- Wealth Tax on assets above £10million
- Votes at 16
- Phasing out of nuclear power
And much more
£1.9bn.
That’s £400m more than it would cost to build the entire Midlands Rail Hub, a project that would improve rail services across at least a third of the country, being spent on *one road*.
BREAKING: The Stonehenge tunnel is going ahead. The Transport Secretary has granted a Development Consent Order (DCO) to construct it. A DCO previously issued for the project was quashed by the High Court in July 2021 amid concern about the environmental impact.
@fitzfromdublin
I’m genuinely surprised the life expectancy in America is as high as it is when a 23 minute walk is practically considered scaling Kilimanjaro.
This sounds silly but it’s better to build it with 7 and need 3 than to build it with 3 and then need 7 when we inevitably need to build the rest of HS2.
HS2 was funded through borrowing against returns, so there is no money to reallocate from the cancelled section.
You can't take out a mortgage, decide not to buy the house and 'reallocate funding' to go on a holiday.
That's not how it works, this post is a blatant lie.
Developers bought the iconic Black Country pub The Crooked House (building built in 1765) and it mysteriously burnt down last night. This happens every single time a pub is bought across Birmingham. Starting to feel like ‘housing developer’ is code for ‘arsonist’.
Worcestershire Parkway was built where two rail lines cross between Worcester/Oxford and Bham/Bristol and provides good connectivity between them. It is *exactly* the sort of place we should be building a new town and the land surrounding the station is wasted as countryside.
Today, Rachel Reeves announced Labour’s changes to planning and housing - and name-checked a proposed site at Worcestershire Parkway within my Droitwich and Evesham constituency.
During the election campaign I expressed grave concerns about Labour's instincts to make top-down
Burnt out on Saturday, unlawfully demolished on Monday. Now not even a careful dismantling and rebuilding at the Black Country Museum is possible. It’s undeniably criminal. Sue me.
So you want to know what’s so bad about ‘15 minute cities’ (for Tory MPs)? I hope this thread will answer a few questions.
Firstly, what is the 15 minute city idea? 1/n
“Did you know that as late as 1961 West Midlands households earned more on average than any other British region, including London and the SE, then in 1964 the govt declared Bham’s growth ‘threatening’ and banned office development for almost two decades?”
Bad take. If the UK is too small for high speed rail it should definitely be too small for domestic flights but there are loads of those. HS2 is something that can replace them.
Britain - being a geographically small country - does not need a high-speed rail network. HS2 is a folly. We should instead renationalise the existing railway system and plough the money into improving - and expanding - that.
Macron:
- €300bn to help the economy
- Pledge that not a single business will go bankrupt
- Utility bills and rent payments suspended from tomorrow
- Gov't to pay for hotels and taxis for healthcare staff
Boris:
- Restaurants will stay open but don't go to them
London's average rent is expected to soar to £2,700 next year.
The average take-home salary per month in London is £2,131.
Londoners cannot continue living this way. This is why I'm calling on the Govt to urgently introduce a rent freeze.
Brescia, with a population of around 200k, is the smallest city in Italy with a metro system. The system currently consists of a single 13.7 km line (70% underground) with 17 stations ofc all equipped with platform screen doors. Trains are fully driverless too.
➡️Cost: €575 M
Investing in skills without infrastructure just accelerates the 'brain drain'.
People finish their training and find there aren't any jobs where they live and simply move.
Investing in infrastructure enables the agglomeration that *actually* drives economic performance.
Southern cities are higher skilled than northern ones 🧭
Skills are the driver of economic performance. High-skilled businesses invest where they can recruit the workforce needed to help them grow.
See our 12 charts to inform the election debate 📊👇
See that supermarket on the ground floor? Every single storey big shed Aldi, Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Tesco in the region should instead look something like this. If local policy doesn’t ensure that, policy is behind.
504 homes proposed for Harrow supermarket
🎯Contributes 69% of Harrow’s yearly housing target
🛒 32% ⬇️ of customer car parking
🏠 35% affordable including 115 for social rent
🏢 Tallest tower changed from pink to brown following public backlash
❗❗A points failure at
#LondonEuston
means all lines are blocked.❗❗
ℹ As a result, trains running to / from this station may be cancelled or severely delayed by up to 90 minutes.
🕐Major disruption is expected to continue until 13:00.
Locals in Hillingdon take down a traffic light with a ULEZ camera on it in their West London neighbourhood.
This is in protest of Sadiq Khan's policy where drivers are charged £12.50 for driving within London with a non-ULEZ compliant car. Police are forced to turn up at the
@jamestaylor1
That’s because train ticket prices are inflated as a mechanism to manage demand. Demand is growing and supply (capacity) is staying the same because of lack of investment. HS2 increases capacity (supply) and should bring prices down.
This is not a drill, a car, an actual badly parked vehicle, has been towed in Birmingham, has this ever happened before? Unprecedented scenes.
@badlyparkedbrum
It’s a strange quirk of British urban history that Birmingham was sufficiently wealthy and had enough civic power to complete its equivalent plan and ruin itself whereas other places that were/did not are now much more successful for it. Roads are always a poor investment.
— Two flagship Sunak policy areas - skills and science/tech funding - are backed by the Treasury as having a “high impact”
— Treasury also takes a dim view of big infrastructure projects like HS2, labelling them “low impact” and “high fiscal cost”
#Birmingham2022
has exceeded my wildest hopes; the ceremonies, the venues, the volunteers, the welcome and the showcasing of the city have all been phenomenal. I refuse to call it a once in a lifetime experience because the campaign for the 2036 Olympics begins tomorrow.
#B2022
The one on the left is designed, costed and under construction. The one on the right only appeals to Balsall Common locals because it’s none of those things. If it were real they’d whine about it too.
What railway bridge would you rather was built near you? This is what the British public think. And here’s why it matters if we want to
#GetBritainBuilding
and
#CreateConsensus
that transcends politics … 🧵 ⬇️
£18.9 billion.
Imagine how transformative it would be if the Cross City Line or the Snow Hill Line could operate at such a frequency and what that would mean for modal shift enabled placemaking, reduced congestion, improved air quality, productivity, access to opportunity...
Station Street is a busy, successful street - a cinema, theatre, hotel and restaurants with only the Crown pub needing to be brought back into use (maybe a revamp for the hotel too) It’s the kind of small scale, quirky and interesting place we should be *building* not demolishing
Fire engines blocked by a suspiciously dumped mound of earth but the owner could apparently organise machinery on site on the first working day after the fire.
While Birmingham remains a basket case Wolverhampton looks resplendent. Investment in culture, new public realm, public transport and cleaning up historic buildings to bring them back into use instead of demolishing them 👍
I have an unsubstantiated theory that everyone born between 1987 and 1992 has comprehensive knowledge of Microsoft Excel’s full functionality but anyone born outside of that window can only barely use it for basic things.
Utter joke of a country. HS2 must be built in full. It is essential for increasing rail capacity, introducing new services, promoting modal shift and reducing emissions in the West Midlands and across the UK. The silence from our mayor is disappointing.
Right then. We want:
- bus franchising
- bring West Midlands Rail under TfWM control
- more bus lanes, cycles lanes and tram routes
- a spatial strategy
- CAZ expansion
- Mayoral Development Company to expedite major regeneration
- centralised waste management authority
How about the ‘We Stupidly Bulldozed an Area Significant Enough to Have its Own University, Football Team and Jacobean Manor House So a Small Number of Rich People Could Drive From Sutton Coldfield to Their City Centre Offices Expressway’?
BREAKING NEWS:
Birmingham City Council considering renaming A38M "The Birmingham Expressway" to improve international recognition of the second city.
Great idea, good on you
@BhamCityCouncil
pic credit:
It’s also wrong. Rail prices have skyrocketed because demand is the highest it’s ever been but capacity hasn’t changed so prices are increased to reduce patronage.
If the govt stopped building bypasses and introduced pay per mile for drivers traffic would drop too.
Very concerning to hear Rachel Reeves calling "falling rail demand" post-pandemic a "new reality".
To meet climate targets, and to reduce inequality, we need to increase demand for rail.
This claim is also misleading - rail usage is now very close to pre-pandemic levels.
It’s standard UK practice to increase rail fares to reduce demand because of existing congestion but if roads are congested motorists get fuel duty frozen for a decade and the govt will throw a billion pounds at a new roundabout that will only improve traffic flow for 9 months.
This has been obvious ever since the HS2 announcement; there is no plan for capacity n of Birmingham. Nothing. The govt line has largely been - and I’m only being slightly facetious here - that there’s no problem bc after Covid people stopped using trains
What this doesn’t show is that there are a significant number of journeys between Birmingham and Nottingham/Leicester but the train speeds are so slow 90% of travel between them is by car. Opportunities for modal shift there are huge.
Honestly I never thought it would be possible to turn ‘you’ll have a corner shop over the road instead of having to drive 20 mins to big Tesco’ would ever be subject to conspiracy theories but christ people will hate on anything if you call it ‘internationalist & communist’ 16/16
I spy a tram somewhere I’ve not seen trams before 👍 I’m guessing full service speed when it starts will be faster than testing speed...
@WMmetro
@GtrBhamDev
The biggest challenge in tackling car dependence in cities is that the people who defend their behaviour by saying that there isn’t a convenient & reliable alternative are the same people who complain most vociferously when we try to deliver convenient & reliable alternatives.
@BBCNewsnight
@toadmeister
@maitlis
Of course he was wrong but the problem was threefold:
1) that he believed he had the authority, knowledge and credibility to make such a claim in the first place
2) that people actually take what he says seriously
3) that people still invite him onto TV to talk nonsense
‘A graduate earning £35,000 a year pays almost double the average tax of someone with the same income from rent on property, according to a study of inequality in the UK tax system…’
'Demand management' mean higher ticket prices. Despite the loud nonsense of idiots and frausters, the reality has always been that ticket prices will inevitably rise *without HS2* because - entirely intuitively - HS2 = more capacity = more supply = lower rail ticket prices.
NAO confirms that HS2 without phase 2 will result in trains with less space between Manchester and Birmingham than current west Coast services, and might require demand management to dissuade passengers…
A quick reminder that the demise of Smallbrook Queensway's Ringway marks the end of New Snobs, which will move to Broad Street and be known by everyone, henceforth, as New New Snobs. New Snobs is now Old New Snobs, obviously, and Old Snobs becomes Old Old Snobs. The new Mr Egg
Want to support drivers? Make trains and buses better, faster and cheaper and build cycle lanes and tram lines in major cities to cut congestion and increase modal choice.
The best way to support drivers is to enable them not to have to drive.
🚨NEW: Labour will support drivers with a laser-like focus on the cost of living, saving them up to £685 a year.
Labour will take action on unfair practices pushing up car insurance costs and set up a tough new fuel watchdog to tackle rip-off prices.
Any local authority whose planning policies allow stuff like this to be proposed let alone approved is not serious about tackling the housing shortage, homelessness, car dependence or air pollution.
Just missed my train from Snow Hill Station in the centre of Birmingham to a station 6 miles outside central Birmingham. In an advanced, prosperous and productive country the next train would be here in about 10 minutes, rather than an hour.
The Black Country has two motorways running through it. It also has some of the highest levels of unemployment and deprivation in the country.
This ‘road building drives investment’ crap has been demonstrably false for 60 years. Build public transport infrastructure instead.
Great news that the disruption on the M6 junction 10 will come to an end within weeks 👏🏻
This major £78m project will help tackle congestion and drive investment and job growth in Walsall & the region 🚗🚙🚛
@SkyNews
The eldest son of a US president who appointed his kids and their spouses to positions of power is trying to convince people that the US isn’t a banana republic by inciting insurrection to overturn the legitimate democratic vote to remove him from power?
Good luck with that mate
Taking money out of funding public transport infrastructure in the Midlands and North, spending it filling potholes in London and still branding it a ‘Network North’ project.
The contempt the government hold us in is unfathomable.
What’s particularly odd about the debate in Oxford is that Florence Pugh’s dad, one of the main opponents of new LTNs, owns two restaurants, one either side of a road closed decades ago as an LTN that he benefits from because the restaurants put tables in the pedestrian space.
An interesting study on Cowley Rd businesses - more opening now since the LTNs than at any other point in the last decade. Business owners are keen to invest in the area. I think we need a couple more years of data to be robust but this is encouraging.
NEW: Cathedral Square Wheel will take riders to heights of 35 metres in enclosed, 6-seater cabins. Riders will get a recorded commentary from Brum historian Carl Chinn as they go around! May 24 to September 1.
● Adults: £8
● Under 12s: £7
● Concession: £7
● Family: £25 ( 2