tomforth.co.uk
Same as @thomasforth on X. Gone back to Twitter for now. Quality filter, locations in bios, and polls pls. Leeds, Yorkshire, UK.
327 posts
7,050 followers
146 following
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Luke knows Hull far better than I do. He was the most popular candidate among my mates still living there and in the East Riding. My hope is that the Labour old guard have reached out and offered to help and he's accepted. eg. Alan Johnson knows 100x more about governing Hull than Nigel Farage does.
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Very good. The effects of congestion charging in Manhattan seem quite amazing. I haven't managed to keep with whether Trump has managed to ban it or not. Do you know if the congestion charge is still in operation?
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Thanks. Yes, an update is being rolled out. We didn't expect Leeds City Council to change the URL without putting a forward in.
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This will teach me to change 10TB to ten terrabyes (sic) on the last read through.
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#coproduction
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fixed!
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Ha. Thanks. Yes, I saw that. I think a terrabye is when you have a really big party and you have to say goodnight to everyone as they leave.
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I distrust your team much much less. Thanks!
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Buuuuut, I got my team to do the same and we got v different numbers
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No I don't think so. The National Data Library is about releasing data, not statistics. There isn't that much overlap.
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Includes this nice picture of the building where I think any such library should be. Unsurprisingly, I think location is a key part of any decision.
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Those two things sound like pretty much the same thing to me. Top priority for Britain, and especially for North England, is to get trains through Manchester sorted. That means either new tunnels, or two extra platforms at Manchester Piccadilly and properly fixing the Castlefield corridor.
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I dunno. Bang in enough "wider economic benefits" and say "transformative" enough times and they come out looking lovely. And that's all pretty much allowed by the current Green Book.
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*lurks*
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The meetings were in Leeds. No meetings in Oxford. But,... and I need you to sit down in case the laughing causes you to pass out,... our partnership was announced in London and I did have to be physically present.
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Love Oxford me. Never said a bad thing about it.
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Lots of people and organisations to thank for all their hard work on this, but a particular game-changer for us has been @productivity.bsky.social being based in Manchester. #ProximityMatters and #SpilloversAreReal even more than I thought.
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Trams are good. Nobody faffing for change or asking the driver if it stops at the co-op.
Get on, ding ding, and we're off.
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🙏
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🙏
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The moment I saw the first word of their company name I knew it was the right partner for us.
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I thought the Labour plans for something like that were an improvement over what we've got now. I am not surprised that they seem to have been made a low priority now that they are in government. It's quite a politically costly change to make with little payback.
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Thanks for this. It prompted me to update my data on where the Lords live and I fear it's actually even more skewed towards the South East. Here's the residence of those that attended in the last month. :/
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<sarcasm> the fully remote competitors will storm in any moment and outperform the incumbents and we'll all be liberated to live in Bradford or Bari on a Boston salary </sarcasm>
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<sarcasm> well that's just because they have bad bosses who don't understand that work can be done just as well remotely and demand presenteeism without evidence in order to boost their own feeling of important. </sarcasm>
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That does seem to have been the way things have gone in the 22 years since that was written. There's still a really big "remote work changes everything, we don't need physical agglomeration" group who push back on that and seem hard to defeat in the UK especially.
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Quite fun to read the bits on how hard it is to measure and to have fixed some of those problems, and to know where the data exists such that we could fix even more.
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Most enjoyable. I think I have seen most of the negatives they identify with "clusters policy". It is indeed a very weakly and very variably defined idea and most people asking after it, don't know what they're asking for.
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I'm loving reading this. Grapes so sour even the Scots wouldn't try make wine from them. I'm sure it's useful in its own way but I always enjoy a "they ignored all the pre-existing work how dare they" paper.
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This is a nice way to think about it.
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No maps, no graphs, not even much of a conclusion. If you thought you were getting 7500 word epics I figured it was best to let you down quickly.