Jennifer Williams Profile picture
Sep 16, 2020 6 tweets 1 min read Read on X
Seems like England is now under the scope of lockdown type things, aside from Leicester, bits of Leicestershire, Blackburn, Pendle, Bradford, other bits of W Yorkshire and E Lancs, all of Greater Manchester and more recently Birmingham. Welcome! Here’s what you can expect
Each week, your council will engage in discussions with govt about what can be done. You won’t be told what the trigger is for lockdown measures. Keep calm. It’s natural to feel angry any powerless but take it from people who know: it’s pointless.
Some weeks, things will be announced by the govt at 9pm on twitter. Other weeks, nothing will happen. And on other occasions you’ll find out from the front of the daily telegraph. You may also find that what you’re meant to do changes at short notice. Don’t worry: this is normal.
You might also find other places with higher Covid infection rates than your area are subject to no measures at all, while your area is. Or the other way round. This is also normal.
You’ll increasingly find you read news articles about ‘lockdown measures’ and mutter bitterly to yourself: ‘Why does WIGAN get to go ice skating?’ even if you have no interest in ice skating
Anyway, good luck England, you’re welcome.

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More from @JenWilliams_FT

Mar 28
Another push as the free views probably ran out.

The Teesside taxpayer is now on the hook for £4m+ after the mayor/Teesworks tried to ransom the area’s biggest private sector employer - and then conclusively lost at the high court

on.ft.com/49vD2I1
This is far too long a saga to relay in a thread but, in brief:

PD Ports runs the port next to Teesworks and is the statutory harbour authority for the Tees. In March 2021, the development corporation overseen by Ben Houchen launched legal action against it over access
It sought a declaration that PD had *no* rights at all - and that bit is important - over its land, the former steelworks at Redcar, which is now part of the Teesside freeport
Read 15 tweets
Mar 8
A brief thread on what it’s like to read a South Tees Development Corporation board paper. Approx one third of next week’s agenda is devoted to the declarations of interest procedure, which as we know is rigorously adhered to 1/
There then follows a report about landfill tax exemptions, much of which is about “onerous” environment agency rule changes now making it harder to dump toxic waste /2
There then follows an update from the chief exec, which I have to confess baffled me. Lots of things that looked like they’d been copy and pasted from a previous update 3/

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Read 9 tweets
Feb 2
A more in depth look at what that Teesworks report actually found (free to read for the first 300):

on.ft.com/49kbiX6
Will do that mega thread soon, not forgotten my somewhat hasty promise
…but thought it was worth, in the first instance, laying out some of the key findings, particularly given some people commenting on it don’t appear to have actually read it.
Read 12 tweets
Oct 4, 2023
On great rail cancellations, a reminder that the expansion of Piccadilly, intended to alleviate the chronic northern rail bottleneck in the centre of Manc, was promised a decade ago, then put on ice, messed about with and actually only officially cancelled a few months ago.
The Transpennine upgrade? Well

on.ft.com/3IOV8bW
The version of Northern Powerhouse Rail eventually signed off by govt two years ago, meanwhile, was a wildly scaled back version of what northern leaders had spent years drawing up (with the backing of George Osborne), because govt didn’t want to spend the £
Read 6 tweets
Jun 7, 2023
PD Ports, which owns the port next door to Teesworks - and is also in the Teesside freeport - accused Houchen of ‘inaccurate’ public statements re a case that has been rumbling on for two years
on.ft.com/3N0VGOK
The development corporation sued PD over access in 2021. In court papers at the time, PD said it had been directly told by a corporation board member (an allegation that is denied) that the goal was to force a distressed sale: drive down the port’s value, buy it cheap and flip it
The development corporation did then try to buy the port - to incorporate it into Teesworks - when it was put on the market later that year, but owners Brookfield pulled the sale
Read 7 tweets
May 15, 2023
Ok so, here goes. My (long-researched) attempt to explain why so many allegations are flying about in relation to Ben Houchen, the former steelworks in Redcar and, by extension, the Teesside freeport

enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/d1051c0…
(It is not completist, because as anyone who has followed this knows, that would be impossible to attempt in six articles let alone one.)
This has taken many many months and I want to be the first to recognise the huge and forensic body of work Private Eye have done on it. Private Eye is not a comic - it’s actually the reason I first wanted to be a journalist.
Read 29 tweets

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