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Tom Forth Profile picture
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Jan 27 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Good. She is right.
Much better a trip on a private jet than lying about it which is what the current PM would do.
Also. Foreign Secretary of a top six world power. Until an election, she's pretty important.
The French government also chose austerity. "The squadron [for VIP gov. transport] operates four Dassault Falcon 50s, two Dassault Falcon 900s, two Dassault Falcon 7Xs and an Airbus A330-200. Additionally, the unit operates three VIP-configured Super Puma helicopters."

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More from @thomasforth

Tom Forth Profile picture
Jan 29
Hypothetically,... if this levelling up white paper is 400 pages,... even I'm going to struggle to read that.
Wait,... what?! 400 pages is just the first section.
It'll be very heavy "complexity and nuance" British bullshitting if the UK government's levelling up white paper is a thousand pages of complexity and nuance to make highly-educated people feel clever, but then the railways aren't electrified and Leeds has no tram.
Read 4 tweets
Tom Forth Profile picture
Nov 20, 2021
"How has the Government managed to spark a great trainline robbery row despite capital spending rising almost 50 per cent in the early 2020s and transport getting a big share of this rising pie?" ask @TorstenBell in his Top of the Charts. I'll explain. resolutionfoundation.org/comment/happy-…
@TorstenBell This is a "that's your GDP not ours" type story. Capital investment in transport in England (elsewhere is partly devolved) has been rising for two decades now and is at a record high. But it's not risen at all in Yorkshire or North East England. The increase is very London.
@TorstenBell The UK government has tried a few times to cook the books on this stuff. They tried (very quickly smacked down) to not assign Crossrail spending to a region because it was a "national project". They tried (for longer) with HS2 to assign the spending to regions it would benefit.
Read 12 tweets
Tom Forth Profile picture
Nov 20, 2021
There is a pretty large group of people in North England who think that we don't need a tram, nor rail of any form, to achieve economic success. We can do it all with cars and buses and still be prosperous and pay more of our own way within the UK.
I've listened to and read their arguments, I think they're nonsense, so I mostly ignore them. But the part I always wonder about is why they think that everywhere else in the whole world has come to a different conclusion to them.
ps. if there were no restrictions on building on the greenbelt and if Leeds was allowed to sprawl like Houston,... I think they might be quite close to being right. For all the other downsides I do believe that a car-based economy can be successful (GDP measure).
Read 4 tweets
Tom Forth Profile picture
Nov 19, 2021
No surprise to me. UK central government has always been embarrassed by how much better Transport for the North were at many things than core DfT and the Treasury. So Whitehall and Westminster have been killing it off. manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-m…
If you fail in the North, it's your own fault. If you succeed in the North, changes will be made until you fail. It's a common pattern. Used all the time.
I wrote up how the UK government killed off Tech North because it was too successful here. I have many more examples. tomforth.co.uk/technation2/
Read 4 tweets
Tom Forth Profile picture
Nov 19, 2021
They are also all massive double-decker trains that run on electricity. Eindhoven is a city about the size of Hull.
Oh and the Dutch national railways require no operating subsidy*. Zero. Zilch. None. Nada. Not a €. When you invest in infrastructure (almost all Dutch railways are electrified, stations are modern with level boarding and loads of bike parking) you save money over time.
At the risk of sending @GarethDennis into a pit of despair, a Dutch railway person once explained to me why they were doing level boarding at the stations. Just brutally honest in saying it would mean they didn't have to pay staff to help people get on and off trains.
Read 4 tweets
Tom Forth Profile picture
Nov 19, 2021
I would never have guessed that The Spectator would become a "what the North needs is a return to industry not a modern economy with a strong services sector" magazine. But there it is.
There's been quite a lot of that in recent days. The "real people" of the North need to get back in their mines and mills and leave the clever services stuff to London and the clever boffin stuff to Oxford and Cambridge. Wrapped up in the language of equality. From the right. 🤦‍♂️
"Humberside needs more industrial jobs, and connectivity by rail and road" > so the roads bit is done. Humber Bridge plus M62 plus M180. The rail is shocking. Yesterday cancelled* electrification to Hull and any hope of Grimsby, Cleethorpes, Scunthorpe et al. trains to Leeds.
Read 11 tweets

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