So, there is an election coming and apparently it might be decided in Keighley, my home constituency. This is likely to be the third event to occur in the area, after the Tour de France went through in 2014 and Keighley Cougars RLFC won the 1995 second division championship, so I thought I’d devote a…
Read More Come, muse, let us sing of KeighleyTurned down by Politico Europe for being too local The populist threat is on everyone’s mind, whether from Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, or the AfD. In the UK, it’s been argued in a classic twitterstorm that Labour’s Northern heartlands are especially threatened, precisely because they’re “the heartlands” – ultra-safe parliamentary seats and city councils where…
Read More Bradford: Populism And AfterBack in 2011 the government had been proposing to spend £190 million on a flood defence scheme for Leeds. Instead, they cancelled the scheme and only did £50m worth of the work. The scheme was based on a hypothetical worst-case flooding scenario. In 2011, the economic losses from such a flood were estimated at £500…
Read More Sound financeI imagine we’re going to be in for quite a few of these, so let’s get in quick. As Daniel Davies allegedly wrote: Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to…
Read More Why the floods mean you should support my politicsAs an update to this post, somebody asked a representative sample of Yorkshire folk what they wanted. What happened? Well. A directly elected, Yorkshire-wide regional assembly Stronger powers that would include some tax-setting and law-making powers; this is to ensure actual power is achieved over issues such as transport infrastructure, economic development and education. To…
Read More #devono doesn’t have to be negative, you knowThings I argue with @thomasforth about: "We'll sign the deal as long as the announcement on gov.uk calls us 'Britain's second city'" > bet this happened. https://t.co/G2dk6MQBHz — Tom Forth (@thomasforth) November 17, 2015 The problem here is that Tom thinks devolution to Yorkshire, or some subset of Yorkshire, will be all like this old…
Read More Vote no in the referendum that doesn’t exist.Alternative maps of Britain are an occasional theme. Here’s something really interesting – if it has a regional accent it probably has a genetic signature. Compare and contrast – here’s the map based on BT call-detail records from here. Here’s the genetic one from here:
Read More West Yorkshire: Special.What is it that’s changed in the paedophile inquiry? We’re now looking at a triple murder inquiry and the police seem to be taking it deadly seriously. I have a theory. North Yorkshire police just apologised for denying for years that they ever suspected Jimmy Savile or his associate, Peter Jaconelli. In fact, they investigated…
Read More a high-entropy node in the network of networksSo yer big french pushbike sportsday. Having run away from the London ‘Lympics, you may be surprised to learn I was back in Yorkshire for it. The explanation is simple – it went through the village I grew up in twice, a unique distinction. As our old neighbour’s slogan goes, so good it’s coming twice.…
Read More Big Sportsday 2.0: YorkshireI have been reading the Leeds Teaching Hospitals report on Jimmy Savile. Obviously, it couldn’t really be any more grim, and you’ll have heard the latest shocking revelations via the mainstream media and Jamie Kenny. But what about really sick and perverted behaviour? Here’s some for you. A hugely important theme in the report is…
Read More Genuinely evil