iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The London population decline appears to be mostly families with children

Chart of population by age in London showing decline in under 20s

Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Massive anti fascism demo in London today. Great to spend an afternoon with kind people across a wide spectrum of backgrounds

Piccadilly in London full of people marching against the far right

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Great to attend and speak at Community Energy London on behalf of SE1 Solar. We need Elexon P441 to unlock estate rooftop solar energy at scale

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

New Bazalgette Embankment with great views in all directions. Built ok the site of the Thames Tideway sewer construction site.

View from Bazalgette Embankment towards Blackfriars Bridge

View from Bazalgette Embankment towards St Pauls

View from Bazalgette Embankment towards City

View from Bazalgette Embankment towards Sea Containers House and Oxo Tower

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

The UK runs on immigration. Our NHS, care sector, food and transport depend on it. Brexit failed. Racism is creeping back into the mainstream. We should name it, challenge it, and defend our neighbours, friends and family - every time.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

The rebuilt Colindale station is cool but so is the massive development of the area. High density for outer London and 10000 new homes.

High density by the standards of outer London. 15 floor blocks of flats.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

New council flats going up in Bermondsey. Southwark is building more council homes than anywhere else in the UK.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

Stockport marketpkace. A great town to visit. Recently covered on YOG. yeoldeguide.com/stockport/

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 16/12/2025

ONS on employment. Exactly what the government set out to do: shift economic activity towards healthcare. Something has to get smaller and it's retail, hospitality etc. All sectors at link share.google/uxK8LUh3h4lO...

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

Massive crane being assembled outside my office on Blackfriars road. Huge.

Massive red tower crane on floor next to office

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Talk of electricity grid upgrades today. I wonder if local energy like SE1 Solar could help. Currently we pay for national grid transmission even when energy is sold within the same substation as where it is produced. Solar panels in London can produce energy for London even on a winters day

Blue skies in Bermondsey December 3rd 2025

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

yeoldeguide.com/stockport/ latest podcast episode out. The town on many levels: Stockport. History of the industrial and social development of Stockport in part 1 🎩👒🤠

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 24/11/2025

Grateful to our friends in California for this structured breakdown of Radiohead's most miserable songs in six categories.

Two of the six categories of Radiohead miserable songs

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

40 new social rent homes sensitively added to Maltby Street, Bermondsey. Replacing old car parks. Very good.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Improving bus speeds one of the most underrated actions in transport planning. Increases mode share & revenue while lowering cost. Step free. It's about prioritising the road space for productive use. This corridor is ideal- a big gap in the rail network, dense, busy, but slow speeds lowering demand

Map showing imprortant bus priority corridor along Walworth Road, Camberwell Green Denmark Hill, East Dulwich

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

How much of UK GDP is spent cleaning up after muppets? A poor deployment of productive capacity. Sorry we can't build homes or provide care because x% of our workers are cleaning up lazy people's crap.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

3 trains (including mine) racing into London Bridge. All of them have all seats taken. Plenty of demand for sustainable travel into London at 2pm on a Saturday.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 10/11/2025

I regularly travel around East Anglia. The railway is the best in the country. High punctuality, level access, clean trains. It pays a premium back to the government. The six year old trains still feel new. A success.

Interior of a greater anglia train to Lowestoft.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 04/10/2025

Cities around the world are calming their streets, making them safer and cleaner. This road in East Dulwich used to be a congested rat run. Great example of improving London for its residents and due for planting next month 🌳🌿⚘️

Melbourne Grove East Dulwich new paving, seats and plants

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 29/09/2025

Ilderton road is the stop that gains the most from Bakerloop. Loads of homes going up, the Tustin estate having more added, a new cycleway and Bakerloop. An exciting area. Its high council rent area so benefits won't all be lost to rents going up.b

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

www.gov.uk/government/p... New Towns Taskforce report makes a compelling case and identifies some genuine new towns, and some urban extensions. Ease of land assembly & transport drive choices. The Crews Hill town could make a lot of money for the state if the land value uplift is taxed.

Screenshot of map of locations of new towns

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

Good to see the new Bakerloop bus with a decent number on board. I think it will need more bus priority, and bus stops set into the pavement to really zoom past stopping buses. But it has got quite far ahead of the 53 stopping bus I'm on. Time will tell. Loads of new flats at Ilderton Rd so needed.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

Stockport interchange is fantastic. Massive bus station, elevated park, cycle route. In the background is the Stockport Viaduct which opened in 1840 and carries the mainline to Manchester on 11 million bricks. Best view of the interchange is from a train on the viaduct.

Stockport interchange gardens and cycle path with rail viaduct in the background

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

My colleague and I have been published! This is our method to use machine learning on massive multimodal data to automatically identify the most effective pubic transport routes and produce thousands of value for money business cases automatically 🚇🚌🚊 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Example benefit cost ration for thousands of machine generated bus routes

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Wow Heathrow runway £49bn. You'd get several hub airports for that in other countries. Just noticed the Lower Thames Crossing is £9bn - 40x more expensive inflation adjusted than the first Dartford tunnel. Appreciate its much bigger, better and safer, includes access motorways but still.

Chart showing cost inflation of lower Thames crossings

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

As a birthday treat my podcast cohost (who usually does most of the talking) has let me talk about metros in the UK! Available on 🍎, Spotify etc. yeoldeguide.com/britain-inve...

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Handel's Semele at the Royal Opera House is outstanding. And a bit different from usual - but easy listening tunes. Crazy it was first played at Covent Garden, albeit a different building, in 1744!

Photo of royal opera house stage at end of Semele

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

First Light Festival one of the best events around. Beach party, music, stuff for kids, amazing food. Goes on all night. Unbelievably it's free. Lowestoft beach one of the best around ⛱️

View of Lowestoft Beach during First Light Festival

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

The UK Infrastructure: a 10 year Strategy notes how poor access to city centres limits core city productivity by making these cities function as smaller cities than they are. Great work from Centre for Cities a couple of years ago underpinning this. Its a key difference vs Germany, France, etc.

Chart from the UK Infrastructure: 10 year strategy using the Centre for Cities analysis on access to cities centres to show UK city centres have smaller population catchments than they should.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Was late to the party but agree with everyone else: The V&A storehouse is great. Cool to see work restoring items. Parts of Robin Hood Gardens just hanging there.

Inside the V&A storehouse, 4 floors of museum storage.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 07/06/2025

Sad that they run down the service like that. Lack of foresight. Its left poor journey times to key cities. A few years ago I compared journey times by train and car in North and Midland and Nottingham's rail services did badly. Fast to London / Leicester via MML but elsewhere driving is faster.

Diagram of journey time comparison for rail and driving from Nottingham to various places in the North and Midlands. Nottingham has poor rail journey times to most places.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Rethinking stakeholder engagement: Forget the old “interest vs influence” matrix. I worked with ChatGPT while on the bus home to make a version that asks: How important are you to them? It’s a more realistic lens for modern, human-centred leadership (More aligned to my experience) *image not perfect

Importance to them vs influence over us matrix

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

My TfL branded dice are available now. Only a tenner each. Limited supply, cash only. Etc. (Sad that this was all I could come up with at a baby shower today)

Wooden baby toy with London Underground lines written on the sides in felt tip pen

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

The deliciousness, interest and value of food around Elephant & Castle is amazing. Such as this Chaulafan. Traditional Ecuadorian kitchens at Elephant serve this Chinese-inspired rice to newly arrived Chinese Londoners. Chop sticks included. A whole migration story in a single dish.

Chaulafan is a traditional Ecuadorian fried rice dish, heavily influenced by Chinese cuisine. It's a popular example of Chifa—a fusion of Chinese and Latin American cooking that developed in countries like Peru and Ecuador due to Chinese immigration.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

The trams are great but not enough capacity long term for the densities now seen in Manchester. Needs a metro line or two. www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater...

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Final game in the Prem for the mighty tractors but a magnificent atmosphere nevertheless 🐴⚽️🏟 #ipswich #itfc. Not good enough for the premier league this time but massive progress for the club over the last few years.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Rail privatisation has had its ups and downs. Many downs. A huge success has been Greater Anglia where a vast fleet replacement was done off government balance sheet. New electric or bi mode trains on every line in East Anglia replacing ancient diesel pacers. A huge achievement.

Anglia trains a huge improvement over what we had before

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Good to see. Slow build out of valuable sites is a huge frustration. Endless list of massive sites in London: Royal Docks, North Greenwich, Abbey Wood, Stratford, Barking Riverside, Convoys Wharf.

Empty land for decades at convoys Wharf near central London next to the river

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

This is the story of many suburban rail lines in UK. Same issues in all the big cities of different traffic types sharing routes & junctions preventing a frequent & reliable service. From Connecting the North West.

Diagram from Connecting the north west comparing traffic types by route between Manchester and Liverpool https://greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/media/r0fnp32u/2025-05-21-connecting-the-north-west-to-drive-national-prosperity-lmr-accessible-digital.pdf

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Huge development around North Acton. Its visible from miles around in West London. Still feels like a disconnected place and roads not pleasant for walking st all, but give it time I guess...

Buildings under construction at North Acton

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Any Sunday morning run I go past numerous undeveloped sites in a city with some of the highest house prices in the world. Convoys Wharf has space for at least 3500 homes, is a prime historic site, and vacant for decades. It's a piss take. Give me a few meters of it and I'll build myself.

Convoys Wharf Deptford. Vast empty space for decades.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Cores rising for the 1600 homes at the Bermonsdey Biscuit Factory. This is a low rise area dominated by flats of 4 or 5 floors or tarraced housing so it will make a big impression.

View over Bermondsey towards the biscuit factory

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

One place where thousands of homes are being built, 25 years too late in my view, is Canada Water. It's a great place with a council that is pulling on all the levers available to build. Not enough levers.

New tall building at Canada Water next to a 1960s tower and library with skyline in background and wetland / bridge in foreground.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

This metro line in Central London was good enough to be part of London Transport in the 1950s but now is planned & specified by the national government Department for Transport. Urban rail in the UK should be devolved to local mayors / regional authorities.

An old northern line train at the London Transport museum with a northern line map including the northern city line

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Just a few meters separate vast solar array potential on a housing estate to the right of the picture, from a big daytime electricity user (hospital) on the left. But we sell power via the grid as though the consumer is 100 miles away.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

yeoldeguide.com/nottingham/ latest episode of Ye Olde Guide goes big on Nottingham Castle and the caves you can make out in the Castle Rock.

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Liam K McGrath @liammcgrath.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Genuinely good bus station (from my casual perspective - regular users know better!) in Cardiff. Next to trains, shops, information screens, good toilets, protected from elements, oversite development. Every town should have this.

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