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maltesestreets.bsky.social

@maltesestreets.bsky.social
64 followers 264 following 34 posts

Malta, Vienna now London. Interested in economics, devolution, housing, transport, active travel and urban planning. Used to write a blog. medium.com/@maltesestreets

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Reposted by @maltesestreets.bsky.social
Henry Mance @henrymance.ft.com · 04/09/2026
Nigel Farage is very lucky that he didn't know what was being discussed at the lunch where he was discussing it
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👻 Jack Djinn Wail 🧞 @jacktindale.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Oh crap. I shouldn’t have said they were donors. Oh crap. I shouldn’t have said they were illegal. Oh crap. And I certainly shouldn’t have rattled off all of their names in the space of thirty seconds. Ah. It’s too woke today.
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Will Davies @will-davies.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
The Rod Liddle biography suggests a certain post-1968 'type' who was just idiotically drawn to norm-breaching, moving via adolescent rebellion, punk, revolutionary socialism, and eventually ending up at racism, because by the 21st century that was the most efficient transgression still on offer
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Jake Gotta @jakegotta.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
“Cars are the most absurd means of transport in a city,” [says Jean-Louis Missika, Paris’s deputy mayor for urbanisation]. “They are parked 95% of the time. It takes two tonnes to move someone who weighs 70kg. And the denser the city, the more absurd it is.” www.ft.com/content/882e...
ft.com
How Paris beat the car
Though chaotic, the city’s transition has become a global role model
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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 22/07/2026
🎯 @stephenkb.bsky.social nails it on bus fare subsidies / VAT cuts. www.ft.com/content/31f4...
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Ed Morrish @edmorrish.com · 14/07/2026
i don’t think there’s a much beef between argentina and england as the media are making out; none of these players were even alive when the drug-addict maradona cheated in a quarter final, let alone when argentina’s fascist junta failed with their illegal invasion of british sovereign territory
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Alex Nurse @alexnurse.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Once again, for those in the back.
Smeed's law - highlighting a prediction made in 1949 that the average speed of traffic in a London would be 9mph. It was 8.98 after the congestion charge came in.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
They’ll be no bridge then. I’ll tell the motorists - now that Hammersmith Bridge has been confirmed to stay car free, reupping my piece on how it illustrates the choices central government must make to make devolution work:
ft.com
What Hammersmith Bridge could teach Andy Burnham
Devolved authorities do not face right or wrong choices, only trade-offs
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
only Americans can be *self-righteous* about corruption
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Stanley Pignal @spignal.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
VEEERRRRY punchy statement by UEFA on the reversal of the American red-card suspension. And quite right, too. "We express our disbelief at such an unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable decision." www.uefa.com/news-media/n...
uefa.com
UEFA statement on the Balogun case
Statement on decision related to Folarin Balogun
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Sam Kunti @samindrakunti.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Statement from Belgian FA.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Quite a yarn this. Really worth picking up the Sunday Times to read it, I think:
thetimes.com
Revealed: Nigel Farage secretly funded by convicted criminal
The Reform UK leader did not declare benefits including staff, security and housing by crypto-gambler George Cottrell, our investigation reveals
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Jordan @jordanpfot.bsky.social · 04/07/2026
So close! This is actually the opposite of the lesson of HS2.
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Matthew Fraser @matthewfraser.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
Agree entirely, ‘autobesity’ is out of control, cars and SUVs are dangerously oversized, especially in a city such as Paris. Get these luxury tanks off the road.
spectator.com
The rise of 'autobesity'
Nobody has ever browsed garage forecourts, tape-measure in hand, trying to buy the biggest vehicle to occupy the most road space. Is this enlargement epidemic really the consumer's fault?
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Jeremy Cliffe @jeremycliffe.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
10) Merge, or recast, both the Treasury and the Business and Trade Department. The UK Treasury is almost unique among major European finance ministries in its domination of economic policymaking, subordinating industrial vision to short-term accounting. That has to change.
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Jeremy Cliffe @jeremycliffe.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Apparently the incoming Burnham government is looking for "big ideas". Here are 10 of them:
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maltesestreets.bsky.social @maltesestreets.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
The phrase post code lottery is stupid to attack devolution. It's like calling a free market economy a "profit lottery". The fact it's a lottery is a good thing.
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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Move the capital. www.newstatesman.com/politics/201...
newstatesman.com
Goodbye to London: the argument for moving the UK’s capital
Such is its status as a major world city that London’s economy would barely skip a beat.
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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 24/06/2026
FT exclusive: Andy Burnham is looking to set up a 'Number 10 in the north', moving part of his prime ministerial operation to Manchester, in a radical attempt to shift power beyond Westminster ft.trib.al/49mgac4
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Institute for Government @instituteforgovernment.org.uk · 23/06/2026
And lastly @samfr.bsky.social tells us why post-Brexit political fragmentation has opened up space for smaller or fringe parties. www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/brex...
A quote from a comment piece by Sam Freedman for the Institute for Government.

"For now politics is a competition to see who can most effectively consolidate the Leave or Remain bloc, whether directly or through tactical voting, while attempting to win over a smaller pool of floating voters. But these blocs are largely orthogonal to questions of economic policy that are most critical to the country’s future."

The photo is of the exit poll for the 2024 general election projected on the BBC building, showing Reform UK winning 13 seats in parliament.
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Prof. Ian Walker @ianwalker.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
🚨 New research by us! 📣 Most British drivers don't know how dangerous SUVs are to other road users, but adding information to SUV marketing materials seems to do almost nothing to change people's plans to buy SUVs Here's a 🧵 on why harder action is going to be needed 1/10
A mockup SUV advert image with a prototype safety warning
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Robert Hutton @roberthutton.co.uk · 16/06/2026
This confirms something a lot of people in Westminster noticed: while Farage was happy to bluster through the Schoolboy Nazi stuff, he has gone to ground over the £5million "gift". The story has Reform worried.
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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
It is extremely annoying the way that Hunt, like Osborne before him, personally undermined the foundations of the British state and now gets to opine as if this mess was absolutely nothing to do with him.
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zatapatique @zatapatique.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
My feelings right now
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The Author, Séamas O'Reilly @seamas.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
On legitimising yet another pogrom.
Some prefer to step two degrees away from the above conclusion, blaming the violence not on one discrete crime, but rather on long-simmering discontent about “unfettered immigration”, to use the words offered by loyalist MP Jim Allister, in the wake of last year’s Ballymena riots. Such riots are appalling, the argument goes, but their anger reflects a legitimate concern; that immigration has simply gone too far.

Again, we risk demeaning ourselves by pointing out that rates of migration into Northern Ireland have never been connected to any rise in crime, and represent a tremendous benefit to the economy, from workers in hospitality and agri-business sectors to manufacturing and academia. Migrants are most beneficial in the health and care sectors, with 22 per cent of carers in the state coming from outside the UK and Ireland, without whom Tracey Reid, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Social Care Council, says the sector “could not survive”. Such statistics are, of course, broadly similar throughout the UK and Ireland, and were regarded as truisms until it became seemingly gauche for any prominent newspaper or politician to repeat them, in favour of contorting gymnastically to flatter the perceptions and prejudices of those who just hate migrants for entirely racist reasons. No matter how much they contribute to society, and no matter how few of them there are.

A compelling argument that this is the case can be found in the demographics of Northern Ireland itself. Its current population is just shy of two million. According to the most recent figures available, net migration in the state between 2001 and 2023 amounted to around 62,000 people, including less than 2,400 refugees in secure accommodation. Ballymena, which until this week had been the most prominent site of anti-immigrant violence in the state, sits in the Mid and East Antrim council area, which has seen fewer than 5,000 international migrants settle there this century. Only 3 per cent of Northern Ireland’s population belong to any ethnic minority at all.

For those of us who find the constant discussion of “the immigration problem” dehumanising and dishonest in any context, it’s revealing to see it deployed in places where immigration barely exists, not least for what it might suggest about such legitimate concerns everywhere else. We are left to presume that any number of non-white faces, no matter how few, is a salient enough horror for locals that their concerns become legitimised automatically. Even one, it would seem, is one too many.Most confusing of all has been the near-total absence of any context regarding who, exactly, is committing all this violence. The reluctance among media outlets to specify that these pogroms are the work of far-right loyalist gangs is particularly odd, given that such groups are fond of signing their work. The LVF, and associated gangs, have for decades sprayed their tags on the houses of the people they burn out, whether Catholics, economic migrants or refugees. Even now their graffiti proudly adorns walls and estates, demanding they be reserved for “locals only”. I’m old enough to remember when the LVF attacked the specially modified home of a severely disabled child because his family was insufficiently Protestant. I’m old enough to remember it because it happened less than two years ago.

When loyalist gangs burned Catholic families out of their homes in past years, there were few stern and sombre pleas that we should understand the arsonists’ concerns. Nor was there a reflexive jolt to place such acts in a context the perpetrators themselves might have liked, perhaps by drawing direct links between their violent acts and the existence of alleged crimes committed by disconnected Catholics many miles away. That this same logic is no longer applied to vast acts of violence against dozens of non-white people of all nationalities in Belfast, purportedly due to the actions of a single man from Sudan, is as preposterous as it is repulsive.
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Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Yes to all of this, but also let's not forget Jeremy Hunt, laying a trap (that Labour shouldn't have walked into) that basically salted the earth and has left the country weaker and less able to defend itself as an electoral gimmick
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Baz @barry1878.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Everton’s legal team
static.klipy.com
Lionel Hutz: I Move For A Bad Court Thingy
ALT: Lionel Hutz: I Move For A Bad Court Thingy
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Tom Phillips @tom-phillips.com · 08/06/2026
Call me an idealist, but I think that a prerequisite for hosting an international sport event should be that you're willing to host an international sport event.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
A whole 12% of voters think Brexit has been a success. And just 25% of Leave voters. Sigh.
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Ben Zaranko @benzaranko.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
You’ve probably heard of Henry – the High Earner, Not Rich Yet. But what about his nemesis, Richard – who Retired In a Comfortable House And Refuses to Downsize? There are quite a lot of Richards out there. They’re the subject of my column for today’s Observer. observer.co.uk/news/busines...
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Phil Costa @philcosta.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
Bit mad that three of the "traditional" top six Premier League clubs (and Aston Villa) are being managed by four managers born in Gipuzkoa. Entire nations don't produce that much talent and this tiny little Basque province is stacked.
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Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
X is currently full of posts falsely naming Christi Hill and another officer as having arrested Henry Nowak. One names and pictures the other PC, saying, "Wanted: dead or alive". It gives his address. What more exactly will it take to get UK MPs, ministers and departments off that hellsite?
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The Empty City @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
This, on the death of Henry Nowak, is an outstanding piece of journalism by @stephenkb.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/aa94...
ft.com
What Henry Nowak’s murder does — and does not — tell us about policing
Kemi Badenoch says his killing needs to be seen as a ‘Stephen Lawrence moment’ but the failures in both cases differ
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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 29/05/2026
Extraordinary testimony to the Millburn Report about sleeping habits
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Janine Gibson @janinegibson.ft.com · 28/05/2026
It’s a stupidly high bar but I believe this to be Craig Brown’s finest work
A page of parodic mail online headlines by Craig Brown from the current issue of Private Eye. Buy Private Eye it’s only £2.99.
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
30% of Makerfield's working population are in trades/manufacturing or manual labour. 70% are in professional, managerial, admin or services jobs. 22% work from home.
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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
You must understand: Lily, who works doing data analysis for the University of Bristol and lives in a house share is middle class. Brian, her landlord, who is a self employed plumber declaring around a third of his income is working class.
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Adam Bell @adambell.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
"Shall we tell motorists that they might have to drive slightly slower to conserve fuel, fellow Minister?" "Nah, let's betray democracy instead." www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK loosens Russian oil sanctions as fuel prices rise
The waiver reflects increasing supply concerns over certain fuels due to the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
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Owler Nook @owlernook.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Motornormativity is everyone in the comments explaining why it's simply not possible to imagine people going to hospital by any means other than a car, while a fifth of the population does not have access to a car.
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Conor Sewell @ccsewell.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Postponing fuel duty rise, easing sanctions on Russia, and price controls on supermarkets is a perfect triptych of why Reeves/Starmer have failed economically and fiscally. “What if instead of good left-wing policies we centred our platform about the most stupid, reactionary nonsense imaginable?”
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Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
- Subsidising consumption in the face of a supply shock - reducing incentives to drive less/switch to EVs - using up limited fiscal space to help better-off drivers rather than the most vulnerable. Hard to think of a worse policy right now.
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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
The era of supply shocks cries out for a politician willing to be straight with people: these shocks make us poorer, we have to divide out the pain while sticking up our values. None of these measures pass that test
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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 20/05/2026
Looking forward to buying tonnes of extra fuel now the fuel duty rise has been cut. There's definitely going to be enough supply, right?
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Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Fuel duty moves, Russian sanction tweaking and talk of voluntary supermarket price caps are just a total mess of a response to an energy price surge.
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 20/05/2026
So far the government response to a global oil supply shock is to subsidise demand through fuel tax freezes and 'holidays' and to help Russia's economy by easing sanctions. Not exactly a triumph.
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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Is it morally defensible? No. But is it a coherent response to a difficult situation? No. Ah, but is it effective in bringing down fuel prices? Ha, you're not going to believe this...
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Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Britain, 2335: The budget ceremony begins with the traditional Announcement of the Fuel Duty Rise. Two months later, there will be the traditional Postponement of the Fuel Duty Rise, continuing a ritual begun centuries earlier by Chancellors in the Fossil Fuel era
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
A child born on the Regent’s Park estate when the demolition started will be in their late 20s when they can get a HS2 train to Birmingham. What an avoidable mess.
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Prof. Ian Walker @ianwalker.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
In fact, as someone who's from a poor northern town AND has looked at the Census data I might just devote my life to sharing these figures over and over until I never again hear somebody tell me how poor northerners all have to drive everywhere
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