Greenwich used to have sign saying ‘Welcome to the centre of time and space’. Which is hard to top.

House I grew up had a ban on bean feasts.

England?

Different measure: I was using mm per year en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Or Paris, Rome and Lisbon!

Me too. So easily worth it. Genuinely beautiful work.

Much though I would love to have written Fervour, I’m afraid that’s a different Toby Lloyd. Congrats on your award!

In the famous Booth Poverty map studies of London and York one of the defining characteristics of the lowest vicious and semi criminal’ class was that they employed no servants. ie even the very-poor-but-quite-poorest might have done so.

I think these ones might actually live in my flat: “two female Yule pranksters who steal melted fat by stuffing it up their noses or putting it in socks.”

Feel seen.

Bargain! Great book....

T-shirt saying ‘people who get up early in the morning cause war, death and famine’

Combination of parenting and personal body clock means I tend to work 10-2pm then 10-2am…

File under 'can't be answered with a quick google search' aka 'complete mystery'.

Don't think so - it's the public corporations line going negative, and I think they were owned by the relevant central government departments. But happy to be corrected.

Bar chart showing public sector net investment in the UK since 1948.

The OBR's recent report on investment has this startling chart, but not the data behind it. Do the green lines turn negative in the 1980s due to the New Towns Development Corporations paying off their debts, council house sales under the Right to Buy, or something else? obr.uk/docs/dlm_upl...

Yes the catch was rather my point: funding is more likely to disappear than fixed rails.

The inflexibility of trams is, paradoxically, a bonus: permanent infrastructure has much bigger effects on incentives/decisions than services that could be cut tomorrow. Would you buy a home/business based on the current bus service nearby?

This. Obsessive parochialism is the mark of the true Londoner.

And real Londoners don’t just not get the tube, they don’t even live in places on the tube map.

Also, the real divide is not the Thames but the Fleet: west London is basically Buckinghamshire.

Top fact: a million seconds is about 11 days. A billion seconds is…. 32 years.

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?

A million pounds of public spending isn’t enough to count as loose change (equivalent to about 1p out of every £12,200).

It has recently reached the tipping point of numbers and quality here to be absolutely worth making the switch.

@catrionariddell.bsky.social is spot on here

I feel seen

I’ve done a starter pack on economics, data, and a bit of AI. Although the picture below is male dominated it is 50/50. Do let me know of others to include and I might do a second pack
go.bsky.app/R5q59tM

100%

Yes, the only real merits are its sheer damn silliness and quirky archaism - plus the pleasingly basic links to intimate bits of human anatomy.

Another plug for @transportfornewhomes.org.uk and @transportgood.org. Both no longer posting to the other place.

I have broken my toes so many times in equally stupid and mundane ways that my GP made me go for a bone density scan. Which confirmed that I don’t have osteoporosis - I’m just an idiot.

Bluesky has finally - and suddenly - achieved the critical mass of interesting/smart/informed contributors needed to provide me with my preferred diet of digestible geekery. Thanks Elon!

This is beautiful. Almost manages to impose logic on the imperial system of measurements. Almost….