Missing links

This week: how the Treasury accidentally made the strongest case for devolution, and fun with papal numbering.

Before we get into the actual content, some news, hot off the press.¹ That top secret project I’ve been teasing intermittently for an infuriating number of weeks is secret no longer. In fact, two episodes are out already.

Paper Cuts is a thrice-weekly paper reviews podcast, in which a revolving panel of journalists and comedians dissect what the papers say and why. It’s produced by Podmasters, the people behind Remainiacs/Oh God What Now, The Bunker and so on, it launched on Monday, and it’s hosted by the excellent Miranda Sawyer.

I’m away this week – in Liverpool, working on the pilot for yet another secret thing which I can’t tell you about yet; fancy – but am scheduled to be on the panel for Monday’s episode, and weekly-ish thereafter. You can subscribe to the show here and read more, including who else is involved, here.

That’s enough promotion, now for some actual stuff.

From Washington to Dawlish Beach: The case for breaking the Treasury

A question arising from last week’s newsletter. Hanging on my every word as you no doubt do, you’ll recall that it included proposals for a sort of S-Bahn network for the north east of England, with some extensions to the Tyne & Wear metro and more frequent train routes stretching from Middlesbrough all the way up to Alnwick. 

The thing that struck me about this plan – the work of Kieran Carter, who runs the North East Heritage Library website – is that it really isn’t that fantastical. It’s all a matter of reopening freight routes to passengers, or re-laying track on routes that had been removed but which remain as pedestrian or cycle routes. Some of these proposals, such as reopening the Leamside line south from Pelaw, are already being considered. It can be done. 

And so, that question I mentioned: if it can be done, why hasn’t it been? 

Transport North East begs for some crumbs.

One short term barrier to investments of this sort, of course, is that for most of the last three and a half years either the Prime Minister or Chancellor has been Rishi Sunak: a man who this week chose to travel from London to Dover, a 74 mile journey you can do on a train in an hour, by helicopter. So frequently has this sort of thing now happened, and so long is the list of cuts to both rail investment and existing services that he’s made, that it’s getting harder to escape the obvious conclusion that the Prime Minister: