Watershed moment as our big cities unite in display of power
“It’s not a zero-sum game,” London mayor Sadiq Khan said, “If Birmingham does well it is not at the expense of London.”
The commission sees the three main challenges facing city regions as congestion, capacity and carbon – sorting out the transport problems, addressing energy, housing and IT needs and reducing pollution and poor air quality.
And each area has different ideas to achieve it.
Mayor James Palmer wants to join jobs in thriving Cambridge to affordable housing in the north of his patch through new roads and rail lines and sees a Land Value Capture – securing funds through future uplift in land values – as a way of achieving this. He is frustrated at government bureaucracy and wants speedier decisions and more powers.
While London’s Mayor Khan called for longer term thinking away from the four or five year political cycles highlighting Crossrail 1 – planned under Ken Livingstone, built under Boris Johnson and now set to open under his mayorship as an example. He said that growth of cities is not the problem – but the planning.
And in Manchester and the North they would like to see the pace of transport picked up considerably. Mayor Burnham said it takes longer to get from Manchester to Chester by train today than it did in 1962.
Although the details were different, the call was the same. Britain is far too centralised and we need more devolution for our cities to take back control and deliver the jobs and growth for the national economy.
Regional businesses and authorities are fed up of going cap in hand to the Department for Transport or Business for a handout, which if it A Birmingham Labour politician with hopes of a council seat next year has managed to upset the leader of the free world.
Beaming with pride, Sundip Megahni, who wants to be council candidate in Harborne, has managed to get himself blocked on Twitter by Donald J Trump.
The famously thin-skinned President, who makes all his policy announcements on the social media platform, with typical modesty described himself as the “most accomplished President in modern American history”.
But Mr Megahni disagreed and replied: “History will judge you harshly. Your name will forever be linked to ignorance and failure. And you’ll die alone and empty, just as in life.”
This strongly worded retort has been seen almost 300,000 times, liked more than 10,000 times and shared over a 1,000 times.
The only ‘downside’ is that Mr Megahni will no longer be able to see any future pearls of wisdom from the Donald.