So the results are in. The Tory Party took one hell of a beating in the North Shropshire by-election. And this coming on top of the many other scandals and headaches for Johnson’s government. All of this means a leadership challenge against Boris Johnson looks likely in the short to […]
IMPORTANT: this blog post is correct as of 15 December 2021, and all the text below is unchanged since then. At that time two borders – Russia to China, and China to Laos – could not be crossed due to COVID. The outbreak of war in Ukraine has also meant […]
I am writing this blog post at the end of a 5 day trip from Berlin to Bled in Slovenia by train and back, through the 4th wave of the COVID pandemic and crossing Austria in lockdown. I’ve been tweeting about the trip as I went along on the hashtag […]
Further to my previous blog post about the idea, I am now happy to confirm that the #ZugGegenFlug experiment is on! I’ve partnered with multi-modal travel booking platform Omio who, as well as supporting with ideation and planning (thanks Emily, Boris and team), will be providing the tickets for participants […]
Just under 2 years ago I acquired a 2001 Birdy folding bicycle, and explained here how I upgraded it to more modern standards. Since then the Birdy has accompanied me on many business trips, especially to smaller cities with good bike infrastructure where bike hire is either expensive or non-existent […]
An excellent Twitter thread by Alistair King caught my attention yesterday, critiquing Keir Starmer’s supposed new slogan “make Brexit work”. Meanwhile Andrew Adonis summed it up visually with this: “Make Brexit Work” pic.twitter.com/ExqjoKThal — Andrew Adonis (@Andrew_Adonis) November 7, 2021 Aside from the snarky tweet, there is a nugget of […]
Mark Smith and Simon Calder are having a race today. Mark is taking the new Lumo train from London to Edinburgh, and Simon is racing him – on a flight. It’s a bit of fun, but with a serious purpose – as passengers often underestimate the time it takes them […]
When you travel by rail Europe-wide as much as I do (and also spend as much time debating rail policy in Europe as I do when I am not travelling), you end up with an overwhelming impression: cross border rail does not work as well as train travel within one […]
*** WARNING: I have never done this personally! Attempt this at your own risk! *** Anders Peterson, Associate Professor in traffic systems at Linköping University in Sweden, posed an interesting question on Twitter: An attractive train route from Sweden to continental Europe is train 3 (night train Stockholm-Malmö), Ø-train (shuttle […]
On Thursday 7th October the EU Year of Rail “Connecting Europe Express” reaches its final stop in Paris after a month criss-crossing Europe. If ever a tweet summed up the emptiness, the hollowness, of this train, it was this by Community of European Railways’ Yann Seimandi: Amazing experience and discussions […]
On Friday I was asked for the first time to present my Trains for Europe campaign at an old style offline conference in Brussels – at Friends of Europe’s European Young Leaders event. I am an alumnus of that programme, but back when I was in the scheme it was in my […]
High resolution PDF and PNG files, the draw.io XML and the .ods files of the workings are all available here! Hochauflösende PDF- und PNG-Dateien, draw.io-XML und die .ods-Dateien sind hier verfügbar! Version 1.0.0 EN – 05.09.2021, 18:00 The first version of the new series! Based on the polling and […]
