Ryan Hogg

A little act of kindness starts an endless ripple - Anon

#AbsurdityOfCars: #Parking, #ResourceUse, #EnergyUse and #UrbanSprawl

Born at 354ppm

[Ryan Hogg @rh52d]

@LNER Thanks, will get in touch!

[Ryan Hogg @rh52d]

I must admit I'm a bit disheartened with the new @LNER refund policy, cancelled a trip to York from Alnmouth a couple of days before due to travel and applied for a ticket refund that has been rejected. Even a partial refund (tickets minus an admin fee) would seem more fair?

[Gareth Dennis @GarethDennis]

So by my calculations this £2.5bn HS2 saving* from reducing speeds** is less than the cost of holding the project and doing the reset. It's certainly less than the cost of the design change as Euston. How embarrassing for everyone involved.

[Ryan Hogg @rh52d]

For the record, I have long bought tickets via the @LNER app, and enjoy taking trips by rail where I can, but this experience has soured that feeling today. I'll probably reconsider buying advance now, and for someone who loves travelling by rail that feels wrong to be saying.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The last time an El Niño this strong hit, it killed 50 million people. That was 3 to 4% of the entire world population. Scale that to today and you're looking at 250 million equivalent.

The 1877 Super El Niño triggered simultaneous droughts across India, China, Brazil, and East Africa. Crops failed on four continents at the same time. The famine lasted three years. Researchers have called it "arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity."

NOAA's latest update gives a two-in-three chance this one reaches strong or very strong by fall. European models are even more aggressive. Sea surface temperatures need to exceed 2°C above normal to qualify as "super." The trajectory is pointing directly at that threshold.

Here's what makes 2026 structurally different from every previous Super El Niño: there are two independent supply shocks converging on the same crop cycle.

The Iran war has shut down roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade through the Strait of Hormuz. US fertilizer supply was at 75% of normal in mid-March, right when the Corn Belt needed it most. Fertilizer prices hit their highest level since 2022. That input shortage is already baked into the 2026 growing season.

The El Niño yield shock operates on a 6 to 12 month lag. India is forecasting below-normal monsoons for the first time in three years. Indonesia and Malaysia carry 90% of global palm oil, and El Niño production declines in those countries take 6 to 24 months to peak. Every strong El Niño in the past 55 years has reduced global cocoa production.

So the fertilizer shortage weakens the crops El Niño is about to stress, and the El Niño yield collapse hits in 2027 on fields that were already under-fertilized in 2026. Two shocks with nearly identical lag structures, converging on the same harvest window.

The difference between 1877 and 2026: we can see this one coming six months out. The commodity futures curve is barely pricing either shock. Whether that's rational discounting or willful denial depends entirely on what the Pacific Ocean does between now and October.

[Jim Cognito @JimCognito2016]

Lists of seats that 5 mil Farage has stood in:

Eastleigh
Salisbury
Bexhill and Battle
South Thanet
Bromley and Chislehurst
Buckingham
South Thanet
Clacton

Now he's telling you that politicians who stand in multiple seats are not to be trusted?

Do as I say, not as I do.

[Phil Sturgeon @philsturgeon]

Here’s the rail expansion we wanted.

Here’s the rail expansion Labour are currently trying to cancel.

[Ryan Hogg @rh52d]

Didn't think I'd be in agreement with @Lord_Sugar but there's a time for everything!

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 @Lord_Sugar in Sun Times

“Leaving Europe is the worst thing I have experienced in my whole time in business.”

“Johnson and Gove should be in jail. As a chairman I am obliged to tell the truth to my shareholders.”

“If I lie it’s a criminal offence. Politicians lie to the public — their shareholders — and get away with it.”

“All that bullshit about the 350 million quid going to the NHS after Brexit.”
#rejoinEU

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 @Lord_Sugar in Sun Times

“Leaving Europe is the worst thing I have experienced in my whole time in business.”

“Johnson and Gove should be in jail. As a chairman I am obliged to tell the truth to my shareholders.”

“If I lie it’s a criminal offence. Politicians lie to the public — their shareholders — and get away with it.”

“All that bullshit about the 350 million quid going to the NHS after Brexit.”
#rejoinEU

[BladeoftheSun @BladeoftheS]

As you can see from this graph of Party Membership Jeremy Corbyn and his policies were horribly unpopular...

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

So as the media

- pull up Streeting tweets from 2009
- challenge any word Rayner says about tax
- analyse any comment Burnham has ever made

They are all ignoring this story / plus the Habib disclosure / plus the £1.4million house purchase

WHY?

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Deeply alarming.

Josh Simons is a Morgan McSweeney sidekick.

He ran Labour Together - whose purpose was to crush the left.

There he led a smear campaign against journalists investigating its funding.

Ignore this now, regret it later!

[Chris (Rail Focus) @EngFocus]

@RailNutter No, is the short answer. The report makes it seem as though increasing the speed to 360km/h or capacity (beyond 12tph) later would require a full signalling upgrade to ATO. Not impossible but potentially prohibitively expensive and disruptive given the line will be operational 😮‍💨

[Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 @reformexposed]

Reform UK Gone Since the Local Elections

Dr David Bull has been sacked as Chair.

[Dale Vince @DaleVince]

If only Ed Miliband and Rachael Reeves had actually ‘broken the link’ - our energy bills would be lower now - I’ve shown them both how ’the link’ added £43 billion to our energy bills in 2023. We allow the price of gas to set the price of all other electricity in Britain, even made from the wind and sun - and when global gas prices go crazy, so does the price of our own green energy.

Two weeks ago Ed and Rachael announced they were breaking the link, days later when the detail came out we could see they had done no such thing. Offering voluntary contracts to legacy green generation is a joke. Their own forecasts are for a 10% take up by 2030 - a pointless gesture - other than the great headlines they got. But a betrayal of the country and arguably the government, many of whom believed the rhetoric. Not breaking the link allows right wing types to continue to blame green levies for what is a fossil fuel crisis, made worse by a defective market mechanism.

Keir Starmer should take control of this - and actually break the link.

[Reform Party UK Exposed 🇬🇧 @reformexposed]

Reform UK Councillors Gone Since The Local Elections: Updated

Since Local elections (less than a week):

➡️ Lost Seat
Mike Morris
Clarence Mitchell
Alan Cook
Mark Shooter
Kira Gabbert

➡️ Resigned
Daniel Devaney
Stuart Prior
Jay Cooper
Ashley Monk
Jo Monk

➡️ Defected
Nick Farmer

➡️ Suspended
Ben Rowe
Glenn Gibbins
Paul Heyward

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

🚨 The total reported donations by Christopher Harborne (Harbourne) to UK parties and individuals amount to approximately £28.8–29 million.

Having given this money to Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, the Tory Party, and Brexit Party/Reform UK, is now extremely likely to be the largest single individual donor to UK political parties/politicians in UK post-war history (certainly in the Electoral Commission era, from 2001 onwards when decent quality recording of donations started), surpassing lifetime totals by figures such as Lord David Sainsbury (around £25–27 million across Labour and Lib Dems) and Frank Hester (over £20 million to the Conservatives).

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Out of curiosity, why is there so much pressure on Starmer to resign

But no pressure on Nigel Farage who took a £5,000,000 gift from a foreign billionaire and coincidentally started calling for the very thing the foreign billionaire wants for the UK, crypto deregulation?

[PollCheck @poll_checker]

London 2026 raw votes (vs 2022):

Labour: 1.82M (−0.72M)
Green: 1.43M (+0.97M)
Conservative: 1.42M (−0.12M)
Reform UK: 854K (+850K)
Lib Dem: 818K (+44K)
Other: 397K (+155K)

Total: 6.75M votes cast across 32 boroughs

Reminder: most London voters cast 2 or 3 votes, so votes cast does not equal voters

Below: the largest party in each ward by votes

[Narinder Kaur @narindertweets]

Ben Habib is practically begging to be sued. Why? Because if Farage or Johnson take legal action, disclosure rules could force documents, payments and communications into the open. That’s the gamble ..not “prove me wrong,” but “let’s see the evidence.”
Check mate..bravo @benhabib6