Here Be Dragons.

One of the things that went largely unnoticed by most of the media in the Conservative announcement yesterday at their annual bun-fest about trashing the Heathrow third runway project was one rather glaring feature of the proposed alternative.

To cut flying, a Tory government would build high speed rail links between Lonon and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. This is clearly a way to 'connect the north' to the capital. Or, part of the north anyway. What happened to tbe bit above Leeds? You know, the bit with Newcastle. And SCOTLAND. It looks like someone just kind of forgot that there's actually quite a bit of mainland Britain north of Leeds. Though of course we are savages because we don't have Harvey Nicks or other such markers of 'civilisation'. It is also fairly incongruous given the amount of air traffic going through both Teesside (I refuse to call it Durham Tees Valley) and Newcastle airports. you would think that the East Coat mainline up to Edinburgh through Geordieland would be the ideal route for a high speed link, upgrading what's already there and giving a much improved connection to mainland Europe by means of the Eurostar.

Either that or perhaps the 'insane' Policy Exchange Report of earlier this year (q.v Rivers of Black Pudding) wasn't as mental as Cameron would like to have us believe.

I don't think I'll even bother talking about the meltdown across the world. It's hilarious enough trying to watch President Chimpy flailing helplessly out of his depth without needing to say anything else.