Tom Barrett

@plannertomb.bsky.social

891 Followers 410 Following

Town Planner what does policy stuff. Based in Northern England.

The terrifying truth is that 15 minute cities was always about controlling our daily lives
Area around border of Leicestershire, East Midlands, Staffordshire and Warwickshire on the SDS geography map
Map showing proposed SDS areas, with a ring around Wigan and St Helens showing the 4 different SDS areas
Reform UK and Farage added to my muted words
Facebook post from Time out London: Inside the huge £218m train station opening in autumn - just 40 mins from London
The expectation as things stand would be that the Championship side Toulouse would replace Salford in the top 12. But that will not be the only change, as two more clubs will essentially be handpicked by an independent panel, based on a selection of criteria that is yet to be finalised.
Sign saying "Blackpool North Train Station"
Council website: During busy periods our planning system may run more slowly than usual. If you get a message that there is a server problem when you are searching for an application or leaving a comment, please wait 15 to 30 minutes and try again.
View from an empty beer garden / play area, with a Transpennine express train and hills in the background
Singer Self Esteem said her Glastonbury outfit was inspired by Sheffield's Meadowhall shopping centre because when it opened she "lost her tiny mind". The South Yorkshire songwriter wore a silicone bra with cups replicating the two glass domes of the mall's roof, and a cape embroidered with its outline. Self Esteem, real name Rebecca Lucy Taylor, said as a child she'd "march around there like a real chic adult". She added being on the food court's video wall was a "major goal" of hers.
It features Thompson emerging from a fountain in the middle of a shopping centre near her home town of Dunboyne. "Blanchardstown shopping centre," she says. "For the first 10, 11 years of my life, it was like my local village. My sister, who lives in Blanch now, goes to the shopping centre every day. You drive there if you want to see other people and then you drive back home again and live in your house by yourself."
NME from 1965 with tour dates for Tamla Motown UK tour.
Top result on Google is Wikipedia page for University of Greater Manchester, second is University of Bolton website.
Info screen on train "This is Clifton"
A sloping cobbled street
Blue plaque from Institute of Civil Engineers: To commemorate the reconstruction of Manchester City Centre 1996-2000
A yellow step through bike with a basket, parked on a street in front of a modern building in Manchester
A frozen fountain
National rail app screenshot. Daisy Hill to Stoke. A 91 min journey is delayed but there is an option to view alternatives.
My bike, with the sun shining casting a shadow over the road. Green fields in the background
Jasper from The Simpsons with his paddle.
Printed note in a document wallet taped to a fence ""FAO BRSK PLEASE DONT INSTALL THE PROPOSED POSTS AS WE THE RESIDENTS ARE WAITING FOR THIS ACTION TO BE REVIEWED AS UNDERGROUND CAVLJNF IS PREFERRED INSTEAD OF OVERHEAD CABLES"
A pub called The Northern Way
David Batty
"Sheffield Hallam University is officially the ugliest university in the UK. Over one in five students who took the poll voted for it. The uni’s brutalist 1960s buildings (read: hideous concrete monstrosities) were not popular among students. What really gave The Tab’s readers the ick was Sheffield Hallam’s Student Union, which might well be the weirdest-looking university building of all time." With picture of the student union, former national centre for popular music.
BT phone boxes from the 1980s (kx ones apparently)
My blocked accounts list on Facebook featuring: British Legacy, Brits Only, British Heritage, Vintage Britain.
Canal, bridge and a bike
Cycle use was so high in some English cities that one town planner described cyclists as "locusts." Thomas Sharp, the author of Town Planning, a Pelican Book that sold 250,000 copies in 1940, was describing postwar Oxford, but his comment that "the bicycle ... is one of the main causes of traffic congestion" would have been true of the war years, too, when cycling was both commonplace and necessary. We may consider the bicycle to be benign; Sharp did not. He called it "the new and dangerous invention of the [eighteen-] eighties..." He went on: "Bicycles came in hordes, like locusts, upon the university towns... The bicycle ... is one of the main causes of traffic congestion... [They] cannot be lightly dismissed as mere bicycles. A few locusts are of little importance. a Swarm is a plague"