Rachel Reeves flies back from Davos to lead a revival of the aviation perennial. Labour hated the idea before, but growth won’t grow itself, will it?
How can people say we can’t build anything in this country any more? Listen: our parliament is literally falling down, has caught fire 45 times in the past decade alone, and is going to take tens of billions of investment just to get it in the same postcode as fit-for-purpose – a fact which has now been kicked down the road for actual decades by successive cohorts of MPs who can’t handle being the ones to face reality, even though they are actually walking around in it every day. So don’t you dare tell me we don’t build things. We build the best damn metaphors in the world.
Another thing we might be building, perhaps in our own inimitable style, is a third runway at Heathrow. This is the heavy hint dropped by chancellor Rachel Reeves at Davos this week, which – if realised – could open the gate to the Labour Upside Down. Half of the cabinet hate it, half of them love it. Imagine Tony Blair but in asphalt.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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01/24/2025 - 08:56
01/24/2025 - 07:11
Former councillor Andrew Boswell accuses PM of wanting to lock people out of planning process
An activist singled out by Keir Starmer as an environmental “zealot” who must be stopped from making “vexatious” legal claims that thwart growth, has accused the prime minister of trying to lock people out of the planning process.
Andrew Boswell, a 68-year-old former Green councillor, insisted his two-year legal fight over the expansion of the A47 in Norfolk was worth it, despite it ending in defeat in the supreme court last year.
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01/24/2025 - 07:01
An aquarium in Galway has been hit by strong winds and flooding as Storm Éowyn sweeps Ireland and the UK. Footage shows water rising to the top of a staircase and streaming past the building as gusts blow flood water across the car park
Storm Éowyn live – latest updates
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01/24/2025 - 06:28
International research team based findings on 300m records from MOT data to estimate failure rates of all cars
Battery cars on Britain’s roads are lasting as long as petrol and diesel cars, according to a study that has found a rapid improvement in electric vehicle reliability.
An international team of researchers has estimated that an electric car will have a lifespan of 18.4 years, compared with 18.7 years for petrol cars and 16.8 years for diesels, according to a peer-reviewed study published on Friday in the journal Nature Energy. The findings were based on 300m records from compulsory annual MOT tests of roadworthiness.
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01/24/2025 - 05:51
A series investigating the country’s vast environmental inequalities – and how climate change will make things worse
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01/24/2025 - 03:00
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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01/24/2025 - 00:39
Corpse flower mania is sweeping the nation (inner-city Sydney)
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01/24/2025 - 00:00
Fridays for Future organiser warns conspiracy theories are increasingly taking hold despite effects of global heating
The rise in extreme weather is not generating political support for climate action, Germany’s best-known climate activist has warned, as conspiracy theories increasingly circle after disasters made worse by global heating.
“Like many, I did buy into the idea that big catastrophes would do something to politics,” said Luisa Neubauer from Fridays for Future Germany. “I bought into that – and I’m glad about it – because I was naively believing there was a democratic responsibility that would live through coalition changes and climate changes.”
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01/24/2025 - 00:00
Birdwatch survey comes as concerns grow over infection risks posed by garden bird feeders
People are being urged to spend an hour this weekend counting the birds in their garden, park or local green space for the world’s largest survey of garden wildlife.
More than 9m birds were counted last year by 600,000 participants in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch, providing a vital snapshot of how wild birds are faring.
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01/23/2025 - 23:43
Biologist says the massive numbers of jellyfish and algae in Tasmania’s Storm Bay are ‘drivers of harm in the ocean’
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A “magical” swarm of moon jellyfish colliding with algae dazzled onlookers this week, but it comes with a warning.
The bloom of jellyfish – temporary increases in populations – has occurred over the past few weeks in Storm Bay, east of Hobart, and as far as halfway up Tasmania’s east coast. The biologist and jellyfish expert Lisa-ann Gershwin said the population growth was “unprecedented” and had “stepped up dramatically” last month.
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