This morning, a new £19bn Crossrail line has been unveiled in London as the capital gears up to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee.
Four years late, £4bn over budget and still not completely finished, whilst the new Elizabeth Line is undoubtedly a welcome new arrival in the capital, the aplomb with which it has been announced has left a sour taste in some northerner’s mouths.
Amidst the rejection of plans for an underground here in Manchester and a series of derailed promises regarding the scrapped Eastern HS2 leg, which planned to connect the East Midlands with Leeds; whilst the capital hails its new ‘cathedral-like’ stations and the ‘longest trains ever seen’ in London, some northerners are feeling decidedly ticked off.
As the new Elizabeth Line was unveiled in London this morning, the Prime Minister tweeted that “it’s not just Londoners that will reap the rewards, but the whole country”.
The new Crossrail Line in the capital sees more than 70 miles of train lines and 10 new stations open, spanning London and the South East from Reading to Heathrow.
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The new 205-metre-long trains can each carry up to 1,500 passengers and will run every five minutes to start with, cutting the journey time for Londoners crossing the capital in half.
The project has already created 42km of new tunnels under central London, with the Prime Minister revealing last week that he already has a second £30bn London Crossrail 2 project in his sights.
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I’m so happy London’s new £18.8bn #ElizabethLine railway has opened. Meanwhile if you want to get from Leeds to Manchester in less than 1 hour and spend less than £15 you can go bloody swivel, the government hasn’t got money for that!
£9,000,000,000 for the Elizabeth line while the quickest train between Leeds and Manchester is still 53 mins to do 47 miles. Northern powerhouse plans scrapped. Disgrace.
However, whilst Londoners will be enjoying better connectivity than ever across the city over the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend, here in the north of England it has just been announced that train services in and around Manchester will be ‘severely disrupted’.
Network Rail will complete a ‘major signalling overhaul’ in Manchester over the Jubilee weekend, seeing a large number of Manchester trains replaced by buses in order to help our trains ‘run on time’.
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As part of these upgrades, a 132-year-old signal box near Philips Park will be removed. Network Rail will also replace nearly 4km of track and secure over 2.8km of overhead wires.
As a result, passengers travelling between Leeds, Liverpool Lime Street, Manchester Victoria, and Stalybridge over the weekend will likely suffer delays as services are re-directed and/or replaced with buses.
Makes me so happy when Elizabeth line posts say it's "12 trains per hour to begin" and then I look and there are 6ph Liverpool-Manchester and Manchester-Leeds
The ‘colossal upgrade’ to Northern rail is part of another delayed project, initially forecast to be completed in 2018.
A part of the Transpennine Route Upgrade, it was originally part of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse Rail pledge, which also featured plans to upgrade Manchester’s Piccadilly and Oxford Road stations
Once labelled a ‘priority’ by the Prime Minister, this original Northern Powerhouse Rail line was envisioned as a 40-mile, high-speed route that would connect east to west between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford.
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It would have enabled more hourly trains to run between northern cities and allowed for shorter journeys on almost every important route, but the £36bn plan was ultimately rejected by Westminster for being too costly.
Here in Manchester, rail passengers have become quite used to travelling on cramped, overcrowded trains with reduced timetables – but it appears that the coverage of the new £19bn Elizabeth line is not going down well on social media today.
So much for #LevellingUp@grantshapps@michaelgove On a train from Leeds to Manchester. Absolutely rammed standing room only, and just one or 2 an hour. I heard that the £18bn Elizabeth line in London has 24 trains an hour. Thanks… just thanks…
Taking to Twitter, Mancs have not held back on voicing their opinions, with one person tweeting: “So excited for the Elizabeth line to improve Manchester! It’s what we’ve all been waiting for up here.”
Another said: “How is this good news for the ‘entire country’? Good news for London yes, but is theElizabeth Line going to mean a more frequent service between Lancaster and Barrow? Or more carriages on trains down to Manchester? Or more affordable rail fares nationwide?”
A third added: “£9,000,000,000 for the Elizabeth line while the quickest train between Leeds and Manchester is still 53 mins to do 47 miles. Northern powerhouse plans scrapped. Disgrace.”
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So excited for the Elizabeth line to improve Manchester! It’s what we’ve all been waiting for up here https://t.co/LcoRVazF8J
A fourth said: “So the Elizabeth line opens 3years 6 months late at a cost of 18.8 billion but meanwhile in the north we can’t half a major route built between Sheffield and Manchester still??? Talk about levelling up.”
Another added: “New Elizabeth line is 100km. If you put a pin in central Leeds and drew a 100km radius, you could reach as far as Liverpool, Manchester, Lincoln and all coastal towns in the north east and west. WHY does London need a an inch of dazzling new infrastructure?”
Whilst a further person commented: “Nice to see the London based, The Queen Elizabeth line, which has cost the UK taxpayer £20billion is making national news. I look forward to using the service from the north where a trip to London costs £140 return or a trip to Manchester takes longer today than in 1965…”
The Department For Transport said in a statement: “We continue working towards delivering a rail network that is cleaner, greener and fairer to taxpayers, while boosting opportunity right across the country.
“Our work to date has seen 800 miles of electrification in just four years and the largest ever single investment with the £96bn Integrated Rail Plan. This will deliver improvements to the Midlands Main Line, as well as the completion of the Transpennine Route Upgrade.”
Feature image – Boris Johnson / Facebook
News
Yorkshire Tea is Manchester’s ‘favourite’ brand of teabags, according to new data
Danny Jones
The Great British debate of which teabag is best is one that will rage on for millennia, that’s just the way it is, but according to new data, it sounds like we might at least have an answer to which brand makes for Manchester’s favourite brew.
It won’t be a surprise to many of you and we can certainly confirm it on our end but the one and only Yorkshire Tea looks to have taken the cuppa crown when it comes not only to Manchester’s preferred teabag but seemingly the best-loved in Britain as a whole.
This is according to numbers pulled by local firm, TonerGiant. The Atherton-based ink and toner suppliers decided a poll around the office wasn’t enough and instead chose to turn their knowledge of the market and consumer trends into a bit of online research.
At the end of the day, tea has got to be the most important of all office supplies, surely?
According to the stats, Yorkshire Tea is Manchester’s favourite brand of tea bags. (Credit: Yorkshire Tea)
Using data from trusted online source Statista, which nailed down the top 25 teabag brands in the UK, each make was then ranked in relation to its average monthly searches via Google Keyword Planner to reveal that Yorkshire Tea was clearly the top dog.
With roughly 390 searches per month in Manchester alone, compared to PG Tips as the next best (260), it seems us Mancs have to concede at least one thing to our fellow Northern county: Yorkshire makes a bloody good brew.
The Roses rivalry raged for centuries but if there’s one thing that brings us together, it’s a good cuppa.
In terms of other tea brands that came in high on the leaderboard, Pukka Tea (170), Twinings (140)and Teapigs (90) made up the rest of the top five most-searched tea brands in Greater Manchester. It’s also interesting to see how those figures looked when extrapolated nationwide. Here’s the full ranking:
Rank
Tea
Average UK monthly searches
1
Yorkshire Tea
27,100
2
PG Tips
18,100
3
Pukka Tea
14,800
4
Twinings
12,100
5
Teapigs
8,100
6
Whittards Tea
6,600
7
Tetley
4,400
8
Clipper Tea
4,400
9
Lipton Tea
3,600
10
Barrys Tea
3,600
11
Thompsons Tea
1,300
12
Typhoo
1,300
13
Taylors Tea
1,300
14
M&S Tea
1,300
15
Tesco Tea
1,000
16
Tick Tock Tea
880
17
Sainsbury’s Tea
720
18
Lyons Tea
720
19
Asda Tea
590
20
Aldi Tea
590
21
Waitrose Tea
590
22
Lidl Tea
480
23
Morrisons Tea
320
24
Bewleys Tea
90
25
Cafedirect Tea
40
Few of these on here we’ve never heard of. Taste test, anyone?
While Yorkshire Tea was found to be Manchester’s and the nation’s favourite, Belfast was the only UK city where Yorkshire Tea didn’t take the top spot. Instead, it was Irish-owned Barry’s Tea that came out as their favourite – we definitely need to hold a ‘brew-off’ between the two. The Hoot, you up for it?
As for supermarket’s own-brand offerings, out of the eight options on the list, Marks and Spencer’s teabags were found to be the most popular, closely followed by Tesco and then Sainsbury’s.
Commenting on the findings, TonerGiant’s Stuart Deavall said: “With so many office workers opting for tea to get through the day, it’s no surprise that the UK has a day dedicated to the drink.
“In light of National Tea Day on Sunday, 21 April, our new data shows that Yorkshire Tea is the nation’s favourite, with over 27,000 Brits searching every month… We can expect many Brits to be celebrating in style this Sunday, no doubt with a mug of Yorkshire tea in hand”. Speaking of, anyone fancy a brew?…
Featured Images — Yorkshire Tea/Rumman Amin (via Unsplash)
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Manchester palaeontologist unearths bones of what may be the largest known marine reptile
Emily Sergeant
A Manchester-based palaeontologist has unearthed the bones of what may be the largest known marine reptile.
This new identification is a crucial part of a fascinating eight-year long discovery journey.
It all started when a seasoned fossil collector named Paul de la Salle found a giant jawbone on Lilstock Beach, near Bridgewater in Somerset, back in May 2016, and then father and daughter, Justin and Ruby Reynolds from Devon, found the first pieces of a second jawbone and another giant bone while searching for fossils on the beach at Blue Anchor, also in Somerset, in May 2020.
And now, a palaeontologist at the University of Manchester (UoM) Dr Dean Lomax, has identified the fossilised remains of the second gigantic jawbone that measures more than two metres long.
Experts have identified these bones as belonging to the jaws of a new species of enormous ichthyosaur – which is a type of prehistoric marine reptile – and astonishing estimations suggest the oceanic titan would have been more than 25-metres long.
Dr Lomax has been working together with Justin and Ruby Reynolds, along with Paul de la Salle and several family members, since the father-daughter duo first contacted them about their groundbreaking discovery in 2020.
A Manchester palaeontologist has unearthed bones of what may be the largest known marine reptile / Credit: UoM
“I was amazed by Justin and Ruby’s find,” Dr Lomax commented.
“In 2018, my team and Paul de la Salle studied and described Paul’s giant jawbone, and we had hoped that one day another would come to light.”
He explained that Justin and Ruby’s new specimen was “more complete and better preserved” than the first find, and that he “became very excited” at the chance to learn more following their discovery.
As mentioned, the Manchester-based research team, led by Dr Lomax, revealed that the jaw bones belong to a new species of giant ichthyosaur that would’ve been about the size of a blue whale, and they have called the new genus and species Ichthyotitan severnensis – which means ‘giant fish lizard of the Severn’.
The bones – which represent the very last of their kind – are around 202 million years old, and date back to the end of the Triassic Period in a time known as the Rhaetian.
During this time, the gigantic ichthyosaurs swam the seas while the dinosaurs walked on land.
The University of Manchester, where Dr Dean Lomax works as a palaeontologist / Credit: UoM
Ichthyotitan is not the world’s first giant ichthyosaur, but the discoveries by Paul, and Justin and Ruby, are said to be “unique among those known to science”, as they appear roughly 13 million years after their latest geologic relatives – including Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia in Canada, and Himalayasaurus tibetensis from Tibet in China.
Speaking on the confirmation of the bones’ identification this week, Dr Lomax said: “This research has been ongoing for almost eight years.
“It is quite remarkable to think that gigantic, blue whale-sized ichthyosaurs were swimming in the oceans around what was the UK during the Triassic Period.
Georgina Pellant -
24th May 2022 
