Poverty in Motion

On the list of most urgent priorities for the British political class, the chore of placating the provincial proles tends to rank rather low: probably somewhere between keeping the air breathable and enforcing the taxation laws on people who are patently above them. Hence the careful reasoning behind the superficially demented decision to entrust a major announcement about transport in Greater Manchester to the present secretary of state for transport. The brilliant Chris Graybeing, whose major achievements in his present post include timetable chaos and massive price rises on the railways while hitting cyclists with car doors on the road, has heard from some nice people at Network Rail that a tram network would be just the thing to relieve chronic capacity problems in central Manchester. A pilot project in south Yorkshire came in three years late and five hundred per cent over budget; from which the brilliant Graybeing has no doubt learned the inevitable lessons that subsidies are too high, fares too low, and the profits of the private sector insufficiently prioritised. Nevertheless, a few hundred million from the Brexit dividend have been pledged, thereby gladdening the heart of the mayor, who was imprudent enough to hint that, despite the government being sometimes vaguely involved in the maunderings of Chris Graybeing, the promise might not have been made entirely in fun.