A tale of two theme parks
Plus why British Steel turned into a crisis, and how to level up... but do it properly
The latest episode of my podcast, The Abundance Agenda is out now – wherever you get your podcasts.
On this week’s episode of The Abundance Agenda, hosts James O’Malley and Martin Robbins celebrate the fact that Britain is actually building something – specifically, a massive new Universal theme park in Bedfordshire.
They dig into why the park will be well located, what it will mean for Bedfordshire and British growth – as well as why it succeeded while similar plans for a new theme park in Kent failed.
Then the show moves on to the drama over British Steel, and Martin explains how we got into the mess that forced Parliament to dramatically nationalise the company.
Plus we roll our eyes at several wrecking amendments to the Planning Bill that have been proposed not by a dinosaur Tory, but by… a newly elected Labour MP.
And then finally, we speak to JP Spencer, Director of Devolution Policy at Labour Together about his new report, titled Nation Rebalanced.
It’s a packed show – so have a listen!
The Abundance Agenda is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and hopefully wherever you get your podcasts!
You can find James on Bluesky here, and Martin here.
You can find Nation Rebalanced here.
Here’s the great video about the planning battles of Thorpe Park that James mentioned.
When I was a kid in England before we emigrated to Australia my Nan ran a village pub, her most regular daytime patron was Mr Bagshaw, who was the owner of Alton towers, he used to sit me on his knee and let me have sips of his beer while he drew ducks, more importantly 😀 we used to get free passes every year and it got to the point we went so often (and were too small to go on the corkscrew or even the big swingy raft thing) that as kids do we got used to it and by the end were as excited to get McDonalds In Hanley on the way home as we were to go to what we were told was the 6th biggest theme park in world at the time (I’ve just realised I’ve never bothered checking if that was true)