I think I’ve said here before that one of the biggest differences I noticed when I moved to London was in public transport. Here in the capital, busses are pretty much as accessible to me as they are anyone else; the tube may not be perfect, but it certainly makes getting around the metropolis a lot easier and faster. When I was still living in Cheshire, I was pretty much stuck in my old home town: busses still had manual wheelchair ramps, and to be honest I didn’t go anywhere near the trains.

With all this talk of diverting investment away from London, I’ll be extremely interested to see if and how Andy Burnham plans to address this. Good public transport is obviously key to any kind of economic redevelopment, so I can’t help wondering whether the government will soon propose a kind of Northern Crossrail, linking Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle, or a light rail system between the towns of Cheshire. Helping people get around is key: that is surely as true in London as it is anywhere else.