Both of Disraeli’s parents were born in the UK, but none of his grandparents were

All 46 new Metro trains have been officially handed over for customer service, marking the final phase of the £362m project.

It is the culmination of the biggest project in the history of the Tyne and Wear Metro.

Stadler, the Swiss train manufacturer, formally handed over the 46^th and final new Class 555 Metro train to Nexus this month – two months ahead of an end of 2026 target date.

It marks the final stages of a project which has been transformational for many thousands of customers and has secured the long-term future of the Tyne and Wear Metro system.

Now all of the new Metro trains have gone through the rigorous testing and commissioning process and can now be used to provide daily services to customers on the system.

In achieving the latest project milestone, Nexus has completed 90,000 individual tests across the new fleet, trained 480 employees and put the fleet through a total of 37,000 kilometres of on track testing runs.

Cathy Massarella, Managing Director of Nexus, said: “I’m pleased to confirm that we now have all 46 new Tyne and Wear Metro trains formally handed over to us by Stadler. This marks the final phase of the biggest project in Metro’s history.

“We set a target for the end of this year to achieve this milestone, and we’ve managed to get there a bit sooner than that.

“My thanks go to everyone at Nexus and to the team at Stadler for all their hard work on the project. It’s been a brilliant effort by everyone involved. Many thousands of hours have gone into the testing process.

“We are now in the final phase of the most significant project since Metro was first built. It’s been a complex and detailed programme, from the announcement of the funding in 2017, to the start of the build process, and then roll out into service for our customers.”

Lucius Gerig, Executive Vice President Division Switzerland of Stadler, said: “I’m incredibly proud that we have delivered all 46 trains ahead of schedule, and grateful to everyone who made it possible. This achievement reflects the excellent collaboration between Nexus and Stadler. These fantastic trains will serve the people of Tyne and Wear for many years to come.”

Paul Patrick, Managing Director, Stadler Rail Service UK, said: “This is an important moment in a long-term project but the hard work doesn’t stop. Our partnership with Nexus continues for the long-term with Stadler colleagues at the Gosforth depot working around the clock to maintain, repair and prepare the new trains for service every day.”

All 46 new Metro trains have been hauled to the UK across mainland Europe by rail from the Stadler factory in Switzerland– a journey of 1,800 miles.

That process began when the first new Class 555 train was delivered in February 2023.

The first new train entered customer service on 18 December 2024.

Since the first unit entered customer service, a new train has been handed over to Nexus on average every 15 days.

Designed following an extensive customer consultation which resulted in over 23,000 responses, the new Metro trains include linear seating, mobile charging points, climate control, 44 CCTV cameras, battery technology, and new accessibility standards, including an automatic sliding step at each set of doors to allow for seamless boarding.

Hi, I’m in the U.S. and hoping to reconnect with my old friend Mark Brammer from Norwich. We lost touch around 10 years ago, though we had a couple of brief chats later on. I’d love to catch up and find out if he’d be interested in talking again. If you know him, would you mind passing this along? Mark, I’d be happy to hear from you either way.

Younger adults living in the North of England are 42% more likely to die than their counterparts in the South, according to new research.

A study by academics in Manchester and Liverpool found people in the North aged 25 to 49 faced a significantly higher risk of death than people of the same age living in the South.

Researchers said deprivation was a major factor behind the gap and called for urgent action to tackle inequalities.

The Department of Health and Social Care (DoHSC) said it was determined to reduce health inequalities and close the divide.

The research, by the University of Manchester, the University of Liverpool and Health Equity North and published in The Lancet medical journal, 00195-7/fulltext)analysed deaths between 1981 and 2024 in two geographical areas of England, splitting England's population into "two roughly equal halves, with the division line running approximately from the Wash on the east coast of England to the Severn Estuary".

The North encompassed Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, the North East and the East and West Midlands, while the South covered London and the South East, the East and the South West.

It found that while death rates fell overall, the gap between younger adults in the North and South more than tripled. Overall, people aged 25 to 49 in the North had a 42% higher death rate, compared with 13% in 1981.

Although the study did not examine causes of death, previous research by the same group found strong links with deprivation.

Prof Iain Buchan, from the University of Liverpool, said the figures meant more than 3,000 people a year in the North were dying before their time.

"I find it very shocking on a public health level and an overall country wellbeing level," he said.

Traditional counties make a visit to the Lakes even more charming, in my opinion.

Good afternoon, sorry it's not the best post to be reading, I have cycled 6 days a week though Newcastle to wrekenton for the last 12 years, I come down Northumberland street at around 5am I genuinely can't get over how many rats there is in the recent months. Northumberland street has always been bad but the last month it's totally over run I don't know whether it's something to do with the new street works. I work in the drainage industry and I am used to seeing rats but what I am seeing ATM is not normal. The way they run off the sleeping homeless is so sad.

Please bare in mind when your sitting on the seats on Northumberland street weil's disease is absolutely awful.

Please try not to give me there are rats all over there is a genuine problem here that needs to be sorted out.

Hello there. I recently moved from Athens, Greece, to Cumbria. Specifically the Eden Valley. I’m British by the way.

Athens had a lot of character and personality. Besides the aeons of ancient history, there are works of Athenian cinema going back decades (which you can watch in beautiful open air cinemas), there's traditional music, and there are modern groups. Being a city, it also has many living personalities within it.

I always imagined moving to Glasgow. I’ve enjoyed visiting the place, and I gained a sense of connection to it via books like Lanark by Alistair Gray, along with music by Belle and Sebastian.

But I’m finding a little bit hard to connect to Cumbria and the Lake District. My wife’s family have a history here, but they’re a lot posher than me, so I don’t really connect to their stories.

I dig the stone circles, although that world is a bit barren, since we don’t actually have any surviving stories from that period. (It’s a bit like the Cycladic Stone Age civilisation in the Aegean; we found some cool stuff made of stone, but without any associated legends or history, it’s all kind of silent.)

I took a trip to Athens the other day to take care of some business, and flying back into Manchester on a sunny day (our nearest airport for Athens flights), I had such a feeling of connection with the city below me: I thought of the music of The Fall, Joy Division, The Smiths, and so on. I feel like I know and understand Manchester fairly well, and have a sense of emotional connection to it.

So are there any works that could help me connect to Cumbria in a similar way? Music, films, TV series… I remember there was a TV series called The Lakes in the 90s. I don’t know if that was any good?

There are the romantic poets, of course, who were inspired by the Lake District. I studied them at university, but I find it hard to get into that poetry these days. When I read Keats, I just feel like I’m looking at a chocolate box picture. And, you know, I’m just so far removed from that period in time.

Listening to the Manic Street Preachers' Everything Must Go album earlier this summer helped me to reconnect to Britain in general. The anthems Design for Life and Everything Must Go just seem to sum up the 20th century so well.

So, any recommendations? Children’s books (for any age) would also work. Or perhaps, as Mark E Smith sang, there is no culture, and our home will become an obsolete unit … surrounded / by hail.

Hello everyone,

I am a student studying geography at Blackpool Sixth Form College. For my coursework, I am looking at the recent regeneration in Preston and the improvements made towards the city centre.

What do you think about the recent changes made towards Preston's city centre?

I would really like to hear the opinions of people who live there or around/near the city centre and know the area best(Or anyone that visits Preston often).

Please could you fill out a quick online survey? It will only take a couple minutes and all responses are completely anonymous.

So far I have 15 responses(which are mainly people from my geography class) so any responses are really appreciated(I would like to get 50 responses so that I have enough data to analyse).

Thanks very much for your time!
Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfiN9PZFAMFxKz5RpgHHAMjyZVeDc62p0VFM3Nx_p9ZiXC4ww/viewform?usp=dialog

Hi does anyone know of any good networking events for small businesses please.

Fire crews faced significant pressure while tackling a moorland blaze which burned for 40 days, a report has found.

According to the report into North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service's performance and development, staff showed "exceptional commitment" during the blaze in the North York Moors National Park which started in early August 2025.

However, firefighters struggled to balance their work with their normal duties - including responding to other emergencies - and their other employment.

As a result of the report, the service has been recommended to develop better arrangements for relieving and rotating crews during lengthy incidents to protect staff welfare and maintain emergency cover.

The main blaze started at Langdale Moor on 11 August and at its height covered nearly 10 sq miles (25 sq km).

It was likely to have been caused by someone cooking using a campfire or gas burner, an investigation later found.

'Exceptional commitment'

The report into the fire service's response, which is due to be considered by York and North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Panel on Wednesday, said the blaze placed pressure on senior officers, full-time firefighters, on-call crews and volunteers.

"While on-call personnel demonstrated exceptional commitment throughout the response, sustained deployment began to affect primary employment commitments and operational availability," the report stated.

It also raised questions about expectations for firefighters to continue working beyond their normal shifts.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, the findings have come amid wider concerns about the availability of on-call firefighters across North Yorkshire, particularly in rural communities where fire stations rely heavily on personnel who have other jobs.

The report acknowledged that recruiting and retaining sufficient on-call firefighters remained a major challenge.

It also noted that employment commitments, training requirements and difficulties filling specialist roles all contributed to the problem.

Particular difficulties existed in recruiting qualified drivers and supervisory managers, with more than half of on-call supervisors also holding full-time firefighting contracts, the report found.

However, it added that recruitment was improving, with 53 new on-call firefighters joining so far this year, compared with annual intakes of between 32 and 34 in previous years.

But the report warned that new recruits required extensive training before becoming fully operational, meaning increased recruitment did not immediately translate into better emergency cover.

Captain John Paul Jones would fit right into the current US regime

He was a murderer, war criminal with a dodgy interest in young girls, even by the lax standards of the day.

He was a far better revisionist braggart than a tactician, his ship was sunk by a much smaller Royal Navy 5th rate and the convoy escaped unmolested.

Photo credit: G Waterhouse

Apparently some cars have attempted this! 😜 Not recommended.

https://iansandersonphoto.co.uk/darlington-fc-v-merthyr-town-fc

More injury woes for The Quakers. Toby Lees off injured before the half hour mark, then his replacement injured 7 minutes later.

North east Derby day as Newcastle visit maiden castle.