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It really is causing my brain to glitch that Reform candidate Sian Astley is so similar a name to 2017 Tory candidate (and very briefly my boss) Sean Anstee

A nice bit of icing on the cake would be if Reform came third.

Yes, very literally in the case of Croydon!

The South does have a few big cities, but not as many places with identities that stick in the memory (nobody views being from Reading like being a Geordie) and proportionate to population, it has fewer. E.g of the top 20 urban areas in Britain: North: 7 Midlands: 7 South East: 4 South West: 2

So I see the argument, but the reason 1945 is the peak of their power is that 1942 is the year the British Empire's back is pretty definitively broken, and it becomes clear that the world will, after a few hard years of fighting, belong to America.

I was very much thinking of Crawley - a place with a population almost twice that of Barnsley but not seen as emblematic of any specific phenomenon so never enters the discourse.

I wouldn't say almost none at this point - about 4 million people there are now foreign born. It's not a lot by European standards but foreigners are definitely noticeable in Japan in a way they wouldn't have been 30 years ago. Which I think is what's making some people freak out!

While the North is only, like, a third of the population, it is overrepresented in large cities, while the South East is lots of medium-to-large towns, plus London. So Liverpool, Sheffield or Leeds stick out while it's easy to forget a cluster of towns in Kent, even if they have the same population.

However since we're now at 218 Yen to the pound and I might be going back there in a couple of years, I'm hoping nobody lets on that you don't have to do that.

It really is a very similar country to Britain. Island nation, former imperial hegemon, cultural powerhouse beloved by American nerds, likes to address its chronic economic problems by pulling up the drawbridge and hoping they go away by themselves.

I think you can make a good case that you start it when the USA becomes the pre-eminent global power, at some point between 1900 and 1942 depending on how you're counting.

Would be interesting to use a time machine to tell Labour people in 2005 that in 2024, they'd hold Sheffield Hallam but not Dewsbury.

So pretty much the entire difference seems like it would be accounted for by the lower purchasing power relative to incomes of the different amounts in the US. Quite satisfying, really.

It unsurprisingly didn't let me have WANKERS once

The hinomaru profile picture that would probably get you arrested in China is a particularly wonderful addition

Feels to me like with a few exceptions it's a chart of "how much of your summer is too hot for kids to be in school" (Ireland being three weeks longer than the UK is interesting though)

Extremely keen on this use of window boxes

...I had entirely forgotten that guy. Huh.

I can only assume Andy saw my branding work and thought "seems like a good idea" compulsoryvoting.org.uk

Any chance of an episode on Apartheid? Both a very specific term to South Africa but also crucial in the history of cultural and social movements and frequently raised in Israel/Palestine comparisons. Plus a chance to round out the secular saints with Mandela after your shows on Partition and MLK.