The Abundance Agenda
The Abundance Agenda
A tale of two theme parks
0:00
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -48:02
-48:02

A tale of two theme parks

Plus why British Steel turned into a crisis, and how to level up... but do it properly

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.

And here’s our newsletters for this week:

Odds and Ends of History
This road is broken – and nobody can fix it
HEY, LISTEN! Check out the latest episode of The Abundance Agenda, where Martin and I discuss why (to my horror) we love Luton Airport, and dig into a mad proposal to change how the Mayor of London works. Plus we speak to the co-founders of a new think tank, the…
Read more
The Value of Nothing
Why does Britain feel so poor?
Britain is a rich country with the world’s 6th largest economy and the highest tax income for decades, which raises a simple question - why do we seem so broke? Tom Calver, Data Editor at The Times, tackled the question last week. The big picture is pretty simple: we have a huge debt burden sucking over £100bn out of the budget every year (more than the…
Read more

Discussion about this episode