Metrolink

Manchester has been promised a total of £650 million to extend and improve the Metrolink Light Rail system which was begun in 1988. The new system, due to be completed by 2012, will extend to Rochdale, Oldham, Droylsden, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Airport. The existing lines, which run between Manchester and Bury, Altrincham and Eccles, will also be upgraded and improved, and new trams will also be brought into service.

And it's about bloody time.

A Thought (Contains WC2006 SPOILERS)

On Monday of next week, we enter the most terrible period of the typical adult male human's lifecycle. The Wait.

When the final whistle is blown in Berlin on Sunday evening, ending what has been one of the best football World Cups in living memory, there will not be a football kicked in anger in England until Saturday, August 5th. Twenty-seven agonising, soul-buggering days of No Football. Yes, there are other sports - but that misses the point.

Imagine asking the hardcore Trekkie - you know who you are - to go twenty-seven days without a fix of Kirk. What devotee of good cinema would go without for almost a month without tapping their library, or raiding the local video rental shop? Go without the internet for twenty-seven days. Not impossible, but damn hard.

So spare a thought for all those poor, wretched football fans, struggling to get out of the heavily dented sofas they've spent the last month glued to. Watch them deflate, ever so slightly, when France or Italy lift the trophy. Help them, if you can. Because for them, the ordeal is just beginning.