{"slug": "the-burnhamocalypse-odds-and-ends-102", "title": "The Burnhamocalypse (Odds and Ends #102)", "summary": "A newsletter roundup discusses Andy Burnham's political influence, AI in planning systems, Ukraine's open data, and the discovery of Liz Truss's 'Jenga' lectern.", "body_md": "# The Burnhamocalypse (Odds and Ends #102)\n\n### Plus the Liz Truss 'jenga' lectern has been found! And more!\n\n**POD! **On * YIMBY Pod* this week, we dig more into plans to use AI to speed up the planning system, speaking to Faculty AI’s\n\n**Paul Maltby**, who is working on the Augmented Planning Decisions programme. Plus – does Wychavon even exist?!\n\n[Listen here, or wherever you get your pods!](https://yimbypod.com)\n\n**ESSAY! **Don’t forget to read [my big piece on this week on ten years when I went viral for an incredibly silly reason](https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/londependence). (I pressed send instead of schedule on it, so you might have to scroll a bit further in your inbox to find it!).\n\nHello! It’s time for *Odds and Ends*, your semi-regular round-up of the most interesting links I’ve seen this week, plus some shorter takes. This week is accidentally a bit of an Andy Burnham special, so I am writing this while wearing a bucket hat and listening to [Sonic Boom Six](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfBy_me9ij4), Manchester’s finest ska-punk band.\n\nAnyway, please do read on as this week I’m featuring:\n\nAn interview with, er, me\n\nA devastating takedown of Andy Burnham\n\n...And the case for a more optimistic view of Burnham\n\nHow Ukraine has embraced open-ish data\n\nA tool to find out what Burnham thinks about... anything\n\nHow the Swiss would have built HS2\n\nAnd Liz Truss’s infamous ‘Jenga’ lectern has been found!\n\nSo let’s get started!\n\n## Keep reading with a 7-day free trial\n\nSubscribe to Odds and Ends of History to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-burnhamocalypse-odds-and-ends-102", "canonical_source": "https://takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/burnhamocalypse", "published_at": "2026-06-24 06:01:45+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-24 06:15:50.310545+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Andy Burnham", "Liz Truss", "Faculty AI", "Paul Maltby", "Wychavon", "Ukraine", "HS2", "YIMBY Pod"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-burnhamocalypse-odds-and-ends-102", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-burnhamocalypse-odds-and-ends-102.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-burnhamocalypse-odds-and-ends-102.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/the-burnhamocalypse-odds-and-ends-102.jsonld"}}