| It's not over until the fat lady sings - and English National Opera has been given a temporary reprieve after being told it faced huge funding cuts and would need to relocate outside London, possibly to Manchester. Yesterday the prestigious opera firm announced that after "negotiations" with Arts Council England it will get £11.46 million for the next financial year from the National Lottery. It will continue to have its HQ in the London Coliseum but will also look for a second base outside the capital. Chief executive Stuart Murphy told Press Association his team would be visiting "a whole bunch of places around Britain" - though some sites seem to already have been written off due to their perceived lack of culture. He said: "They're split into two types of places: places that already have a lot of culture like the big cities, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Hull. "And then there's going to be another set of places who don't have much culture at all and we would be the main people in town. That's a bit of a harder sell because we're going to have to shift our orchestra and chorus and their families and their partners to a place that potentially has very little cultural provision. "It'll be hard to get people who live and die for culture to move somewhere that has literally nothing, but we're up for the challenge. The main thing is we just need money to be able to relocate people and encourage people to move." 
Should we start gauging up rather than levelling up? Tomorrow looks set to be a big day for many Northern Tory MPs as the Government reveals whether their patches will get investment from its flagship £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund. But is the phrase 'levelling up' itself at risk? Geri Scott reports in The Times that Conservative MPs in key marginal seats have been told by party bosses to shun the use of the two-word slogan because no one knows what it means. Those at risk of losing their seats have been advised by party staff to use phrases such as "stepping up", "gauging up" or "enhancing communities" instead, one Tory said.
Meanwhile as the Government's Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill made its way through the Lords it was damned with some charged language by the former chief executive of NHS England. Lord Stevens of Birmingham, a crossbench peer and former Labour member, said giving "much stronger statutory teeth" to the levelling up missions would help "overcome political short-termism" like that currently affecting the NHS. The wide-ranging draft legislation, which runs to nearly 400 pages, includes proposed planning changes and devolution measures. But, referring to a previous blueprint from the Government, Lord Stevens said: "There seems to have been a voltage drop between the 240v diagnostic clarity of last year's levelling up white paper and the flickering 12v legislative battery before us today. "Last year's white paper rightly argued for root-and-branch reform, but unfortunately this Bill currently leaves the roots and branches of our difficulties largely untouched. In my judgement it's more like a gentle rustling of the leaves."
The silent Blackburn firm which gave money to 24 Tory MPs with no explanation There've been some uncomfortable MPs in the last few days thanks to the Westminster Accounts database, set up by Tortoise Media and Sky News to raise awareness of the millions of pounds every year that pour into the nation's political system. But one surprising inclusion in the list of the UK's largest political donors is telecoms firm IX Wireless, based in an unassuming business park in Blackburn but still able to donate more than £138,000 to 24 - mostly Northern - Conservative MPs since 2019. Read more about the firm in this piece on the LancsLive website.  IX Wireless has donated more than £138,000 to 24 - mostly Northern - Conservative MPs since 2019. Graphic by Carly Holds
IX Wireless provides 'next generation gigabyte capable broadband' and its website boasts that it is 'managing the 6G Internet' in Northern towns, 'providing gigabit internet at lower prices than providers such as Virgin and BT'. But all efforts by journalists to get the firm to talk about the donations have met with a wall of silence. Recipients of donations are mostly members of the Northern Research Group (NRG) set up to represent Tory backbenchers across the region. But according to Tortoise Media MPs say they didn't know it was behind the money until weeks after receiving it, and some had never heard of it before. And last November Chris Green, the Tory MP for Bolton West who received a £5,000 donation from IX Wireless, told his local paper the donations helped to pay for its annual conference in Yorkshire where Northern businesses and councils had a chance to meet then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak. In recent months the firm has been involved in a number of controversial planning applications around the North. In Cheadle, Greater Manchester, it was ordered to remove a 'monstrous' 60ft mast in an area where it donated £2,000 to the sitting MP.
It's not just Tory MPs coming under the spotlight. Labour's Dan Jarvis, MP for Barnsley Central, has defended accepting a total of £100,000 in donations from a little-known firm. The former South Yorkshire mayor was one of three Labour MPs - along with West Yorkshire's Yvette Cooper and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting - to have received a total of £345,217 from MPM Connect Ltd in the past two years. Mr Jarvis' office said there had been no wrongdoing from any party involved, and that he has followed the rules and supports the transparency of information around donations to MPs.
Union boss: Nurse staffing levels aren't safe any day of the week  Nursing staff on strike in Greater Manchester. Pic by Sean Hansford
Thousands of nurses are on strike again today in a dispute over pay as the head of the nursing union said patients do not get safe staffing levels "any day of the week" in the NHS. Pat Cullen, chief executive and general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said nurses felt "totally heartbroken" joining another two days of industrial action, but felt they had no choice. She told ITV's Good Morning Britain the NHS was not currently delivering an acceptable minimum staffing level, which "flies in the face" of new anti-strike laws calling for minimum service cover on strike days. For the first time nurses in Greater Manchester are joining the picket line along with others around the North. Get live updates from that region here or see what's happening on Merseyside with the Liverpool Echo's live blog.
MPs go back in time in clash over female Doctor Who  Warrington North MP Charlotte Nichols and Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher
Remember the furore in 2021 when Tory Don Valley MP Nick Fletcher suggested young men are committing crime as a result of Doctor Who being played by a woman? The comments reared their head again in Westminster yesterday when a Northern Labour MP, Warrington North's Charlotte Nichols, misremembered his comments and was forced to issue an apology. The bad-tempered exchange was one of many between MPs as they considered the UK Government's decision to move against controversial reforms of the gender recognition process passed by the Scottish Parliament. Ms Nichols said: "There are a lot of people who I'm very interested to hear suddenly become massive defenders of equality, including the honourable member from Don Valley who I remember being in a Westminster Hall debate with when he said that Doctor Who being a woman was turning boys gay, among other ridiculous arguments." Mr Fletcher shouted out: "That's not what I said." He later said the claim was an "outright lie", an assertion Deputy Speaker Dame Rosie Winterton deemed unparliamentary behaviour. Ms Nichols, in her reply, apologised for having "inadvertently misled the House" and said: "On checking Hansard, the honourable member said that Doctor Who being a woman was turning boys towards a life of crime. So clearly it was a matter of misogyny rather than homophobia."
Better late than never: New Merseyrail trains finally get the green light  The first new Merseyrail train will welcome passengers on Monday (Image: Andrew Teebay/Liverpool Echo)
They've been a long time coming, but passengers in the Liverpool city region now only have a few days to wait to ride the long-awaited new Merseyrail trains. A crucial deal was struck between drivers of the new trains, represented by the ASLEF union, and the Liverpool City Region mayoral authority meaning passengers will experience the state-of-the-art vehicles from Monday, reports Liam Thorp for the Liverpool Echo. The new Class 777 trains are due to replace the existing Merseyrail fleet of 507 trains, with a deal to purchase the new vehicles signed back in 2016. But the roll-out of the new models has been held up by factors including the pandemic and industrial disputes. The landmark moment will be a big one for the city region, which has been waiting a long time for the first passenger trains to run. The new fleet is seen as a vital part of the future of the region's public transport offer. Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region said: "The agreement between Merseyrail and ASLEF is brilliant news for us because it gives the green light to launch our region's new £500m fleet of publicly owned trains into action. We are enormously grateful to passengers for their patience during this process but the day we have all been waiting for has finally arrived."
 The new Stadler Tyne and Wear Metro train on the Rigi Bahn in Switzerland (Image: Martin Horat/Tyne and Wear Metro)
Meanwhile, one of the new trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro has been pictured on one of the world's most scenic railway routes ahead of them arriving in the North East in just a few weeks time. The Stadler Class 555 train was photographed on the tracks of the Rigi Bahn, a mountain railway located between the two arms of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. It is the highest standard gauge railway in Europe at a height of 1,752 metres, though the Metro was shot much closer to sea level at a holding facility. The first of the new 46 Metro trains are expected to arrive in the North East in just a few weeks, ahead of further testing and driver training before entering passenger service in the autumn, reports Daniel Hall for ChronicleLive. 
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Northern Stories  Labour councillor for Barrow, Allison Johnston
- A Cumbrian councillor whose daughter was convicted over false claims of being sexually abused by an 'Asian grooming gang' has been suspended by the Labour Party. Cllr Allison Johnston sits on Barrow Borough Council but has been suspended by the party pending an investigation. Last month, her daughter Ellie Williams, 22, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice after she published pictures of her injuries and an account of being groomed, trafficked and beaten on Facebook, in a post which was shared more than 100,000 times.
- A veteran Labour MP has revealed he is having chemotherapy after a recent cancer diagnosis, meaning he will not attend Parliament. Tony Lloyd, who has served Rochdale since 2017, said his doctors had told him to "socially isolate and avoid meetings". He said his immune system was "compromised" so he was at a higher risk of catching infection. Mr Lloyd said in a statement on Twitter his chemotherapy treatment, which was being delivered "as a day patient to hospital", would continue for the next couple of months and was "not very intense".
- Around 5,800 new homes are to be built on brownfield sites regenerated with the help of £60 million in Government funding. Councils across England are able to bid for a share of the £180 million Brownfield Land Release Fund 2 to revive disused urban areas and make room for new dwellings, the Department for Levelling Up said today. A £35 million slice of the overall fund was released to 41 councils last November, supporting 59 regeneration projects from Exeter to Sunderland, including the building of 29 new homes on the site of a former bingo hall in Chorley, Lancashire.
- A new life-saving cancer diagnostic centre on Teesside, originally mooted for 2025, will now open by the end of this year. On Monday, Health Minister, Helen Whatley confirmed that the new Community Cancer Diagnostic Centre would be built in Stockton by December 2023. She revealed the news during a debate called by Simon Clarke, Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, in which he pressed the case for better cancer diagnostics in the Tees Valley.
- Tyne and Wear Metro services are set to avoid cuts next year despite the threat posed by enormous energy bills – but are in a "precarious" spot. Transport chiefs have agreed plans to plug a gap of more than £10m in Metro operator Nexus' finances next year without needing to slash train services. But there remain worries about the future funding of the network, with its electricity costs having shot up dramatically amid the global energy crisis and expected to remain high for years to come.
- Sheffield Council has revealed a new plan to draw more tourists as Time Out named it one of the best city break destinations in Europe for 2023. It was named second on the recently published list of 18 destinations that included Milan, Oslo, Liverpool, Dublin and Valencia. Describing Sheffield, judge Daniel Dylan Wray said: "Combine the lush greenery – and proximity to the Peak District – with a vibrant city rich in culture, food and drink, and you have two kinds of holiday wrapped into one." It comes as city leaders look to boost tourism by getting accredited by the Local Visitor Economy Partnership.
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