Just because a policy is popular doesn't make it right. I thought we were beyond policy by focus groups.
There must be labour and lib dems who disagree with you if 50% agree the policy
I'm not trying to party politicise this even if you re.
I think both Sunak and Starmer are being responsible - Sunak is trying to work with the French and others to come up with a suitable and proportionate response and Starmer reminds us it's the people smuggling gangs who are actively profiting from the desperation and misery of others. Targeting them and stopping them (and to be fair some of them appear to be British citizens so our hands aren't exactly clean) seems wholly sensible.
Where I part company with Braverman is her policy continues to inflame sentiment against migrants - once a group is suitably dehumanised and vilified any action aginst them becomes justified. Whatever we may think of them as a group, migrants are individuals and we should treat them with a common decency and humanity.
I don't disagree with any of that but boats have to be stopped to save innocent lives
Your last two words should read 'Tory seats'.
Sorry I just do not have a concern for conservative seats, I have concern for lives lost at sea and the risk my son and his colleagues, as sea going RNLI crew, take every day in rescuing people and children drowning at the hands of people smugglers
And of course the risks they may again suffer a t the hands of a Tory government. I really hope we don't get that hatred and nonsense about prosecuting the RNLI again, after Ms Patel had her try at the boat people.
Looking unlikely right now, but imagine we have a hung parliament where the SNP hold the balance of power. Kate Forbes is leader of the SNP, whose economic and social views suggest she would very likely be a Tory voter had she been born south of the border. Labour refuses to accede to her demands for indyref2, but Rishi actually approaches Forbes and says he'd agree to if the SNP propped him up. Is it possible at all she would say yes and prop the Tories up?
She might but Forbes is more rightwing than Sunak so she increases the chances of a Labour majority or at least enough seats to just need the LDs for a majority not the SNP. She would likely lose seats to Scottish Labour but gain most of the remaining SCon seats
Is she a TORY even? Does she meet your criteria?
No. Doesn't believe in the UK. I'd have thought it was a rather big hint.
The Tories existed even before the Act of Union, that simply means she isn't a Conservative and Unionist
Wel, of course. The tóraithe (as then spelt) were early modern (aka Tudor etc) thieves and robbers. Even before the 1603 act.
They also supported the monarchy etc. Forbes could certainly have been an 18th century Tory.
More than that, Margaret Thatcher could well have had Forbes in her Cabinet, her views would have slotted in well
But Mrs T's views wouldn't fit in the Tory Party of the 2010s-2020s.
Not sure if this has been done yet, but this week's YouGov poll was published by The Times Red Box this morning: Labour 45 (-2) Tory 23 (-2) LibDem 10 (-) Greens 7 (+1) Reform 7 (+2) SNP 4 (-) No polling dates were provided, but the previous week's (referenced in brackets) was 28th February and 1st March, so it's likely this one was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. If so, no Tory small boat bounce as yet.
Anyone expecting a 'Small Boat Bounce' takes an even dimmer view of the Great British public than I do. Braverman looks and sounds like a souped up Patel. The most unpopular member of an unpopulat government. Are people really attracted to those who seem to enjoy pulling the wings off flies?
Seems 50% support Sunak on boats
Britain Elects
On banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re-entering the UK
The question is very black or white . What would the result be if you added a caveat that banning would include genuine asylum seekers . Sadly much of the public only deal in slogans and swallow sound bites put out by no 10 politburo and its arse licking right wing press .
The key is small boats and to stop them
"The way stateless Jews and Germans are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest."
In these words, Mr Herbert Metcalde, the Old Street Magistrate yesterday referred to the number of aliens entering this country through the 'back door' -- a problem to which The Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.
The number of aliens entering this country can be seen by the number of prosecutions in recent months. It is very difficult for the alien to escape the increasing vigilance of the police and port authorities.
Even if aliens manage to break through the defences, it is not long before they are caught and deported.
The Daily Mail, 1938.
Jews coming from Germany, a dangerous anti-Semitic dictatorship. Not people coming from France, a modern, liberal democracy. Do keep up.
Hmm I wonder which country located between Germany and Britain those Jewish refugees might have passed through on their way here.
Bollocks because in 1938 the netherlands and france etc were under imminent threat of invasion by the ones endangering german jews.....no one today is planning on invading france except maybe putin on those fantasy wet dream nights
Erm…no they weren’t. The war was still a year away and the Jews had been arriving since the Nuremberg Laws three years earlier. No one in France or the Netherlands thought in 1938 they were at risk of invasion. As was proved in May 1940 when they were both taken totally by surprise when it happened.
Ah you mean like they were taken by surprise when Russia invaded ukraine.....well I will be charitable and put it down to wishful thinking on their part. Anyone in 38 not seeing that hitler dreamt of a europe under the nazi bootheel was frankly deluding themselves
Even Churchill was "dumbfounded" by the German victory over France in 1940.
And yet the French did put up some resistance to begin with. Germany lost 27,000 men in May-June 1940.
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
Heathrow? The airport where we haven't built the northern runway and we haven't built the western runway and we haven't built another runway at Gatwick and we haven't built Boris island. Meanwhile European superhubs continue to expand successfully and we slide ever backwards in terms of our competitiveness.
I am not attacking the quality of the projects that are built. I am attacking our constant inability to build projects. We haven't done a London hub airport expansion. We can't build high speed rail. We don't build motorways. Everyone else does. We are shit at infrastructure.
We’re not shit. But neither are we perfect. We face particular issues - dense population, strong individual rights, vivid local democracy - which in many ways are advantages. But they do stall projects
I’ve seen maps showing how many high speed trains Spain has built since 1992. It is impressive. They’ve built a dozen
But most of them speed through very empty semi desert or quite empty countryside and you do wonder about their long term economic sustainability. Spain lacks people rich enough to pay for whizzy lines from Bilbao to Toledo
Not sure if this has been done yet, but this week's YouGov poll was published by The Times Red Box this morning: Labour 45 (-2) Tory 23 (-2) LibDem 10 (-) Greens 7 (+1) Reform 7 (+2) SNP 4 (-) No polling dates were provided, but the previous week's (referenced in brackets) was 28th February and 1st March, so it's likely this one was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. If so, no Tory small boat bounce as yet.
Anyone expecting a 'Small Boat Bounce' takes an even dimmer view of the Great British public than I do. Braverman looks and sounds like a souped up Patel. The most unpopular member of an unpopulat government. Are people really attracted to those who seem to enjoy pulling the wings off flies?
Seems 50% support Sunak on boats
Britain Elects
On banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re-entering the UK
The question is very black or white . What would the result be if you added a caveat that banning would include genuine asylum seekers . Sadly much of the public only deal in slogans and swallow sound bites put out by no 10 politburo and its arse licking right wing press .
The key is small boats and to stop them
"The way stateless Jews and Germans are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest."
In these words, Mr Herbert Metcalde, the Old Street Magistrate yesterday referred to the number of aliens entering this country through the 'back door' -- a problem to which The Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.
The number of aliens entering this country can be seen by the number of prosecutions in recent months. It is very difficult for the alien to escape the increasing vigilance of the police and port authorities.
Even if aliens manage to break through the defences, it is not long before they are caught and deported.
The Daily Mail, 1938.
Jews coming from Germany, a dangerous anti-Semitic dictatorship. Not people coming from France, a modern, liberal democracy. Do keep up.
Hmm I wonder which country located between Germany and Britain those Jewish refugees might have passed through on their way here.
Bollocks because in 1938 the netherlands and france etc were under imminent threat of invasion by the ones endangering german jews.....no one today is planning on invading france except maybe putin on those fantasy wet dream nights
Erm…no they weren’t. The war was still a year away and the Jews had been arriving since the Nuremberg Laws three years earlier. No one in France or the Netherlands thought in 1938 they were at risk of invasion. As was proved in May 1940 when they were both taken totally by surprise when it happened.
Ah you mean like they were taken by surprise when Russia invaded ukraine.....well I will be charitable and put it down to wishful thinking on their part. Anyone in 38 not seeing that hitler dreamt of a europe under the nazi bootheel was frankly deluding themselves
Even Churchill was "dumbfounded" by the German victory over France in 1940.
And yet the French did put up some resistance to begin with. Germany lost 27,000 men in May-June 1940.
About 50,000 dead (170,000 total casualties) over that main 6 week period.
But, tolerance for such casualties was much higher then.
Not sure if this has been done yet, but this week's YouGov poll was published by The Times Red Box this morning: Labour 45 (-2) Tory 23 (-2) LibDem 10 (-) Greens 7 (+1) Reform 7 (+2) SNP 4 (-) No polling dates were provided, but the previous week's (referenced in brackets) was 28th February and 1st March, so it's likely this one was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. If so, no Tory small boat bounce as yet.
Anyone expecting a 'Small Boat Bounce' takes an even dimmer view of the Great British public than I do. Braverman looks and sounds like a souped up Patel. The most unpopular member of an unpopulat government. Are people really attracted to those who seem to enjoy pulling the wings off flies?
Seems 50% support Sunak on boats
Britain Elects
On banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re-entering the UK
The question is very black or white . What would the result be if you added a caveat that banning would include genuine asylum seekers . Sadly much of the public only deal in slogans and swallow sound bites put out by no 10 politburo and its arse licking right wing press .
The key is small boats and to stop them
I despair of this country . From cool Brittania during Labours time in office to now becoming a pariah nation led by this rancid cesspit of a government.
I think it depends on what is being stopped. (A) Small boat crossings due to the awful risks people on them are taking (B) Small boat crossings to stop the nasty forrin people getting here
For many it’s A, for some it’s B, sadly.
I want to do A, but also sort out means whereby genuine asylum claims can be made, close to the countries of origin.*
*Does not include Albania.
According to the open borders lobby you're already guilty of "B" and therefore cancelled for discriminating against Albanians. Sorry.
The Government would arguably have been much better off framing its legislation to permit automatic refusal for asylum seekers previously ordinarily resident in a list of countries deemed safe, including Albania. That would've been less contentious, permitted the number of boat people applications the Home Office had to sift through at least to be cut in half, and would've been considered perfectly acceptable to nearly all of public opinion except for a tiny number of urban ultra-liberals. The scope for intervention by the ECHR would be limited and any justifications offered - e.g. that the UK is somehow responsible for sheltering people escaping criminal feuds in Tirana, because the local authorities are unwilling or unable to do the job - would've made the court rather than the Government look ridiculous.
Just because a policy is popular doesn't make it right. I thought we were beyond policy by focus groups.
There must be labour and lib dems who disagree with you if 50% agree the policy
I'm not trying to party politicise this even if you re.
I think both Sunak and Starmer are being responsible - Sunak is trying to work with the French and others to come up with a suitable and proportionate response and Starmer reminds us it's the people smuggling gangs who are actively profiting from the desperation and misery of others. Targeting them and stopping them (and to be fair some of them appear to be British citizens so our hands aren't exactly clean) seems wholly sensible.
Where I part company with Braverman is her policy continues to inflame sentiment against migrants - once a group is suitably dehumanised and vilified any action aginst them becomes justified. Whatever we may think of them as a group, migrants are individuals and we should treat them with a common decency and humanity.
I don't disagree with any of that but boats have to be stopped to save innocent lives
Your last two words should read 'Tory seats'.
Sorry I just do not have a concern for conservative seats, I have concern for lives lost at sea and the risk my son and his colleagues, as sea going RNLI crew, take every day in rescuing people and children drowning at the hands of people smugglers
Big G, my comment wasn't aimed at you personally - far from it. However, I would take some persuading that Braverman's main concern is to 'save innocent lives' - I reckon that's a long way down her list of priorities.
Her list of priorities in descending order appears to be:
1. Suella Braverman’s career 2. Owning the libs 3. Winning wavering conservative voters 4. Actually reducing migration 5. Other stuff
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
Heathrow? The airport where we haven't built the northern runway and we haven't built the western runway and we haven't built another runway at Gatwick and we haven't built Boris island. Meanwhile European superhubs continue to expand successfully and we slide ever backwards in terms of our competitiveness.
I am not attacking the quality of the projects that are built. I am attacking our constant inability to build projects. We haven't done a London hub airport expansion. We can't build high speed rail. We don't build motorways. Everyone else does. We are shit at infrastructure.
We’re not shit. But neither are we perfect. We face particular issues - dense population, strong individual rights, vivid local democracy - which in many ways are advantages. But they do stall projects
I’ve seen maps showing how many high speed trains Spain has built since 1992. It is impressive. They’ve built a dozen
But most of them speed through very empty semi desert or quite empty countryside and you do wonder about their long term economic sustainability. Spain lacks people rich enough to pay for whizzy lines from Bilbao to Toledo
Easier and cheaper to build through desert or empty countryside ...
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
I don't think fighting fire with fire in terms of mischaracterisation works, in this case. People really don't expect absolute perfection. If big projects were a bit over budget or bit delayed, they get annoyed but can understand that cannot reasonably be said to mean a project is a total failure.
It's when things are vastly overbudget and massively delayed that the criticisms ramp up. Particularly if it comes across like no one could have believed the initial estimates.
I disagree.
Brits are whinging poms, and the Australians have got us dead right on that.
Heathrow T5 had a problem with its baggage systems for 48-72 hours after opening, and that was it, but no-one has ever forgot it.
LHRT5 is great. The Liz Line is great. We can do great infrastructure. They had problems but now they’re world class
But it is futile to deny that HS2 is a proper copper-bottomed chateau-bottled disaster, and one we haven’t even begun to solve - it might yet get worse
It was an over engineered solution to an almost non existent problem, and the expense was always hideous. Fuck knows how we get out of this mess
Interesting if true:
"Elizabeth line could be be extended into Essex and Kent under ambitious new proposals"
Lineker seems to like to have his cake and eat it: using the BBC as a platform, and taking a massive salary from it, but damaging its reputation for neutrality accordingly, without obeying any of the rules.
So lets have the Tories who literally run the impartial BBC fire him.
Lineker hasn't damaged the reputation. The Chair has. The DG. Robbie Gibb.
Not sure if this has been done yet, but this week's YouGov poll was published by The Times Red Box this morning: Labour 45 (-2) Tory 23 (-2) LibDem 10 (-) Greens 7 (+1) Reform 7 (+2) SNP 4 (-) No polling dates were provided, but the previous week's (referenced in brackets) was 28th February and 1st March, so it's likely this one was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday. If so, no Tory small boat bounce as yet.
Anyone expecting a 'Small Boat Bounce' takes an even dimmer view of the Great British public than I do. Braverman looks and sounds like a souped up Patel. The most unpopular member of an unpopulat government. Are people really attracted to those who seem to enjoy pulling the wings off flies?
Seems 50% support Sunak on boats
Britain Elects
On banning migrants who come to the UK in small boats from ever re-entering the UK
The question is very black or white . What would the result be if you added a caveat that banning would include genuine asylum seekers . Sadly much of the public only deal in slogans and swallow sound bites put out by no 10 politburo and its arse licking right wing press .
The key is small boats and to stop them
"The way stateless Jews and Germans are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. I intend to enforce the law to the fullest."
In these words, Mr Herbert Metcalde, the Old Street Magistrate yesterday referred to the number of aliens entering this country through the 'back door' -- a problem to which The Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.
The number of aliens entering this country can be seen by the number of prosecutions in recent months. It is very difficult for the alien to escape the increasing vigilance of the police and port authorities.
Even if aliens manage to break through the defences, it is not long before they are caught and deported.
The Daily Mail, 1938.
Jews coming from Germany, a dangerous anti-Semitic dictatorship. Not people coming from France, a modern, liberal democracy. Do keep up.
Hmm I wonder which country located between Germany and Britain those Jewish refugees might have passed through on their way here.
Bollocks because in 1938 the netherlands and france etc were under imminent threat of invasion by the ones endangering german jews.....no one today is planning on invading france except maybe putin on those fantasy wet dream nights
Erm…no they weren’t. The war was still a year away and the Jews had been arriving since the Nuremberg Laws three years earlier. No one in France or the Netherlands thought in 1938 they were at risk of invasion. As was proved in May 1940 when they were both taken totally by surprise when it happened.
Ah you mean like they were taken by surprise when Russia invaded ukraine.....well I will be charitable and put it down to wishful thinking on their part. Anyone in 38 not seeing that hitler dreamt of a europe under the nazi bootheel was frankly deluding themselves
Even Churchill was "dumbfounded" by the German victory over France in 1940.
And yet the French did put up some resistance to begin with. Germany lost 27,000 men in May-June 1940.
About 50,000 dead (170,000 total casualties) over that main 6 week period.
But, tolerance for such casualties was much higher then.
We'd find it shocking today.
Also shows 2 other things: how history is written many years after the even when the initial difficulties are forgotten (Russia had some pretty serious setbacks even in its lightning war against Georgia in 2008), and how the population pyramid in most countries has changed. The fighting age population was a much bigger portion of the whole back then.
Lineker seems to like to have his cake and eat it: using the BBC as a platform, and taking a massive salary from it, but damaging its reputation for neutrality accordingly, without obeying any of the rules.
So lets have the Tories who literally run the impartial BBC fire him.
Lineker hasn't damaged the reputation. The Chair has. The DG. Robbie Gibb.
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
I don't think fighting fire with fire in terms of mischaracterisation works, in this case. People really don't expect absolute perfection. If big projects were a bit over budget or bit delayed, they get annoyed but can understand that cannot reasonably be said to mean a project is a total failure.
It's when things are vastly overbudget and massively delayed that the criticisms ramp up. Particularly if it comes across like no one could have believed the initial estimates.
I disagree.
Brits are whinging poms, and the Australians have got us dead right on that.
Heathrow T5 had a problem with its baggage systems for 48-72 hours after opening, and that was it, but no-one has ever forgot it.
LHRT5 is great. The Liz Line is great. We can do great infrastructure. They had problems but now they’re world class
But it is futile to deny that HS2 is a proper copper-bottomed chateau-bottled disaster, and one we haven’t even begun to solve - it might yet get worse
It was an over engineered solution to an almost non existent problem, and the expense was always hideous. Fuck knows how we get out of this mess
In the end it is just an extra train line from Birmingham to London. If you try and get a train from Birmingham to London now, it is a disaster, they are all packed, and it just gets worse and worse every year. In the end there needs to be some plan to resolve that problem, this is it, there is no other plan. And situation is going to get far, far worse before it gets better, because it is going to be another decade before HS2 opens.
The only thing that they may be able in the intervening time is perhaps buy Chiltern railways some more trains - they still inexplicably have a habit of running 3 car trains which are absolutely packed.
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
So what is your take on HS2?
That is a fuck up. Mainly because the business case changed after they specced and scoped it, its over-designed and the leadership are muppets.
But, strategically, it was (and is) still the right thing to do to link up England's major cities with a 21st century railway backbone.
Makes sense. Even in its truncated form, HS2 deals with three of the biggest blockages on the UK railway network:
1. Lack of capacity between London and Birmingham. AIUI there is demand for another 10 trains an hour between London and Birmingham, which they can't run because there aren't the tracks.
2. Takes a chunk of traffic away from Birmingham New Street, a hugely congested station being both a terminus and an interchange.
3. Allows a chunk of trains to bypass Crewe junction, the biggest bottleneck.
I have to admit this thought occurred to me when someone suggested the Tories taking on David Attenborough next as being a stupid idea (which it very much would be), due to comments he's made about the industrial revolution - whilst he may have thought through the implications of that, I do think it has an image problem which doesn't consider the good points.
Err not sure these two things are the same. The first counts as pure environmental degradation, the second was costly but had the upside of by far the biggest increase in human welfare in history.
Unfair to pick on this otherwise interesting post but it's a mistake that comes up surprisingly often. What do people think life would be like if we hadn't burnt fossil fuels? Like it is now, just no climate crisis? https://twitter.com/mrianleslie/status/1633845495595671552/photo/1
We’d have chopped down all the forests, and burned them for energy.
People who wish the Industrial Revolution had never happened seem to imagine themselves living like lords, rather than like peasants.
I don't think that's the error. I think they just don't know history and don't have much understanding of pre-industrial life. They have a vision of Hobbits in the Shire.
I think that’s right. And the Shire was rural Warwickshire in the 1890’s, rather than a medieval society.
A pre-industrial world is one where starvation is a reality when the crops fail; most children don’t reach adulthood; most homes are damp and insanitary; people die of infections and illnesses that are easily treated today; violent crime is rife; competition for resources is fierce, and the class system is brutal.
David Attenborough is a national treasure but has always been a luvvie Leftie.
He is also a patron of the optimum population trust which believes in a hugely reduced human population
A warning that people can be hugely impressive and respected public figures, but also talk shite.
As a naturalist he is impressive, when it comes to area's outside his sphere like many he assumes his expertise in on field makes him an expert on everything else
Humans aren't animals? Population density and so on is the stuff we were taught at Uni alongside other zoology.
I have to admit this thought occurred to me when someone suggested the Tories taking on David Attenborough next as being a stupid idea (which it very much would be), due to comments he's made about the industrial revolution - whilst he may have thought through the implications of that, I do think it has an image problem which doesn't consider the good points.
Err not sure these two things are the same. The first counts as pure environmental degradation, the second was costly but had the upside of by far the biggest increase in human welfare in history.
Unfair to pick on this otherwise interesting post but it's a mistake that comes up surprisingly often. What do people think life would be like if we hadn't burnt fossil fuels? Like it is now, just no climate crisis? https://twitter.com/mrianleslie/status/1633845495595671552/photo/1
We’d have chopped down all the forests, and burned them for energy.
People who wish the Industrial Revolution had never happened seem to imagine themselves living like lords, rather than like peasants.
I don't think that's the error. I think they just don't know history and don't have much understanding of pre-industrial life. They have a vision of Hobbits in the Shire.
I think that’s right. And the Shire was rural Warwickshire in the 1890’s, rather than a medieval society.
A pre-industrial world is one where starvation is a reality when the crops fail; most children don’t reach adulthood; most homes are damp and insanitary; people die of infections and illnesses that are easily treated today; violent crime is rife; competition for resources is fierce, and the class system is brutal.
David Attenborough is a national treasure but has always been a luvvie Leftie.
He's a true patriot now, finally doing a series about our Beloved Blighty, starting this coming Sunday at 7pm.
I think in terms of the industrial revolution he was taking the long view.
Will the inhabitants of the world in a century or two look back on the pre-industrial period as an idyllic Garden of Eden? Quite possibly so if the coastal world is flooded, the seas full of plastics, the land desert and the hills deforested, with our posterity roaming in packs trying to fight off climate refugees in a silent landscape with little wild life left.
I hope we can avoid such a fate, but it is far from certain. In the short term we can ignore the possibility, as we will all be dead before we find out.
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
I don't think fighting fire with fire in terms of mischaracterisation works, in this case. People really don't expect absolute perfection. If big projects were a bit over budget or bit delayed, they get annoyed but can understand that cannot reasonably be said to mean a project is a total failure.
It's when things are vastly overbudget and massively delayed that the criticisms ramp up. Particularly if it comes across like no one could have believed the initial estimates.
I disagree.
Brits are whinging poms, and the Australians have got us dead right on that.
Heathrow T5 had a problem with its baggage systems for 48-72 hours after opening, and that was it, but no-one has ever forgot it.
LHRT5 is great. The Liz Line is great. We can do great infrastructure. They had problems but now they’re world class
But it is futile to deny that HS2 is a proper copper-bottomed chateau-bottled disaster, and one we haven’t even begun to solve - it might yet get worse
It was an over engineered solution to an almost non existent problem, and the expense was always hideous. Fuck knows how we get out of this mess
In the end it is just an extra train line from Birmingham to London. If you try and get a train from Birmingham to London now, it is a disaster, they are all packed, and it just gets worse and worse every year. In the end there needs to be some plan to resolve that problem, this is it, there is no other plan. And situation is going to get far, far worse before it gets better, because it is going to be another decade before HS2 opens.
The only thing that they may be able in the intervening time is perhaps buy Chiltern railways some more trains - they still inexplicably have a habit of running 3 car trains which are absolutely packed.
But is even this true?
Two hours ago we had a pb-er saying he was on a half empty train from london to brum, and he said this is the new normal. Post covid
Also, there are surely cheaper ways of adding capacity between london and b’ham. £100 fucking billion? Seriously? Give over
I have to admit this thought occurred to me when someone suggested the Tories taking on David Attenborough next as being a stupid idea (which it very much would be), due to comments he's made about the industrial revolution - whilst he may have thought through the implications of that, I do think it has an image problem which doesn't consider the good points.
Err not sure these two things are the same. The first counts as pure environmental degradation, the second was costly but had the upside of by far the biggest increase in human welfare in history.
Unfair to pick on this otherwise interesting post but it's a mistake that comes up surprisingly often. What do people think life would be like if we hadn't burnt fossil fuels? Like it is now, just no climate crisis? https://twitter.com/mrianleslie/status/1633845495595671552/photo/1
We’d have chopped down all the forests, and burned them for energy.
People who wish the Industrial Revolution had never happened seem to imagine themselves living like lords, rather than like peasants.
I don't think that's the error. I think they just don't know history and don't have much understanding of pre-industrial life. They have a vision of Hobbits in the Shire.
I think that’s right. And the Shire was rural Warwickshire in the 1890’s, rather than a medieval society.
A pre-industrial world is one where starvation is a reality when the crops fail; most children don’t reach adulthood; most homes are damp and insanitary; people die of infections and illnesses that are easily treated today; violent crime is rife; competition for resources is fierce, and the class system is brutal.
David Attenborough is a national treasure but has always been a luvvie Leftie.
He is also a patron of the optimum population trust which believes in a hugely reduced human population
A warning that people can be hugely impressive and respected public figures, but also talk shite.
As a naturalist he is impressive, when it comes to area's outside his sphere like many he assumes his expertise in on field makes him an expert on everything else
Humans aren't animals? Population density and so on is the stuff we were taught at Uni alongside other zoology.
Humans are obviously animals however being a naturalist does not give you any particular insight to what amounts to social problems and just waving your hands and saying humans should only be whatever the last claim he made was doesn't answer any of those. Yes he might be right from a naturalist point of view however you tell people well we have 7.8 billion too many people doesn't really help.
If we are talking for example astrophysics and brian cox tells me I am wrong I should listen because he knows more than I.
If he is commenting on how to stop incel culture no he knows no more than I
I have to admit this thought occurred to me when someone suggested the Tories taking on David Attenborough next as being a stupid idea (which it very much would be), due to comments he's made about the industrial revolution - whilst he may have thought through the implications of that, I do think it has an image problem which doesn't consider the good points.
Err not sure these two things are the same. The first counts as pure environmental degradation, the second was costly but had the upside of by far the biggest increase in human welfare in history.
Unfair to pick on this otherwise interesting post but it's a mistake that comes up surprisingly often. What do people think life would be like if we hadn't burnt fossil fuels? Like it is now, just no climate crisis? https://twitter.com/mrianleslie/status/1633845495595671552/photo/1
We’d have chopped down all the forests, and burned them for energy.
People who wish the Industrial Revolution had never happened seem to imagine themselves living like lords, rather than like peasants.
I don't think that's the error. I think they just don't know history and don't have much understanding of pre-industrial life. They have a vision of Hobbits in the Shire.
I think that’s right. And the Shire was rural Warwickshire in the 1890’s, rather than a medieval society.
A pre-industrial world is one where starvation is a reality when the crops fail; most children don’t reach adulthood; most homes are damp and insanitary; people die of infections and illnesses that are easily treated today; violent crime is rife; competition for resources is fierce, and the class system is brutal.
David Attenborough is a national treasure but has always been a luvvie Leftie.
He is also a patron of the optimum population trust which believes in a hugely reduced human population
A warning that people can be hugely impressive and respected public figures, but also talk shite.
As a naturalist he is impressive, when it comes to area's outside his sphere like many he assumes his expertise in on field makes him an expert on everything else
Like everyone on this board then. And on Twitter.
(No apostrophe when in this case BTW. You’ve indicated something belongs to the area rather than more than one area. To take an example you’re doubtless more than familiar with “Jobseeker’s Allowance” means the allowance belongs to the jobseeker whereas “Jobseekers” means more than one jobseeker. Oh, and “one” has an “e” at the end)
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
Heathrow? The airport where we haven't built the northern runway and we haven't built the western runway and we haven't built another runway at Gatwick and we haven't built Boris island. Meanwhile European superhubs continue to expand successfully and we slide ever backwards in terms of our competitiveness.
I am not attacking the quality of the projects that are built. I am attacking our constant inability to build projects. We haven't done a London hub airport expansion. We can't build high speed rail. We don't build motorways. Everyone else does. We are shit at infrastructure.
I have to admit this thought occurred to me when someone suggested the Tories taking on David Attenborough next as being a stupid idea (which it very much would be), due to comments he's made about the industrial revolution - whilst he may have thought through the implications of that, I do think it has an image problem which doesn't consider the good points.
Err not sure these two things are the same. The first counts as pure environmental degradation, the second was costly but had the upside of by far the biggest increase in human welfare in history.
Unfair to pick on this otherwise interesting post but it's a mistake that comes up surprisingly often. What do people think life would be like if we hadn't burnt fossil fuels? Like it is now, just no climate crisis? https://twitter.com/mrianleslie/status/1633845495595671552/photo/1
We’d have chopped down all the forests, and burned them for energy.
People who wish the Industrial Revolution had never happened seem to imagine themselves living like lords, rather than like peasants.
I don't think that's the error. I think they just don't know history and don't have much understanding of pre-industrial life. They have a vision of Hobbits in the Shire.
I think that’s right. And the Shire was rural Warwickshire in the 1890’s, rather than a medieval society.
A pre-industrial world is one where starvation is a reality when the crops fail; most children don’t reach adulthood; most homes are damp and insanitary; people die of infections and illnesses that are easily treated today; violent crime is rife; competition for resources is fierce, and the class system is brutal.
David Attenborough is a national treasure but has always been a luvvie Leftie.
He is also a patron of the optimum population trust which believes in a hugely reduced human population
A warning that people can be hugely impressive and respected public figures, but also talk shite.
As a naturalist he is impressive, when it comes to area's outside his sphere like many he assumes his expertise in on field makes him an expert on everything else
Like everyone on this board then. And on Twitter.
(No apostrophe when in this case BTW. You’ve indicated something belongs to the area rather than more than one area. To take an example you’re doubtless more than familiar with “Jobseeker’s Allowance” means the allowance belongs to the jobseeker whereas “Jobseekers” means more than one jobseeker. Oh, and “one” has an “e” at the end)
Shut the fuck up with your sneering. We all do typos. Twat
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
There's an old adage that my dad told me when I was knee-high to a grasshopper: when doing any construction, whether it's a new bathroom, a new house, building a road or a railway - then you have three criteria: specification, time and budget.
It is easy to get one of them (although the WCML upgrade did not meet any of them).
It is perfectly possible to get two: e.g. for the project to be on budget and spec, but late, or on spec and on time, but over budget.
But it is really, really hard for a project to be on spec, on time and on budget. Crossrail, it should be remembered, only hit one: specification. It was over budget and late.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
Yeah, it was always going to be a white elephant.
Much better to be a conventional track going 100mph if just between London and Brum. Higher speeds only make sense if going all the way to Scotland, South Wales, Liverpool, Leeds etc.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
A lot depends on how you define "neutrality" - one way is to avoid the subject completely, the other is to ensure both sides of an argument are properly and equally represented. The BBC should always, in my view, incline to the latter.
Democracy depends on a plurality of voices not a minimum.
Lineker's comment was intemperate - one can accuse the current Government of many things (blundering self-serving ineptitude being three of them) but they aren't by any stretch of any imagination comparable to the Government of 1930s Germany.
The worry however is the systematic demonisation of particular groups - it was those on welfare not so long ago - legitimises the implementation of discriminatory law. Those seeking asylum should have their applications properly and promptly reviewed and judged and if the application fails, the reasons for that failure need to be properly explained and the individual repatriated to France.
We need proper co-operation and collaboration with France and other European countries as well as going after the people smuggling gangs (which, as I've said, are often run by British nationals).
The tougher question is how do you stop Britain being such a magnet for migrants? For some, it's simply the capitalist dream - work hard, make money, enjoy nice things - and who are we to deny others the dream we so ardently espouse? We may still be seen as a "soft touch" for those seeking a life on benefits but I suspect the reality is very different.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
Yeah, it was always going to be a white elephant.
Much better to be a conventional track going 100mph if just between London and Brum. Higher speeds only make sense if going all the way to Scotland, South Wales, Liverpool, Leeds etc.
Rubbish. Even the WCML manages more than 100mph.
It was set for too high a speed, but it's ludicrous to suggest taking all the fastest trains off to a specially engineered line wouldn't be the biggest boost to capacity. If delivered properly, rather than by the incompetent losers at the DfT, it would triple it.
Just glancing at some European polls, it seems both the newish Italian and Swedish Governments are losing their immediate post-election bounce and polling is returning in both countries to close to election levels.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
They did, and that's why we nearly didn't.
The shenanigans around the building of the GWML through Wiltshire, WCML through Northamptonshire and the ECML through Northumberland were quite extraordinary. They included waiting until a vicar whose estate was on the route was in church preaching on a Sunday to carry out the survey, gathering private armies to fight off rival gangs so a bridge could be built, and trying to sabotage Lord Howick's carriage so he couldn't filibuster a bill in the Lords.
In the case of the WCML, eventually the solution was simply to triple the cost paid for the land. Which (along with Kilsby Tunnel) is one reason why it cost more than twice as much as was expected.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, the competition for transport then was canals (slow) or road (slow and only small loads). There was no serious competition for the original railways. HS2 has to compete with air, conventional rail, motor vehicles, and the Internet.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, the competition for transport then was canals (slow) or road (slow and only small loads). There was no serious competition for the original railways. HS2 has to compete with air, conventional rail, motor vehicles, and the Internet.
I recommend to you the many books on the subject of the tremendous fight the stagecoach industry put up against railways. Or the efforts of the canals to obstruct construction.
Not that canals were immune to Nimbyism. Shelmore Great Bank, which took six years to build, cost a fortune and is today an engineering marvel, was built only because some pillock at Gnosall refused to let the canal cross his pheasant preserve.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
They thought their heads would fall off if they went above 30mph and they still went for it.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
Because we don't have hope of increasing capacity, otherwise. It isn't rocket science. I'm sure a thriller writer would get it.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, the competition for transport then was canals (slow) or road (slow and only small loads). There was no serious competition for the original railways. HS2 has to compete with air, conventional rail, motor vehicles, and the Internet.
I recommend to you the many books on the subject of the tremendous fight the stagecoach industry put up against railways. Or the efforts of the canals to obstruct construction.
Not that canals were immune to Nimbyism. Shelmore Great Bank, which took six years to build, cost a fortune and is today an engineering marvel, was built only because some pillock at Gnosall refused to let the canal cross his pheasant preserve.
Tixall Wide has the same reason. And the bit of the Soar navigation where it heads off onto the river Wreake for a bit.
One of my favourite canal anecdotes is the Battle of Saxby, when Lord Harborough (a shareholder in the Oakham Canal) brought up a bunch of cannons from his ship on the south coast to fire at the surveyors from the Syston & Peterborough railway, who wanted to build over the canal.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
Coz that fucked up Camden and Primrose Hill. And got rightly booted
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
Back when the Chunnel was first being constructed the plan was for exactly this. HS1 would have taken you from Paris or beyond all the way to Yorkshire and Manchester. I remember the station at Rugby getting ready to be a staging post with its huge platforms. Then they canned it for cost saving reasons and ran the Eurostar over the suburban lines to Waterloo.
So that when HS1 was finally built it was of course way more expensive. And now HS2 will be many orders of magnitude more expensive again. And if we canned it and restarted in a decade, it would be yet more orders of magnitude more expensive.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
Coz that fucked up Camden and Primrose Hill. And got rightly booted
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
I don't think fighting fire with fire in terms of mischaracterisation works, in this case. People really don't expect absolute perfection. If big projects were a bit over budget or bit delayed, they get annoyed but can understand that cannot reasonably be said to mean a project is a total failure.
It's when things are vastly overbudget and massively delayed that the criticisms ramp up. Particularly if it comes across like no one could have believed the initial estimates.
I disagree.
Brits are whinging poms, and the Australians have got us dead right on that.
Heathrow T5 had a problem with its baggage systems for 48-72 hours after opening, and that was it, but no-one has ever forgot it.
LHRT5 is great. The Liz Line is great. We can do great infrastructure. They had problems but now they’re world class
But it is futile to deny that HS2 is a proper copper-bottomed chateau-bottled disaster, and one we haven’t even begun to solve - it might yet get worse
It was an over engineered solution to an almost non existent problem, and the expense was always hideous. Fuck knows how we get out of this mess
In the end it is just an extra train line from Birmingham to London. If you try and get a train from Birmingham to London now, it is a disaster, they are all packed, and it just gets worse and worse every year. In the end there needs to be some plan to resolve that problem, this is it, there is no other plan. And situation is going to get far, far worse before it gets better, because it is going to be another decade before HS2 opens.
The only thing that they may be able in the intervening time is perhaps buy Chiltern railways some more trains - they still inexplicably have a habit of running 3 car trains which are absolutely packed.
But is even this true?
Two hours ago we had a pb-er saying he was on a half empty train from london to brum, and he said this is the new normal. Post covid
Also, there are surely cheaper ways of adding capacity between london and b’ham. £100 fucking billion? Seriously? Give over
Apparently they used to run three trains a day to Birmingham, now it's two. So it can't be that desperate.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
Geeky trainspotter twats??
How can I usefully take a picture of a train whizzing by at a bajillion miles an hour???
Just because a policy is popular doesn't make it right. I thought we were beyond policy by focus groups.
There must be labour and lib dems who disagree with you if 50% agree the policy
I'm not trying to party politicise this even if you re.
I think both Sunak and Starmer are being responsible - Sunak is trying to work with the French and others to come up with a suitable and proportionate response and Starmer reminds us it's the people smuggling gangs who are actively profiting from the desperation and misery of others. Targeting them and stopping them (and to be fair some of them appear to be British citizens so our hands aren't exactly clean) seems wholly sensible.
Where I part company with Braverman is her policy continues to inflame sentiment against migrants - once a group is suitably dehumanised and vilified any action aginst them becomes justified. Whatever we may think of them as a group, migrants are individuals and we should treat them with a common decency and humanity.
I don't disagree with any of that but boats have to be stopped to save innocent lives
Your last two words should read 'Tory seats'.
Sorry I just do not have a concern for conservative seats, I have concern for lives lost at sea and the risk my son and his colleagues, as sea going RNLI crew, take every day in rescuing people and children drowning at the hands of people smugglers
Big G, my comment wasn't aimed at you personally - far from it. However, I would take some persuading that Braverman's main concern is to 'save innocent lives' - I reckon that's a long way down her list of priorities.
I genuinely care for the lives of people at sea and am very proud my son who is sea going crew on the verge of getting his first command in just 2 years
I want the boats stopped for this reason and reject Farage style attitudes to Immigrants
On whose watch did the small boat asylum seekers/economic migrant accelerate from 0 to 45,000 pa in around four years?
Can Sir Beer Korma lefty Lawyer fans please explain?
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
What we need is high speed rail that goes direct from our biggest cities (Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham) into Europe.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
Back when the Chunnel was first being constructed the plan was for exactly this. HS1 would have taken you from Paris or beyond all the way to Yorkshire and Manchester. I remember the station at Rugby getting ready to be a staging post with its huge platforms. Then they canned it for cost saving reasons and ran the Eurostar over the suburban lines to Waterloo.
So that when HS1 was finally built it was of course way more expensive. And now HS2 will be many orders of magnitude more expensive again. And if we canned it and restarted in a decade, it would be yet more orders of magnitude more expensive.
No one north of Brent Cross wants to go direct to the continent. Foreign travel is too expensive for northerners and Scots, and it confuses them so they end up wandering around places like Düsseldorf exposing their genitals to old ladies and embarrassing the nation
We made the right decision. Stop northerners and Scots going abroad. We need to see it through
The first thing you learn on a computer science course is how every project always ends up being a lot more expensive, and taking a lot more time, than originally envisaged. Seems to apply to engineering projects as well, and it never seems to change.
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
I don't think fighting fire with fire in terms of mischaracterisation works, in this case. People really don't expect absolute perfection. If big projects were a bit over budget or bit delayed, they get annoyed but can understand that cannot reasonably be said to mean a project is a total failure.
It's when things are vastly overbudget and massively delayed that the criticisms ramp up. Particularly if it comes across like no one could have believed the initial estimates.
I disagree.
Brits are whinging poms, and the Australians have got us dead right on that.
Heathrow T5 had a problem with its baggage systems for 48-72 hours after opening, and that was it, but no-one has ever forgot it.
LHRT5 is great. The Liz Line is great. We can do great infrastructure. They had problems but now they’re world class
But it is futile to deny that HS2 is a proper copper-bottomed chateau-bottled disaster, and one we haven’t even begun to solve - it might yet get worse
It was an over engineered solution to an almost non existent problem, and the expense was always hideous. Fuck knows how we get out of this mess
In the end it is just an extra train line from Birmingham to London. If you try and get a train from Birmingham to London now, it is a disaster, they are all packed, and it just gets worse and worse every year. In the end there needs to be some plan to resolve that problem, this is it, there is no other plan. And situation is going to get far, far worse before it gets better, because it is going to be another decade before HS2 opens.
The only thing that they may be able in the intervening time is perhaps buy Chiltern railways some more trains - they still inexplicably have a habit of running 3 car trains which are absolutely packed.
But is even this true?
Two hours ago we had a pb-er saying he was on a half empty train from london to brum, and he said this is the new normal. Post covid
Also, there are surely cheaper ways of adding capacity between london and b’ham. £100 fucking billion? Seriously? Give over
Apparently they used to run three trains a day to Birmingham, now it's two. So it can't be that desperate.
Three trains a day? Seriously? Going down to two?
It’s four trains an hour from Birmingham alone, not including non-stops from Stoke, Crewe, Manchester and Liverpool.
A lot depends on how you define "neutrality" - one way is to avoid the subject completely, the other is to ensure both sides of an argument are properly and equally represented. The BBC should always, in my view, incline to the latter.
Democracy depends on a plurality of voices not a minimum.
Lineker's comment was intemperate - one can accuse the current Government of many things (blundering self-serving ineptitude being three of them) but they aren't by any stretch of any imagination comparable to the Government of 1930s Germany.
SNIP
Agreed.
Lineker versus Braverman --- it's a pity both sides can't lose.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
I guess the govt will have to u-turn over whatsapp but if not I wonder if it may have an impact on turnout of younger voters.
If there's no Whatsapp, how will they even find out there's an election on?
(Yes, I know - Whatsapp is probably only for old - over 30 - people, right?)
Does anybody have a solution to the actual problem, though. All I hear is lofty principles and denial of the problem.
We can’t have the most sickening abuse content being openly - and securely - shared. We owe it to the victims to stop it, surely?
And we can’t have the government reading everyone’s private communications.
What is the solution?
It is a solution that is worse that the problem tbh. The politicians have been told often enough that you put everyone at risk by weakening encryption however they, and the civil service have their eye on the holy grail....full data on everyone. Whats the betting that important people will get exemptions to have proper encryption
There is no solution.
What we are seeing is clash of the legalistic mindset - “all information required must be available to the court at its request” with the laws of mathematics.
“ Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,"
The politicians I have spoken to on this over the years simply do not accept that unbreakable end to end encryption is inevitable - this is across parties.
Because politicians sadly think anything they don't understand must be easy and assume when people are saying it's not possible they must be lying because its what they would do
More that there is a certain mindset.
I worked with a lawyer once. Who claimed
- that since testing can’t cover every possible branch of complex code, that all developers are incompetent - Accused me of insolence when I pointed out that a certain problem was actual The Travelling Salesman problem. And hence had no guaranteed perfect solution.
Essentially he thought that reality should do as it’s told.
And most politicians are lawyers
More to the point - think they should act like a version of lawyers they see on tv.
I was young and stupid. I explained encryption to one MP. He kept blustering that “the security services” must be able to break that.
When he finally got the point - it was a look of utter horror. I realised my mistake in that moment. He would fight this with his every breath….
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Reopening old railway infrastructure, targeted new lines to ease pressure on the main lines, station and rolling stock upgrades would have potentially been goers, for instance.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
My impression is that they've pretty much got all the juice out of that particular orange, and you can't do much more without putting the fast trains on separate tracks to the slower ones.
And if you want that fast track to unclog the three routes to the north, it needs to be super-fast to compensate for some journeys (London-Leeds, say) having to go the longer way round.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
They now make up our excellent off-road cycle network in Edinburgh
He has been granted a huge platform on the BBC for the past 30 odd years
His profile would be nothing like the same if he had just been local ex footballer Gaz selling local Leicester junk food and litter for the those years
He owes almost all of his profile to MOTD rather than World Cups 86 and 90
While he's given that remarkably privileged platform to perform from, he ought to refrain from politics
If that rule can't hold for the highest paid BBC employee contractor..
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
We desperately need that new runway at Heathrow.
I actually cannot remember what the current state of play with that is. In stasis?
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
An awful lot of shit written about infrastructure on this thread by those who know nothing about it.
Britain is world-leading at creating excellent infrastructure, and Heathrow T5, the Olympics and Crossrail are all first class.
The measure seems to be absolute perfection of superb quality, on time, on budget and with no teething trouble whatsoever predicted with total accuracy over 10 years in advance otherwise it's shit.
Megaprojects don't work like that.
I don't think fighting fire with fire in terms of mischaracterisation works, in this case. People really don't expect absolute perfection. If big projects were a bit over budget or bit delayed, they get annoyed but can understand that cannot reasonably be said to mean a project is a total failure.
It's when things are vastly overbudget and massively delayed that the criticisms ramp up. Particularly if it comes across like no one could have believed the initial estimates.
I disagree.
Brits are whinging poms, and the Australians have got us dead right on that.
Heathrow T5 had a problem with its baggage systems for 48-72 hours after opening, and that was it, but no-one has ever forgot it.
LHRT5 is great. The Liz Line is great. We can do great infrastructure. They had problems but now they’re world class
But it is futile to deny that HS2 is a proper copper-bottomed chateau-bottled disaster, and one we haven’t even begun to solve - it might yet get worse
It was an over engineered solution to an almost non existent problem, and the expense was always hideous. Fuck knows how we get out of this mess
In the end it is just an extra train line from Birmingham to London. If you try and get a train from Birmingham to London now, it is a disaster, they are all packed, and it just gets worse and worse every year. In the end there needs to be some plan to resolve that problem, this is it, there is no other plan. And situation is going to get far, far worse before it gets better, because it is going to be another decade before HS2 opens.
The only thing that they may be able in the intervening time is perhaps buy Chiltern railways some more trains - they still inexplicably have a habit of running 3 car trains which are absolutely packed.
But is even this true?
Two hours ago we had a pb-er saying he was on a half empty train from london to brum, and he said this is the new normal. Post covid
Also, there are surely cheaper ways of adding capacity between london and b’ham. £100 fucking billion? Seriously? Give over
Apparently they used to run three trains a day to Birmingham, now it's two. So it can't be that desperate.
Per hour, more like. But no need to let your tenuous grasp of the facts influence the certainty of your opinions. As you were.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Reopening old railway infrastructure, targeted new lines to ease pressure on the main lines, station and rolling stock upgrades would have potentially been goers, for instance.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Double decker trains?
That would be even more expensive and slower than building HS2 given our loading gauge.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Reopening old railway infrastructure, targeted new lines to ease pressure on the main lines, station and rolling stock upgrades would have potentially been goers, for instance.
Just because a policy is popular doesn't make it right. I thought we were beyond policy by focus groups.
There must be labour and lib dems who disagree with you if 50% agree the policy
I'm not trying to party politicise this even if you re.
I think both Sunak and Starmer are being responsible - Sunak is trying to work with the French and others to come up with a suitable and proportionate response and Starmer reminds us it's the people smuggling gangs who are actively profiting from the desperation and misery of others. Targeting them and stopping them (and to be fair some of them appear to be British citizens so our hands aren't exactly clean) seems wholly sensible.
Where I part company with Braverman is her policy continues to inflame sentiment against migrants - once a group is suitably dehumanised and vilified any action aginst them becomes justified. Whatever we may think of them as a group, migrants are individuals and we should treat them with a common decency and humanity.
I don't disagree with any of that but boats have to be stopped to save innocent lives
Your last two words should read 'Tory seats'.
Sorry I just do not have a concern for conservative seats, I have concern for lives lost at sea and the risk my son and his colleagues, as sea going RNLI crew, take every day in rescuing people and children drowning at the hands of people smugglers
Big G, my comment wasn't aimed at you personally - far from it. However, I would take some persuading that Braverman's main concern is to 'save innocent lives' - I reckon that's a long way down her list of priorities.
I genuinely care for the lives of people at sea and am very proud my son who is sea going crew on the verge of getting his first command in just 2 years
I want the boats stopped for this reason and reject Farage style attitudes to Immigrants
On whose watch did the small boat asylum seekers/economic migrant accelerate from 0 to 45,000 pa in around four years?
Can Sir Beer Korma lefty Lawyer fans please explain?
They turned to boats as other routes were closed off.
The first thing you learn on a computer science course is how every project always ends up being a lot more expensive, and taking a lot more time, than originally envisaged. Seems to apply to engineering projects as well, and it never seems to change.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
Tbf, delightful though a reopened Daffodil Line would be, I can’t see it relieving congestion on the WCML.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
I don't agree. Civil servants grossly inflate the drawbacks and costs of projects they don't want to do. If your argument is that the CS isn't fit for purpose, I agree, but that doesn’t affect the idea of reversing some Beeching cuts any more than it affects anything else.
And it was a Tory Government that did it, but it was enabled by nationalisation.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Double decker trains?
That would be even more expensive and slower than building HS2 given our loading gauge.
You couldn't have two true stories. The upper layer would be for Sunak sized people only.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Double decker trains?
That would be even more expensive and slower than building HS2 given our loading gauge.
Just because a policy is popular doesn't make it right. I thought we were beyond policy by focus groups.
There must be labour and lib dems who disagree with you if 50% agree the policy
I'm not trying to party politicise this even if you re.
I think both Sunak and Starmer are being responsible - Sunak is trying to work with the French and others to come up with a suitable and proportionate response and Starmer reminds us it's the people smuggling gangs who are actively profiting from the desperation and misery of others. Targeting them and stopping them (and to be fair some of them appear to be British citizens so our hands aren't exactly clean) seems wholly sensible.
Where I part company with Braverman is her policy continues to inflame sentiment against migrants - once a group is suitably dehumanised and vilified any action aginst them becomes justified. Whatever we may think of them as a group, migrants are individuals and we should treat them with a common decency and humanity.
I don't disagree with any of that but boats have to be stopped to save innocent lives
Your last two words should read 'Tory seats'.
Sorry I just do not have a concern for conservative seats, I have concern for lives lost at sea and the risk my son and his colleagues, as sea going RNLI crew, take every day in rescuing people and children drowning at the hands of people smugglers
Big G, my comment wasn't aimed at you personally - far from it. However, I would take some persuading that Braverman's main concern is to 'save innocent lives' - I reckon that's a long way down her list of priorities.
I genuinely care for the lives of people at sea and am very proud my son who is sea going crew on the verge of getting his first command in just 2 years
I want the boats stopped for this reason and reject Farage style attitudes to Immigrants
On whose watch did the small boat asylum seekers/economic migrant accelerate from 0 to 45,000 pa in around four years?
Can Sir Beer Korma lefty Lawyer fans please explain?
They turned to boats as other routes were closed off.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Double decker trains?
That would be even more expensive and slower than building HS2 given our loading gauge.
You couldn't have two true stories. The upper layer would be for Sunak sized people only.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
I don't agree. Civil servants grossly inflate the drawbacks and costs of projects they don't want to do. If your argument is that the CS isn't fit for purpose, I agree, but that doesn’t affect the idea of reversing some Beeching cuts any more than it affects anything else.
And it was a Tory Government that did it, but it was enabled by nationalisation.
I have a friend who started a business called Village Railways with the goal of restarting some of these lines. The problem was that almost any town or village of any size will have created a hulking great new development on top of the line.
And the only places where there hadn't been development were the places where there was limited demand for new railway lines.
On the long watch tonight. My father-in-law, 85, is nearing the end.
As a child, he was orphaned when his disabled father fell into a river, his mother jumped in to try and save him, and both were drowned. He married his childhood sweetheart at 19, and had three daughters. He joined the RAF, served on SAR helicopters, and was the only survivor of a crash as they returned to Tangmere. In 1969, when his youngest child was a few months old, he took his family and set sail from Selsey planning to sail around the world. In the West Indies, he nearly died when the engine on the catamaran exploded while he was working on it. He carried the scars, along with those from the helicopter crash, for the rest of his life. They sailed through the Panama canal, visited Peru, the Galapagos and Easter Island, witnessed a French atom bomb test, and settled in New Zealand. After five years, he set off home, this time alone, and arrived back in Selsey having sailed non stop across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape, and North through the Atlantic. He trained as a chiropractor, settled on the Isle of Wight, and served the community for forty years. Three children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. A life well lived.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Also remember you want to increase goods capacity too, which is part of the problem. The much-touted increase in passenger numbers in the so-called privatised railway has been done by allowing goods traffic to collapse and end up on the roads, though the coal traffic was on the way out anyway.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
Tbf, delightful though a reopened Daffodil Line would be, I can’t see it relieving congestion on the WCML.
I used to walk the dog on the line bank behind the rec. The insanity of closing that line just beggars belief.
In terms of major population centres the UK is relatively tiny. High speed trains make no sense. It’s like building a high speed walkway from my bed to my laptop, which is 3 metres away
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
If they'd had this attitude in the 19th century we wouldn't have built any railways in Britain.
No, it just doesn’t make sense
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
The Shinkansen transformed Japanese transportation in an almost equally small and even more densely populated country. Of course they didn’t have the same NIMBY issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
But this is shite
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
I’ve never been sold on the speed of the thing. Manchester or Leeds to London isn’t an intolerable travel time as it is. If they’d been connecting it to Edinburgh and Glasgow, sure, maybe you can argue greater benefit.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
Such as?
Double decker trains?
That would be even more expensive and slower than building HS2 given our loading gauge.
Any resemblance to Mr D. Davis MP's double-decker leadership publicity is purely accidental.
And that design could be improved even more by the floors being dropped lower than the top of the wheels, like the Australian two storey trains. So you could almost get 2 floors.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
Curiously, where re-opening an old Beeching line is feasible (e.g. the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth line), the EU was always a good first port of call for funding.
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
That pipedream is gone forever. For example to relay the line from Ledbury to Gloucester would cost gazillions. Many years ago I worked with a guy who had an EA exemption to inert landfill a railway cutting he had bought. It's sad, but it's dead, it's gone, and it ain't coming back, a bit like Britain in the EU.
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
I don't agree. Civil servants grossly inflate the drawbacks and costs of projects they don't want to do. If your argument is that the CS isn't fit for purpose, I agree, but that doesn’t affect the idea of reversing some Beeching cuts any more than it affects anything else.
And it was a Tory Government that did it, but it was enabled by nationalisation.
I have a friend who started a business called Village Railways with the goal of restarting some of these lines. The problem was that almost any town or village of any size will have created a hulking great new development on top of the line.
And the only places where there hadn't been development were the places where there was limited demand for new railway lines.
Yes, it's not a perfect solution. But hey, with most post-60's developments, demolition might be a bonus.
On the long watch tonight. My father-in-law, 85, is nearing the end.
As a child, he was orphaned when his disabled father fell into a river, his mother jumped in to try and save him, and both were drowned. He married his childhood sweetheart at 19, and had three daughters. He joined the RAF, served on SAR helicopters, and was the only survivor of a crash as they returned to Tangmere. In 1969, when his youngest child was a few months old, he took his family and set sail from Selsey planning to sail around the world. In the West Indies, he nearly died when the engine on the catamaran exploded while he was working on it. He carried the scars, along with those from the helicopter crash, for the rest of his life. They sailed through the Panama canal, visited Peru, the Galapagos and Easter Island, witnessed a French atom bomb test, and settled in New Zealand. After five years, he set off home, this time alone, and arrived back in Selsey having sailed non stop across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape, and North through the Atlantic. He trained as a chiropractor, settled on the Isle of Wight, and served the community for forty years. Three children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. A life well lived.
Great post!
This is the soundtrack in my head, reading your words;
Comments
I’ve seen maps showing how many high speed trains Spain has built since 1992. It is impressive. They’ve built a dozen
But most of them speed through very empty semi desert or quite empty countryside and you do wonder about their long term economic sustainability. Spain lacks people rich enough to pay for whizzy lines from Bilbao to Toledo
But, tolerance for such casualties was much higher then.
We'd find it shocking today.
The Government would arguably have been much better off framing its legislation to permit automatic refusal for asylum seekers previously ordinarily resident in a list of countries deemed safe, including Albania. That would've been less contentious, permitted the number of boat people applications the Home Office had to sift through at least to be cut in half, and would've been considered perfectly acceptable to nearly all of public opinion except for a tiny number of urban ultra-liberals. The scope for intervention by the ECHR would be limited and any justifications offered - e.g. that the UK is somehow responsible for sheltering people escaping criminal feuds in Tirana, because the local authorities are unwilling or unable to do the job - would've made the court rather than the Government look ridiculous.
1. Suella Braverman’s career
2. Owning the libs
3. Winning wavering conservative voters
4. Actually reducing migration
5. Other stuff
"Elizabeth line could be be extended into Essex and Kent under ambitious new proposals"
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/elizabeth-line-could-be-be-extended-into-essex-and-kent-under-ambitious-new-proposals/ar-AA18moYa?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=eb31db9121b34be99f472bdc17cdf715&ei=18
Lineker hasn't damaged the reputation. The Chair has. The DG. Robbie Gibb.
The only thing that they may be able in the intervening time is perhaps buy Chiltern railways some more trains - they still inexplicably have a habit of running 3 car trains which are absolutely packed.
1. Lack of capacity between London and Birmingham. AIUI there is demand for another 10 trains an hour between London and Birmingham, which they can't run because there aren't the tracks.
2. Takes a chunk of traffic away from Birmingham New Street, a hugely congested station being both a terminus and an interchange.
3. Allows a chunk of trains to bypass Crewe junction, the biggest bottleneck.
Will the inhabitants of the world in a century or two look back on the pre-industrial period as an idyllic Garden of Eden? Quite possibly so if the coastal world is flooded, the seas full of plastics, the land desert and the hills deforested, with our posterity roaming in packs trying to fight off climate refugees in a silent landscape with little wild life left.
I hope we can avoid such a fate, but it is far from certain. In the short term we can ignore the possibility, as we will all be dead before we find out.
Two hours ago we had a pb-er saying he was on a half empty train from london to brum, and he said this is the new normal. Post covid
Also, there are surely cheaper ways of adding capacity between london and b’ham. £100 fucking billion? Seriously? Give over
If we are talking for example astrophysics and brian cox tells me I am wrong I should listen because he knows more than I.
If he is commenting on how to stop incel culture no he knows no more than I
(No apostrophe when in this case BTW. You’ve indicated something belongs to the area rather than more than one area. To take an example you’re doubtless more than familiar with “Jobseeker’s Allowance” means the allowance belongs to the jobseeker whereas “Jobseekers” means more than one jobseeker. Oh, and “one” has an “e” at the end)
It’s all over engineered and it was all done for vanity
My old route was 540 houses and 11.5 miles walking on a full day
The new one was around 850 houses and just under 12.5 miles
Took me twelve hours, on my birthday
It was lucky that I'd pointed out to the manager that the original new route he'd given me had over 1,050 houses in it
He said I was exaggerating until I counted them for him and he held about 200 back for someone else to do
They cut some bits and added some for my round on Tuesday and on a much lighter day only took me nine hours
I said I needed my day off yesterday, but got talked into working six hours
I then got persuaded to work today, training someone on part of my old route, and a couple of hours covering a bit in town I've not done before
So I've worked the last six days on the rota (Sundays aren't on it), and I'm also working the next six
And I don't know for sure what my route will be tomorrow
Much better to be a conventional track going 100mph if just between London and Brum. Higher speeds only make sense if going all the way to Scotland, South Wales, Liverpool, Leeds etc.
CAPACITY.IS.KEY
With a marker over Birmingham New Street.
A lot depends on how you define "neutrality" - one way is to avoid the subject completely, the other is to ensure both sides of an argument are properly and equally represented. The BBC should always, in my view, incline to the latter.
Democracy depends on a plurality of voices not a minimum.
Lineker's comment was intemperate - one can accuse the current Government of many things (blundering self-serving ineptitude being three of them) but they aren't by any stretch of any imagination comparable to the Government of 1930s Germany.
The worry however is the systematic demonisation of particular groups - it was those on welfare not so long ago - legitimises the implementation of discriminatory law. Those seeking asylum should have their applications properly and promptly reviewed and judged and if the application fails, the reasons for that failure need to be properly explained and the individual repatriated to France.
We need proper co-operation and collaboration with France and other European countries as well as going after the people smuggling gangs (which, as I've said, are often run by British nationals).
The tougher question is how do you stop Britain being such a magnet for migrants? For some, it's simply the capitalist dream - work hard, make money, enjoy nice things - and who are we to deny others the dream we so ardently espouse? We may still be seen as a "soft touch" for those seeking a life on benefits but I suspect the reality is very different.
It was set for too high a speed, but it's ludicrous to suggest taking all the fastest trains off to a specially engineered line wouldn't be the biggest boost to capacity. If delivered properly, rather than by the incompetent losers at the DfT, it would triple it.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2023/03/09/uk-government-cuts-452-million-from-active-travel-budget/?sh=5353f8805470
Hope the 2024 tax cuts are worth it.
The shenanigans around the building of the GWML through Wiltshire, WCML through Northamptonshire and the ECML through Northumberland were quite extraordinary. They included waiting until a vicar whose estate was on the route was in church preaching on a Sunday to carry out the survey, gathering private armies to fight off rival gangs so a bridge could be built, and trying to sabotage Lord Howick's carriage so he couldn't filibuster a bill in the Lords.
In the case of the WCML, eventually the solution was simply to triple the cost paid for the land. Which (along with Kilsby Tunnel) is one reason why it cost more than twice as much as was expected.
Not that canals were immune to Nimbyism. Shelmore Great Bank, which took six years to build, cost a fortune and is today an engineering marvel, was built only because some pillock at Gnosall refused to let the canal cross his pheasant preserve.
I’d build Heathrow’s new runway tomorrow. And crossrail 2. But highly expensive ultra fast trains are simply dumb in a small densely populated country like England
We don’t need them. It’s like trying to make Tube trains go in the air at vast expense. What’s the frigging point?
One of my favourite canal anecdotes is the Battle of Saxby, when Lord Harborough (a shareholder in the Oakham Canal) brought up a bunch of cannons from his ship on the south coast to fire at the surveyors from the Syston & Peterborough railway, who wanted to build over the canal.
Are you still striking ? Don’t hear anything about it since Xmas.
Then it makes sense. Even original HS2 didn't do that with the silly Euston thing.
issues we do but the engineering challenges were at least as great.
Shinkansen literally means “new mainline” and it was built entirely to create extra capacity by taking the express trains off the lines used by stoppers and freight. I assume they decided they might as well make them super fast if they were building a whole new line. They are also just incredibly efficient if a little no frills. In they roll, stop for a few seconds, everyone gets on, off they go again and 2 hours later you’re in Osaka.
I suspect the problem as with all infrastructure is that we should have built HS2, and 3 and 4, decades ago. I’m also sure it’s better to get on with building now than doing it another decade later.
We could do with a bit of latency in our infrastructure. We always build just as we’re about to burst.
So that when HS1 was finally built it was of course way more expensive. And now HS2 will be many orders of magnitude more expensive again. And if we canned it and restarted in a decade, it would be yet more orders of magnitude more expensive.
Tokyo-Hiroshima (about half the length of Japan) is 800km
London-Manchester is 262km
It’s ridiculous. We don’t need ultra high speed trains because quite fast trains get anyone wherever they need perfectly fine. England is small. This is an advantage. Instead the geeky trainspotter twats have tried to foist upon us, at vast expense, a train system which is ideal for vast continental countries. Not England
How can I usefully take a picture of a train whizzing by at a bajillion miles an hour???
Can Sir Beer Korma lefty Lawyer fans please explain?
I wasn't striking when I was on my six month contract, but I've just, yesterday, been given a permanent contract
Now all the CWU chaps are very concerned that I worked twelve hours on Monday
We made the right decision. Stop northerners and Scots going abroad. We need to see it through
It’s four trains an hour from Birmingham alone, not including non-stops from Stoke, Crewe, Manchester and Liverpool.
Lineker versus Braverman --- it's a pity both sides can't lose.
But capacity is the key driver here. There would likely have been cheaper options to boost capacity at pinch points though. Which would have been more sensible.
I was young and stupid. I explained encryption to one MP. He kept blustering that “the security services” must be able to break that.
When he finally got the point - it was a look of utter horror. I realised my mistake in that moment. He would fight this with his every breath….
https://www.railmaponline.com/UKIEMap.php
It looks like a spaghetti carbonara. There must be enough that haven't been built over significantly that can be relaid relatively inexpensively to ease any potential capacity issues on the WCML and any other lines. And they're built in places where people want/ed to go - they were all built by businesses for economical reasons, not as part of a eurocrat feverdream in the 1950's. That means they stand a better than average chance of viability and success.
And if you want that fast track to unclog the three routes to the north, it needs to be super-fast to compensate for some journeys (London-Leeds, say) having to go the longer way round.
He has been granted a huge platform on the BBC for the past 30 odd years
His profile would be nothing like the same if he had just been local ex footballer Gaz selling local Leicester junk food and litter for the those years
He owes almost all of his profile to MOTD rather than World Cups 86 and 90
While he's given that remarkably privileged platform to perform from, he ought to refrain from politics
If that rule can't hold for the highest paid BBC
employeecontractor..Oh fuck off Lineker
The railways, another great British institution smashed by a Conservative Government
She managed an event at the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square where Lineker was the celebrity
She was warned not to have any young ladies anywhere near him
I'm sure that doesn't stop him being a fine upstanding person on Nazis
And it was a Tory Government that did it, but it was enabled by nationalisation.
Any resemblance to Mr D. Davis MP's double-decker leadership publicity is purely accidental.
And the only places where there hadn't been development were the places where there was limited demand for new railway lines.
My father-in-law, 85, is nearing the end.
As a child, he was orphaned when his disabled father fell into a river, his mother jumped in to try and save him, and both were drowned.
He married his childhood sweetheart at 19, and had three daughters.
He joined the RAF, served on SAR helicopters, and was the only survivor of a crash as they returned to Tangmere.
In 1969, when his youngest child was a few months old, he took his family and set sail from Selsey planning to sail around the world.
In the West Indies, he nearly died when the engine on the catamaran exploded while he was working on it. He carried the scars, along with those from the helicopter crash, for the rest of his life.
They sailed through the Panama canal, visited Peru, the Galapagos and Easter Island, witnessed a French atom bomb test, and settled in New Zealand.
After five years, he set off home, this time alone, and arrived back in Selsey having sailed non stop across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape, and North through the Atlantic.
He trained as a chiropractor, settled on the Isle of Wight, and served the community for forty years.
Three children, seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
A life well lived.
New Tyne & Wear Metro train, as seen on Wikipedia:
New MerseyRail trains, as seen on Wikipedia:
New Glasgow Subway train, as seen on Wikipedia:
New Docklands Light Railway train, as seen on Wikipedia Modern Railways:
New Southend Pier Railway trains, as seen on Wikipedia:
If it ain't broke, the Conservatives break it.
This is the soundtrack in my head, reading your words;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIJGlTu5sEI