I see we are told which county cancelled the pangolins, a nice bit of nominative determinism there, but not *why*:
'Manatee County removed the book from district libraries, citing Florida Statute 1006.40(3)(d). However, section (3)(d) does not appear to exist under Florida Statute 1006.40, which is titled "Purchase of instructional materials."
When asked for clarity and for a full copy of the objection, Manatee County did not respond in time for publication'
You think it's just the manatees being jealous of another cute but obscure mammal getting any publicity?
Manatee County Tourist Board, more likely. Either that or they confused pangolins with trouser-snakes or something. Don't ask me, though.
I see they are also cancelling lions.
'Manatee County officials also removed "Christian, the Hugging Lion" by Justin Richardson, a 32-page children's book about two men who raise a lion named Christian in a London apartment. When Christian becomes too big, the two men release the lion into the wild in Africa. When the men go to visit Christian in Africa, they find that he remembers them. The book is based on a true story.
[...] While the two men, John and Ace, lived together in London and raised Christian the lion, it is never explicitly said in the book whether the two men were in a relationship.'
Hs2 is a monumental cock up but its particularly frustrating that the whole "London to Brum and no further" narrative has taken hold. As far as i know, phase 1 being built now runs from London to the existing West Coast at Lichfield with a spur into Birmingham.
So the plan was always for HS trains to run to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow etc on the brand new line as far as Lichfield then on the existing WC lines thereafter. I read last week that even if phase 2a and 2b never happens, Manchester to London will be 1.5 hrs rather than 2h10, and completely bypass the knackered and over congested hell that is the WCL between Rugby and Euston - the source of 99% of my London/Mcr train issues over the last 23 years of using it.
Yet all the media and political opponent spin is that canceling 2a and 2b means an expensive white elephant for London to Brum and naff all for the rest of the UK. But that's simply not right is it, unless I'm missing something?
I do think it should be built in full as planned, but i can see some attraction in pausing 2a and 2b indefinitely to spend the money on immediate improvements for commuters in the wider North.
Maybe that's what the comms plan was for Rishi until the leak blew that out of the water?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
The line to Scotland was the very long term plan.
The trains from Glasgow and Edinburgh would initially link in at Preston, then Goldbourne.
But there had been conversations with the Scottish government about longer term taking the service to Scotland.
Plus, the line into Manchester, from the south is heavily congested, HS2 takes the fast trains off that congested railway to provide space for more shorter commuter services.
Hs2 is a monumental cock up but its particularly frustrating that the whole "London to Brum and no further" narrative has taken hold. As far as i know, phase 1 being built now runs from London to the existing West Coast at Lichfield with a spur into Birmingham.
So the plan was always for HS trains to run to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow etc on the brand new line as far as Lichfield then on the existing WC lines thereafter. I read last week that even if phase 2a and 2b never happens, Manchester to London will be 1.5 hrs rather than 2h10, and completely bypass the knackered and over congested hell that is the WCL between Rugby and Euston - the source of 99% of my London/Mcr train issues over the last 23 years of using it.
Yet all the media and political opponent spin is that canceling 2a and 2b means an expensive white elephant for London to Brum and naff all for the rest of the UK. But that's simply not right is it, unless I'm missing something?
I do think it should be built in full as planned, but i can see some attraction in pausing 2a and 2b indefinitely to spend the money on immediate improvements for commuters in the wider North.
Maybe that's what the comms plan was for Rishi until the leak blew that out of the water?
The HS2 trains will be slower than the Pendolinos on the WCML though, because they'll be built to run on nice straight 400kmh track not crazy wiggly 1840s train tracks, and they won't tilt to go round the bends. Just build the fucking thing properly and stop dicking around.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
Sex denialism ie that biological sex exists, cannot be changed...
Pointing out the obvious: genes can't be changed, but genitals can and have been (sound of chainsaw in background).
A few years ago during my enforced purdah I thought of writing several articles, two or three of which would have been about trans. Although now abandoned, one of them would have revolved around analysing the factions as political factions (pre-2015, gender ideology, gender critical) and noting the terms specific to each faction - shibboleths, in other words. "Biological sex" is one of them, displacing the prior "genetic sex".
The intent was to plot their prevalence over time (I thought of using the British Newspaper Archive, but in practice it would have been Google) and thereby track the rise and fall of each faction. If I ever get free time (hah!) I'll try to resurrect it before I forget it all.
You'd really have to go back to pre-Victorian times to do that properly. Would be interesting meat for argument.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
Sky saying the HS2 decision is expected to be announced by Sunak in his speech tomorrow after a cabinet meeting later today
I cannot understand how on earth the conservatives have allowed this to dominate the media cycle other than abject communication incompetence
I have mixed feelings on HS2 and need to hear the explanation and alternative investments for the North but they couldn’t have handed a better gift to Labour for their conference next week
My main problem with cancelling HS2 is this. It's a bit like ordering a Range Rover for £100,000, paying 30% up front, changing your mind and forgoing the deposit. It doesn't make financial sense.
It does if you don't have the £70,000
Well no.
You could find some sort of external funding in order to pass the project (as suggested by Street) or the Range Rover, on to a third party. Either way you must save your up front deposit.
Except if the main point of your plan is to end up with a car to go from A to B, you might be financially better off forgetting the Range Rover, losing the £30k deposit and spending £25k on a Golf. Granted, it would have been a much better deal all round if you hadn't thrown £30k at the Range Rover you didn't really need first, but that decision is already made.
This is the classic sunk cost fallacy. The initial question was "should we pay £100k for a Range Rover." We made the wrong decision, said yes, put down £30k. This means that the present decision has become "Should we pay £70k" for a Range Rover", because that is it's present cost to us. It is possible to correctly conclude that the answer to this is no, as we've realised it would be a better deal to have a £25k Golf.
The only difference with HS2 is that having put down our £30k, we've wandered down to dealership to ask about the delivery date. They've told us the price has gone up to £180k, so before we get our Range Rover we need to find £150k. This makes the question we've got to answer "Should we pay £150k for a Range Rover we originally thought was worth £100k?" to which the answer may well be no.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
The line to Scotland was the very long term plan.
The trains from Glasgow and Edinburgh would initially link in at Preston, then Goldbourne.
But there had been conversations with the Scottish government about longer term taking the service to Scotland.
Plus, the line into Manchester, from the south is heavily congested, HS2 takes the fast trains off that congested railway to provide space for more shorter commuter services.
Indeed and that longer term plan would have been much more affordable at an off-the-shelf 300km/h spec, instead of pissing away billions on consultants and overspeccing for 400km/h that isn't even used on the continent where people actually do travel thousands of miles.
How much more capacity would we have got if we'd gone from day one for London to Glasgow at 300km/h?
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
Well what a whopping cop out.
Could it be you can't answer the question?
I’ve explained MULTIPLE times on here exactly why Woke is new and dangerous and way way way more menacing than “PC gone mad”. I’ve said it so often and explained it in such detail I’ve been told to shut up by others on PB
I’m sitting at a lunch table on a beach in the Maldives. I really can’t be arsed to explain it all AGAIN just to satisfy some quasi-literate woke nitwit who won’t grasp what I’m saying anyway
If you want to read my previous posts on this subject, ask @heathener - she apparently archives and screenshots my comments
Cheers
Why do you think none of us get it? PBers are a pretty bright lot yet it only seems you and Casino get it.
We can't be all that dim.
Woke is the sort of stuff that really irritates me, but I don't see the mass threat.
Especially when venison is woke. Despite being shot by impeccably tweedy gents and ladies and gralloched by hereditary ghillies on great landed estates bought in the 1830s with the compo from closing down slavery.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
The Trans Woke Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs will infiltrate all levels of government and steal our Vital Essence. Within 15 minutes of your home, as well.
1) Someone announces it is cancelled 2) everyone relaxes. 3) I send a memo to the Illuminati, who tell the Zeta Reticulans, who tell the Lizard Men to tell their puppets in the Shadow Government to make it compulsory.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
The line to Scotland was the very long term plan.
The trains from Glasgow and Edinburgh would initially link in at Preston, then Goldbourne.
But there had been conversations with the Scottish government about longer term taking the service to Scotland.
Plus, the line into Manchester, from the south is heavily congested, HS2 takes the fast trains off that congested railway to provide space for more shorter commuter services.
Indeed and that longer term plan would have been much more affordable at an off-the-shelf 300km/h spec, instead of pissing away billions on consultants and overspeccing for 400km/h that isn't even used on the continent where people actually do travel thousands of miles.
How much more capacity would we have got if we'd gone from day one for London to Glasgow at 300km/h?
HS2 is 'off the shelf spec'.
The tracks, the signalling, the trains are all off the shelf, there is nothing bespoke.
The ONLY part that makes it 400km/h 'future proof' is the lack of tight turns that physics dictates means that in theory, in the future, a train could go around those corners at 400km/h.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
Well what a whopping cop out.
Could it be you can't answer the question?
I’ve explained MULTIPLE times on here exactly why Woke is new and dangerous and way way way more menacing than “PC gone mad”. I’ve said it so often and explained it in such detail I’ve been told to shut up by others on PB
I’m sitting at a lunch table on a beach in the Maldives. I really can’t be arsed to explain it all AGAIN just to satisfy some quasi-literate woke nitwit who won’t grasp what I’m saying anyway
If you want to read my previous posts on this subject, ask @heathener - she apparently archives and screenshots my comments
Cheers
Why do you think none of us get it? PBers are a pretty bright lot yet it only seems you and Casino get it.
We can't be all that dim.
Woke is the sort of stuff that really irritates me, but I don't see the mass threat.
Especially when venison is woke. Despite being shot by impeccably tweedy gents and ladies and gralloched by hereditary ghillies on great landed estates bought in the 1830s with the compo from closing down slavery.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
Well what a whopping cop out.
Could it be you can't answer the question?
I’ve explained MULTIPLE times on here exactly why Woke is new and dangerous and way way way more menacing than “PC gone mad”. I’ve said it so often and explained it in such detail I’ve been told to shut up by others on PB
I’m sitting at a lunch table on a beach in the Maldives. I really can’t be arsed to explain it all AGAIN just to satisfy some quasi-literate woke nitwit who won’t grasp what I’m saying anyway
If you want to read my previous posts on this subject, ask @heathener - she apparently archives and screenshots my comments
Cheers
Why do you think none of us get it? PBers are a pretty bright lot yet it only seems you and Casino get it.
We can't be all that dim.
Woke is the sort of stuff that really irritates me, but I don't see the mass threat.
Especially when venison is woke. Despite being shot by impeccably tweedy gents and ladies and gralloched by hereditary ghillies on great landed estates bought in the 1830s with the compo from closing down slavery.
Sigh
Venison isn’t woke.
Venison is vegan.
Get it right.
I do get confused. Isn't vegan woke by definition?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
So they should have added extra tight curves for the sake of it ?
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
I see we are told which county cancelled the pangolins, a nice bit of nominative determinism there, but not *why*:
'Manatee County removed the book from district libraries, citing Florida Statute 1006.40(3)(d). However, section (3)(d) does not appear to exist under Florida Statute 1006.40, which is titled "Purchase of instructional materials."
When asked for clarity and for a full copy of the objection, Manatee County did not respond in time for publication'
You think it's just the manatees being jealous of another cute but obscure mammal getting any publicity?
Manatee County Tourist Board, more likely. Either that or they confused pangolins with trouser-snakes or something. Don't ask me, though.
I see they are also cancelling lions.
'Manatee County officials also removed "Christian, the Hugging Lion" by Justin Richardson, a 32-page children's book about two men who raise a lion named Christian in a London apartment. When Christian becomes too big, the two men release the lion into the wild in Africa. When the men go to visit Christian in Africa, they find that he remembers them. The book is based on a true story.
[...] While the two men, John and Ace, lived together in London and raised Christian the lion, it is never explicitly said in the book whether the two men were in a relationship.'
To revisit my earlier point about Euston, I can see the go-ahead being the scrapping of the planned HS station but the completion of the tunnels. Even if they do confirm the completion of the Handsacre link, we're looking at a limited number of services an hour which OOC could handle with 4 platforms. There is enough room in Euston to straighten and lengthen the western islands without having to go all Stratford International.
It would be short-sighted and stupid, but it is what it is.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
So they should have added extra tight curves for the sake of it ?
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
Where its possible to keep straights of course you should, but where its more affordable to add bends? If its a choice between capacity or straights, I say go for the capacity, yes.
The extra speed is redundant, the capacity is not. We should have prioritised what was important from day one and started building it all the way to Scotland, or at least Preston, from day one. But the problem was it was designed by and for Londoners, and Londoners care more about their capacity than they do what we need in the North.
Sex denialism ie that biological sex exists, cannot be changed...
Pointing out the obvious: genes can't be changed, but genitals can and have been (sound of chainsaw in background).
A few years ago during my enforced purdah I thought of writing several articles, two or three of which would have been about trans. Although now abandoned, one of them would have revolved around analysing the factions as political factions (pre-2015, gender ideology, gender critical) and noting the terms specific to each faction - shibboleths, in other words. "Biological sex" is one of them, displacing the prior "genetic sex".
The intent was to plot their prevalence over time (I thought of using the British Newspaper Archive, but in practice it would have been Google) and thereby track the rise and fall of each faction. If I ever get free time (hah!) I'll try to resurrect it before I forget it all.
Sadly Google NGrams is a terrible dataset for this kind of thing because it’s dominated by the kind of books that were in the academic libraries that Google scanned & you can’t ask for things like ”just the newspapers please” (if they even scanned newspapers?).
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
My predictions for the last weekend of RWC before the knockout phase starts, although some of these games are effectively knockout:
Thursday NZ v Uruguay – A walkover for NZ by 75+ pts
Friday France v Italy – a 6 Nation rematch but Italy will not have firepower to overturn France. France by 30-40 pts
Saturday England v Samoa – Samoa have already announced their intent – this is their world cup final. They have not performed so far in this world cup, but I expect that they will give England a tough battle. England should eventually prevail by 15 points but it wont be easy at times.
Wales v Georgia – Georgia defence looked strong against Fiji, and they have a tough pack. Wales have respected Georgia by picking a strong team (but not full) but I expect Wales to control the game well. Wales by 20.
Ireland v Scotland – Scotland will be throw everything at Ireland to try and stay in RWC, but it wont be enough. Ireland by 15
Sunday Tonga v Romania – Play off for 4th-5th place. Romania’s best chance to win their first RWC game but Tonga to win comfortably by 20.
Japan v Argentina – This is maybe the hardest match to call this weekend. Argentina have improved slowly through the tournament but Japan will be targeting this game to reach the QF. I expect Argentina to win but only by 5 or 6 – and Japan could potentially steal it.
Fiji v Portugal – This could be the most exciting game of the weekend – Both sides will be running from everywhere but I expect Fiji’s strength to prevail – Fiji by 15.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
The Treasury never gave a damn about Levelling Up or the North. The Treasury never saw this as a Northern project, which is why it began in London.
I forecast this cancellation years ago, I just didn't think they'd do it so blatantly after construction had begun. The only way the Northern legs would have been built was if they were built first, once the London leg was built the Treasury had what it wanted in the bank, time to move on to the next Crossrail instead.
Parliament, the Treasury and all Civil Servants needs to be moved en-mass out of London. Leave London for finance and other things, like NYC, and move all Civil Servants and Parliamentarians to the North in a new city like Washington DC. Its the only way they'll stop doing this.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
It probably does not soothe you to know that Matthew Goodwin explicitly prefers "PC gone mad" to "woke" or its variants because it's not understood on the doorstep. People with everyday concerns are not as widely read in multiple concurrent end-of-the-West theories as you are.
Macs are a very good replacement for PCs
When I was in consulting, our company used Macs. Those who I worked with in the various businesses we did projects for frequently started off sniggering, and months later changed their tune when the spreadsheets and data dumps that often crashed their PCs didn't crash our Macs.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
Yes, the costs of cancellation are now enormous. Just a stupendous waste of £££.
The whole saga encapsulates the current British attitude to infrastructure - fundamentally unserious & heedless of the real costs of either building or not building.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
It’s linkage.
1) One person said, somewhere, that all White Western civilisation must be destroyed. 2) This is Woke. 3) Pronouns stuff is Woke 4) Therefore Pronouns stuff is part of the program to destroy Western Civilisation.
Sex denialism ie that biological sex exists, cannot be changed...
Pointing out the obvious: genes can't be changed, but genitals can and have been (sound of chainsaw in background).
A few years ago during my enforced purdah I thought of writing several articles, two or three of which would have been about trans. Although now abandoned, one of them would have revolved around analysing the factions as political factions (pre-2015, gender ideology, gender critical) and noting the terms specific to each faction - shibboleths, in other words. "Biological sex" is one of them, displacing the prior "genetic sex".
The intent was to plot their prevalence over time (I thought of using the British Newspaper Archive, but in practice it would have been Google) and thereby track the rise and fall of each faction. If I ever get free time (hah!) I'll try to resurrect it before I forget it all.
Sadly Google NGrams is a terrible dataset for this kind of thing because it’s dominated by the kind of books that were in the academic libraries that Google scanned & you can’t ask for things like ”just the newspapers please” (if they even scanned newspapers?).
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
It probably does not soothe you to know that Matthew Goodwin explicitly prefers "PC gone mad" to "woke" or its variants because it's not understood on the doorstep. People with everyday concerns are not as widely read in multiple concurrent end-of-the-West theories as you are.
Macs are a very good replacement for PCs
When I was in consulting, our company used Macs. Those who I worked with in the various businesses we did projects for frequently started off sniggering, and months later changed their tune when the spreadsheets and data dumps that often crashed their PCs didn't crash our Macs.
How long ago was this or how badly maintained were the PCs?
Since about Windows XP Pro, PC crashes have been a thing of the past for me wherever I've been.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
So they should have added extra tight curves for the sake of it ?
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
Where its possible to keep straights of course you should, but where its more affordable to add bends? If its a choice between capacity or straights, I say go for the capacity, yes.
The extra speed is redundant, the capacity is not. We should have prioritised what was important from day one and started building it all the way to Scotland, or at least Preston, from day one. But the problem was it was designed by and for Londoners, and Londoners care more about their capacity than they do what we need in the North.
The original plan was to Preston, then the trains continuing through the lake district on the bendy tracks to meet a new line from Castairs to both Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I do hope that Labour bring back the plans, but build it from Manchester airport through Piccadilly and onto Leeds first.
The continue south from the airport towards Brum at the same time as continuing from Leeds towards the ECML which can have a mix of new track and upgrades to Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Likewise, as tracks going from Manchester west to Liverpool, a combination of new and upgrades and east of Leeds to Hull.
It's not all going to get done quickly, but a very long term railway plan showing a core line, London, Brum, Manc, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh, with lines off to Liverpool, Hull etc.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
So they should have added extra tight curves for the sake of it ?
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
It’s stuff like this that has led some people to suggest investing in automated tunnelling at extreme depth. Because it will be cheaper in the end.
Go 300 meters down, even in London, and you can go exactly where you want in a straight line.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
The Treasury never gave a damn about Levelling Up or the North. The Treasury never saw this as a Northern project, which is why it began in London.
I forecast this cancellation years ago, I just didn't think they'd do it so blatantly after construction had begun. The only way the Northern legs would have been built was if they were built first, once the London leg was built the Treasury had what it wanted in the bank, time to move on to the next Crossrail instead.
Parliament, the Treasury and all Civil Servants needs to be moved en-mass out of London. Leave London for finance and other things, like NYC, and move all Civil Servants and Parliamentarians to the North in a new city like Washington DC. Its the only way they'll stop doing this.
Given the cost of rebuilding Parliament - moving it to Bradford would be a very cheap option...
I suspect a new High Speed Line between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford could be included in for little more than the Parliament would cost.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
Well what a whopping cop out.
Could it be you can't answer the question?
I’ve explained MULTIPLE times on here exactly why Woke is new and dangerous and way way way more menacing than “PC gone mad”. I’ve said it so often and explained it in such detail I’ve been told to shut up by others on PB
I’m sitting at a lunch table on a beach in the Maldives. I really can’t be arsed to explain it all AGAIN just to satisfy some quasi-literate woke nitwit who won’t grasp what I’m saying anyway
If you want to read my previous posts on this subject, ask @heathener - she apparently archives and screenshots my comments
Cheers
Why do you think none of us get it? PBers are a pretty bright lot yet it only seems you and Casino get it.
We can't be all that dim.
Woke is the sort of stuff that really irritates me, but I don't see the mass threat.
Especially when venison is woke. Despite being shot by impeccably tweedy gents and ladies and gralloched by hereditary ghillies on great landed estates bought in the 1830s with the compo from closing down slavery.
Sigh
Venison isn’t woke.
Venison is vegan.
Get it right.
It is difficult keeping a handle on all this stuff though. I don't know from one day to another whether I am woke or anti woke, vegan, vegetarian or a carnivore.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
It probably does not soothe you to know that Matthew Goodwin explicitly prefers "PC gone mad" to "woke" or its variants because it's not understood on the doorstep. People with everyday concerns are not as widely read in multiple concurrent end-of-the-West theories as you are.
Macs are a very good replacement for PCs
When I was in consulting, our company used Macs. Those who I worked with in the various businesses we did projects for frequently started off sniggering, and months later changed their tune when the spreadsheets and data dumps that often crashed their PCs didn't crash our Macs.
How long ago was this or how badly maintained were the PCs?
Since about Windows XP Pro, PC crashes have been a thing of the past for me wherever I've been.
I think Cisco were reporting last week that the overall cost of a Mac was 25% less than a windows computer.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
So they should have added extra tight curves for the sake of it ?
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
Where its possible to keep straights of course you should, but where its more affordable to add bends? If its a choice between capacity or straights, I say go for the capacity, yes.
The extra speed is redundant, the capacity is not. We should have prioritised what was important from day one and started building it all the way to Scotland, or at least Preston, from day one. But the problem was it was designed by and for Londoners, and Londoners care more about their capacity than they do what we need in the North.
The original plan was to Preston, then the trains continuing through the lake district on the bendy tracks to meet a new line from Castairs to both Glasgow and Edinburgh.
I do hope that Labour bring back the plans, but build it from Manchester airport through Piccadilly and onto Leeds first.
The continue south from the airport towards Brum at the same time as continuing from Leeds towards the ECML which can have a mix of new track and upgrades to Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Likewise, as tracks going from Manchester west to Liverpool, a combination of new and upgrades and east of Leeds to Hull.
It's not all going to get done quickly, but a very long term railway plan showing a core line, London, Brum, Manc, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh, with lines off to Liverpool, Hull etc.
But that would take a very long term plan.
Yes if you want a smart plan, that's what you do. You need to link those cities with capacity.
Speed is a very much tertiary concern. If its no cost-difference, then of course there's no reason not to go for speed, but if it adds billions or means cutting off cities to add speed then go for capacity, go for connections, that is what matters.
We need to do the same with new motorways too. Linking towns and cities that aren't currently connected or with enough capacity with new roads to add new capacity, not simply convert A roads to motorway format that doesn't really add any capacity.
It will cost money to add all this rail and road capacity, but that is investment in our infrastructure that will boost GDP per capita, it is what should be happening.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
No one was ever suggesting the route from London to Manchester would operate at 400km/h.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
If its never going to operate at 400km/h all the more reason it shouldn't be built for that.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
So they should have added extra tight curves for the sake of it ?
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
It’s stuff like this that has led some people to suggest investing in automated tunnelling at extreme depth. Because it will be cheaper in the end.
Go 300 meters down, even in London, and you can go exactly where you want in a straight line.
Sex denialism ie that biological sex exists, cannot be changed...
Pointing out the obvious: genes can't be changed, but genitals can and have been (sound of chainsaw in background).
A few years ago during my enforced purdah I thought of writing several articles, two or three of which would have been about trans. Although now abandoned, one of them would have revolved around analysing the factions as political factions (pre-2015, gender ideology, gender critical) and noting the terms specific to each faction - shibboleths, in other words. "Biological sex" is one of them, displacing the prior "genetic sex".
The intent was to plot their prevalence over time (I thought of using the British Newspaper Archive, but in practice it would have been Google) and thereby track the rise and fall of each faction. If I ever get free time (hah!) I'll try to resurrect it before I forget it all.
Sadly Google NGrams is a terrible dataset for this kind of thing because it’s dominated by the kind of books that were in the academic libraries that Google scanned & you can’t ask for things like ”just the newspapers please” (if they even scanned newspapers?).
You also have the problem of many historical documents, especially those on continental Europe, being destroyed in the 30s and 40s by the Nazis.
But from my understanding the "set" view of binary sex (and sexuality) is something that became preeminent during the Victorian era (partly as a reaction to engagement with colonised people who had more fluid understanding of these things) and kind of stuck after that point. Then you had sexologists and other scientific endeavours in the early 20th century, most famously the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and the recognition of individuals who wanted to transition. In the 50s you had a resurgence of anti gay sentiment, with the Lavender Scare in the US and the roll back of previously pro gay and pro women policy in the USSR (started by Stalin, but kept by Khrushchev despite liberalising policies for women again). The modern understanding and political movements for queer liberation come more out of the AIDs crisis and the response from US and UK administrations than that earlier history (although that earlier history is interesting).
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
The Treasury never gave a damn about Levelling Up or the North. The Treasury never saw this as a Northern project, which is why it began in London.
I forecast this cancellation years ago, I just didn't think they'd do it so blatantly after construction had begun. The only way the Northern legs would have been built was if they were built first, once the London leg was built the Treasury had what it wanted in the bank, time to move on to the next Crossrail instead.
Parliament, the Treasury and all Civil Servants needs to be moved en-mass out of London. Leave London for finance and other things, like NYC, and move all Civil Servants and Parliamentarians to the North in a new city like Washington DC. Its the only way they'll stop doing this.
Civil servants aren't doing the cancelling. Parliament isn't doing the cancelling. This comes from the executive, the Government.
It's unclear whether the Treasury is doing the cancelling. This seems to be Sunak's big idea. You suggest everyone other than the Prime Minister is to blame, but it's his decision.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
Been in the FT repeatedly since February. I know they are already on site. They are already on site in Camden and Euston, and yet that is also up for cancellation.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
Well what a whopping cop out.
Could it be you can't answer the question?
I’ve explained MULTIPLE times on here exactly why Woke is new and dangerous and way way way more menacing than “PC gone mad”. I’ve said it so often and explained it in such detail I’ve been told to shut up by others on PB
I’m sitting at a lunch table on a beach in the Maldives. I really can’t be arsed to explain it all AGAIN just to satisfy some quasi-literate woke nitwit who won’t grasp what I’m saying anyway
If you want to read my previous posts on this subject, ask @heathener - she apparently archives and screenshots my comments
Cheers
Why do you think none of us get it? PBers are a pretty bright lot yet it only seems you and Casino get it.
We can't be all that dim.
Woke is the sort of stuff that really irritates me, but I don't see the mass threat.
Especially when venison is woke. Despite being shot by impeccably tweedy gents and ladies and gralloched by hereditary ghillies on great landed estates bought in the 1830s with the compo from closing down slavery.
Sigh
Venison isn’t woke.
Venison is vegan.
Get it right.
It is difficult keeping a handle on all this stuff though. I don't know from one day to another whether I am woke or anti woke, vegan, vegetarian or a carnivore.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
The Treasury never gave a damn about Levelling Up or the North. The Treasury never saw this as a Northern project, which is why it began in London.
I forecast this cancellation years ago, I just didn't think they'd do it so blatantly after construction had begun. The only way the Northern legs would have been built was if they were built first, once the London leg was built the Treasury had what it wanted in the bank, time to move on to the next Crossrail instead.
Parliament, the Treasury and all Civil Servants needs to be moved en-mass out of London. Leave London for finance and other things, like NYC, and move all Civil Servants and Parliamentarians to the North in a new city like Washington DC. Its the only way they'll stop doing this.
Given the cost of rebuilding Parliament - moving it to Bradford would be a very cheap option...
I suspect a new High Speed Line between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford could be included in for little more than the Parliament would cost.
I'd far rather an entire new build city than dumping it into an existing one, but if you're going for existing locations then Bradford is a great suggestion.
Absolutely not a major city like Manchester or Leeds or Birmingham though, that defeats the point.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
It’s linkage.
1) One person said, somewhere, that all White Western civilisation must be destroyed. 2) This is Woke. 3) Pronouns stuff is Woke 4) Therefore Pronouns stuff is part of the program to destroy Western Civilisation.
Sure, but we are "non believers" and therefore I don't think our structure of this thought process is useful. I want to know how someone who does believe in "wokeism" as an existential threat thinks of these topics - if they are sincere in their belief at all. If they aren't, I will learn that too.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
Been in the FT repeatedly since February. I know they are already on site. They are already on site in Camden and Euston, and yet that is also up for cancellation.
Why would they cancel that though ?
Savings minimal / zero and extra costs for all the new trains huge.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
Been in the FT repeatedly since February. I know they are already on site. They are already on site in Camden and Euston, and yet that is also up for cancellation.
Why would they cancel that though ?
Savings minimal / zero and extra costs for all the new trains huge.
Makes no sense.
Start from the premise that the Treasury only gives a damn about London and work backwards.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
The FT has been reporting the Treasury plans to scrap everything north of the Delta for the last 6 months. I know it has been awarded and contracted. I know that they are actually building the northern legs of the delta. Cancellation would be utterly stupid.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
The Treasury never gave a damn about Levelling Up or the North. The Treasury never saw this as a Northern project, which is why it began in London.
I forecast this cancellation years ago, I just didn't think they'd do it so blatantly after construction had begun. The only way the Northern legs would have been built was if they were built first, once the London leg was built the Treasury had what it wanted in the bank, time to move on to the next Crossrail instead.
Parliament, the Treasury and all Civil Servants needs to be moved en-mass out of London. Leave London for finance and other things, like NYC, and move all Civil Servants and Parliamentarians to the North in a new city like Washington DC. Its the only way they'll stop doing this.
Given the cost of rebuilding Parliament - moving it to Bradford would be a very cheap option...
I suspect a new High Speed Line between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford could be included in for little more than the Parliament would cost.
I'd far rather an entire new build city than dumping it into an existing one, but if you're going for existing locations then Bradford is a great suggestion.
Absolutely not a major city like Manchester or Leeds or Birmingham though, that defeats the point.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
God's pronouns are in Exodus 3.14, no messing about:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
Been in the FT repeatedly since February. I know they are already on site. They are already on site in Camden and Euston, and yet that is also up for cancellation.
Why would they cancel that though ?
Savings minimal / zero and extra costs for all the new trains huge.
Makes no sense.
Start from the premise that the Treasury only gives a damn about London and work backwards.
Sense isn't part of the equation.
The City of London is arguably the only part of the grift that is the British economy that makes anyone any money - mostly in part because it is the griftiest part.
Sex denialism ie that biological sex exists, cannot be changed...
Pointing out the obvious: genes can't be changed, but genitals can and have been (sound of chainsaw in background).
A few years ago during my enforced purdah I thought of writing several articles, two or three of which would have been about trans. Although now abandoned, one of them would have revolved around analysing the factions as political factions (pre-2015, gender ideology, gender critical) and noting the terms specific to each faction - shibboleths, in other words. "Biological sex" is one of them, displacing the prior "genetic sex".
The intent was to plot their prevalence over time (I thought of using the British Newspaper Archive, but in practice it would have been Google) and thereby track the rise and fall of each faction. If I ever get free time (hah!) I'll try to resurrect it before I forget it all.
Sadly Google NGrams is a terrible dataset for this kind of thing because it’s dominated by the kind of books that were in the academic libraries that Google scanned & you can’t ask for things like ”just the newspapers please” (if they even scanned newspapers?).
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
Been in the FT repeatedly since February. I know they are already on site. They are already on site in Camden and Euston, and yet that is also up for cancellation.
Why would they cancel that though ?
Savings minimal / zero and extra costs for all the new trains huge.
Makes no sense.
Start from the premise that the Treasury only gives a damn about London and work backwards.
Sense isn't part of the equation.
In which case it makes even less sense not to build that link as the major beneficiary is the economy of London.
Building that link takes inter city trains from Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Crewe, Preston etc. off the southern section of the WCML, the section into London.
That extra capacity created provides an opportunity to run more commuter services, many many more, into Euston on the WCML as the norther WCML services are now on the HS2 core line which is designed to have a 18trains per hour capacity, only three being taken by Brum services.
Looking back at the cost estimates for one of our worst largish projects (Much smaller than HS2 obvs) in recent times it seems we were 13% over cost budget. Ukraine, covid & the general supply crunch were the culprits. It seems this Indonesian project (Chinese supply) went 16% over budget - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-66979810 again Ukraine & inflation no doubt upped their costs.
How on earth did HS2 get the sums so badly wrong in the first place ?
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
Anyone who is dim enough to seriously believe “woke is just a replacement for PC gone mad” is so dim they wouldn’t understand any explanation as to why that is dismally wrong. So it is pointless me wasting my time explaining to you
I hope that helps
Well what a whopping cop out.
Could it be you can't answer the question?
I’ve explained MULTIPLE times on here exactly why Woke is new and dangerous and way way way more menacing than “PC gone mad”. I’ve said it so often and explained it in such detail I’ve been told to shut up by others on PB
I’m sitting at a lunch table on a beach in the Maldives. I really can’t be arsed to explain it all AGAIN just to satisfy some quasi-literate woke nitwit who won’t grasp what I’m saying anyway
If you want to read my previous posts on this subject, ask @heathener - she apparently archives and screenshots my comments
Cheers
Why do you think none of us get it? PBers are a pretty bright lot yet it only seems you and Casino get it.
We can't be all that dim.
Woke is the sort of stuff that really irritates me, but I don't see the mass threat.
Especially when venison is woke. Despite being shot by impeccably tweedy gents and ladies and gralloched by hereditary ghillies on great landed estates bought in the 1830s with the compo from closing down slavery.
Sigh
Venison isn’t woke.
Venison is vegan.
Get it right.
It is difficult keeping a handle on all this stuff though. I don't know from one day to another whether I am woke or anti woke, vegan, vegetarian or a carnivore.
Woke Consultancy can help. £865 per hour plus VAT, plus expenses. How many hours do you need?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
I've always had a bit of a thing for Priti Patel, even if she is kind of evil, not gonna lie. But Farage makes my skin crawl, not sure why exactly, there's something about him that really physically, viscerally, disgusts me, and seeing him "dancing" was every bit as vomit inducing as I might have expected.
Had so many conversations yesterday along the lines of “but why, in Manchester, why would you do this, but why” and can only assume that the PM thinks it is good politics
Genius move. With the cancellation of the rest of the network we won't need a separate Euston high speed station. Exit the tunnels on Camden bank, let the 3 trains an hour use platform 15 which is already long enough, and sell off the land corruptly to developers to ensure that Keith Donkey can never resurrect his evil HS2 scheme.
It's a good point actually.
Presumably there will still be HS2 services to Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Preston....
Just that the trains will rejoin the WCML much further south than was originally planned.
Those 'classic compatible' services will still need platforms at Euston.
There will also need to be a fair few more trains that was originally planned and a lot more staff to operate them.
A set of trains averaging 300km/h require far fewer trains and staff to operate them than a set of trains averaging 150km/h.
There will be a fair bit of extra capital costs, the trains, and operational costs, the staff, if the decision is to cancel the faster section from Brum to Manc.
Unless the announcement is going to be a surprise, there is no connection to the WCML. That was north of the delta junction and that whole section is supposedly being cancelled...
And it is that most northern section of phase 1 - the "Handsacre Link" which they have been openly discussing cancelling. Yes I know they have started building it - as they have the Euston link and chunks of phase 2a. They don't care.
No they are not.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
You can see the HS2 construction site south of Handsacre on streetview including the existing WCML alongside it:
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
Been in the FT repeatedly since February. I know they are already on site. They are already on site in Camden and Euston, and yet that is also up for cancellation.
Why would they cancel that though ?
Savings minimal / zero and extra costs for all the new trains huge.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
Also, what is not 'off the shelf' in the design ????
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that doesn't just terminate at Manchester, but stops there then goes past Manchester too means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
I’ve been reading about the New York fraud court case against Trump. It seems to me that it is wrong, and, worse than that, it is a mistake
It screams “political persecution” - as it is brought and led by a highly political controversial Democrat lawyer in NYC. It feeds into Trump’s martyr narrative (“they’re out to get me AND you”). It gives him a pulpit to address the nation daily
It’s gonna aid him. They should have stuck with the J6 trials elsewhere etc. This new case is a grave error which makes a Trump victory more likely
Of course you think this, you’re basically a Trumpite yourself these days.
*weary sigh*
No, I don’t want Trump to win. My ideal would be for both Trump and Biden to disappear from the world of politics. They are both old, selfish men past their time
Personally I’d like a good tough Republican President who will stick to America’s allies - like the UK, Ukraine, and NATO in general. Trump won’t do that. I want him gone
But he needs to be defeated democratically. For that the Dems should kick out Biden and get a better candidate (as the GOP seem determined to nominate Trump)
Is that clear enough?
But you're shimmying round the killer question with the elegance of a Strictly contestant. Whether that's Bill Bailey or Richard Coles, I don't know.
Trump-Biden is a dismal choice. But it looks very likely to be the choice. So, taking it as read that AN Other would be preferable, on both sides, who do you go for?
You can vote against one of them. Who do you want to fire your one bullet at?
Trump
However this is a much tougher question for me than it is for most PB-ers. I believe the Democrats and their Wokeness (which they export to us, in hideous forms) are a long term threat to western security and prosperity. It is that bad
However Trump is the SHORT term threat to western security, and if your choice is to shoot one of two dangerous Bully XL dogs then you shoot the one that’s closest to biting your head off. In this case, that’s Trump
Wokeness is a bigger threat to "western security" than Trumpism? How? I still haven't heard a decent definition of wokeness that isn't just "everything right wingers hate" (unless we mean the actual historic use of the term by the African American community).
The end of Free Speech, the reversal of the Enlightenment, the re-racialisation and further division of society, the warping of education to meet Woke goals, the crippling of science for similar reasons, the indoctrination of our kids with mad woke bollocks, the crimping of industry with mad woke “targets”, the deligitimising of western values, history, prestige and pride, and in the end the total annihilation of a woke-weakened west
Let’s start there
So this Gish gallop of conclusions is missing how "wokeness" leads to these thing, and also automatically assumes all of these things are universally agreed as of value. Can you explain the causal link between what you understand as wokeness and, say, the "reversal of the Enlightenment"? Or "the warping of education to meet Woke goals"? Does Free Speech include the right to shout fire in a crowded theatre, hate speech, libel? It would be useful to know the detail of this journey rather than just the image of a right wing fever dream to understand how "wokeness" achieves all these revolutionary changes.
Attempting to engage Leon with logic won't get you anywhere.
I really want to know, though. In my mind "woke" seems to have just replaced "PC gone mad", and I don't see how that is the "End of the West". I would like to understand the A to B to C journey for that; even if it is mad. Because I don't see how christofascist science deniers can be the inheritors of "the Enlightenment" nor "the crippling of science".
The journey is pretty simple. Take the most extreme woke things that are happening in the world, some of which are indeed bonkers. See that most young people consider themselves woke. Get scared most young people want the bonkers extreme things to be commonplace.
It is not reality but a story easily told in echo chambers.
I would just like an example of "extreme woke things" and an explanation of how they are woke, and how they will lead to the end of the "western world".
As with any idea, there is someone advocating something batshit under the same umbrella.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
The problem is if I provide an example of someone else saying "x is woke" and then go on to explain why it either isn't or is not a big deal - I will get told I am straw manning or will get a no true scotsman response.
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
God's pronouns are in Exodus 3.14, no messing about:
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
The Hebrew is ambiguous to tense. And of course the first person, ambiguous to gender.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
Off topic: Before I disappear on holiday I wanted to post on the 19 Oct by election which could be won by any of the main players. Yes I'm talking about the Horlseys by election for Surrey County Council.
This really is a cliff hanger. This used to be a rock solid seat for the Tories. Posh central. Then we had the debacle in Guildford Borough Council (I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary) and the Tories got wiped out in Guildford by the LDs in the centre and the newly formed independents R4GV in the villages. The latter being the more impressive gains.
In the last set of Borough elections the Tories made a comeback. You won't see that if you look at the overall results as it shows the LDs taking control of the council, but that hides another story. The Tories lost their main last stronghold (6 councillors, 5 to LDs and 1 to an indy), but actually made good gains everywhere else at the expense of R4GV.
In the Horsleys however R4GV remained strong and R4GV hold all the Borough seats making up this County ward except 1 and hold them by decent margins.
However a popular R4GV councillor has stood down so this should make it a strong possible gain for the Tories.
But another quirk is this ward has moved from the Mole valley constituency to the Guildford constituency and we all know how the LDs love a by election, so they are going for it.
Anyone of the 3 could win and nobody has a clue.
I vote here and am involved in the campaign and have arranged my proxy vote for when I am away. Previously I have voted LD or R4GV. I am voting LD this time.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It's not worth building a high speed line to Birmingham, it's not far enough. It should always have been planned to go to Glasgow.
I can't help thinking the "cost overrun" is a feature, not a bug, and designed to provide grift for Tory donors.
It's about time we got back to the central tenet of capitalism, profit is the reward for capitalism and if you fuck up, you lose your shirt.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
I'm bored with HS2 now. But I find it utterly bizarre that the Tories have let it dominate their conference. Assuming the review is genuine, all Sunak had to do was state very clearly when an announcement would be made (say, November 1st, or in the Autumn statement), and that until then nobody in government would be commenting further. The press would soon have got bored with silence.
But I guess they have neither the political guile nor the self-discipline to carry out something so obvious.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
I'm bored with HS2 now. But I find it utterly bizarre that the Tories have let it dominate their conference. Assuming the review is genuine, all Sunak had to do was state very clearly when an announcement would be made (say, November 1st, or in the Autumn statement), and that until then nobody in government would be commenting further. The press would soon have got bored with silence.
But I guess they have neither the political guile nor the self-discipline to carry out something so obvious.
Certainly, it's not obvious why they are waiting either to confirm or deny the rumour.
The purpose seems to be to lure Labour into making some sort of commitment, presumably to trap them into having to say how they will pay for it?
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Why does it add more capacity ?
You are not explaining.
Why does it add more capacity to build a new line that goes to Manchester and to Preston than to build a new line that terminates at Manchester?
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that goes past Manchester means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
But there would be no capacity relief by extending the captive tracks beyond where there are capacity issues on the WCML.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
You were the one going on about taking it to Glasgow.
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
I'm bored with HS2 now. But I find it utterly bizarre that the Tories have let it dominate their conference. Assuming the review is genuine, all Sunak had to do was state very clearly when an announcement would be made (say, November 1st, or in the Autumn statement), and that until then nobody in government would be commenting further. The press would soon have got bored with silence.
But I guess they have neither the political guile nor the self-discipline to carry out something so obvious.
The whole thing is so shit it sort of makes you wonder if there some other more complex plan operating on a higher metaphysical level that you don't understand. But, no, it's just shit.
Did y’all hear the recent episode of More or Less, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ggvbxq (it’s at the end of the episode), on HS2 and big infrastructure problems being expensive in the UK. They talked to a researcher who’s done an international comparison and concluded that big infrastructure projects all around the world often have overspends but that UK projects are no worse on average. We’re not exceptionally bad at these things.
However, HS2 is a mess and massively over-budget, which the interviewee put down to plans being repeatedly changed after work had started. He said that’s the main cause of extra expense.
The more or less episode was enlightening - funnily enough this morning R4 had a spokesman for a big building company who obviously hadn’t listened to MoL and was spouting crap about how none of this happened in any other country.
More interesting was the interview with the chap who ran HS1 and was head of Crossrail (Rob Bowman I think?) who made a few very interesting points, namely:
HS1 was designed and built for the French high speed rail tech and so all the kit and engineering was “out of the box” so cost a huge amount less.
With HS1 they did not divulge the overall budget, only a handful of people knew the ceiling and so when bids went in people didn’t go crazy having seen the billions on offer. He compared it to Crossrail where the budget was announced and similar jobs from HS1 were suddenly multiples more expensive.
He explained that for some reason HS2 was planned as a 400KPH line rather than 340KPH (I think he said) which was the European standard and so everything then becomes grossly more expensive because engineering had to be developed to accommodate the extra speed and huge costly measures had to be added to mitigate the extra noise issues this would cause.
From here and all the media it seems there are a million different views, cancel or continue, change this bit or that hit, it’s vital, it’s not. If there is no way near a consensus then surely the best thing is to pause, rework it in a sensible way that makes it more useful, acceptable and affordable. There is no point continuing to pour money into a mistake I would have thought. See what can be cut if they lower the speed requirement, see what has been done already and where it can be used as it is until a sensible plan is ready.
The cynic in me wonders if the custom spec for HS2 was a reaction to HS1 - got to get those costs up somehow.
Some years back, I met a very angry sales guy from BAe. The F35 program hadn’t been customised (enough) to “unique British requirements”. So if a weapon is qualified to fit one F35B, it will be included in the next software update for all F35B - internationally. Worse, the US Marine Corps squadrons operating off the U.K. carriers would include instructors in their weapons - so U.K. pilots could end up trained on such weapons.
All this added up, in the opinion of the sales guy to a disaster - his area was selling integration and training for weapons being bought for U.K. military aircraft.
I would guess the spec for HS2 was that politician says “I want the best fast train service in the world so I can say we have a world leading rail service” and then a load of people google “fastest trains” and find that 400KPH is at least faster than all the European ones so they start there instead of saying “we need to free up capacity on existing lines and have a faster service, how do we best get that, is speed or capacity the priority, how can we build it with existing kit and which are the priority routes.”
There just seems to be a lack of any thought that you can save shitloads of money adapting off the shelf kit (see the military too) but also this obsession with wanting a “world beating” something and then working towards that rather than simply saying “what do we really need without perfect being the enemy of good” and then working towards that.
IIRC the reason for 400km/h provision was that, although current trains are slower, many countries are looking at 400km/h. Given the fifteen or so years it would take to build HS2, by the time it was opened, other countries would have 400km/h lines and trains.
So what ? Given the distances involved, any cost benefit analysis would have shown it wasn't worth it.
And as you regularly remind us, it was in any event about capacity, not speed.
It is, indeed. But evidently a cost benefit analysis did show it was worth it - and remember, it's a line being built to run not for five years, but for many, many decades.
Lets see a rational, independent cost benefit analysis that shows a custom spec of 400km/h over a less than 400km distance is worthwhile over an off the shelf 300 or similar standard spec?
And then people cry that its "capacity" that matters, but that supposedly this unique spec is necessary too, make your minds up.
I might suggest you read my post from yesterday, outlining how the project came about. It is about capacity, but if you're building a new route, best to make it as future-proof as possible.
I expect you'd be happy with a new motorway being built that had only one lane in each direction, and a 10MPH speed limit on it?
What future? In the future is Manchester no longer going to be less than 200 miles away from London? In the future are London and Manchester going to be 2,000 miles apart where these speeds might make a difference?
I know some Britons struggle with metric, but 300km/h != 10 miles per hour.
If we finally get a Government that invests in new motorway capacity, then given a choice I would rather twice as much new capacity built to a 70 mile per hour speed limit than half as much new capacity built to a 400km/h speed limit.
Instead of an absurd 400km/h London to Manchester route far better future proofing would have been a 300km/h London to Glasgow route stopping at Manchester and Birmingham - and possibly other cities too like Preston.
That would have added far more capacity at a comparable price using off the shelf specs.
You're plucking figures out of thin air and drawing crayon lines on a map.
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air. Less than 200 miles is the distance between Manchester and London, which is why 400km/h travel speeds were never necessary for a capacity basis.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
You are plucking figures out of the air when you say rubbish like: "Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable..."
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
No, I'm not plucking figures out of thin air since you dropped words out of the sentence.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
Please talk me through the logic of how building all the way to Glasgow would have added far more capacity to the network than building to Preston.
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
I think you have it backwards?
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Preston has incredibly high rates of active travel, for some reason.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
Oooh me sir! I know, I know!
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Preston also had really high active travel at the last census.
Hmmm.
Yes, because they've been investing in roads and cycle paths for years.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
Curious, because the vast majority of the active travel is not cycling. It's walking.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
No, I'm not making things up.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
You also got hopelessly mixed up between 15-minute cities and LTNs earlier.
Good. It means those travelling from Manchester disembark at Euston not Old Oak. This IS investment in the North surely?
QTWAIN.
Investment in the North is improving travel between locations in the North, not those who go to London.
Investment in transport infrastructure for an area A includes both better transport within A and to and from A to other places. So not cancelling the Euston leg is a good thing for the North, albeit not-cancelling-something-you-were-going-to-do is a fairly minor type of good thing, and it's overshadowed by the cancelling of the Northern leg.
Off topic: Before I disappear on holiday I wanted to post on the 19 Oct by election which could be won by any of the main players. Yes I'm talking about the Horlseys by election for Surrey County Council.
This really is a cliff hanger. This used to be a rock solid seat for the Tories. Posh central. Then we had the debacle in Guildford Borough Council (I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary) and the Tories got wiped out in Guildford by the LDs in the centre and the newly formed independents R4GV in the villages. The latter being the more impressive gains.
In the last set of Borough elections the Tories made a comeback. You won't see that if you look at the overall results as it shows the LDs taking control of the council, but that hides another story. The Tories lost their main last stronghold (6 councillors, 5 to LDs and 1 to an indy), but actually made good gains everywhere else at the expense of R4GV.
In the Horsleys however R4GV remained strong and R4GV hold all the Borough seats making up this County ward except 1 and hold them by decent margins.
However a popular R4GV councillor has stood down so this should make it a strong possible gain for the Tories.
But another quirk is this ward has moved from the Mole valley constituency to the Guildford constituency and we all know how the LDs love a by election, so they are going for it.
Anyone of the 3 could win and nobody has a clue.
I vote here and am involved in the campaign and have arranged my proxy vote for when I am away. Previously I have voted LD or R4GV. I am voting LD this time.
"I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary"
Comments
I see they are also cancelling lions.
'Manatee County officials also removed "Christian, the Hugging Lion" by Justin Richardson, a 32-page children's book about two men who raise a lion named Christian in a London apartment. When Christian becomes too big, the two men release the lion into the wild in Africa. When the men go to visit Christian in Africa, they find that he remembers them. The book is based on a true story.
[...] While the two men, John and Ace, lived together in London and raised Christian the lion, it is never explicitly said in the book whether the two men were in a relationship.'
Good luck tomorrow. You'll need it.
The trains from Glasgow and Edinburgh would initially link in at Preston, then Goldbourne.
But there had been conversations with the Scottish government about longer term taking the service to Scotland.
Plus, the line into Manchester, from the south is heavily congested, HS2 takes the fast trains off that congested railway to provide space for more shorter commuter services.
Just build the fucking thing properly and stop dicking around.
Phase 1 has a link to WCML just north of the M42.
https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2022-01/impact-of-hs2-on-network-rail-planned-work-tar.pdf#:~:text=Phase One of HS2 is currently under construction,will travel onwards to Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.
Point 2.5.
Would be interesting meat for argument.
Its like suggesting that if we launch a new flight between Manchester and London we may as well future proof it by going for a new generation of supersonic Concorde to fly it.
Building a London to Glasgow route stopping at Birmingham, Crewe, Manchester, Preston etc would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2 - and been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds but only half building it to Manchester instead of all the way to Scotland. Or now as it turns out quarter building it to Birmingham.
Back when Multiculturalism was the in thing, one idiot of a Labour councillor said that community leaders filling in postal ballots for people was a good thing - cultural traditions of community etc.
This doesn’t mean that more than taxi load of people advocated Georgian (U.K.) style politics.
In fact, from Crewe to Manchester it is designed at 230km/h.
But don't let facts get in your way.
This is the classic sunk cost fallacy. The initial question was "should we pay £100k for a Range Rover." We made the wrong decision, said yes, put down £30k.
This means that the present decision has become "Should we pay £70k" for a Range Rover", because that is it's present cost to us. It is possible to correctly conclude that the answer to this is no, as we've realised it would be a better deal to have a £25k Golf.
The only difference with HS2 is that having put down our £30k, we've wandered down to dealership to ask about the delivery date. They've told us the price has gone up to £180k, so before we get our Range Rover we need to find £150k. This makes the question we've got to answer "Should we pay £150k for a Range Rover we originally thought was worth £100k?" to which the answer may well be no.
How much more capacity would we have got if we'd gone from day one for London to Glasgow at 300km/h?
1) Someone announces it is cancelled
2) everyone relaxes.
3) I send a memo to the Illuminati, who tell the Zeta Reticulans, who tell the Lizard Men to tell their puppets in the Shadow Government to make it compulsory.
The tracks, the signalling, the trains are all off the shelf, there is nothing bespoke.
The ONLY part that makes it 400km/h 'future proof' is the lack of tight turns that physics dictates means that in theory, in the future, a train could go around those corners at 400km/h.
Using the same logic there are parts of the TGV that are future proofed at 600km/h !!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEX8vADhncU
Venison isn’t woke.
Venison is vegan.
Get it right.
Don't get the wrong end of the stick, I'm saying it should be built, but it should have been built smartly from day one to go all the way and not just the London-centric end of it.
And even going just as far as Preston, let alone Glasgow (which should be done) would add more for the North too. A lot of Northerners daily travel between Manchester and Preston and my understanding is that the rail route for that has been an absolute disaster for years, so that capacity should have been getting built from day one.
They are only talking about cancelling Phase 2A & Phase 2B.
The whole of Phase 1 has contracts awarded. It is being built, including the Handsacre link.
Despite that would have had tiny, almost minimal impact on costs ???
For a railway that is likely to last over a 100 years, in an area where train technology is adding about 10km/h top speeds every couple of decades ?
Why not leave out the bends, especially when so much is underground ?
I just want an example to understand the thought process. How do pronouns in the bio end Western civilisation as we know it (especially when the Western tradition makes many appeals to biblical literature if not scriptural truth and God often announces his pronouns)
The real life men were not gay; they were just friends.
https://news.sky.com/video/net-zero-minister-grilled-on-meat-tax-joke-in-speech-12975303
It would be short-sighted and stupid, but it is what it is.
The extra speed is redundant, the capacity is not. We should have prioritised what was important from day one and started building it all the way to Scotland, or at least Preston, from day one. But the problem was it was designed by and for Londoners, and Londoners care more about their capacity than they do what we need in the North.
And yet that is what they have been planning to do.
Thursday
NZ v Uruguay – A walkover for NZ by 75+ pts
Friday
France v Italy – a 6 Nation rematch but Italy will not have firepower to overturn France. France by 30-40 pts
Saturday
England v Samoa – Samoa have already announced their intent – this is their world cup final. They have not performed so far in this world cup, but I expect that they will give England a tough battle. England should eventually prevail by 15 points but it wont be easy at times.
Wales v Georgia – Georgia defence looked strong against Fiji, and they have a tough pack. Wales have respected Georgia by picking a strong team (but not full) but I expect Wales to control the game well. Wales by 20.
Ireland v Scotland – Scotland will be throw everything at Ireland to try and stay in RWC, but it wont be enough. Ireland by 15
Sunday
Tonga v Romania – Play off for 4th-5th place. Romania’s best chance to win their first RWC game but Tonga to win comfortably by 20.
Japan v Argentina – This is maybe the hardest match to call this weekend. Argentina have improved slowly through the tournament but Japan will be targeting this game to reach the QF. I expect Argentina to win but only by 5 or 6 – and Japan could potentially steal it.
Fiji v Portugal – This could be the most exciting game of the weekend – Both sides will be running from everywhere but I expect Fiji’s strength to prevail – Fiji by 15.
I forecast this cancellation years ago, I just didn't think they'd do it so blatantly after construction had begun. The only way the Northern legs would have been built was if they were built first, once the London leg was built the Treasury had what it wanted in the bank, time to move on to the next Crossrail instead.
Parliament, the Treasury and all Civil Servants needs to be moved en-mass out of London. Leave London for finance and other things, like NYC, and move all Civil Servants and Parliamentarians to the North in a new city like Washington DC. Its the only way they'll stop doing this.
The whole saga encapsulates the current British attitude to infrastructure - fundamentally unserious & heedless of the real costs of either building or not building.
https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.google.com/maps/@52.7266446,-1.8472283,3a,74.6y,334.47h,96.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1suc94fmjY-TRASP51OGqo6w!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&data=05|01||7d0dac89343c4e09a3d608dbc3ecab4b|84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa|1|0|638319193472099906|Unknown|TWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0=|3000|||&sdata=vJXHAsUUgsSzQpzXXBgEIED84yRpcZ2B8lKY/w6PUzk=&reserved=0
I've not seen anything anywhere reporting any cancellation of existing phase 1 contracts, other than potentially Euston.
1) One person said, somewhere, that all White Western civilisation must be destroyed.
2) This is Woke.
3) Pronouns stuff is Woke
4) Therefore Pronouns stuff is part of the program to destroy Western Civilisation.
Since about Windows XP Pro, PC crashes have been a thing of the past for me wherever I've been.
I do hope that Labour bring back the plans, but build it from Manchester airport through Piccadilly and onto Leeds first.
The continue south from the airport towards Brum at the same time as continuing from Leeds towards the ECML which can have a mix of new track and upgrades to Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Likewise, as tracks going from Manchester west to Liverpool, a combination of new and upgrades and east of Leeds to Hull.
It's not all going to get done quickly, but a very long term railway plan showing a core line, London, Brum, Manc, Leeds, Newcastle and Edinburgh, with lines off to Liverpool, Hull etc.
But that would take a very long term plan.
Go 300 meters down, even in London, and you can go exactly where you want in a straight line.
I suspect a new High Speed Line between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford could be included in for little more than the Parliament would cost.
When it comes to summing up what’s going on at the Conservative Party conference, phone footage of Priti Patel and Nigel Farage dancing and singing along to ‘Can't Take My Eyes Off You’ could hardly be more on point.
https://twitter.com/NicholasPegg/status/1709101246882132069
Can anyone recommend a therapist?
Speed is a very much tertiary concern. If its no cost-difference, then of course there's no reason not to go for speed, but if it adds billions or means cutting off cities to add speed then go for capacity, go for connections, that is what matters.
We need to do the same with new motorways too. Linking towns and cities that aren't currently connected or with enough capacity with new roads to add new capacity, not simply convert A roads to motorway format that doesn't really add any capacity.
It will cost money to add all this rail and road capacity, but that is investment in our infrastructure that will boost GDP per capita, it is what should be happening.
But from my understanding the "set" view of binary sex (and sexuality) is something that became preeminent during the Victorian era (partly as a reaction to engagement with colonised people who had more fluid understanding of these things) and kind of stuck after that point. Then you had sexologists and other scientific endeavours in the early 20th century, most famously the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, and the recognition of individuals who wanted to transition. In the 50s you had a resurgence of anti gay sentiment, with the Lavender Scare in the US and the roll back of previously pro gay and pro women policy in the USSR (started by Stalin, but kept by Khrushchev despite liberalising policies for women again). The modern understanding and political movements for queer liberation come more out of the AIDs crisis and the response from US and UK administrations than that earlier history (although that earlier history is interesting).
It's unclear whether the Treasury is doing the cancelling. This seems to be Sunak's big idea. You suggest everyone other than the Prime Minister is to blame, but it's his decision.
Sunak's Harrying of the North will not be forgotten.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hs2-manchester-scrapped-northern-leg-route-rishi-sunak-0hwxnk5w9
Absolutely not a major city like Manchester or Leeds or Birmingham though, that defeats the point.
Savings minimal / zero and extra costs for all the new trains huge.
Makes no sense.
https://x.com/BeardedGenius/status/1709105710112374946?s=20
Sense isn't part of the equation.
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”
Farage remains part of Reform UK. Why is he even invited to all these events at the Conservative Party conference?
You have zero idea how much that would cost. None. It's almost as though you don't understand the distance between London and Glasgow, or the terrain inbetween...
Building that link takes inter city trains from Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Crewe, Preston etc. off the southern section of the WCML, the section into London.
That extra capacity created provides an opportunity to run more commuter services, many many more, into Euston on the WCML as the norther WCML services are now on the HS2 core line which is designed to have a 18trains per hour capacity, only three being taken by Brum services.
How on earth did HS2 get the sums so badly wrong in the first place ?
What a mess.
Which part of the sentence do you dispute?
A: That building from London to Glasgow (inc Preston etc) "would have added far more capacity to the network than HS2" [ie London to Manchester only]?
B: That doing so would have "been more affordable if built using off the shelf 300km/h specs instead of "future proofing" unnecessary speeds"?
I am not remotely understanding what your point is here.
Also, what is not 'off the shelf' in the design ????
You keep missing the point, it is off the shelf.
I'm saying building all the way to Glasgow (including Preston) adds far more capacity than terminating at Manchester.
I know you have visions of beyond Manchester, quite rightly, but that's not HS2. HS2 would have been better designed had it gone to Preston at the very least and possibly Glasgow from day one.
The distances involved extending even to just Preston isn't even much extra distance but would have improved the North's infrastructure more than worrying solely about London as the Treasury does.
Three people.
Pause.
Just sayin'.
You are not explaining.
Errr because many people in the North want to travel between Manchester and Preston, not just Manchester and London? What's confusing there?
I'm not a rail commuter but from what I've heard from those who are, the existing line between Manchester and Preston is especially shit. Adding capacity by building a new line that doesn't just terminate at Manchester, but stops there then goes past Manchester too means that Mancs wanting to go Northbound have extra capacity, not just those who want to go Southbound.
Anyone from that part of the world cast some light as to why?
And of course the first person, ambiguous to gender.
Yes, Preston has been rapidly building new roads and using that extra road capacity to convert old roads to be able to have more cycle paths. See the new A59 built in recent years, Edith Rigby Way and more.
As a result cars have been moved onto newer faster A roads and cycling capacity has leapt forwards.
Now who could possibly have been advocating this? The Dutch have I know, who else on this site? 🤔
Hmmm.
With the captive tracks ending at Preston and classic compatibles continuing on the WCML in the sections that there are not capacity issues you achieve the same result, at much lower costs.
There is no extra capacity relief required, at huge cost, to take the captive lines all the way through very challenging terrain in the lake district where the tracks are not operating anything like at capacity.
Manchester and south there is a big problem.
There are issues to the north, but not remotely as bad and not solved by the same expensive solution as is needed south of the city.
Just like the Dutch.
Its almost as if it works. Are you ready to admit that yet?
I'm talking about building the planned HS2 in full but continuing it past Manchester but to Preston etc as well rather than terminating in Manchester.
Again (and I'm fed up of saying this) its not either/or, its both.
This really is a cliff hanger. This used to be a rock solid seat for the Tories. Posh central. Then we had the debacle in Guildford Borough Council (I won't go into details as it would make one of Cyclefree's headers look like a brief summary) and the Tories got wiped out in Guildford by the LDs in the centre and the newly formed independents R4GV in the villages. The latter being the more impressive gains.
In the last set of Borough elections the Tories made a comeback. You won't see that if you look at the overall results as it shows the LDs taking control of the council, but that hides another story. The Tories lost their main last stronghold (6 councillors, 5 to LDs and 1 to an indy), but actually made good gains everywhere else at the expense of R4GV.
In the Horsleys however R4GV remained strong and R4GV hold all the Borough seats making up this County ward except 1 and hold them by decent margins.
However a popular R4GV councillor has stood down so this should make it a strong possible gain for the Tories.
But another quirk is this ward has moved from the Mole valley constituency to the Guildford constituency and we all know how the LDs love a by election, so they are going for it.
Anyone of the 3 could win and nobody has a clue.
I vote here and am involved in the campaign and have arranged my proxy vote for when I am away. Previously I have voted LD or R4GV. I am voting LD this time.
We should have built this, UK Ultraspeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Ultraspeed
Investment in the North is improving travel between locations in the North, not those who go to London.
Are you sure you're not just making things up?
But I guess they have neither the political guile nor the self-discipline to carry out something so obvious.
Having dedicated cycle paths on the road but separate from cars makes all forms of active travel safer. It means pedestrians aren't sharing footpaths with cyclists and it means that that cyclists aren't sharing road space or footpaths with either pedestrians or cars.
I do a lot of driving in this part of the world, you see a lot of pedestrians and cyclists in Preston on dedicated paths that suit them - and the car traffic is freer flowing than most other cities too because the city isn't overcrowded and has a lower population density.
Investment works. Who'd have thought it?
The purpose seems to be to lure Labour into making some sort of commitment, presumably to trap them into having to say how they will pay for it?
I simply point out that taking captive trains all the way passed Preston makes no sense economically or logistically.
Disappointing from our resident transport expert.