2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
That suggests to me that the strongest relationship is not North-South but urban-rural, as you'd expect. London has by far the lowest percentage of car use, and the North is lower than the ex-London South because there are some big cities there.
Bingo!
Comparing the North to the South ex-London is preposterous. London is in the South.
If you want to do that you'd need to have the Northwest exc Liverpool and Manchester.
Quite. Which is why you need to take account of population density to make a fair comparison of the propensity to drive in the north or south.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
That suggests to me that the strongest relationship is not North-South but urban-rural, as you'd expect. London has by far the lowest percentage of car use, and the North is lower than the ex-London South because there are some big cities there.
Bingo!
Comparing the North to the South ex-London is preposterous. London is in the South.
If you want to do that you'd need to have the Northwest exc Liverpool and Manchester.
Quite. Which is why you need to take account of population density to make a fair comparison of the propensity to drive in the north or south.
No, its why you don't.
You need to hold the actual density as it is and make a comparison based on real life.
Southerners are less likely to drive as the South includes London and London is too dense. So dense they struggle to drive and struggle to own their own home.
Thank goodness we don't have that density up here. Trying to pretend we did is not comparing reality.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
It's a brave politician, especially one based in a farming constituency, who advocates for agricultural imports with lower regulatory standards than domestic production, however delicious.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
It's a brave politician, especially one based in a farming constituency, who advocates for agricultural imports with lower regulatory standards than domestic production, however delicious.
And any politician who is brave that way would get my vote, ceteris paribus.
Mogg would not for other issues, not this.
There is absolutely nothing wrong food-safety wise with Australian beef. Its not a "lower" regulation, its a different regulation. Non-tariff barriers and protectionism are a bad thing for consumers, not a good one.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
It's a brave politician, especially one based in a farming constituency, who advocates for agricultural imports with lower regulatory standards than domestic production, however delicious.
And any politician who is brave that way would get my vote, ceteris paribus.
Mogg would not for other issues, not this.
There is absolutely nothing wrong food-safety wise with Australian beef. Its not a "lower" regulation, its a different regulation. Non-tariff barriers and protectionism are a bad thing for consumers, not a good one.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
That suggests to me that the strongest relationship is not North-South but urban-rural, as you'd expect. London has by far the lowest percentage of car use, and the North is lower than the ex-London South because there are some big cities there.
Bingo!
Comparing the North to the South ex-London is preposterous. London is in the South.
If you want to do that you'd need to have the Northwest exc Liverpool and Manchester.
Quite. Which is why you need to take account of population density to make a fair comparison of the propensity to drive in the north or south.
No, its why you don't.
You need to hold the actual density as it is and make a comparison based on real life.
Southerners are less likely to drive as the South includes London and London is too dense. So dense they struggle to drive and struggle to own their own home.
Thank goodness we don't have that density up here. Trying to pretend we did is not comparing reality.
"We northerners drive" is therefore wrong. It's actually "We people who live in low density areas drive".
Indeed, in Reigate and Banstead, which has exactly the same population density as Warrington, car ownership is higher.
What's really interesting is that there is a much looser correlation between car ownership and the use of public transport compared with the relationship with density.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
That suggests to me that the strongest relationship is not North-South but urban-rural, as you'd expect. London has by far the lowest percentage of car use, and the North is lower than the ex-London South because there are some big cities there.
Bingo!
Comparing the North to the South ex-London is preposterous. London is in the South.
If you want to do that you'd need to have the Northwest exc Liverpool and Manchester.
Quite. Which is why you need to take account of population density to make a fair comparison of the propensity to drive in the north or south.
No, its why you don't.
You need to hold the actual density as it is and make a comparison based on real life.
Southerners are less likely to drive as the South includes London and London is too dense. So dense they struggle to drive and struggle to own their own home.
Thank goodness we don't have that density up here. Trying to pretend we did is not comparing reality.
"We northerners drive" is therefore wrong. It's actually "We people who live in low density areas drive".
Indeed, in Reigate and Banstead, which has exactly the same population density as Warrington, car ownership is higher.
What's really interesting is that there is a much looser correlation between car ownership and the use of public transport compared with the relationship with density.
No, it was right, but its right in Reigate and Banstead too.
In fact its right for everywhere apart from London. London is not in the North.
Not sure why you're surprised by the last point, I've been telling you for ages that public transport isn't an alternative to driving. The only reason Londoners don't drive like the rest of the country do is they're too overcrowded so can't easily. That's a pity for them.
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.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
The Scottish government extended the notmotorway to Dunbar. They discussed the prospect for turning the whole route to Newcastle into an expressway / DC and were rebuffed by the DfT.
So the Scottish government was happy to build a notmotorway from Dunbar to Berwick as long as the UK government built similar to close all the single carriageway gaps. The DfT said no.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
It's a brave politician, especially one based in a farming constituency, who advocates for agricultural imports with lower regulatory standards than domestic production, however delicious.
Just now on the Guardian Live Blog:
Mark Spencer, the farming minister, has denounced Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg as an attention seeker whose views on imported beef are wrong.
Yesterday Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said he wanted to see hormone-injected beef imported from Australia.
Speaking at a Countryside Alliance event today, Spencer said:
"So it helps Jacob’s profile doesn’t it. Jacob is the master of grabbing the headlines. But it doesn’t really add much to the debate and I think, it’s probably my job as a minister to explain to Jacob why that is wrong.
And actually backing UK farmers is better for the planet. It’s better for our economy. It’s actually better for our consumers as well, because we’re producing the top quality products here and we’re not going to allow the imports of hormone fed beef from anywhere in the world."
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
It's a brave politician, especially one based in a farming constituency, who advocates for agricultural imports with lower regulatory standards than domestic production, however delicious.
Just now on the Guardian Live Blog:
Mark Spencer, the farming minister, has denounced Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg as an attention seeker whose views on imported beef are wrong.
Yesterday Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said he wanted to see hormone-injected beef imported from Australia.
Speaking at a Countryside Alliance event today, Spencer said:
"So it helps Jacob’s profile doesn’t it. Jacob is the master of grabbing the headlines. But it doesn’t really add much to the debate and I think, it’s probably my job as a minister to explain to Jacob why that is wrong.
And actually backing UK farmers is better for the planet. It’s better for our economy. It’s actually better for our consumers as well, because we’re producing the top quality products here and we’re not going to allow the imports of hormone fed beef from anywhere in the world."
Protectionist anti-consumer bullshit.
Yet another reason not to vote for today's Tories. Although I doubt any other party would be better on this issue, this was one area where the Tories had the possibility to be better.
There’s an air of unreality at #cpc23 in Manchester. But it’s part of a longer story. The slow radicalisation of the Conservative Party. The seeds are being sown for that process to complete, with Liz Truss & Nigel Farage at its centre. My latest for NS.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
The point farmers in the UK would rightly make is that, currently, growth hormones for livestock is banned explicitly due to concerns over public health (not "quality" - I'm sure it tastes fine but that isn't the point).
Now it COULD be that Australia is right on this and the UK is wrong to have public health concerns. But the way to deal with that is to review the scientific position and, if the UK regulation needs changing, to change it. Rees-Mogg is suggesting that his own (unpublished) scientific research on this matter shows there is "nothing wrong with it" and indeed it is "delicious", so let's bypass all that in favour of importing a load of hormone injected beef, and sod the British farmers who still aren't allowed to use those farming methods.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
That suggests to me that the strongest relationship is not North-South but urban-rural, as you'd expect. London has by far the lowest percentage of car use, and the North is lower than the ex-London South because there are some big cities there.
Bingo!
Comparing the North to the South ex-London is preposterous. London is in the South.
If you want to do that you'd need to have the Northwest exc Liverpool and Manchester.
Quite. Which is why you need to take account of population density to make a fair comparison of the propensity to drive in the north or south.
'Propensity to drive', that's an interesting one. I'd have thought the only material delta there at population group id level would be male v female, with the former having the higher measure. Eg I have a propensity to drive the short distance to the gym, and my wife has a propensity to say this is a bit pathetic.
There’s an air of unreality at #cpc23 in Manchester. But it’s part of a longer story. The slow radicalisation of the Conservative Party. The seeds are being sown for that process to complete, with Liz Truss & Nigel Farage at its centre. My latest for NS.
There’s an air of unreality at #cpc23 in Manchester. But it’s part of a longer story. The slow radicalisation of the Conservative Party. The seeds are being sown for that process to complete, with Liz Truss & Nigel Farage at its centre. My latest for NS.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
Until climate change buggers up Aussie farming and they can grow nothing but kangaroos and camels.
But by then a major part of UK farming will have been permanently destroyed.
The conference continues to provide wonderful ammunition for the opposition today. Here's one for those Tory-LD farming marginals in the West Country:
Jacob Rees Mogg: "I want cheaper food. I want hormone injected beef from Australia. I've eaten beef in Australia, it's delicious. There's nothing wrong with it."
I'd imagine the quote "I want hormone injected beef from Australia" will feature on one or two leaflets, yes.
Aussie beef is fantastic quality. I'd absolutely eat it.
Shame on anyone who is trying to make Jacob Rees Mogg the voice of reason by being against that.
The point farmers in the UK would rightly make is that, currently, growth hormones for livestock is banned explicitly due to concerns over public health (not "quality" - I'm sure it tastes fine but that isn't the point).
Now it COULD be that Australia is right on this and the UK is wrong to have public health concerns. But the way to deal with that is to review the scientific position and, if the UK regulation needs changing, to change it. Rees-Mogg is suggesting that his own (unpublished) scientific research on this matter shows there is "nothing wrong with it" and indeed it is "delicious", so let's bypass all that in favour of importing a load of hormone injected beef, and sod the British farmers who still aren't allowed to use those farming methods.
Its a load of bovine manure.
There was no public health reason to put this ban in, it was done as a means of protectionism and unscientific fearmongering.
The science has shown for decades that there is no scientific justification for the ban. The WTO ruled against the EU on this issue, but its never been satisfactorily resolved.
At the time the ban was implemented, the UK opposed the ban but it went ahead.
We should take advantage of our post-Brexit freedoms and repeal the ban. Or let British beef farming die if they can't compete with more competitive, equally safe, foreign alternatives and let our British land be turned into more productive uses instead.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
SFAICS all arguments for unfettered free trade break down somewhere in the realm of agriculture. I think there several reasons, and on balance the case is very strong :
Food security Votes Land management (agri is 1% of the economy and about 75% of the landscape) The locally integrated nature of agri production. Once addicted to subsidy you can't stop.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
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.
Reminds me of waiting for Mrs May’s Brexit masterplan…
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
That suggests to me that the strongest relationship is not North-South but urban-rural, as you'd expect. London has by far the lowest percentage of car use, and the North is lower than the ex-London South because there are some big cities there.
Bingo!
Comparing the North to the South ex-London is preposterous. London is in the South.
If you want to do that you'd need to have the Northwest exc Liverpool and Manchester.
Quite. Which is why you need to take account of population density to make a fair comparison of the propensity to drive in the north or south.
'Propensity to drive', that's an interesting one. I'd have thought the only material delta there at population group id level would be male v female, with the former having the higher measure. Eg I have a propensity to drive the short distance to the gym, and my wife has a propensity to say this is a bit pathetic.
I should have said "car ownership" or "car access".
Car access is highly correlated with population density.
However, car commuting is only a weakly associated with density.
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.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
Yes. You can drive on dual carriageways without a gap from Bodmin in Cornwall to north of Aberdeen but neither Mway nor dual from Newcastle (nor Carlisle) to Edinburgh.
A folk memory of the reavers from Edinburgh burning Newcastle? Why make it easy for them…
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The ghost of Ricardo, a hero of the human condition and the creator of a set of ideas that are true, non trivial, novel, world changing and comprehensible, would know why there is not, in the modern world, complete free trade in a number of areas. These would include nuclear fissile material, military hardware, government secrets, water and a lot of agricultural production.
Among the reasons, while there are others, food security trumps the law of comparative advantage for many countries much of the time.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
You can’t buy proper cheese in the US, it seems.
I went to a cheese tasting by an artisan cheese maker once, in upstate NY. They were all basically the same cheese, just with bits of different things in them, herbs, ginger, garlic, cranberry, etc.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The ghost of Ricardo, a hero of the human condition and the creator of a set of ideas that are true, non trivial, novel, world changing and comprehensible, would know why there is not, in the modern world, complete free trade in a number of areas. These would include nuclear fissile material, military hardware, government secrets, water and a lot of agricultural production.
Among the reasons, while there are others, food security trumps the law of comparative advantage for many countries much of the time.
Yes; in a world of climate change being overly dependant on far away imports rather than close importation or internal production would be an interesting choice.
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.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
Yes. You can drive on dual carriageways without a gap from Bodmin in Cornwall to north of Aberdeen but neither Mway nor dual from Newcastle (nor Carlisle) to Edinburgh.
The A30 is dualled all the way down Cornwall to Hayle (ie St Ives)- right at the end, pretty much
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
No, there won't be a choice. There will be Australian beef or Australian beef. What is left of the UK beef industry will be small scale and posh because it can survive with few consumers willing to pay lots.
Again, the challenge is what happens to dairy. At least we could still eat burgers. And drink imported milk. But is Cheddar cheese still Cheddar when the milk is imported frozen from Germany?
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.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
Yes. You can drive on dual carriageways without a gap from Bodmin in Cornwall to north of Aberdeen but neither Mway nor dual from Newcastle (nor Carlisle) to Edinburgh.
A folk memory of the reavers from Edinburgh burning Newcastle? Why make it easy for them…
Reivers were Borderers. Could be Scottish or English - they didn't muchj know or care themselves.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
Have you been to America?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
Have you been to America?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
No, there won't be a choice. There will be Australian beef or Australian beef. What is left of the UK beef industry will be small scale and posh because it can survive with few consumers willing to pay lots.
Again, the challenge is what happens to dairy. At least we could still eat burgers. And drink imported milk. But is Cheddar cheese still Cheddar when the milk is imported frozen from Germany?
Yes. Free trade in lots of things is fine - plastic ducks are more or less interchangeable. But lots of things are not. Just as Mozart is not (thankfully) interchangeable in a free trade market with Little Mix even though both are the same commodity of music, so with cheese. And lots of other stuff.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
No, there won't be a choice. There will be Australian beef or Australian beef. What is left of the UK beef industry will be small scale and posh because it can survive with few consumers willing to pay lots.
Again, the challenge is what happens to dairy. At least we could still eat burgers. And drink imported milk. But is Cheddar cheese still Cheddar when the milk is imported frozen from Germany?
Australia, 24.4 million head of cattle, 15 million of which exported. UK, 9.4 million RoI, 7.5 million
The only way Australia could replace the entire UK production of cheaper beef, and replace our imports of cheap RoI beef would be to export here, and nowhere else in the world. Doesn't seem very likely.
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.
To Glasgow in addition to Manchester, not instead of it.
I never said anything about captive did I?
I'm talking about a full new route that goes all the way from Manchester to London and from Manchester to Glasgow. Or in other words from London to Glasgow which stops at Manchester. So you could board a train from Manchester and get to Crewe or Birmingham or London as planned. Or you could go from Manchester to Preston or Glasgow or wherever else it might stop Northbound too.
Not either/or, both, with new capacity.
You are describing HS2. There is a delta junction near the NEC to allow trains to access Birmingham from the north - or bypass it completely. And there was another planned in Cheshire to allow for trains to access Manchester from the north.
HS2 builds new tracks to Preston?
As far as I knew HS2 terminated at Manchester.
The Golborne link would have allowed trains from both the south and Manchester (and NPR east!) to access the WCML towards Wigan and Preston. That has already been scrapped, but passive provision is still there in the planned route between Crewe and Manchester Airport.
My understanding is the WCML between Manchester/Wigan/Preston is absolutely awful. Certainly hear constant complaints about it.
So why not continue the new line to Wigan and Preston building new capacity there and relieving capacity on the WCML too?
Wasn't that the point? Capacity? Is the suggestion that between Golborne and Preston there's no capacity issues?
Most HS infrastructure gets built in phases. There is a link to the existing line near Litchfield in an earlier phase (which may or may not get built), then a link at Crewe, then a link at Golborne. By the time HS trains are entering the WCML at Golborne traffic is much lower - services from Manchester and Liverpool to the south have gone, so its only for traffic heading north towards Scotland.
Any of our neighbours would have upgraded the whole route years ago. We haven't even got a dual carriageway connection between Edinburgh and England, never mind a fast and capacious railway. Its no wonder so many people fly.
On that we're totally agreed, new motorways are absolutely essential.
The fact there isn't a motorway from Newcastle to Edinburgh is fairly astonishing.
Yes. You can drive on dual carriageways without a gap from Bodmin in Cornwall to north of Aberdeen but neither Mway nor dual from Newcastle (nor Carlisle) to Edinburgh.
A folk memory of the reavers from Edinburgh burning Newcastle? Why make it easy for them…
Reivers were Borderers. Could be Scottish or English - they didn't muchj know or care themselves.
You and your facts spoiling a perfectly good remark!
Reivers were Borderers. Could be Scottish or English - they didn't muchj know or care themselves.
Amusing to think of that heir to the reivers Rory Stewart in his steel bonnet, getting ready for a bit of pillaging on either side of the border.
Did you watch David Olusoga's Union last night? Fairly balanced though through a somewhat Anglocentric lens. Tbf the English may need the most educating about the Union..
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
You can’t buy proper cheese in the US, it seems.
I went to a cheese tasting by an artisan cheese maker once, in upstate NY. They were all basically the same cheese, just with bits of different things in them, herbs, ginger, garlic, cranberry, etc.
It’s worse than that.
Last time I was there someone tried to sell me Gruyere-style Cheddar
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
Have you been to America?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
Probably because they don't have access to good cheese (a bit like Northerners and public transport...)
I remember watching an American go wild at the cheese counter at Tebay services.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
Have you been to America?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
Probably because they don't have access to good cheese (a bit like Northerners and public transport...)
I remember watching an American go wild at the cheese counter at Tebay services.
I love Tebay services. We always make a point of stopping there whenever we go to Penrith.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
Isn't the ownership rate a really poor proxy for use rates? My car does ~20k miles a year. My wife's car does about ~4k miles a year.
I suspect that the big North - South divide isn't so much in the rates of ownership as in the milages driven. I'd expect to discover that many more people actually use their cars to commute every day in the North, as opposed cars just used for the odd run out to the shops and to take the kids to see the grandparents at the weekend.
My maternal grandparents lived in Bexleyheath, had a car, and only really used it on the weekend - they caught the train to work. That's going to be much more typical in the South than the North.
As an aside - my town has a good train service to Manchester. Thanks to perverse ticket pricing structures, most Manchester bound commuters drive parallel to the railway for 5 miles and then catch the train from a station slightly nearer Manchester, as the season tickets from there are around half the price...
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
Have you been to America?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
Probably because they don't have access to good cheese (a bit like Northerners and public transport...)
I remember watching an American go wild at the cheese counter at Tebay services.
I love Tebay services. We always make a point of stopping there whenever we go to Penrith.
2022 North East 28% 2.7M Area: 8579 km2 2022 North West 20% 7.3M Area 14108 km2 2022 Yorkshire and the Humber 23% 5.5M 15405 km2
2022 London 41% 9M 1572 km2 2022 South East 15% 9.2M 19072 km2 2022 South West 13% 5.6M 23836 km2
North: 15.5M people, NO cars 22.4% 38092 km2 1 or more car 77.6% South: 23.8M people, NO cars 24.3% 44480 km2 1 or more car 75.7%
Northern car use a bit higher than southern. I expect the difference is probably explained by income.
Isn't the ownership rate a really poor proxy for use rates? My car does ~20k miles a year. My wife's car does about ~4k miles a year.
I suspect that the big North - South divide isn't so much in the rates of ownership as in the milages driven. I'd expect to discover that many more people actually use their cars to commute every day in the North, as opposed cars just used for the odd run out to the shops and to take the kids to see the grandparents at the weekend.
My maternal grandparents lived in Bexleyheath, had a car, and only really used it on the weekend - they caught the train to work. That's going to be much more typical in the South than the North.
As an aside - my town has a good train service to Manchester. Thanks to perverse ticket pricing structures, most Manchester bound commuters drive parallel to the railway for 5 miles and then catch the train from a station slightly nearer Manchester, as the season tickets from there are around half the price...
Which would prove that public transport is rubbish up north. Commute distances are roughly the same.
Reivers were Borderers. Could be Scottish or English - they didn't muchj know or care themselves.
Amusing to think of that heir to the reivers Rory Stewart in his steel bonnet, getting ready for a bit of pillaging on either side of the border.
Did you watch David Olusoga's Union last night? Fairly balanced though through a somewhat Anglocentric lens. Tbf the English may need the most educating about the Union..
It was very good indeed.
The Ulster plantation history was quite an eye opener.
On beef imports it's pretty simple. Australia could literally swamp the UK market and put most of our farmers out of business. The meat won't be as good - not after blast freezing and shipping half way round the world. But it will be cheap, and where price is all that matters it would take over.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
The ghost of David Ricardo wants to know what the problem with that is?
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
The joy of a free market dominated by a small number of big food producers. You will eat what we tell you to eat, because what we sell will be all you can afford.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
I lived downunder.
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
"Americans don't like cheese".
Next on my list Mr Roberts I'm going to start with cows per capita and go from there...
Have you been to America?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
I won't claim American cheese is any good, but will note that they produce well over ten times as much of it as we do in the UK. Indeed, Wisconsin produces about three times as much cheese as the UK.
Comments
You need to hold the actual density as it is and make a comparison based on real life.
Southerners are less likely to drive as the South includes London and London is too dense. So dense they struggle to drive and struggle to own their own home.
Thank goodness we don't have that density up here. Trying to pretend we did is not comparing reality.
As a mode of transportation? Motorways.
As a food to eat? Aussie beef.
Driving to someone's house for a barbecue? Use the motorway to get to them, then barbecue the beef.
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1135743/tsgb0109.ods&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
Commutes by transport type:
England - Car (& 1% motorbike) 68%, bus or coach 6%, rail & underground 6%, bike & walk 15%.
No particularly significant north/south (Ex London) variation.
London Motor vehicles 28%, bus or coach 12%, rail & underground 42%, bike & walk 17%
Ex London Motor 73 - 78%, bus or coach 3-7% , rail 3 - 5%, active 10 - 18%
Mogg would not for other issues, not this.
There is absolutely nothing wrong food-safety wise with Australian beef. Its not a "lower" regulation, its a different regulation. Non-tariff barriers and protectionism are a bad thing for consumers, not a good one.
Indeed, in Reigate and Banstead, which has exactly the same population density as Warrington, car ownership is higher.
What's really interesting is that there is a much looser correlation between car ownership and the use of public transport compared with the relationship with density.
In fact its right for everywhere apart from London. London is not in the North.
Not sure why you're surprised by the last point, I've been telling you for ages that public transport isn't an alternative to driving. The only reason Londoners don't drive like the rest of the country do is they're too overcrowded so can't easily. That's a pity for them.
https://development.asia/case-study/road-expressway-construction-and-management
Mark Spencer, the farming minister, has denounced Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg as an attention seeker whose views on imported beef are wrong.
Yesterday Rees-Mogg, the former business secretary, said he wanted to see hormone-injected beef imported from Australia.
Speaking at a Countryside Alliance event today, Spencer said:
"So it helps Jacob’s profile doesn’t it. Jacob is the master of grabbing the headlines. But it doesn’t really add much to the debate and I think, it’s probably my job as a minister to explain to Jacob why that is wrong.
And actually backing UK farmers is better for the planet. It’s better for our economy. It’s actually better for our consumers as well, because we’re producing the top quality products here and we’re not going to allow the imports of hormone fed beef from anywhere in the world."
Yet another reason not to vote for today's Tories. Although I doubt any other party would be better on this issue, this was one area where the Tories had the possibility to be better.
Now it COULD be that Australia is right on this and the UK is wrong to have public health concerns. But the way to deal with that is to review the scientific position and, if the UK regulation needs changing, to change it. Rees-Mogg is suggesting that his own (unpublished) scientific research on this matter shows there is "nothing wrong with it" and indeed it is "delicious", so let's bypass all that in favour of importing a load of hormone injected beef, and sod the British farmers who still aren't allowed to use those farming methods.
The challenge is two-fold: our farmers can't compete (scale) so there is no free market argument for letting Australia shut down UK producers. Secondly, we will have to face into a huge increase in the price of (imported) milk and the end of the cheese industry as we know it.
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1709154364042994115
But by then a major part of UK farming will have been permanently destroyed.
There was no public health reason to put this ban in, it was done as a means of protectionism and unscientific fearmongering.
The science has shown for decades that there is no scientific justification for the ban. The WTO ruled against the EU on this issue, but its never been satisfactorily resolved.
At the time the ban was implemented, the UK opposed the ban but it went ahead.
We should take advantage of our post-Brexit freedoms and repeal the ban. Or let British beef farming die if they can't compete with more competitive, equally safe, foreign alternatives and let our British land be turned into more productive uses instead.
We asked 2,000 people to give us one word to describe the Conservative Party.
Food security
Votes
Land management (agri is 1% of the economy and about 75% of the landscape)
The locally integrated nature of agri production.
Once addicted to subsidy you can't stop.
Is Sadiq Khan as evil an anti-Semite as the Corbynista cabal? The fragrant Susan Hall seems to think so.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66990999
If milk is cheaper domestically then it would be farmed, not imported.
Aye, very fcking trying.
cf American "Cheese"
You're a libertarian. What liberty is there in allowing food megaliths to crush the competition and reduce people's choices?
They have plenty of good quality meat and cheeses.
Just because Americans don't like cheese, that's cultural not economic.
Liberty is in letting people make their own choices. If people choose Australian beef, and I would, then so be it. That's free choice in action.
Protectionism is illiberal.
Car access is highly correlated with population density.
However, car commuting is only a weakly associated with density.
Or am I getting mixed up with NZ lamb?
Among the reasons, while there are others, food security trumps the law of comparative advantage for many countries much of the time.
Next on my list Mr Roberts
I went to a cheese tasting by an artisan cheese maker once, in upstate NY. They were all basically the same cheese, just with bits of different things in them, herbs, ginger, garlic, cranberry, etc.
Incredible we can’t do the same for Edinburgh
Again, the challenge is what happens to dairy. At least we could still eat burgers. And drink imported milk. But is Cheddar cheese still Cheddar when the milk is imported frozen from Germany?
Americans don't understand what proper cheese is. I thought that was something everyone here would know.
For them cows are for slaughtering, not bred for cheese which is some sort of commie French plot in much of the midwest.
UK, 9.4 million
RoI, 7.5 million
The only way Australia could replace the entire UK production of cheaper beef, and replace our imports of cheap RoI beef would be to export here, and nowhere else in the world. Doesn't seem very likely.
Did you watch David Olusoga's Union last night? Fairly balanced though through a somewhat Anglocentric lens. Tbf the English may need the most educating about the Union..
Last time I was there someone tried to sell me Gruyere-style Cheddar
*shudders*
I remember watching an American go wild at the cheese counter at Tebay services.
How did you get there? 😇
I suspect that the big North - South divide isn't so much in the rates of ownership as in the milages driven. I'd expect to discover that many more people actually use their cars to commute every day in the North, as opposed cars just used for the odd run out to the shops and to take the kids to see the grandparents at the weekend.
My maternal grandparents lived in Bexleyheath, had a car, and only really used it on the weekend - they caught the train to work. That's going to be much more typical in the South than the North.
As an aside - my town has a good train service to Manchester. Thanks to perverse ticket pricing structures, most Manchester bound commuters drive parallel to the railway for 5 miles and then catch the train from a station slightly nearer Manchester, as the season tickets from there are around half the price...
The Ulster plantation history was quite an eye opener.