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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » HS2 might be hated by Tory activists but scrapping it could lead the party to being portrayed as being anti-north
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I know 3 people working on it in central london..none of them engineers all on salaries in excess of £100k for doing duddly squat. The money is out of control
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27969885
So, spend money improving rail links in the north. It's not rocket science.
You saved me the need to post.
every single chamber of commerce in the north supports it
almost every single elected council in the north supports it
Darling is pretty much hated across places like Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool for cancelling their tram plans in 2004 and is himself seen as anti-north.
But again, that would not register with southern voters as it is never ever reported in the national media.
If you want a vanity project - and one that will cost the country a heck of a lot more than £90 billion - just look at your beloved Brexit.
Including HS2.
Ask northern business, ask northern politicians, they absolutely see HS2 as a priority despite many from further away trying to tell them it is not.
Now is definitely the time for investing in infrastructure, but is this the right project?
With a leaked report saying it could rise to £71bn - £86bn.
Not the figures that some seem to pluck out of the air to make the scheme seem more expensive than reality.
And yes, mayors of the north would spend that money on HS2 given the chance, they have repeatedly stated as such, as Burnham did yesterday.
Those mainlines?
Dastardly London.
For all we know the official line is right, that her first shaking occurred under testing conditions, standing to attention in formal clothing in the sun on a searingly hit day. The following incidents have been caused by a fear of the same thing happening when standing to attention to a national anthem.
If this is the case then it hardly brings into question her ability to be the Chancellor.
To bring this back to topic it is yet another example of the very poor quality of statistical information available in this country when policy, such as transport, infrastructure and housing are discussed. Our political class being incompetent is a given but even the most competent cannot make good decisions without good information.
The North needs both it *and* better regional transverse links. But, without the former, it won’t aid global connectivity and regeneration.
One of the funny things about yesterdays announcement was the way so many antis wanted the money spending in *their* area. What amuses me is that they honestly seem to believe that if HS2 is cancelled, that money will go to them instead of other politically less fraught areas. Cancelling HS2 will burn politicians' fingers enough for the to avoid such grand projects in the future. IMO that's bad for the country.
(For an idea on rail investment, Network Rail are spending £10 billion (minimum) on enhancements in CP6 (2019-24).
Yep.
Being anti HS2 is the most southern thing there is.
to some manifesto commitments, on things like Brexit are sacrosanct, yet commitments on things like HS2 should be dropped, even if almost the entire population voted for parties that support the scheme.
Very, very occasionally Birmingham creeps into the news. Never anything further north than that.
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2013/12/high-speed-trains-are-not-sustainable.html
In a small country like ours, conventional express trains are fast enough, cheaper, and more environmentally sound. Build new lines please, but make them affordable, and support branch services rather than make them wither on the vine.
That doesn't mean there aren't many other projects all around the country that don't also need big money.
is not a headline I ever expect to see.
Very little of it will find its way into transport infrastructure.
I don’t see any merit to the Manchester limb. Better WiFi would make a bigger difference to business commuters.
The north has bigger problems than just infrastructure. Large parts of it need to urgently rethink what they offer in the modern world. Whizzy trains aren’t going to answer that.
https://paulbigland.blog/2019/08/21/the-oakervee-hs2-review-panels-announced-heres-a-look-and-some-thoughts/
It splits about 5-3 in favour of HS2, although he also stresses some on both sides tend to take nuanced views.
The key thing is that Andy Street is on there. If the review doesn't support HS2, he will absolutely crucify the government.
Anyway, all the best today. 100% pass at A level is very impressive.
There is one exception to the above and that is Bavaria. Bavaria is so big and so predomiantly catholic in everyday life and also in politics, hence the CSU instead of the CDU there, that it is hard to conclude that Bavaria is not a "Catholic State"
*in DDR Germany the Church was discriminated against, but Catholic and Protestant to equal measure.
(And I am not anti-HS2. But I am anti costings for large projects that invariably bear no recognition to the stated costs on day one. We always see it. We are supposed to just accept that the people who did the initial costings were just muppets. I come from an industry where we build small cities in the harshest weather conditions in the world, expected to withstand the 100-year wave and with enough onboard generating capacity to power Edinburgh (or push a column of oil hundreds of miles uphill to shore). Even a 10% cost overrun on such projects would risk the joint venture changing operator. Now, if they can get the costsings on such an astonishing piece of construction pretty much spot on from day one, why should the public have to accept costings so wide of the mark? Well, we know why - they would never have allowed politicians to spend £80 billion on a slighlty better train set if the true number was known, is why. It's all part of the dishonesty in our political set up.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8561286.stm
"Lord Adonis said the project would create 10,000 jobs and yield £2 in benefits for every £1 spent.
He said the first 120 miles between London and the West Midlands would cost between £15.8bn and £17.4bn.
The cost per mile beyond Birmingham is then estimated to halve, taking the overall cost of the 335 mile Y-shaped network to about £30bn."
You have to look very hard to find out that this comprises just buses.
It wasn't really an offer to Johnson.
Bozo’s strategy of taking his party members for mugs is working so well on Brexit, he is rolling it out elsewhere.
Those that opposed HS2, do they support £100bn[sic] actually being given to northern cities to spend how they so choose, including on HS2 if they wish?
Or, as I suspect, would that also be opposed as throwing money down the drain when it should go to schools, NHS, Crossrail 4 etc....
That's fair enough. But then come the hard questions (which will hopefully be answered by the people looking into NPR/HS3) :
*) Where does it serve?
*) What traffic patterns will it create?
*) What is its core purpose? To relieve current need and/or to promote growth?
*) What type of line? (Passenger only, mixed passenger/freight, high-speed etc)
*) What benefits do you want it to create?
The former of these is a biggie for me. Looking at a map of the north's conurbations, it's difficult to see how *one* line could realistically serve even a fraction of the large ones sensibly. It might therefore end up more l ike Crossrail, with services from various places west and east converging on a central core section. The core section might be new-build, the branches upgrades of existing routes.
It'll be interesting to see what is proposed.
Decreasing funding for other lines (as France has done) is purely a political decision.
On another point, your link says: "Between 30 and 50% of the trips on a high speed train are due to new demand. [10][11][12] These are all trips that would not have been undertaken if the high speed train did not exist. These travels do not replace a plane or car trip and consequently don't save energy and emissions."
Those are journeys that are for a purpose, and hence help the economy: whether it's people going on holiday, for a day-trip somewhere, or on business. They *help* the economy. That's what better transport links get you.
By somebody who believes wind farms are the wrong type of sustainable electricity because they're made of fibreglass instead of wood?
By somebody who believes batteries should be replaced by compressed air cylinders because the latter work better?
He has just a small credibility gap.
As it happens, there have been issues with the neglect of branch lines in Europe, especially France and Germany. But that's not so much high speed rail's fault as the fact that Europeans tend not to get very worked up about railways in the way we do here.
There has been plenty of spending on other lines as well as HS2. Without bothering to google it: Chase line electrified (cost - £100 million). Remodelling of New Street. New parkway station in Worcestershire. GWR mainline electrified. Waverley route partially reopened.
True, cost estimates haven't been very good. But nor were Brunel's or Stephenson's. HS2 is the crowning of a genuinely progressive railway strategy that has faults and shortcomings but is for the first time since the 1940s generally moving the right way.
Building stuff in the middle of nowhere is much less complex than building it where there is stuff already, where people live and can object.
"The state pension age should be raised to 75 within the next 16 years to help boost the UK economy, according to a Tory think tank."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/state-pension-age-rise-conservatives-think-tank-centre-for-social-justice-a9064071.html
Interestingly (and I don't say this snidely), Oxford hasn't had anywhere near the same success. It's not quite managed to grow the same sort of companies.
Improved transport links will help. But making universities growth incubators in their area might end up being much more rewarding, if chaotic.
Another issue is that London is voracious. It creates jobs, wealth and opportunities, but needs feeding in order to do so (e.g. Crossraial). Stop feeding it, and the whole country is negatively affected. It needs feeding *whilst* the above is done to help the north.
That would be a very bad idea
Either we've left (still loads more to do, I know I know) and the voters will be change the fecking record already
Or we haven't left, in which case NEXT!
https://www.businessinsider.com/tom-hulme-cambridge-edge-over-oxford-startups-2017-9?r=UK
Cambridge, by contrast, is by any measure an outstanding university for History.
The additional capacity argument presumably weakens the further north you go.
https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings?s=History
Although this reverses the rankings:
https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2017/history
Meanwhile another example of Farage's impact on government policy.
The Chair of the Stop HS2 campaign was distinctly unimpressive. And a quick look at their website confirms that they almost all live along the line.
Rankings are another thing to be a bit wary about putting too much faith in. They are often highly subjective.
And finally, of course, remember only a fraction of students attend more than one university so they struggle to make meaningful comparisons.
I cannot see how strangling London helps anyone. We need the wealth it creates.
But it is voracious.
macron sets out his vision for the world order
he waffles as much as BoJo
http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/avant-le-g7-macron-donne-sa-vision-du-monde-20190821
That's not the case at all.
He will undoubtedly lose next year if HS2 is canned.
Right. Time to go and find out what happened. Have a good morning. In fact, as I am off on holiday immediately afterwards, it might well be have a good week.
Possibly the last dozen. Famously there was a faction in MI5 that believed Harold Wilson worked for the Kremlin.
Nor do I understand why the papers today are presenting Boris’s visit yesterday as some great victory. All Merkel did was to say “Come up with an alternative that works.” If Boris had one he’d surely have told us. He doesn’t. He won’t. So on to no deal we go. Have I missed anything?
We should start detailed planning for high speed rail across the Pennines, so that it is ready to start construction as soon as HS2 is finished, if not before. I don't see why we should have to choose between the two.
The problems with HS2 seem to be ones of mismanagement and a lack of cost control. Those will be problems for any other major infrastructure project you might dream of spending the money on instead.
I found that opinion was fairly evenly divided but almost nobody except councillors and those directly affected actually cared - for most, it was a big project that might happen in the future, shrug. I don't think it will shift many votes either way - threatening to cancel it mildly damages the "we care about the North" rhetoric (but many northerners don't believe that anyway) and mildly helps against the "mad spender" jibe. Northern councillors will be very annoyed, but how many divisions do they have?
Off topic, Marquee Mark's job sounds fascinating. What a diverse bunch we are!
https://twitter.com/montie/status/1164415380535828482
(Oh, and when "the middle of nowhere" is the mddle of the North Sea, there's a somewhat greater risk of unknowns than laying a bit of track through Oxfordshire.....)