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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Northern Rail to be nationalised and it looks like HS2 is going to be approved
Confirmed – Northern Rail into public ownership from March 1st
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It won't surprise me if it costs at least that.
But I don't see how the Govt. cans it. It does need to have some very savvy PR selling it far better than has been done to date, however. It has allowed the narrative to develop of it being all about London. It has to make a big push on it being about additional capacity for the whole rail network.
Oh, and don't even TRY to sell us the "every £x spent mean an added £x + y benefit to the economy" line. Nobody is buying it.
https://twitter.com/rewearmouth/status/1222546339764101127?s=21
Even at £106bn it has a £1.40 benefit for every £1 cost, that has already been leaked.
Finally, the alternatives are far worse in terms of costs and benefits and unless you have decided to write off the infrastructure that the business and political community of the north are crying out for, you are going to have to do something very radical to increase capacity up and down and across the countries railways.
He really is stealing Labour's clothes.
The EU needs a leader that has campaigned in all three of Birmingham, Barcelona and Bavaria. And everywhere else.
The rest of us are moving on. When you're ready to finish your strop come and find us.
The railways need accountability, not nationalisation. Oh, hold on; not that bit. These bits:
We will build Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester and then focus on Liverpool, Tees Valley, Hull, Sheffield and Newcastle.
We will invest in the Midlands Rail Hub, strengthening rail links including those between Birmingham, Leicester, Nottingham, Coventry, Derby, Hereford and Worcester.
We will also invest in improving train lines to the South West and East Anglia.
We will give city regions the funding to upgrade their bus, tram and train services to make them as good as London’s
HS2 is a great ambition, but will now cost at least £81 billion and will not reach Leeds or Manchester until as late as 2040. We will consider the findings of the Oakervee review into costs and timings and work with leaders of the Midlands and the North to decide the optimal outcome.
we will restore many of the Beeching lines, reconnecting smaller towns such as Fleetwood and Willenhall
Oakervee review provided and optimal outcome seemingly decided.
Time for people to end their stropping and accept the democratic decision.
Epic fail.
Brexit is because err.. we had too many opt-outs and opt-ins:
https://twitter.com/guyverhofstadt/status/1222553258633441281?s=20
"Blair was later forced into offering a referendum on the EU Constitutional Treaty in 2004 because Charlie Kennedy supported Michael Howard’s call for one and a good number of Labour MPs would have voted for the plebiscite.
France saved Blair by voting down the constitution in 2005. Perhaps if Blair had held a referendum then and lost, as President Chirac did in France, that might have taught David Cameron that holding plebiscites on Europe could only produce one outcome."
It seems to be a habit.
https://politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/109465/excl-rebecca-long-bailey-accused-lying-over-claim
The idea that simply denying any vote whatsoever on the EU ad infinitum was a serious political answer to euroscepticism in the UK is for the birds.
However, if you are an editor of a national newspaper and live in the Chilterns why not stick with speed as the issue, therefore undermining the real reasons the scheme is planned?
If you look at HS2 part of the DfT website it is full of capacity reports and news releases, never picked up by the media.
It's part of the problem in this country, reality is someone living in the Chilterns has a much better chance of having the ability to affect the nations mood and government policy than someone living in an inner city council estate in Manchester.
The positive affect on the poor person in Manchester never gets a look in but all the negatives for those 'poor' people in the Chilterns never leaves the coverage.
Another promise I hope Boris keeps...
Cameron lost narrowly despite having, compared to Blair a decade earlier, a much harder situation. There was no major UKIP surge in Blair's time. There was no migrant crisis. There was no major party leader batting for both sides (Corbyn).
Part of the reason we ended up voting to leave was because those who might've voted either way saw that Labour was perfectly happy to promise a referendum during a campaign and then not hold one once they were safely ensconced in office.
The actions of Blair and Brown encouraged the vote to leave. If they'd held the Lisbon Treaty referendum it would've been lost, a strong sceptical signal would've been sent, and we'd still be in the EU.
HS2 is simply the next step on that path, those opposed to the scheme seem to suggest that Manchester (and other places) would not be adversely affected if the WCML and M6 had never existed.
His optimistic can do attitude is infectious and is the right receipe at the present time
The response was a bit like the hard left types you already respond to claims socialism never works, with we don't have a proper european union, the only way future is a much more integrated closer nit EU with more powers centralized.
"No."
"Then you cannot have seen it blow up then can you."
Had it been addressed 15 years ago, we'd have been talking about a Ruhr model. Now, I tend to think Manchester would be a much more dominant focal point if connectivity improved.
Put any new (electric??) airport somewhere north of London along HS2, and the infrastructure job for the north would be substantially done.
As opposed to a hundred times that, at £106,000,000,000.
Or more if the costs continue to escalate, with a figure of £130,000,000,000 including contingencies now being mooted.
Most of those travelling from the West Midlands to London will in fact see a time saving of 0 minutes, not least from the Black Country, since Curzon Street is so remote from the rest of the creaking West Midlands transport hub centred on New Street that most will find it quicker (and cheaper) to continue to use the WCML or Chiltern Line. As for the WCML capacity issues, they are largely contrived, which is why they were only brought to the fore once the original business case collapsed.
Meanwhile, here's the sort of thing that people in the West Midlands would actually benefit from, delivering transport benefits far more quickly at a tiny fraction of the cost, on the sort of transport links that the people and businesses of the region actually rely upon.
https://www.expressandstar.com/news/transport/2020/01/27/how-hs2-billions-could-be-spent-on-our-region/
Seems that some crossed wires in the media, those being asked to self-isolate are those coming back from areas other than Wuhan. Those the government are evacuating from Wuhan are going into quarantine.
....
BBC suspend the turn off red button service that costs £39m a year to run
This is like when BBC had choice of closing down the likes of BBC Three and bottled it. You think Amazon, Netflix or Sky would hesitate to keep a service that is used by bugger all people and will only continue to decline every single week.
If we voted to Remain, it wasn't for the status quo, it was for ever closer union. Now if in 20-30 years being in a protected trading block against the likes of what will be the global superpower of China is better than fighting out in the world, but being able to be a bit more nibble, who knows.
https://twitter.com/jmartNYT/status/1222373352360349696
Everton reject a €100 million bid from Barcelona for Richarlison.
The EU's strength is in it's weakness; it cannot and will not become the bogeyman that Farage et al conned people in this country into believing because it is simply inefficient in it's ambition.
It isn't just Brexit, as I said in the BBC documentary straight after Brexit, the EU top brass were already talking about this being the only way to deal with inequalities within the different EU countries, which was seeing a rise of populist parties.
What is the alternative?
Honest question, fact no one has provided one in 12 years explains why HS2 or something incredibly similar will eventually be built.
Maybe the issues on the legacy network need HS2 for them to be fixed?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/jan/29/alastair-stewart-quits-as-itv-presenter-over-errors-of-judgment
But not to worry because they have certainly made up for it since.
https://labourlist.org/2020/01/dont-despair-the-left-has-come-a-long-way-since-labours-2015-leadership-race/?amp
My personal view though is that we were right to let Poles and others in. The accession of those states - after the terrible time they had under Soviet control - was a wonderful moment and achievement in European history. To keep their people at arms’ length seemed petty and unworthy, especially when so many of them - Poles particularly - had fought alongside us in WW2 and been betrayed at the end of that war. Something mean-spirited about Germany’s exclusion of them, I felt. If there was one area to which the Germans owed a moral debt of honour, it was to Poland and the Baltic states.
The issue of migration - asylum-seeking and family reunions and cousin marriages in Pakistani communities - should have been dealt with much earlier and more effectively. Then it would have been easier to persuade people of the benefits of FoM. That and not coming up with such obviously bogus figures as 13,000 migrants.
It was the sense that the government had lost control - or had deliberately abandoned all pretence of control - long before 2005 that did for the government. Hence, also, the brilliance of the “Take Back Control” slogan.
But on the BIG one -
Are the first pangs of doubt stirring yet as to the impossibility of Bernie beating the Donald? Bet they are.
"...maybe it's time to throw out those traditional yardsticks."
"Only a lunatic would try to predict a Democratic nominee under these circumstances and I certainly won’t. But put me down for Biden with a 50 percent chance and Bloomberg at 25 percent, with 25 percent split between Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and who the heck else."
https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/picture-remain-cloudy-after-iowa-and-new-hampshire
Britain did not use the controls it had under EU law. Anyway all water under the bridge now.
I do wonder if diehard Leave voters will be pleased with the increased migration from Africa Boris is promising them - https://www.monitor.co.ug/News/World/Britain-will-be-more-open-to-migrants-from-Africa/688340-5425566-a8af0vz/index.html.
There was a pro-Uighur campaigner on the WATO today making an emotional appeal for Britain to do the moral thing (I know, the very idea!) wrt Huawei given their involvement in the surveillance and other techniques used to oppress the poor Uighurs.
Reposting this on this topic - https://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2019/12/09/lets-talk-about-islamophobia/.
However, we've already heard from business calls for an opt out to allow low skilled immigration from the EU and the problem is with employment at a record high and unemployment so low where is the labour capacity to promote continued economic growth?
Back in the 80s, we got to the point in the SE when we had full employment and the problem was workers could command their own wages - wage inflation led to price inflation and the economy collapsed into recession.
With labour supply being restricted and Johnson determined to over-stimulate the economy, what is going to prevent capacity problems and wage-led inflation returning?
I wonder how many Boris Points will be needed to get in here. Low bar or high bar? He has a fine line to tread on this. A liberal or a reactionary? 2 big parts of his voting coalition want opposite things.
After all most EU migrants were not benefit seekers, were pretty highly skilled and contributed greatly to our economy.
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1222562936771809280?s=20
Cameron's commitment was not to have an IN/OUT vote but a vote on a renegotiated membership. It was his and the EU's failure to agree a set of revised membership terms that forced Cameron into an IN/OUT vote.
Even then, he must have thought, having won the 2015 GE against the odds, his own personal popularity would carry REMAIN over the line and for those who opposed him within his Party such as Gove and Johnson it was a huge political gamble. Had REMAIN won, their political careers would have been over and Johnson's Journeys would be a hit show on BBC2 as we follow the bumptious buffoon on his globe-trotting odyssey.
The gamble paid off and the Conservative Party was taken over by the LEAVE brigade as Cameron and then May were effectively forced out.
Blair's action was ancient history just as Maastricht was (and we had no referendum then with the main opposition coming from the likes of IDS in Parliament - whatever happened to him?).
The basic problem from my perspective was no one ever made a telling case for us being in the EU - we wanted to be part of Europe but at the same time apart from Europe. In the end, we had a half-hearted half-baked semi-membership which in the end satisfied no one and annoyed everyone.
The attitude to Europe which existed at Messina still prevails 60 years or more later.
But I read the various posts from you and others in the opposite camp with interest.
https://twitter.com/EtanSmallman/status/1222569997073113088