For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
Judging by the ongoing fun here with the Ouse bridge (M62, early 1970s) and the Grade 2 listed Went bridge (A1, 1961) that problem is definitely increasing, although not as bad as in the US yet. At least we are replacing the worst offenders (Such as the Forth Bridge).
Its the kind of obsolete structure that is common over the pond.
THanks, new one to me - bookmarked to look at the NTSB report.
I remembered that one in particular because I'd been across it quite a few times before the failure.
The Wiki footnote is quite alarming and pretty much summarises the problem in the US: Washington's infrastructure Prior to the bridge collapse the Seattle Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued the 2013 Report Card for the State of Washington's infrastructure. The state's bridges were given a grade of "C−" (an average score among states). There were 400 structurally deficient bridges in Washington. Thirty-six percent of all bridges are more than 50 years old. The oldest bridges were designed for an expected life of only 50 years; keeping them safe is increasingly difficult and expensive.[38] The advocacy group Transportation for America reports that 5.1% of Washington's bridges are structurally deficient, which is the sixth best in the country.
I don't know how much has been replaced since 2013 but I would guess at 'not all'.
I don't think our politics works quite as badly as the US yet - despite today - so our infrastructure isn't quite as rotten - but it does show what happens if you don't invest.
The recent bridge failure in Turin was of course another one with insufficient redundancy and 1960s concrete.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
They're a spivvy estate agent flogging a building with potential.
The rest of us are thinking: "NFW!"
I hope that's not your new garden cabin Cyclefree!
No.
Currently negotiating to buy the land on which it sits so that I can have a beach hut. I will spend my final days there looking out at this. Frankly, given the state of everything, those days can't come soon enough.
I was going to 'like' the post for the idea of sitting and enjoying the view but I can't like the 'end of days can't come soon enough' sentiment.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't know any Tories who blame Brown for the dodgy American mortgages.
I do know Tories and ex-Tories (inc myself) who blame Brown for blowing our budget wide open before the recession hit so we were horrendously exposed when it hit.
The financial crisis wasn't in a historical context that special as far as how it hit our deficit. It added about 7% to our deficit which isn't that abnormal.
What was abnormal was we'd gone into the recession with a 3% deficit having had a surplus a few years earlier. So 3% deficit became 10% deficit which was catastrophic.
Had we gone into the recession with a 1% surplus we'd have come out of it with a 6% deficit, which is entirely manageable in an economic cycle without austerity.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
They did a lot of work on the Oldbury viaduct just before Covid.
Alarmingly, they found it was not only in a much worse state than they thought, but in much too bad a state to do a full repair on as they had neither the time nor the money to do so.
They just patched it up and are hoping it doesn't collapse.
As am I given how often I drive over it.
And, come to think of it, the Queensferry Crossing (2nd Forth Road Bridge) was built to part replace, part extend the life of the original 1960s Road Bridge. Not sure if that is the case for the Severn one as well, or if that is just traffic increase.
I believe Severn was to reduce traffic congestion, and also (minorly) to reduce susceptibility to winds, that meant the old bridge was often closed to high-sided traffic (the location and design of the new bridge makes high winds much less problematic).
From memory, there are some cable corrosion problems on the old bridge, but nothing like as severe as on the Forth Bridge.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't know any Tories who blame Brown for the dodgy American mortgages.
I do know Tories and ex-Tories (inc myself) who blame Brown for blowing our budget wide open before the recession hit so we were horrendously exposed when it hit.
The financial crisis wasn't in a historical context that special as far as how it hit our deficit. It added about 7% to our deficit which isn't that abnormal.
What was abnormal was we'd gone into the recession with a 3% deficit having had a surplus a few years earlier. So 3% deficit became 10% deficit which was catastrophic.
Had we gone into the recession with a 1% surplus we'd have come out of it with a 6% deficit, which is entirely manageable in an economic cycle without austerity.
PSNB 2007-08 3.0%. PSNB 2019-20 2.8%.
Plus ça change...
Yes and the economy is up shit creek because a recession hit while the deficit was still bad.
The difference between Brown and later is that Brown's deficit was entirely optional. There was literally no economic reason for it as the economy had been running a surplus five years earlier.
Five years before 2019-20 the PSNB was not running a surplus. The deficit had been managed in the right direction, albeit from a rotten start due to 2002-2007 which blew everything out of sync and we've still not recovered from then.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
Yes.
Apparently it would be vandalism to dig them out properly and put in the structure to carry modern vehicles. Or something.
Rather than scraping the top off and putting down another layer of black stuff. Which does make it look neat, I’ll admit. Until it starts breaking up again.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Lots of unemployed ... narrower roads ... and a much smaller job, basically just tarring over the macadam (gravel, stone and foundation) that was already there, I'd think?
I think the real wonder is the massive road building programme of the 50s and 60s. All the motorways, all the dual carriageways, most A-roads and many B-roads widened - especially noticeable in Scotland and Wales of course, where previously roads were very very narrow.
And now they all need replacing...
Bridges might cause some toothsucking. As I understand it, the mass obsolescence of road bridges in the US since the big boom in roads postwar has been a concern. But IANAEngineer.
Judging by the ongoing fun here with the Ouse bridge (M62, early 1970s) and the Grade 2 listed Went bridge (A1, 1961) that problem is definitely increasing, although not as bad as in the US yet. At least we are replacing the worst offenders (Such as the Forth Bridge).
Its the kind of obsolete structure that is common over the pond.
THanks, new one to me - bookmarked to look at the NTSB report.
I remembered that one in particular because I'd been across it quite a few times before the failure.
The Wiki footnote is quite alarming and pretty much summarises the problem in the US: Washington's infrastructure Prior to the bridge collapse the Seattle Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued the 2013 Report Card for the State of Washington's infrastructure. The state's bridges were given a grade of "C−" (an average score among states). There were 400 structurally deficient bridges in Washington. Thirty-six percent of all bridges are more than 50 years old. The oldest bridges were designed for an expected life of only 50 years; keeping them safe is increasingly difficult and expensive.[38] The advocacy group Transportation for America reports that 5.1% of Washington's bridges are structurally deficient, which is the sixth best in the country.
I don't know how much has been replaced since 2013 but I would guess at 'not all'.
I don't think our politics works quite as badly as the US yet - despite today - so our infrastructure isn't quite as rotten - but it does show what happens if you don't invest.
The recent bridge failure in Turin was of course another one with insufficient redundancy and 1960s concrete.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
To answer my own question before I answer your point, America has been on a campaign to get everyone else to raise CT because they are determined to get companies to headquarter in the US, and they want to eliminate tax competition. There was no other reason to raise CT - overall CT revenues went UP the last time we dropped the rate, and it was appalling that we caved to their bullying on the issue when the likes of Ireland have managed to keep their rates at 12%.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
No, you can't make that argument with rail freight capacity, because of maths. Double road freight capacity and that's 190% of our total freight currently being moved by roads now. Where has that extra 90% come from, other than economic growth?
Double rail freight capacity and that's an insignificant change in total freight capacity.
As for the North not having a lack of motorways, that's absurd if you've tried driving around the M6, M62 or others. Or the A580 which really needs an M580. The M53 isn't bad, I couldn't see Wallasey being a priority area for new motorway investment I'm afraid to say.
Just because London has an absurd lack of roads, doesn't mean the rest of the nation doesn't need more roads. The fact London has such a pathetic lack of roads is why Londoners have been forced to use public transport instead, due to there being no alternative.
7,000 people per mile is still ludicrously overcrowded.
If we'd continued the investment in motorways at the pace we had in the 1960s then by now we might be talking only 1,000 people per motorway mile in the North West - and GDP per capita would be much better for it.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't blame him for those.
I do blame him for a regulatory system that left our banks badly undercapitalised while buying high-risk assets like CDS and therefore grossly over-exposed to the mortgages in question with no protection against it.
Just before the crisus, the government was suggesting that they would encourage a shareholder lawsuit against Barclays for pulling out of the ABN AMRO takeover race.
They're a spivvy estate agent flogging a building with potential.
The rest of us are thinking: "NFW!"
I hope that's not your new garden cabin Cyclefree!
No.
Currently negotiating to buy the land on which it sits so that I can have a beach hut. I will spend my final days there looking out at this. Frankly, given the state of everything, those days can't come soon enough.
I was going to 'like' the post for the idea of sitting and enjoying the view but I can't like the 'end of days can't come soon enough' sentiment.
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”
Yes. Someone else's.
I've had enough.
Genuinely sorry to hear that.
I know we're just a bunch of saddos arguing on a politics website but I hope you know that a lot of us will be thinking of you and hoping things improve for you.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
No, you can't make that argument with rail freight capacity, because of maths. Double road freight capacity and that's 190% of our total freight currently being moved by roads now. Where has that extra 90% come from, other than economic growth?
Double rail freight capacity and that's an insignificant change in GDP per capita.
As for the North not having a lack of motorways, that's absurd if you've tried driving around the M6, M62 or others. Or the A580 which really needs an M580. The M53 isn't bad, I couldn't see Wallasey being a priority area for new motorway investment I'm afraid to say.
Just because London has an absurd lack of roads, doesn't mean the rest of the nation doesn't need more roads. The fact London has such a pathetic lack of roads is why Londoners have been forced to use public transport instead, due to there being no alternative.
7,000 people per mile is still ludicrously overcrowded.
If we'd continued the investment in motorways at the pace we had in the 1960s then by now we might be talking only 1,000 people per motorway mile in the North West - and GDP per capita would be much better for it.
The difference is that London (and the south-east) do a brilliant job of removing private cars from the road, opening them for freight, the trades, emergency services, disabled people and so on.
That's why their economic output is so much higher:
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't blame him for those.
I do blame him for a regulatory system that left our banks badly undercapitalised while buying high-risk assets like CDS and therefore grossly over-exposed to the mortgages in question with no protection against it.
Just before the crisus, the government was suggesting that they would encourage a shareholder lawsuit against Barclays for pulling out of the ABN AMRO takeover race.
That’s how high they’d got on their own supply.
One day the true story behind how and why that deal came about will be told. It hasn't been yet. And it's a pretty dirty story.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
No, you can't make that argument with rail freight capacity, because of maths. Double road freight capacity and that's 190% of our total freight currently being moved by roads now. Where has that extra 90% come from, other than economic growth?
Double rail freight capacity and that's an insignificant change in GDP per capita.
As for the North not having a lack of motorways, that's absurd if you've tried driving around the M6, M62 or others. Or the A580 which really needs an M580. The M53 isn't bad, I couldn't see Wallasey being a priority area for new motorway investment I'm afraid to say.
Just because London has an absurd lack of roads, doesn't mean the rest of the nation doesn't need more roads. The fact London has such a pathetic lack of roads is why Londoners have been forced to use public transport instead, due to there being no alternative.
7,000 people per mile is still ludicrously overcrowded.
If we'd continued the investment in motorways at the pace we had in the 1960s then by now we might be talking only 1,000 people per motorway mile in the North West - and GDP per capita would be much better for it.
The difference is that London (and the south-east) do a brilliant job of removing private cars from the road, opening them for freight, the trades, emergency services, disabled people and so on.
That's why their economic output is so much higher:
That's really not the case. For one thing all productivity figures are warped by the capital city effect. For another its warped by the major investment they've received where investment has been neglected elsewhere. For another thing that so-called productivity if based on slums where 21 people live in a 2 bedroom apartment and fewer than half the populace have their own home.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
To answer my own question before I answer your point, America has been on a campaign to get everyone else to raise CT because they are determined to get companies to headquarter in the US, and they want to eliminate tax competition. There was no other reason to raise CT - overall CT revenues went UP the last time we dropped the rate, and it was appalling that we caved to their bullying on the issue when the likes of Ireland have managed to keep their rates at 12%.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
I don't totally disagree with you. We could have 12% CT or 0% CT for that matter... but we'd have to replace the income or cut public services. I (and I believe the country at large) would find the latter unacceptable.
I do think ROI can get away with stuff that we would not be able to (because of our size and because the US, France and Germany to name three would make life very difficult for us, or our compete us) but let's say I am wrong, fine try it. but other taxes would have to go up.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
It’s in the same camp as the Tories blaming Brown for all those dodgy American mortgages.
I don't blame him for those.
I do blame him for a regulatory system that left our banks badly undercapitalised while buying high-risk assets like CDS and therefore grossly over-exposed to the mortgages in question with no protection against it.
Just before the crisus, the government was suggesting that they would encourage a shareholder lawsuit against Barclays for pulling out of the ABN AMRO takeover race.
That’s how high they’d got on their own supply.
One day the true story behind how and why that deal came about will be told. It hasn't been yet. And it's a pretty dirty story.
Yes.
And walking away from ABN was a very sensible business decision.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Yes, I see that, but if you look at (for example) the development of the railways in the 19th century, prosperity came first, and railway entrepreneurs built railways to supply economic needs - for freight, for tin, for coal, for factory workers going on holiday, for tourists going to the Highlands. The economic activity came first and created a need for the infrastructure - that imo is the right way, NOT building things like the Humber Bridge to try and revive Hull etc. To me, HS2 falls into the latter category not the former, so there's no guarantee it won't be a white elephant.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
No, you can't make that argument with rail freight capacity, because of maths. Double road freight capacity and that's 190% of our total freight currently being moved by roads now. Where has that extra 90% come from, other than economic growth?
Double rail freight capacity and that's an insignificant change in GDP per capita.
As for the North not having a lack of motorways, that's absurd if you've tried driving around the M6, M62 or others. Or the A580 which really needs an M580. The M53 isn't bad, I couldn't see Wallasey being a priority area for new motorway investment I'm afraid to say.
Just because London has an absurd lack of roads, doesn't mean the rest of the nation doesn't need more roads. The fact London has such a pathetic lack of roads is why Londoners have been forced to use public transport instead, due to there being no alternative.
7,000 people per mile is still ludicrously overcrowded.
If we'd continued the investment in motorways at the pace we had in the 1960s then by now we might be talking only 1,000 people per motorway mile in the North West - and GDP per capita would be much better for it.
The difference is that London (and the south-east) do a brilliant job of removing private cars from the road, opening them for freight, the trades, emergency services, disabled people and so on.
That's why their economic output is so much higher:
That's really not the case. For one thing all productivity figures are warped by the capital city effect. For another its warped by the major investment they've received where investment has been neglected elsewhere. For another thing that so-called productivity if based on slums where 21 people live in a 2 bedroom apartment and fewer than half the populace have their own home.
That investment? Crossrail. The Tube. DLR. Bus services. Trams.
The Mr Roberts sequence:
1) "We northerners drive", "Americans don't like cheese" 2) Evidence is presented to the contrary 3) "Fake data", "Slums", "Warped" 4) PBer tries again 5) "mORe rOaDs"
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
To answer my own question before I answer your point, America has been on a campaign to get everyone else to raise CT because they are determined to get companies to headquarter in the US, and they want to eliminate tax competition. There was no other reason to raise CT - overall CT revenues went UP the last time we dropped the rate, and it was appalling that we caved to their bullying on the issue when the likes of Ireland have managed to keep their rates at 12%.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
I don't totally disagree with you. We could have 12% CT or 0% CT for that matter... but we'd have to replace the income or cut public services. I (and I believe the country at large) would find the latter unacceptable.
I do think ROI can get away with stuff that we would not be able to (because of our size and because the US, France and Germany to name three would make life very difficult for us, or our compete us) but let's say I am wrong, fine try it. but other taxes would have to go up.
But you still don't seem to see that on that specific point, we wouldn't need to replace the lost income, because there wouldn't be lost income. We would take MORE in Corporation Tax, because more companies would headquarter here, but also expand here, declare more of their profits here, etc. The overall CT revenue increases; it doesn't decrease.
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
They're a spivvy estate agent flogging a building with potential.
The rest of us are thinking: "NFW!"
I hope that's not your new garden cabin Cyclefree!
No.
Currently negotiating to buy the land on which it sits so that I can have a beach hut. I will spend my final days there looking out at this. Frankly, given the state of everything, those days can't come soon enough.
I was going to 'like' the post for the idea of sitting and enjoying the view but I can't like the 'end of days can't come soon enough' sentiment.
“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”
Yes. Someone else's.
I've had enough.
Genuinely sorry to hear that.
I know we're just a bunch of saddos arguing on a politics website but I hope you know that a lot of us will be thinking of you and hoping things improve for you.
I’ve just donated a fiver to the Labour Party. A party I’ve never once voted for - but todays left me so furious, every little I can give to help them force this crap from government, I’ll do.
Not that the scraping A/T - Levels will happen, but politically is there any real interest in doing this?
Surely parents are worried about mortgages, food / energy bills, knife crime, cost of uni....there is literally no benefit to an announcement to overturn the apple cart on education qualifications like this.
The youngsters need better maths skills, I can see that, but lets scrap the whole qualification system, just bizarre. There is zero upside politically or practically.
I don't get the whole "maths at 18" obsession. A-level maths is pretty abstruse. I write fairly complex geometry code these days, inter alia, and even then pretty much everything I need was covered in the GCSE syllabus. Most people don't write complex geometry code.
We need more kids to be getting good maths GCSEs at 16, not poor A-levels (or whatever Sunak's replacement is called) at 18.
No need for it to be A-Levels until 18.
Have higher level (A-Level standard) until 18 for the Maths gifted kids.
Have foundation level (GCSE+ basically) for those who would currently be dropping Maths altogether currently.
And what about the ones struggling with functional skills Level 1? What exactly is the point of continuing to set them up to fail for an extra two years?
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is not more A-levels, it is to fix primary education where these things are either learned or not.
The answer to children leaving school functionally illiterate and innumerate is to fix life so that parents are functionally literate and numerate so can help kids learn at home, so parents read books to their children, so that parents can afford to buy books, or bookshelves, so children don't live in overcrowded homes and can live in a home with a bedroom of their own and a desk and a bookshelf so they can study and learn.
There is no magic wand to any of this. I'm sure almost all primary school teachers are doing the best they can, as are almost all secondary school teachers. Its not a magic wand, but funded properly I can't see 2 more years of teaching hurting, particularly if it is set to the pupil's own ability and needs not some "gold standard".
But whatever way you slice it, it comes back to needing to fund it properly. And Sunak won't do that.
All of which is true. But it doesn't have to be, (and in these cases almost necessarily shouldn't be) yet more Maths that they haven't been able to do for the previous 16 years.
Kids haven't been in school the previous 16 years have they? I thought most started around 4 or 5, not newborn.
Its not primary school teachers fault that some pupils struggle, and its not secondary school pupils fault that some do either. Teachers aren't miracle workers.
But setting and streaming and getting 2 more years of educating kids, who are still in compulsory education anyway until 18, seems worthwhile to me. But again only if funded properly.
And again, probably only sensible with complete wholesale reform including abolishing GCSEs.
If you're going to do this though, its not a policy for a party conference. It'd probably take at least a decade to design a curriculum, rebuild schools/colleges to fit the classrooms, recruit and train sufficient staff etc
And it'd cost a not very small fortune and that would need fully funding.
Prepared to do that? Then it could work. Not prepared to do that? Then bugger off and don't screw around with our kids education for the sake of political soundbites.
Don't disagree at all. TA's need training and paying above the rate of a cleaner.
For the first time in my life I want the Tories to lose a general election, actually I want them eviscerated.
Sunak's shafting of the North will not be forgotten or forgiven.
Scorching the earth to ensure HS2 cannot be resurrected by the next government which might only be a year away (without substantial additional cost) is really rather outrageous.
The cancelling of HS2 is made out to be a massive deal but how many people actually travel from Manchester to London on a regular basis?
I only go into London about 4 times a year and I live in the south.
That's not really the point (or probably relevant).
Freeing up the older lines for freight (and moving it off road) would have been the big winner.
No.
Building more roads to carry both freight and passengers would have been a big winner.
If capacity is needed because passengers are trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough. If capacity is needed because freight is trying to travel but can't due to lack of capacity, then that's fair enough.
If capacity is needed to dislocate a fraction of road traffic off the arteries - just build more road artery capacity.
I keep telling you roads are not the answer, and I use the motorway network all day every day. The more roads you make, the more vehicles you encourage and the cycle continues. The M25 was the case in point. You need people out of their cars and freight on the rails. It is the only way forward.
And I keep telling you you're wrong.
95% of freight mileage is moving by roads, so if you get more vehicles on the roads afterwards then what are they moving? The remaining 5%? Or goods not currently getting moved?
If its the latter, there's a word for that. Economic growth!
That's two words.
In 20 years your new roads will be full to the brim again. It won't help long term economic growth.
In 20 years time your railway would be full to the brim too. If railways are a magic bullet why does the WCML have capacity issues? Why doesn't it just magic away all the problems? Could it be that investment is necessary no matter what.
Any infrastructure fills up if your population keeps growing and then you neglect to invest. Had we continuously invested continuously in building new motorways at the rate we were in the 1960s rather than stopping bothering to invest then by now our motorway network would have 7x the mileage that we do today.
And since freight is 95% road anyway, that either means the motorways would have an overabundance of capacity and not be full, or we'd be moving roughly 7x the products that we are today, which a tremendous economic growth.
Either way - win/win.
As an aside, and I am reminded about this by Rishi Pothole, I sometimes ponder with amazement the massive capital investment that went into asphalting a quarter of a million miles of unsurfaced road in Britain, largely in the 1920s and 30s, I believe.
Given the difficulty of getting even a few miles of disintegrating road resurfaced around here it seems astounding that the whole road network was ever surfaced.
Of course when we have done massive investment in our transport infrastructure, it has always resulted in massive economic growth per capita.
The last rapid GDP per capita growth we had was when the motorway network was built. Since we stopped investing in it, GDP per capita has stalled.
Its almost as if real investment (not slapping the word investment on operational expenditure) works.
I agree with you about most economical issues, but I think you might be confusing correlation with causation there. The economy enjoyed something of a post-war boom, therefore we built motorways, would be another, and potentially just as plausible explanation. Of course, there's probably an element of both.
No there's a causative relationship, the motorways are quite literally the arteries of our economy, it unlocked the capacity to move goods we'd never seen before - or due to a neglect in investment since an increase in capacity we've never seen again since.
As I've said many times before 95% of freight movement happens on the roads. If those motorways weren't there, those goods would simply not all be getting moved, since local roads would never have had the capacity to carry that volume of goods.
Had we continued investing in motorways at the rate we were in the 60s then we'd have about 7x the arteries that we have now. Now either those would all be fairly smooth running at 1/7th the volume, or we'd have extra volume moving about coming off the local roads (so local roads would be quiet), or we'd have far more goods being moved which would be goods not currently being moved since we're already at 95% being moved by road freight.
Realistically it'd be a combination of all 3. And the third, is real economic growth.
Hang on, I thought you didn't believe in induced demand?
If that's so, increasing the number of roads will have no impact on the volume of goods moved, and there will be no consequent impact on economic growth.
No, what I've said is that induced demand when demand is 95% of mileage can only come from growth, not other modes of transportation.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem. If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible. If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
But you could make that same argument for rail freight capacity, right? Or indeed public transport to remove private cars off our existing motorway network, freeing up space for freight.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
No, you can't make that argument with rail freight capacity, because of maths. Double road freight capacity and that's 190% of our total freight currently being moved by roads now. Where has that extra 90% come from, other than economic growth?
Double rail freight capacity and that's an insignificant change in GDP per capita.
As for the North not having a lack of motorways, that's absurd if you've tried driving around the M6, M62 or others. Or the A580 which really needs an M580. The M53 isn't bad, I couldn't see Wallasey being a priority area for new motorway investment I'm afraid to say.
Just because London has an absurd lack of roads, doesn't mean the rest of the nation doesn't need more roads. The fact London has such a pathetic lack of roads is why Londoners have been forced to use public transport instead, due to there being no alternative.
7,000 people per mile is still ludicrously overcrowded.
If we'd continued the investment in motorways at the pace we had in the 1960s then by now we might be talking only 1,000 people per motorway mile in the North West - and GDP per capita would be much better for it.
The difference is that London (and the south-east) do a brilliant job of removing private cars from the road, opening them for freight, the trades, emergency services, disabled people and so on.
That's why their economic output is so much higher:
That's really not the case. For one thing all productivity figures are warped by the capital city effect. For another its warped by the major investment they've received where investment has been neglected elsewhere. For another thing that so-called productivity if based on slums where 21 people live in a 2 bedroom apartment and fewer than half the populace have their own home.
That investment? Crossrail. The Tube. DLR. Bus services. Trams.
The Mr Roberts sequence:
1) "We northerners drive", "Americans don't like cheese" 2) Evidence is presented to the contrary 3) "Fake data", "Slums", "Warped" 4) PBer tries again 5) "mORe rOaDs"
Trams and buses are ran on and require an investment in roads. 🤦♂️
I support building more roads, with trams and buses. What part of that can't you get into your head.
Oh, and when 75% of Northern commuters drive to work (and most of the remainder that don't drive, walk instead) - what evidence has been presented to the contrary? Some people don't drive, big whoop. My wife doesn't drive, I do drop her off at her work and my kids off at their school on my way to my own though - so you may see me driving with just me in the vehicle, but when I left the house there were 4 of us in the vehicle.
Yes there should be more roads. That is the only proper solution.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
To answer my own question before I answer your point, America has been on a campaign to get everyone else to raise CT because they are determined to get companies to headquarter in the US, and they want to eliminate tax competition. There was no other reason to raise CT - overall CT revenues went UP the last time we dropped the rate, and it was appalling that we caved to their bullying on the issue when the likes of Ireland have managed to keep their rates at 12%.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
I don't totally disagree with you. We could have 12% CT or 0% CT for that matter... but we'd have to replace the income or cut public services. I (and I believe the country at large) would find the latter unacceptable.
I do think ROI can get away with stuff that we would not be able to (because of our size and because the US, France and Germany to name three would make life very difficult for us, or our compete us) but let's say I am wrong, fine try it. but other taxes would have to go up.
But you still don't seem to see that on that specific point, we wouldn't need to replace the lost income, because there wouldn't be lost income. We would take MORE in Corporation Tax, because more companies would headquarter here, but also expand here, declare more of their profits here, etc. The overall CT revenue increases; it doesn't decrease.
Well, not if we went for 0% But assuming we went low but not 0%....
Globally it's a zero sum game, agreed? I doubt our competitors would stand by and let that happen.
Also of course there's a lag of several years between CT being slashed and all those corporations flooding into the UK. Public services would need to be paid for during that period. Through other taxes or even more borrowing?
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
Assume it was like the Six. Usual dumbed down credulous crap. I thought they might have moved on after Laura K got Sundayed. They haven’t.
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
The trouble with maths is not that it's difficult per se, it's that it's impossible to understand a new concept if you haven't got a good grasp on the previous step. That's the case all the way from primary school through to university.
Those that fall behind become demotivated, understandably. For those that are ahead can become bored easily.
I think the focus should be on funding schools such that they can intervene for those falling behind. Some individual focus can help people get up to speed with their class mates and back on track. Likewise, let those who are far ahead study maths with the year above them.
I expect 16 years is sufficient to cover the maths skills needed, but if compulsory for longer it should be about consolidation on key skills rather than extending to the calculus etc for those who are not academic.
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
In fairness the convention is that they don’t get right of reply in conference week - doesn’t excuse the fawning coverage though
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
To answer my own question before I answer your point, America has been on a campaign to get everyone else to raise CT because they are determined to get companies to headquarter in the US, and they want to eliminate tax competition. There was no other reason to raise CT - overall CT revenues went UP the last time we dropped the rate, and it was appalling that we caved to their bullying on the issue when the likes of Ireland have managed to keep their rates at 12%.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
I don't totally disagree with you. We could have 12% CT or 0% CT for that matter... but we'd have to replace the income or cut public services. I (and I believe the country at large) would find the latter unacceptable.
I do think ROI can get away with stuff that we would not be able to (because of our size and because the US, France and Germany to name three would make life very difficult for us, or our compete us) but let's say I am wrong, fine try it. but other taxes would have to go up.
But you still don't seem to see that on that specific point, we wouldn't need to replace the lost income, because there wouldn't be lost income. We would take MORE in Corporation Tax, because more companies would headquarter here, but also expand here, declare more of their profits here, etc. The overall CT revenue increases; it doesn't decrease.
Well, not if we went for 0% But assuming we went low but not 0%....
Globally it's a zero sum game, agreed? I doubt our competitors would stand by and let that happen.
Also of course there's a lag of several years between CT being slashed and all those corporations flooding into the UK. Public services would need to be paid for during that period. Through other taxes or even more borrowing?
I'm not sure I'm understanding you properly - of course we'd get nothing if we went for 0%. But if we went lower, real world examples suggest that real CT revenue increases proportionally.
I don't think there's a lag of several years for such changes to take effect - it's not just about Google uprooting themselves from California and looking for new digs in Hartlepool, there are thousands of micro-decisions made by companies about where, and whether, to declare profits, that aren't based on such dramatic moves.
A quarter of the £36bn that the Government will save by axing HS2 in the North is to be spent on potholes, it has emerged...
And 150% of the money saved is going to be spent on increased debt servicing caused by Truss.
The increase in our interest payments was not caused by Truss. It has been caused by the increase in base rates that we have seen around the world since the inflation genie escaped the bottle. If Truss had never happened our costs today would have been much the same.
We are paying the price for living beyond our means, for pretending we could get through lockdowns without economic consequences, for subsidising the Ukraine war on credit and for spending absurd amounts trying to protect the middle classes from a higher gas bill. Sooner or later reality catches up with us.
This is true, but this "fake news" has become truth in many voters minds.
And nobody really wants to admit the real situation is as you say living beyond our means for many many years, while piss poor productivity.
Benpointer is bright enough to know he's spouting nonsense about Truss - he's doing it because it's the SKS line to take, for whatever reason.
I am indeed being a little tongue-in-cheek about this and I certainly accept we'd be facing higher debt servicing costs even without Truss. I should have said "since Truss" (as I did at 18:16) rather than "caused by Truss", although I suspect UK borrowing costs are measurably higher now than they would have been without Truss - tricky to prove though.
My real point is the capital savings of HS2 cuts is dwarfed by the revenue costs of debt servicing.
I agree with the "we've been living beyond our means for years" point. The obvious if unpalatable answer, since no government is able to avoid the essential public spending needed by a modern developed state, is to raise taxes and to raise them on the wealthy - on people like me and quite a few (probably most) of us on here.
You may not like it but that's the only answer.
But 'since Truss' ignores the fact that yields had been rising consistently before her, as well as continuing to rise consistently since her.
... Sunak’s tenure as the Chancellor of the Exchequer saw 10-year gilt yields increase by 376 per cent. His replacement, Nadhim Zahawi, presided over 10-year gilt yields rising by 38 per cent. Neither Chancellor saw many complaints about this from the press, however. Whilst Kwasi Kwarteng was Chancellor, 10-year gilt yields continued to increase, up 41 per cent from 3.0865 to 4.3462. This is not dissimilar from the increase under Zahawi and certainly less than the increase under Sunak, but still the commentary and comedy circuit is sure that it was the Truss/Kwarteng Government that broke the UK economy... https://thecritic.co.uk/why-truss-was-right/
No, the obvious answer is to lower taxes and stimulate economic activity. Does it occur to anyone just *why* the USA has been on a mission to get everyone else to raise their CT levels?
Corporate taxes and personal taxes need to be considered separately.
With CT, given the ability of many companies to operate in one country and headquarter for tax purposes in another, there's the potential for a global competition to the bottom. Which might be fine - set CT to a low% and hope to attract companies to invest here (well headquarter here, at least).
Small states can gain a bit that way (see various tax havens). If we tried it to too great an extent we'd either be outbid with even lower CT by our competitors or, more likely, shunned when trying to trade with them. And has the low CT actually stimulated real growth or pinched apparent growth from our neighbours, who will try to steal it back soon enough?
Then there's a bigger issue of public services still needing to be paid for somehow. That CT needs to be replaced with some other tax or else the already shite public services cut even further.
For CT see also taxes on employment (e.g. employers' NI).
With private taxation (including taxation on consumption) I remain totally unconvinced that tax rates directly drive growth rates.
I can see that raising taxes on the poorest, e.g. by freezing personal allowances, will hit growth (as would freezing benefits) because the poorest have no cushion to maintain spending. Similarly, lowering taxes on the poorest will stimulate demand in the short term (though not necessarily sustainable growth).
Would raising taxes on the highest earners, or on wealth, hit growth? Would it f*ck. For every high earner who says 'tax has gone up, my net income has gone down, so I am going to work less hard (and see my income go down further(!))' there will be another who strives harder, works longer, to maintain their net income.
To answer my own question before I answer your point, America has been on a campaign to get everyone else to raise CT because they are determined to get companies to headquarter in the US, and they want to eliminate tax competition. There was no other reason to raise CT - overall CT revenues went UP the last time we dropped the rate, and it was appalling that we caved to their bullying on the issue when the likes of Ireland have managed to keep their rates at 12%.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
I don't totally disagree with you. We could have 12% CT or 0% CT for that matter... but we'd have to replace the income or cut public services. I (and I believe the country at large) would find the latter unacceptable.
I do think ROI can get away with stuff that we would not be able to (because of our size and because the US, France and Germany to name three would make life very difficult for us, or our compete us) but let's say I am wrong, fine try it. but other taxes would have to go up.
But you still don't seem to see that on that specific point, we wouldn't need to replace the lost income, because there wouldn't be lost income. We would take MORE in Corporation Tax, because more companies would headquarter here, but also expand here, declare more of their profits here, etc. The overall CT revenue increases; it doesn't decrease.
Well, not if we went for 0% But assuming we went low but not 0%....
Globally it's a zero sum game, agreed? I doubt our competitors would stand by and let that happen.
Also of course there's a lag of several years between CT being slashed and all those corporations flooding into the UK. Public services would need to be paid for during that period. Through other taxes or even more borrowing?
Actually due to our convoluted tax system that's not necessarily the case, we could actually abolish corporation tax and we wouldn't get 0% tax.
We'd get VAT, PAYE, NIC, NNDR, Duties. The list goes on.
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
In fairness the convention is that they don’t get right of reply in conference week - doesn’t excuse the fawning coverage though
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
In fairness the convention is that they don’t get right of reply in conference week - doesn’t excuse the fawning coverage though
Didn’t know that, but makes sense. The coverage got a bit more balanced later but it was awfully shallow, just parroting lines like there being a load of new money for northern transportation.
🚨 Rail industry sources privately withering about “Network North” telling me its “[Andrew] Gilligan with a crayon and a map” behind a “Disintegrated Rail Plan”… which is a “wish list”not only will there not be shovels in ground but doubts business cases would be complete pre GE
🚨 Rail industry sources privately withering about “Network North” telling me its “[Andrew] Gilligan with a crayon and a map” behind a “Disintegrated Rail Plan”… which is a “wish list”not only will there not be shovels in ground but doubts business cases would be complete pre GE
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
In fairness the convention is that they don’t get right of reply in conference week - doesn’t excuse the fawning coverage though
Betfair oddly becalmed - Labour favourite in all 3 by-elections, including 1.04 in Rutherglen tomorrow, which feels pretty short given the absence of polling.
Watching the BBC ten o’clock news headlines. Quite positive spin, in fact very positive spin. If that’s what most voters of the country are getting then todays speech will probably see a polling bounce.
24 minutes into the news and not a single opposition party voice so far.
In fairness the convention is that they don’t get right of reply in conference week - doesn’t excuse the fawning coverage though
🚨 Rail industry sources privately withering about “Network North” telling me its “[Andrew] Gilligan with a crayon and a map” behind a “Disintegrated Rail Plan”… which is a “wish list”not only will there not be shovels in ground but doubts business cases would be complete pre GE
Betfair oddly becalmed - Labour favourite in all 3 by-elections, including 1.04 in Rutherglen tomorrow, which feels pretty short given the absence of polling.
🚨 Rail industry sources privately withering about “Network North” telling me its “[Andrew] Gilligan with a crayon and a map” behind a “Disintegrated Rail Plan”… which is a “wish list”not only will there not be shovels in ground but doubts business cases would be complete pre GE
The Lib Dems fought a very local campaign, highlighting the local disruption from the HS2 rail project, and changes to planning laws, with Davey calling this the biggest issue raised “by far” among local voters.
Out of interest, is there any opportunity for Labour to bring an opposition day motion to force a vote on HS2 to Manchester?
(Not that I'm convinced they would... but it would be a worthwhile piece of electoral theatre. Sunak would presumably whip against it, at which point Labour have a ready-made attack line for every Conservative-held constituency in the North: "Your Tory MP voted against fast trains to the north.")
Replying to @faisalislam Other rail insider insight:
For a line designed expressly to free up capacity on West Coast… all that benefit is now south of Birmingham… the West Coast Mainline north of Lichfield will now have to accommodate 400m HS2 trains as well as Avanti and freight and what not
Betfair oddly becalmed - Labour favourite in all 3 by-elections, including 1.04 in Rutherglen tomorrow, which feels pretty short given the absence of polling.
I'm on SNP at 11.
Long shot obviously.
I was thinking of backing the SNP on the basis they may hold it by 10 votes or something like that.
I suppose it does add some interest to what Labour have to say on HS2 . They clearly can’t just re-instate that unless they’re going to do that now with HS3. Do that and the Tories will accuse them of blowing billions .
Labour certainly need to hammer them on HS2 and ensure the public at least apportion blame to the Tories and don’t let them get away as if oversight was nothing to do with them.
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
Because high speed is part of what gives it the capacity.
Interesting point - does it cost 2x to build a line that you can get 2x capacity on. Is it more costly to build a slow line with 4 tracks or a high speed one with 2? The relationships wont be linear. You can also run slower trains more frequently due to signalling and braking distances etc
The rail industry has been busy today telling us HS2 is all about capacity - not speed. In which case it was a rotten project name. If it was about capacity why did we not build a slower line, built to a lower, cheaper spec? Presumably it could bend round obstacles more easily and therefore require less tunnels - making the project even cheaper. It could have happily stopped at old oak, avoided the centre of Birmingham altogether, stopping at NEC and then onto Manchester. The new line handles freight and local commuter traffic and the WCML concentrates only on intercity. Is that what we really needed but got seduced by Japanese bullet trains?
Because high speed is part of what gives it the capacity.
Interesting point - does it cost 2x to build a line that you can get 2x capacity on. Is it more costly to build a slow line with 4 tracks or a high speed one with 2? The relationships wont be linear. You can also run slower trains more frequently due to signalling and braking distances etc
You get more than 2x capacity from HS2 and actually it's rather cheaper than adding more tracks to the WCML or building a four track mixed use railway.
Comments
The Wiki footnote is quite alarming and pretty much summarises the problem in the US:
Washington's infrastructure
Prior to the bridge collapse the Seattle Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued the 2013 Report Card for the State of Washington's infrastructure. The state's bridges were given a grade of "C−" (an average score among states). There were 400 structurally deficient bridges in Washington. Thirty-six percent of all bridges are more than 50 years old. The oldest bridges were designed for an expected life of only 50 years; keeping them safe is increasingly difficult and expensive.[38] The advocacy group Transportation for America reports that 5.1% of Washington's bridges are structurally deficient, which is the sixth best in the country.
I don't know how much has been replaced since 2013 but I would guess at 'not all'.
I don't think our politics works quite as badly as the US yet - despite today - so our infrastructure isn't quite as rotten - but it does show what happens if you don't invest.
The recent bridge failure in Turin was of course another one with insufficient redundancy and 1960s concrete.
Double our motorway mileage and if you think our motorway traffic is doubling where would that come from?
If it comes from local road traffic being moved onto motorways, then that's great news not a problem.
If it comes from non-road traffic, then that's mathematically impossible.
If it comes from economic growth per capita - then fantastic! We have economic growth per capita.
Or induced demand doesn't happen and our roads are simply quieter and better to drive on.
There's no downside, other than it costs some money to invest.
I've had enough.
PSNB 2019-20 2.8%.
Plus ça change...
From memory, there are some cable corrosion problems on the old bridge, but nothing like as severe as on the Forth Bridge.
The difference between Brown and later is that Brown's deficit was entirely optional. There was literally no economic reason for it as the economy had been running a surplus five years earlier.
Five years before 2019-20 the PSNB was not running a surplus. The deficit had been managed in the right direction, albeit from a rotten start due to 2002-2007 which blew everything out of sync and we've still not recovered from then.
I don't think the north has a problem with a lack of motorway (except perhaps the north-east). People per motorway mile:
London: 100,000
North-east: 27,000
South-east: 9,000
Yorkshire: 8,000
North-west: 7,000
Apparently it would be vandalism to dig them out properly and put in the structure to carry modern vehicles. Or something.
Rather than scraping the top off and putting down another layer of black stuff. Which does make it look neat, I’ll admit. Until it starts breaking up again.
Johnson lining up behind Cameron on HS2.
What you say on the issue has no logic - there's no reason why lower Corporate Taxes are only for small nations - bigger nations actually have deeper pockets, and we've been very charitable to ROI over the years to keep our CT no lower than 19% when theirs was 12%. Who would 'shun' us for lowering them exactly? Who shuns Ireland for doing so?
Your last point is completely illogical, you suggest that we'd be 'pinching growth' (fine if you want to call it that) from our neighbours, but also that we'd need to 'replace' a supposed fall in CT revenues. Ireland takes MORE per head in CT than we do, despite significantly LOWER rates. There's no reason why we wouldn't do the same.
Double rail freight capacity and that's an insignificant change in total freight capacity.
As for the North not having a lack of motorways, that's absurd if you've tried driving around the M6, M62 or others. Or the A580 which really needs an M580. The M53 isn't bad, I couldn't see Wallasey being a priority area for new motorway investment I'm afraid to say.
Just because London has an absurd lack of roads, doesn't mean the rest of the nation doesn't need more roads. The fact London has such a pathetic lack of roads is why Londoners have been forced to use public transport instead, due to there being no alternative.
7,000 people per mile is still ludicrously overcrowded.
If we'd continued the investment in motorways at the pace we had in the 1960s then by now we might be talking only 1,000 people per motorway mile in the North West - and GDP per capita would be much better for it.
That’s how high they’d got on their own supply.
I know we're just a bunch of saddos arguing on a politics website but I hope you know that a lot of us will be thinking of you and hoping things improve for you.
She’s back.
And this time, she means business.
That's why their economic output is so much higher:
I do think ROI can get away with stuff that we would not be able to (because of our size and because the US, France and Germany to name three would make life very difficult for us, or our compete us) but let's say I am wrong, fine try it. but other taxes would have to go up.
And walking away from ABN was a very sensible business decision.
I saw the numbers. Personally.
13 years. 13 years of being robbed. Apparently, we need change. And Rishi is the man to lead that change.
Shut up. Go away. You’ve snatched away our only chance. You posh, privileged, rich, disconnected egotist.
https://x.com/JayMitchinson/status/1709622506779201793
The Mr Roberts sequence:
1) "We northerners drive", "Americans don't like cheese"
2) Evidence is presented to the contrary
3) "Fake data", "Slums", "Warped"
4) PBer tries again
5) "mORe rOaDs"
Historic EU deal reached on how to manage sudden rise in asylum seekers
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/04/historic-eu-deal-reached-how-to-manage-sudden-rise-asylum-seekers
TA's need training and paying above the rate of a cleaner.
I support building more roads, with trams and buses. What part of that can't you get into your head.
Oh, and when 75% of Northern commuters drive to work (and most of the remainder that don't drive, walk instead) - what evidence has been presented to the contrary? Some people don't drive, big whoop. My wife doesn't drive, I do drop her off at her work and my kids off at their school on my way to my own though - so you may see me driving with just me in the vehicle, but when I left the house there were 4 of us in the vehicle.
Yes there should be more roads. That is the only proper solution.
Globally it's a zero sum game, agreed? I doubt our competitors would stand by and let that happen.
Also of course there's a lag of several years between CT being slashed and all those corporations flooding into the UK. Public services would need to be paid for during that period. Through other taxes or even more borrowing?
https://x.com/greghands/status/397308494292201472?s=46
Those that fall behind become demotivated, understandably. For those that are ahead can become bored easily.
I think the focus should be on funding schools such that they can intervene for those falling behind. Some individual focus can help people get up to speed with their class mates and back on track. Likewise, let those who are far ahead study maths with the year above them.
I expect 16 years is sufficient to cover the maths skills needed, but if compulsory for longer it should be about consolidation on key skills rather than extending to the calculus etc for those who are not academic.
Winsorise the data, deal with the massive outlier, and run a regression analysis and there does not seem to be any discernible trend in that data.
I don't think there's a lag of several years for such changes to take effect - it's not just about Google uprooting themselves from California and looking for new digs in Hartlepool, there are thousands of micro-decisions made by companies about where, and whether, to declare profits, that aren't based on such dramatic moves.
We'd get VAT, PAYE, NIC, NNDR, Duties. The list goes on.
🚨 Rail industry sources privately withering about “Network North” telling me its “[Andrew] Gilligan with a crayon and a map” behind a “Disintegrated Rail Plan”… which is a “wish list”not only will there not be shovels in ground but doubts business cases would be complete pre GE
@faisalislam
Two other very interesting insights from industry…
The level of environmental/ noise mitigation in phase 1 chilterns etc set a standard that increased the cost of the whole line…
Phase 2A hybrid bill legal permissions last until early 2026, would have to be repealed…
Cheryl Gillan ended HS2.
Discuss.
Long shot obviously.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jun/18/lib-dems-can-topple-tory-blue-wall-in-south-of-england-says-leader
The Lib Dems fought a very local campaign, highlighting the local disruption from the HS2 rail project, and changes to planning laws, with Davey calling this the biggest issue raised “by far” among local voters.
(Not that I'm convinced they would... but it would be a worthwhile piece of electoral theatre. Sunak would presumably whip against it, at which point Labour have a ready-made attack line for every Conservative-held constituency in the North: "Your Tory MP voted against fast trains to the north.")
Taking a step back from the fire and fury tonight: is that really a very good re-election launch strategy?
Elections are not won by cancellations...
Rail just isn't that important outside of London, which is why HS2 was only ever a Londoners blueprint for what Levelling Up should mean.
If the Opposition overreacts to this then it could backfire, which is probably why Starmer is wisely keeping his cards close to his chest currently.
If Sunak wanted to be really cynical, he should slash fuel duty before the election. Would help him make his inflation target too.
Replying to
@faisalislam
Other rail insider insight:
For a line designed expressly to free up capacity on West Coast… all that benefit is now south of Birmingham… the West Coast Mainline north of Lichfield will now have to accommodate 400m HS2 trains as well as Avanti and freight and what not
The reason it isn't important is because it isn't available. That's what HS2 was aiming to fix.
The reason you have high levels of driving in the north-west is because you have the highest density of roads anywhere in the country.
THIS HIGH SPEED THREAD HAS BEEN CANCELLED
Labour certainly need to hammer them on HS2 and ensure the public at least apportion blame to the Tories and don’t let them get away as if oversight was nothing to do with them.