Supporters of Andy Burnham are asking the cabinet to go to Keir Starmer and urge him not to stand in a leadership contest against Wes Streeting
The Burnham camp say they think cabinet ministers will tell Starmer he should instead set a timetable for a longer contest if Streeting does move
BUT friends of Starmer completely dismiss that. They say there is no chance he will listen to any such advice and insist he will stand in a contest now if Streeting has the numbers
Streeting’s allies are saying different things about whether he has 81 MPs and his chances of success in a leadership election
Some think this is his only shot and he’s right to go over the top. Others are less sure he can get to 81 and also worry the backlash against him could see him lose to Starmer or another candidate
If there is an expedited contest many on the soft-left expect Ed Miliband to stand to try to stop either Streeting or Starmer winning
Any immediate contest could become a free-for-all with ambitious novice Al Carns as well as other members of the cabinet deciding they fancy their chances
As of 2pm this afternoon, the Labour Party appears to be moving from paralysis toward chaos
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Has anyone seen Andy Burnham and Jimmy Cleverly in the same room?
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
That ignores the very large increase in noise between (for example) 150mph and 200mph, which is one of the things which led to th political demand for tunnels.
Speed was always an issue, as no one was prepared to cap it at the outset, which would have greatly simplified both the political argument and the construction issues. That might have avoided a huge amount of unnecessary controversy, and the massive cost overruns.
Henry Zephman says the £5m is a "gift", so even though Farage should have registered a "donation" that was received 12 months before being elected to Parliament, Zephman suggests as a "gift" this is different.
I find it hard to find a reading of the Code of Conduct that doesn't conclude that Farage should have reported the donation, or at least contacted the office about it.
When is a donation a gift? Farage seems to think he is watertight which suggests the system is broken.
It was clearly a gift.
You know how people of means often make financial provision for loved ones so they are safe and secure for the rest of their lives?
Well that's obviously how Christopher Harborne feels about Nigel Farage.
Farage gets a hefty tax bill if Harborne expires within 7 years of the gift.
No it doesn't smell like dead and rotting fish at all.
It's a total scandal. If it doesn't cause him big political problems now it's been exposed we might as well pack up and go home.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
No point building it to be slow - speed is capacity as the fast you shift trains through a zone, the more trains can pass through it per an hour.
Not when you build for speed the way we did. Insane
I didn’t realise you were an expert in railway design as well
Or you could just apologise for entirely misreading my comment and replying to something I never said. Be a man
You said, about HS2, “we never needed it” when we do. We need the capacity it would give us. If anything we need more HS2.
The inability to apologise for a clear and obvious error is effeminate and childish, and a tiny bit cringeworthy
It’s a lesson I learned early and it’s served me well. If you fuck up - from small things to big things - just say sorry. It doesn’t diminish you, it earns respect
Politicians could benefit from this advice, as well
You’re just gaslighting me now. I literally quoted you. You said that we never needed HS2, we need more capacity but HS2 is for more capacity. I have nothing to apologise for and no error was made.
The original Leon post:
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
We could have saved £80bn by accepting that simple fact
"We never needed it". "we could have saved £80bn" "what was needed was more capacity"
HS2 is entirely about capacity. Take the intercity trains off the existing crush capacity network. Run more of them faster to improve connectivity. Use the space freed up on the existing network to run a lot more trains to/from all the places that it bypasses - Milton Keynes as one example,
The idiocy isn't even that the Tories opted for 350kph rather than 320kph. Its the terms set to the contractors which has forced the costs. Infrastructure that has to both be buried and capable of surviving the break-up of the entire planet at the end of days.
Henry Zephman says the £5m is a "gift", so even though Farage should have registered a "donation" that was received 12 months before being elected to Parliament, Zephman suggests as a "gift" this is different.
I find it hard to find a reading of the Code of Conduct that doesn't conclude that Farage should have reported the donation, or at least contacted the office about it.
When is a donation a gift? Farage seems to think he is watertight which suggests the system is broken.
It was clearly a gift.
You know how people of means often make financial provision for loved ones so they are safe and secure for the rest of their lives?
Well that's obviously how Christopher Harborne feels about Nigel Farage.
Farage gets a hefty tax bill if Harborne expires within 7 years of the gift.
No it doesn't smell like dead and rotting fish at all.
It's a total scandal. If it doesn't cause him big political problems now it's been exposed we might as well pack up and go home.
The recipient of a gift doesn’t pay inheritance tax, the estate of the giver does.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Non starter, for all manner of reasons. There are very few rail systems where even double decker makes practical sense.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
That ignores the very large increase in noise between (for example) 150mph and 200mph, which is one of the things which led to th political demand for tunnels.
Speed was always an issue, as no one was prepared to cap it at the outset, which would have greatly simplified both the political argument and the construction issues. That might have avoided a huge amount of unnecessary controversy, and the massive cost overruns.
The noise actually is that big an issue. At the time I was living in Amersham and the complaint was they were going to get all this disruption and see absolutely nothing for it.
Which is why I said we should have kept the original CrossRail proposal rather than Reading as that would have given all the constituents a fast regular train service which HS2 then ran alongside(ish).
Given the mahoosive list of things Leon and his prior incarnations have got wrong over so many years, the real question is why he’s settled on voting for Starmer for his renaming.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Ironically, this was exactly the expectation that led to the massive underinvestment in the railways in the post-war period & ended up with the Beeching cuts. Why build railways when everybody is going to be driving everywhere and the car is going to be king?
It turned out that the population didn’t actually want the car to be king after they saw what the car being King did to the city centers that were put to the sword to make room for them. Lots of inner city motorways that were planned ended up never happening as the political climate turned firmly against building them.
Perhaps the UK would have been better off economically if we had chosen the car? We could have been the European Texas - but we would have had to pave over a lot of the country to do it.
OK then. Why hasn't Canada at 111% debt to GDP been subject to a bond strike and forced to institute swingeing welfare cuts? Since it isn't in the Euro?
That's easy.
Remember that the direction of your debt-to-GDP depends on a number of factors - in particular nominal GDP growth and budget deficit.
So, if you have debt-to-GDP of (say) 120%, but your economy is seeing 5% nominal GDP growth (3% real, 2% inflation), and your budget deficit is 0%, then debt-to-GDP will fall to 114% the next year.
Markets tend to be relatively relaxed about debt-to-GDP if the macroeconomic picture is benign. (See also Greece, Italy, etc prior to the Eurozone crisis.)
If, on the other hand, GDP growth is limited to non-existant, then the market gets freaked out by deficits and debt-to-GDP, because they can rapidly head towards the moon.
Remember Hemingway's quote:
"How did you go bankrupt?" "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
That said... if you can keep inflation down, and you can convince the markets that the Bank of England will buy any necessary government debt, then you can keep the wheels in the air for a long-time - see Japan. But Japan has only been able to keep the plates up in the air like this because it has a large current account surplus.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Meanwhile, all these heavy electric vehicles are pulverising our roads and no local authority has the funds to deal with the consequences.
Henry Zephman says the £5m is a "gift", so even though Farage should have registered a "donation" that was received 12 months before being elected to Parliament, Zephman suggests as a "gift" this is different.
I find it hard to find a reading of the Code of Conduct that doesn't conclude that Farage should have reported the donation, or at least contacted the office about it.
When is a donation a gift? Farage seems to think he is watertight which suggests the system is broken.
It was clearly a gift.
You know how people of means often make financial provision for loved ones so they are safe and secure for the rest of their lives?
Well that's obviously how Christopher Harborne feels about Nigel Farage.
Farage gets a hefty tax bill if Harborne expires within 7 years of the gift.
No it doesn't smell like dead and rotting fish at all.
It's a total scandal. If it doesn't cause him big political problems now it's been exposed we might as well pack up and go home.
The recipient of a gift doesn’t pay inheritance tax, the estate of the giver does.
Unless there’s not enough in the estate to pay the IHT in which case HMRC can & will come after the recipient.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
Double deckers - nope, for multiple reasons
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines. 2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Ironically, this was exactly the expectation that led to the massive underinvestment in the railways in the post-war period & ended up with the Beeching cuts. Why build railways when everybody is going to be driving everywhere and the car is going to be king?
It turned out that the population didn’t actually want the car to be king after they saw what the car being King did to the city centers that were put to the sword to make room for them. Lots of inner city motorways that were planned ended up never happening as the political climate turned firmly against building them.
Perhaps the UK would have been better off economically if we had chosen the car? We could have been the European Texas - but we would have had to pave over a lot of the country to do it.
Large chunks of the public are now firmly out of love with the city centre and actively prefer not to visit it beyond a few times a year.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
No point building it to be slow - speed is capacity as the fast you shift trains through a zone, the more trains can pass through it per an hour.
Not when you build for speed the way we did. Insane
I didn’t realise you were an expert in railway design as well
Or you could just apologise for entirely misreading my comment and replying to something I never said. Be a man
You said, about HS2, “we never needed it” when we do. We need the capacity it would give us. If anything we need more HS2.
The inability to apologise for a clear and obvious error is effeminate and childish, and a tiny bit cringeworthy
It’s a lesson I learned early and it’s served me well. If you fuck up - from small things to big things - just say sorry. It doesn’t diminish you, it earns respect
Politicians could benefit from this advice, as well
You’re just gaslighting me now. I literally quoted you. You said that we never needed HS2, we need more capacity but HS2 is for more capacity. I have nothing to apologise for and no error was made.
You made one massive mistake: arguing with Leon. It is never worth the effort
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
That ignores the very large increase in noise between (for example) 150mph and 200mph, which is one of the things which led to th political demand for tunnels.
Speed was always an issue, as no one was prepared to cap it at the outset, which would have greatly simplified both the political argument and the construction issues. That might have avoided a huge amount of unnecessary controversy, and the massive cost overruns.
The speed wasn't capped because it was designed to reduce costs elsewhere - by setting a route time that reduced dwell time costs so reducing the number of platforms required at each end of the service.
Got to say I reckon the best approach would have been for HS2 to be a loop - London Birmingham Manchester Leeds Sheffield East Midland Hub Birmingham London.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Ironically, this was exactly the expectation that led to the massive underinvestment in the railways in the post-war period & ended up with the Beeching cuts. Why build railways when everybody is going to be driving everywhere and the car is going to be king?
It turned out that the population didn’t actually want the car to be king after they saw what the car being King did to the city centers that were put to the sword to make room for them. Lots of inner city motorways that were planned ended up never happening as the political climate turned firmly against building them.
Perhaps the UK would have been better off economically if we had chosen the car? We could have been the European Texas - but we would have had to pave over a lot of the country to do it.
The Beeching cuts hit the island’s railways terribly, such that the comprehensive network we had in the 1950s was reduced to the rump of the island line, running retired tube trains between Shanklin to Ryde, with only the twin consolations that most of the former railway lines are now cross-island cycle paths, making the island an outstanding destination for people looking for a cycling holiday, and that three of the rails from the former Ventnor line were repurposed into supporting my conservatory so that I can sit in the warm, even in winter, and enjoy watching the cruise and cargo ships passing the south of the Island.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
No point building it to be slow - speed is capacity as the fast you shift trains through a zone, the more trains can pass through it per an hour.
Not when you build for speed the way we did. Insane
I didn’t realise you were an expert in railway design as well
Or you could just apologise for entirely misreading my comment and replying to something I never said. Be a man
You said, about HS2, “we never needed it” when we do. We need the capacity it would give us. If anything we need more HS2.
The inability to apologise for a clear and obvious error is effeminate and childish, and a tiny bit cringeworthy
It’s a lesson I learned early and it’s served me well. If you fuck up - from small things to big things - just say sorry. It doesn’t diminish you, it earns respect
Politicians could benefit from this advice, as well
You’re just gaslighting me now. I literally quoted you. You said that we never needed HS2, we need more capacity but HS2 is for more capacity. I have nothing to apologise for and no error was made.
You made one massive mistake: arguing with Leon. It is never worth the effort
On the other hand it's sidetracked us with an HS2 discussion while we wait for Wes and Ed to kick off the election campaign.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Meanwhile, all these heavy electric vehicles are pulverising our roads and no local authority has the funds to deal with the consequences.
Supporters of Andy Burnham are asking the cabinet to go to Keir Starmer and urge him not to stand in a leadership contest against Wes Streeting
The Burnham camp say they think cabinet ministers will tell Starmer he should instead set a timetable for a longer contest if Streeting does move
BUT friends of Starmer completely dismiss that. They say there is no chance he will listen to any such advice and insist he will stand in a contest now if Streeting has the numbers
Streeting’s allies are saying different things about whether he has 81 MPs and his chances of success in a leadership election
Some think this is his only shot and he’s right to go over the top. Others are less sure he can get to 81 and also worry the backlash against him could see him lose to Starmer or another candidate
If there is an expedited contest many on the soft-left expect Ed Miliband to stand to try to stop either Streeting or Starmer winning
Any immediate contest could become a free-for-all with ambitious novice Al Carns as well as other members of the cabinet deciding they fancy their chances
As of 2pm this afternoon, the Labour Party appears to be moving from paralysis toward chaos
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
Double deckers - nope, for multiple reasons
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines. 2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
I agree with you on existing tracks, very much so for the same reasons. I do think for HS2 it could have worked if it had been designed that way from the start. The line I am talking about in France was more or less a complete new build about 15 years ago. If the case for HS2 had been sound in the first place, which it wasn't, then double deckers could have been part of the plan, but it wasn't and they aren't.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Non starter, for all manner of reasons. There are very few rail systems where even double decker makes practical sense.
Triple-decker trains are the one alternative that would actually be even more expensive than HS2.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Meanwhile, all these heavy electric vehicles are pulverising our roads and no local authority has the funds to deal with the consequences.
Heavy EVs are not great for the roads, but the real damage is done by lorries. Damage scales as the fourth power of axle weight. A 44 ton artic has five load bearing axles, so 8.8 tonne per axle.
8.8⁴ is a scale factor of 5996. Typical small car is 1.5 tonnes, 1.5⁴ is 5, EV equivalent is probably 2 tonnes. EV is 2⁴ or 16.
So sure, an EV is doing three times as much damage as the equivalent ICE vehicle. Meanwhile one laden artic is doing 6000 / 5 = 1200 as much damage as the same ICE vehicle per mile driven.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
Double deckers - nope, for multiple reasons
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines. 2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
I agree with you on existing tracks, very much so for the same reasons. I do think for HS2 it could have worked if it had been designed that way from the start. The line I am talking about in France was more or less a complete new build about 15 years ago. If the case for HS2 had been sound in the first place, which it wasn't, then double deckers could have been part of the plan, but it wasn't and they aren't.
The case was sound - the delivery has just been utterly incompetent and is subject to political whim in ways that shouldn't be the case. If you look at how France build their routes, local authorities are given 2 options and told to accept 1 or the other.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
Double deckers - nope, for multiple reasons
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines. 2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
I agree with you on existing tracks, very much so for the same reasons. I do think for HS2 it could have worked if it had been designed that way from the start. The line I am talking about in France was more or less a complete new build about 15 years ago. If the case for HS2 had been sound in the first place, which it wasn't, then double deckers could have been part of the plan, but it wasn't and they aren't.
I recently travelled on double deckers in Italy. They only work because of long dwell times at stations.
Farage to be investigated by the parliamentary standards commissioner
Popcorn shortage becomes critical.
This is blatantly political. This is how they bring down genuine, talented right wing leaders. They pinned some absurd crime on le pen. They’re trying it on bardella. They had a go at Hitler, openly mocking his paintings. They did lawfare on Trump
Who the hell hasn’t sometimes taken a multi million pound gift from a Thai tycoon with a weird name change. It’s what happens. Life goes on. Leave nigel alone
Even if Farage were subject to a recall petition, he would win the by election.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Meanwhile, all these heavy electric vehicles are pulverising our roads and no local authority has the funds to deal with the consequences.
Heavy EVs are not great for the roads, but the real damage is done by lorries. Damage scales as the fourth power of axle weight. A 44 ton artic has five load bearing axles, so 8.8 tonne per axle.
8.8⁴ is a scale factor of 5996. Typical small car is 1.5 tonnes, 1.5⁴ is 5, EV equivalent is probably 2 tonnes. EV is 2⁴ or 16.
So sure, an EV is doing three times as much damage as the equivalent ICE vehicle. Meanwhile one laden artic is doing 6000 / 5 = 1200 as much damage as the same ICE vehicle per mile driven.
I moved to the island eleven years back, and roads relaid completely then are now breaking up and littered with potholes. I’d be surprised if this is down to lorries, since the largest of such can’t navigate the islands narrow roads.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
Meanwhile, all these heavy electric vehicles are pulverising our roads and no local authority has the funds to deal with the consequences.
Heavy EVs are not great for the roads, but the real damage is done by lorries. Damage scales as the fourth power of axle weight. A 44 ton artic has five load bearing axles, so 8.8 tonne per axle.
8.8⁴ is a scale factor of 5996. Typical small car is 1.5 tonnes, 1.5⁴ is 5, EV equivalent is probably 2 tonnes. EV is 2⁴ or 16.
So sure, an EV is doing three times as much damage as the equivalent ICE vehicle. Meanwhile one laden artic is doing 6000 / 5 = 1200 as much damage as the same ICE vehicle per mile driven.
That’s all correct but you need to bear in mind the standard to which a motorway/A road is built versus local roads. High v none at all.
HGVs have not become much heavier, their annual mileage is steady, and typically travel on much more robust roads. EVs, SUVs have exploded in numbers and weight and are churning up housing estates.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
WCML is at capacity - ECML is at capacity likewise Midland Mainline.
As I said the problem started on the day of the announcement of HS2 when they talked about speed as the extra benefit rather than the bonus it is.
Because that's the other bit no one picked up on, the faster the train, the fewer train sets needed to provide a regular service and the more services that can run along the track (because they all travel at the same speed).
And the real benefit isn't actually at the big cities where HS2 stops, it will be the far more frequent services that will be runnable on the ECML, WCML and similar now the express services don't use 2 timeslots.
They really should have named it “Capacity 2050” or something similar. When the speed is in the name, that’s how it will primarily enter the public consciousness.
As you say, the biggest benefit is a lot more stopping trains and most importantly freight trains on the WCML.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
Double deckers - nope, for multiple reasons
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines. 2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
I agree with you on existing tracks, very much so for the same reasons. I do think for HS2 it could have worked if it had been designed that way from the start. The line I am talking about in France was more or less a complete new build about 15 years ago. If the case for HS2 had been sound in the first place, which it wasn't, then double deckers could have been part of the plan, but it wasn't and they aren't.
I do like the Trams in Besak, Besancon but I am damned if I understand why they cross the Doubs four times instead of just twice.
Am told by an ally of Wes Streeting he "100%" has the numbers for a challenge. Also hearing Ed Miliband confident he has them too
OMG are Labour MPs seriously that stupid ?
I suppose it tees Burnham up for the run in to the 2029 General Election.
Yes that is quite possible. In the meantime pity those who have backed Burnham in the next PM market.
Miliband will also be prepared to receive Burnham's strong backing for his candidature, the price being an absolute assurance that Burnham would before too long be allowed to stand for parliament in a by-election. That would help Miliband's standing in the leadership contest and initially with the general public. Any by-election taking place from within 6 months of Burnham's GM term ending in May 2028 would not (I think) require a by-election to be held for GM Mayor.
Personally I think a PM Miliband would generally overperform against public expectations of him. Attitudes to him are still defined by his period of LOTO and fail to recognise that he has come on a lot in the last decade. He's also diagnosed the failures of Starmer correctly and would take Labour in a direction where the party could win back some of the supporters bled off to the left flank.
Am told by an ally of Wes Streeting he "100%" has the numbers for a challenge. Also hearing Ed Miliband confident he has them too
I assume in that case Starmer will have no choice but tender his resignation to take effect on the appointmemt of the successful candidate
No, not necessarily. Logically Kemi could call a vote of confidence / no confidence in the government and see which way the rebels voted.
Make no mistake, two or three false moves and we could have a GE, a GE that would only favour the Tories in my view. Farage does not want an early election but the public do.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
WCML is at capacity - ECML is at capacity likewise Midland Mainline.
As I said the problem started on the day of the announcement of HS2 when they talked about speed as the extra benefit rather than the bonus it is.
Because that's the other bit no one picked up on, the faster the train, the fewer train sets needed to provide a regular service and the more services that can run along the track (because they all travel at the same speed).
And stations like Waverley and Glasgow Central are at capacity too. Sticking a new line and new stations up the middle of the country opens up room for local services across the whole of the UK.
Is Glasgow Central back to normal now, after the fire next door? The capacity bottleneck there is the bridge over the Clyde on the approach, is it not?
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
HS2 was about capacity, not speed, so as usual you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Literally said this in the comment to which you are replying, you blind fucking muppet
“What we needed was more capacity”
Twat
The issue around HS2 was that it was sold as about getting to the 'North' a few minutes faster (which as you say isn't really needed) but was actually about capacity. And over specified on that basis.
Yes. Even if you must have more speed AIUI the engineers wanted us to have the fastest trains in the universe - out of pride - which is just bonkers in a country as compact as Britain
With all the money not wasted we could have built a cross rail from Liverpool they manc etc to Leeds, maybe even up to Newcastle. Fast (but not high speed) and very regular trains. Every 15 minutes. Really link these cities in a way not done before. A clean convenient shuttle across the north
That would have been transformational. Creating a new metropolitan area to rival london with all that this brings
And we’d still have £50bn left
HS2 isn’t that much more expensive for being designed for 350km/h instead of 300km/h.
What made HS2 ridiculously expensive was 1) burying more than half the line between London and Birmingham and 2) the ridiculous procurement rules demanded by the Treasury that made the contractors liable for any faults that developed over the following decades. Bonus 3) building anything in the UK is ridiculously expensive due to planning regulations out the wazoo, see PB discussions passim.
Consider the M6. Longest motorway in the UK at 230 miles. Current motorway building costs in the UK are pushing £100million / mile (ish). So the M6 would cost us about 23billion to build today. How much do you think it would cost if we decided to bury more than half the route in a massive cutting and a bunch of very long tunnels to appease local NIMBYs? Twice as much? Three times as much? More? Probably much, much more actually. Tunnelling is astonishingly expensive per mile compared to ordinary road building.
HS2’s speed was never the issue.
We should have just invented triple decker trains. Reckon I could do that in a lunch break
Sorted
Obviously not doable but something similar to French double deckers could be realistic. Their problem is when you add in having to lower the bottom deck by say 18 inches you then have to move the axles and then for the upper deck you have to get people up and down by stairs at each end of the carriage. I saw somewhere probably SNCF itself that as a result the train from Parish Gare de Lyon out to Dijon, Bezak etc only had an increase in capacity per metre of carriage of 40 %. They thought in retrospect that longer single deckers would have been a sounder choice.
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
Double deckers - nope, for multiple reasons
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines. 2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
I agree with you on existing tracks, very much so for the same reasons. I do think for HS2 it could have worked if it had been designed that way from the start. The line I am talking about in France was more or less a complete new build about 15 years ago. If the case for HS2 had been sound in the first place, which it wasn't, then double deckers could have been part of the plan, but it wasn't and they aren't.
I do like the Trams in Besak, Besancon but I am damned if I understand why they cross the Doubs four times instead of just twice.
Henry Zephman says the £5m is a "gift", so even though Farage should have registered a "donation" that was received 12 months before being elected to Parliament, Zephman suggests as a "gift" this is different.
I find it hard to find a reading of the Code of Conduct that doesn't conclude that Farage should have reported the donation, or at least contacted the office about it.
When is a donation a gift? Farage seems to think he is watertight which suggests the system is broken.
It was clearly a gift.
You know how people of means often make financial provision for loved ones so they are safe and secure for the rest of their lives?
Well that's obviously how Christopher Harborne feels about Nigel Farage.
Farage gets a hefty tax bill if Harborne expires within 7 years of the gift.
No it doesn't smell like dead and rotting fish at all.
It's a total scandal. If it doesn't cause him big political problems now it's been exposed we might as well pack up and go home.
What you're forgetting, if I may suggest a thought, is that a significant part of the 'national media' won't think it's worth talking about. And indeed, will attack those who do talk about it.
We're really going to get chaos with Ed aren't we. Sigh.
Or anarchy with Ange
All very exciting. What is certain is a hideous civil war, lasting months, which sends the bond markets mad and probably leads to a gennylec and then Prime Minister Big Nige by Christmas Eve
Heh
Labour has a big majority, even if we had 99% unemployment and an economy consisting solely of EDI officers, human rights lawyers and civil servants Labour MPs still wouldn't vote for an early general election
You don’t understand the mechanics
If there is a bond strike (really quite possible now) and Britain teeters towards bankruptcy, the markets will demand massive brutal cuts in benefits. As that’s the only way to grow the economy and therefore service the debts. Massive tax hikes will just make it all worse
I'm not sure that's true.
The current higher bond interest rates are due at least as much to the masochistic policy of quantitative tightening for no apparent reason (and much faster than the the Fed is doing), as to the government's admitted complete incompetence.
So, rather than welfare cuts, the immediate way to get interest rates under control would be to pause QT. I think the Labour Party would be more likely to override the BoE's independence on this issue than allow welfare cuts if push came to shove.
But of course they are completely financially incompetent and economically illiterate, so you never know with this shower.
I'm not sure there's anyone in the Labour party who would actually understand what you've written. I also think undermining BoE independence won't be consequence free, investors will absolutely demand a risk premium.
Just ignoring the OBR was enough to scare the crap out of everyone. Fiddling with the BoE is that on steroids.
What exactly would happen? Bond yields wouldn't spike much if at all because the bank's reduction in QT and maybe return to QE would depress them.
The pound would fall, but the average voter wouldn't notice that much unless the fall was quick and catastrophic. That probably wouldn't be the case if the reduce QT schedule were phased in subtly, quietly and gradually. The Truss budget was none of those.
The specifics and mechanics don’t really matter. It’s the signal it sends. Government in desperate position intervenes in independent central bank rather than dealing with taxes and spending.
That's not true at all. The specifics and detail matter very much.
As always with socialists, they would be robbing Peter to pay Paul, and damaging the economy in the process, but the specifics of how they do that and who feels the pain matter very much indeed.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
You are right to question the assumption that demand will increase. Passenger rail journeys have only just recovered to equal the pre-Covid peak of 2018/19 and even that recovery is probably overstated due to the rise in split ticketing using apps. The stats also fail to adjust for extra journeys prompted by additional capacity such as the opening of the Elizabeth Line.
Speaking personally, if I'm still in a fit state to make recreational journeys by rail to London when HS2 opens, even if it eventually does go past Old Oak Common I'll stick to using the West Coast Main Line on the direct route to Euston from Wolverhampton rather than having all the hassle of wasting time and effort fighting my way across Birmingham from New Street to Curzon Street to make an HS2 connection which I might well risk missing if I don't build in extra time. I'm sure the HS2 planners failed to account for such choices by West Midlands rail users in their efforts to build a business case for HS2.
The added poignancy of HS2 is that by the time it actually comes into operation - 2038? 2098? -, it’s possible all the demand anticipated may largely have disappeared, as the roads fill with self driving cars and other vehicles. We might even have self driving helidrones - whizzing from town to town
Maybe I am being pessimistic but other day I got a letter from HS2. It began like this
“As we begin work on HS2, we expect to be tunnelling in your area…”
You are right to question the assumption that demand will increase. Passenger rail journeys have only just recovered to equal the pre-Covid peak of 2018/19 and even that recovery is probably overstated due to the rise in split ticketing using apps. The stats also fail to adjust for extra journeys prompted by additional capacity such as the opening of the Elizabeth Line.
Speaking personally, if I'm still in a fit state to make recreational journeys by rail to London when HS2 opens, even if it eventually does go past Old Oak Common I'll stick to using the West Coast Main Line on the direct route to Euston from Wolverhampton rather than having all the hassle of wasting time and effort fighting my way across Birmingham from New Street to Curzon Street to make an HS2 connection which I might well risk missing if I don't build in extra time. I'm sure the HS2 planners failed to account for such choices by West Midlands rail users in their efforts to build a business case for HS2.
Well, Crossrail has had hugely higher passenger numbers than expected. Edinburgh’s tram extension as well. That new line in the NE of England too. ECML and WCML are at full capacity.
We have a problem with pessimism bias. If you build it they will come - massive increases in road traffic due to motorways, massive increases in cyclists if you build protected lanes.
We're really going to get chaos with Ed aren't we. Sigh.
Or anarchy with Ange
All very exciting. What is certain is a hideous civil war, lasting months, which sends the bond markets mad and probably leads to a gennylec and then Prime Minister Big Nige by Christmas Eve
Heh
Labour has a big majority, even if we had 99% unemployment and an economy consisting solely of EDI officers, human rights lawyers and civil servants Labour MPs still wouldn't vote for an early general election
You don’t understand the mechanics
If there is a bond strike (really quite possible now) and Britain teeters towards bankruptcy, the markets will demand massive brutal cuts in benefits. As that’s the only way to grow the economy and therefore service the debts. Massive tax hikes will just make it all worse
I'm not sure that's true.
The current higher bond interest rates are due at least as much to the masochistic policy of quantitative tightening for no apparent reason (and much faster than the the Fed is doing), as to the government's admitted complete incompetence.
So, rather than welfare cuts, the immediate way to get interest rates under control would be to pause QT. I think the Labour Party would be more likely to override the BoE's independence on this issue than allow welfare cuts if push came to shove.
But of course they are completely financially incompetent and economically illiterate, so you never know with this shower.
I'm not sure there's anyone in the Labour party who would actually understand what you've written. I also think undermining BoE independence won't be consequence free, investors will absolutely demand a risk premium.
Just ignoring the OBR was enough to scare the crap out of everyone. Fiddling with the BoE is that on steroids.
What exactly would happen? Bond yields wouldn't spike much if at all because the bank's reduction in QT and maybe return to QE would depress them.
The pound would fall, but the average voter wouldn't notice that much unless the fall was quick and catastrophic. That probably wouldn't be the case if the reduce QT schedule were phased in subtly, quietly and gradually. The Truss budget was none of those.
The specifics and mechanics don’t really matter. It’s the signal it sends. Government in desperate position intervenes in independent central bank rather than dealing with taxes and spending.
That's not true at all. The specifics and detail matter very much.
As always with socialists, they would be robbing Peter to pay Paul, and damaging the economy in the process, but the specifics of how they do that and who feels the pain matter very much indeed.
Nah. If Burnham or Miliband or Rayner go anywhere near the BoE with some wonkish but sensible plan to adjust QE, the markets will smell a rat and kick off.
It will be like the fire alarm test from the US Office. “Don’t panic!”.
Comments
Has anyone seen Andy Burnham and Jimmy Cleverly in the same room?
Reform can hardly criticize her if she goes for the leadership and what with Polanskis council tax problems the stars are aligning .
Anyone but Miliband !
Speed was always an issue, as no one was prepared to cap it at the outset, which would have greatly simplified both the political argument and the construction issues. That might have avoided a huge amount of unnecessary controversy, and the massive cost overruns.
Just 11 years late.
I’ve just gone from london to the very north of England in about 20 minutes (or so it feels)
This is the tragedy of HS2. We never needed it. We don’t need high speed trains in the UK, we don’t have the distances that require it. Britain is relatively tiny. You can get anywhere in a few hours. That’s an ADVANTAGE
What we needed was more capacity and better trains with brilliant WiFi. That’s it
We could have saved £80bn by accepting that simple fact
"We never needed it". "we could have saved £80bn" "what was needed was more capacity"
HS2 is entirely about capacity. Take the intercity trains off the existing crush capacity network. Run more of them faster to improve connectivity. Use the space freed up on the existing network to run a lot more trains to/from all the places that it bypasses - Milton Keynes as one example,
The idiocy isn't even that the Tories opted for 350kph rather than 320kph. Its the terms set to the contractors which has forced the costs. Infrastructure that has to both be buried and capable of surviving the break-up of the entire planet at the end of days.
Am told by an ally of Wes Streeting he "100%" has the numbers for a challenge. Also hearing Ed Miliband confident he has them too
There are very few rail systems where even double decker makes practical sense.
Which is why I said we should have kept the original CrossRail proposal rather than Reading as that would have given all the constituents a fast regular train service which HS2 then ran alongside(ish).
Sure you can do the journey from Paris to Besancon in two hours, but only by building a new station Besancon Franche Comte about 20 Km nearer to Paris that Bezak itself. All because of a Presidential promise.
It turned out that the population didn’t actually want the car to be king after they saw what the car being King did to the city centers that were put to the sword to make room for them. Lots of inner city motorways that were planned ended up never happening as the political climate turned firmly against building them.
Perhaps the UK would have been better off economically if we had chosen the car? We could have been the European Texas - but we would have had to pave over a lot of the country to do it.
Remember that the direction of your debt-to-GDP depends on a number of factors - in particular nominal GDP growth and budget deficit.
So, if you have debt-to-GDP of (say) 120%, but your economy is seeing 5% nominal GDP growth (3% real, 2% inflation), and your budget deficit is 0%, then debt-to-GDP will fall to 114% the next year.
Markets tend to be relatively relaxed about debt-to-GDP if the macroeconomic picture is benign. (See also Greece, Italy, etc prior to the Eurozone crisis.)
If, on the other hand, GDP growth is limited to non-existant, then the market gets freaked out by deficits and debt-to-GDP, because they can rapidly head towards the moon.
Remember Hemingway's quote:
"How did you go bankrupt?"
"Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."
That said... if you can keep inflation down, and you can convince the markets that the Bank of England will buy any necessary government debt, then you can keep the wheels in the air for a long-time - see Japan. But Japan has only been able to keep the plates up in the air like this because it has a large current account surplus.
1) bridges would still need to be rebuilt - as would overhead power lines.
2) the capacity of a double decker train really isn't that much more than a single decker - it's 30% more when the stairs and accessbility is taken into account.
Got to say I reckon the best approach would have been for HS2 to be a loop - London Birmingham Manchester Leeds Sheffield East Midland Hub Birmingham London.
It always is.
Let's get on with debate and discussion and not this sort of empty nonsense
Particularly from a member suspended for antisemitism not that many years ago
A kind of genius on Leon's part.
8.8⁴ is a scale factor of 5996. Typical small car is 1.5 tonnes, 1.5⁴ is 5, EV equivalent is probably 2 tonnes. EV is 2⁴ or 16.
So sure, an EV is doing three times as much damage as the equivalent ICE vehicle. Meanwhile one laden artic is doing 6000 / 5 = 1200 as much damage as the same ICE vehicle per mile driven.
NEW THREAD
HGVs have not become much heavier, their annual mileage is steady, and typically travel on much more robust roads. EVs, SUVs have exploded in numbers and weight and are churning up housing estates.
As you say, the biggest benefit is a lot more stopping trains and most importantly freight trains on the WCML.
Miliband will also be prepared to receive Burnham's strong backing for his candidature, the price being an absolute assurance that Burnham would before too long be allowed to stand for parliament in a by-election. That would help Miliband's standing in the leadership contest and initially with the general public. Any by-election taking place from within 6 months of Burnham's GM term ending in May 2028 would not (I think) require a by-election to be held for GM Mayor.
Personally I think a PM Miliband would generally overperform against public expectations of him. Attitudes to him are still defined by his period of LOTO and fail to recognise that he has come on a lot in the last decade. He's also diagnosed the failures of Starmer correctly and would take Labour in a direction where the party could win back some of the supporters bled off to the left flank.
Make no mistake, two or three false moves and we could have a GE, a GE that would only favour the Tories in my view. Farage does not want an early election but the public do.
Never wear a tee shirt under a suit jacket without a collared shirt over the top of it. And shoes? Black for the town, brown for the country.
As always with socialists, they would be robbing Peter to pay Paul, and damaging the economy in the process, but the specifics of how they do that and who feels the pain matter very much indeed.
Speaking personally, if I'm still in a fit state to make recreational journeys by rail to London when HS2 opens, even if it eventually does go past Old Oak Common I'll stick to using the West Coast Main Line on the direct route to Euston from Wolverhampton rather than having all the hassle of wasting time and effort fighting my way across Birmingham from New Street to Curzon Street to make an HS2 connection which I might well risk missing if I don't build in extra time. I'm sure the HS2 planners failed to account for such choices by West Midlands rail users in their efforts to build a business case for HS2.
We have a problem with pessimism bias. If you build it they will come - massive increases in road traffic due to motorways, massive increases in cyclists if you build protected lanes.
It will be like the fire alarm test from the US Office. “Don’t panic!”.