No chance , they will be held up by the rail lines antiquated infrastructure and all the other local trains that run on the same tracks.
You think the Royal Family costs £35billion to run?Can't we just scrap the Royal Family and pay for something that is actually useful from the savings... like the HS2 link from Birmingham to Manchester?
He’s building to a proper mic drop moment in Manchester……..I wonder who thought it was going to look good to claim for weeks that he was taking his time and considering carefully only to come out with it just in time for conference speech.
Madness.
There are not many better investments than infrastructure. The IMF did a study and found that the return on investment from economic growth alone was in the region of £1.40 for every pound invested.The “money can be better spent elsewhere” argument is false. Return on infrastructure investment is always considered to be 100%, so borrowing to build is not something that should be shied away from. No doubt will throw a few crumbs and try to improve cross country travel to soften the blow and that needs doing…but it should have been in addition to, not instead of
The “money can be better spent elsewhere” argument is false. Return on infrastructure investment is always considered to be 100%, so borrowing to build is not something that should be shied away from. No doubt will throw a few crumbs and try to improve cross country travel to soften the blow and that needs doing…but it should have been in addition to, not instead of
Well to be fair those African countries have sold their mineral wealth to China at a bargain price in return.So called lesser countries in Europe and Africa are building high speed railway infrastructure, yet we can't.
Fucking embarrassing.
The “money can be better spent elsewhere” argument is false. Return on infrastructure investment is always considered to be 100%, so borrowing to build is not something that should be shied away from. No doubt will throw a few crumbs and try to improve cross country travel to soften the blow and that needs doing…but it should have been in addition to, not instead of
apparently not in a world where inflation is a tax.
I assume we'll get that again today.
What if that "elsewhere" is other infrastructure? Personally I feel HS2 is a solution to something that wasn't a problem. it wont take many passengers off the west coast main line as most dont travel the full route. they travel partial routes.
If we wanted to move Freight off roads and off passenger lines then custom freight lines could be built, with no need for high speed we could have built them at a fraction of the cost. that would allow more passenger trains on the existing line and free up motorway traffic space.
Personally though the money would have been better spent building a better fast line between Liverpool->Manchester->Leeds->York->Newcastle. Actually start to build this northern powerhouse they keep mentioning.
That being said, if this does get cancelled, odds are the momey will vanish into thin air rather than be spent on "better things", in which case I think it should be completed ( to the original spec, not the overground line through Manchester ) as something is better than nothing.
ICE ICE baby?Just sat on the Berlin to Leipzig tran chugging along at 199 KM per hour ,no idea if that's fast or not
Personally though the money would have been better spent building a better fast line between Liverpool->Manchester->Leeds->York->Newcastle. Actually start to build this northern powerhouse they keep mentioning.
Its about as fast as the trains on the East Coast Mainline. But at a much cheaper cost per mile to the passenger.Just sat on the Berlin to Leipzig tran chugging along at 199 KM per hour ,no idea if that's fast or not
More smoke and mirrors if they try that one. Markets hate governments borrowing to pay their bills (structural debt), they don’t mind them borrowing for infrastructure when that infrastructure is designed to improve output (growth).
Getting anything done in this country is expensive - it won’t be any less expensive a decade from now - so to scrap it on cost is a false economy leaving us with the only viable reason for scrapping it being the economic rationale for doing it doesn’t stack up; ie it will bring zero growth to the north of England, which simply makes no sense. But if that’s the case, be honest about it.