Thick government

This Government is going to spend over 50billion pounds plus on a new fast train up North. This will take half an hour off train time from London to Midlands. We have Rivers that need dredging. We need new flood defences. We need all the roads repairing and Tarmacing. Our infrastructure is bollocked and we are blowing all our money to get a business man up North an hour quicker

 

Maybe the solution isn't a train, but high-speed hovercraft. Load up on the Thames and zoom up the flood plain to your destination in the north.

 

We need to sort the health service and schools out first in my opinion. And getting the rail service we have at the minute to run on time would be a decent start.

 

With all due respect Homer, HS 2 has nowt to do with getting people up north quicker, it's all to do with sucking more power and wealth into London and the south east.

 

Perhaps you are right but still costing money that needs to be spent on all our infrastucture

 

Why did it take these floods for you to realise this ?

 

So why do you suggest Labour wanted to build it.

I'm torn....like Homer said there are much much much better uses for the money. But in 50 years time our grand kids might actually come home for the weekend because of it.

However I'm somewhat on the side of doesn't this have to be built because our grandparents had the foresight to build the M1 - and the M25 and imagine the state of the economy without those.

 

Good old tory eh
What will it do for our area then ?

 

It really does let you down when you can't get your head out of your preconcived ideas and debate sensibly.

In reality the only thing I think I'll get is my kids home for the weekend more frequently when they **** off to London for work...other than that I'm not sure

In reality I don't think either party has much to do with this stuff... I think the civil servant in the dept of transport are calling the shots here. Some unwritten agreement not to **** about with big infrastructure.

But I do think I'd rather see more trains from Sheffield to Leeds - calling at Barnsley four times an hour rather than needing a periodic table and calculus to work it all out.. I think that would do more for us.

 

Exactly, HS2 is a complete waste of money, why should we spend billions in transporting people about quickly when with technology as it is now a lot of people in the service sector can work from home, so what will it be like with the technology that will be around in 15 years time. People in non service sector jobs, ie manufacturing, tend work fairly locally to where they live so won't use HS2.

 

Hopefully your kids won't have to go to London for a job, like I said, with technology now people don't have to go to London to work let alone in 15 years. If the people in charge really want to help business and and in turn help the whole country as well, then they should spend the money to decentralise from London outwards to the regions. In fact with all the flooding in that area, for the security of the economy, that should be happening now, no matter what they do in the short term, if climate change keeps going as it is then the south will flood even more than it is at the moment.

 

It did not take the floods to realise it. I have known about it for months. Just that these threads are apt for putting the point forward

 

Correct. The trouble with most of London is that nobody wants dirty hands and they are not too practical. That's why lads from up North work down there to keep the tube open and build and joiner.

 

Agreed whole heartedly. I WFH regularly- doesn't impact my output one jot - apart from maybe a bit more BBS than normal.!

The money should be spent on improvements in internet fibre.

I mean who the hell allows a new housing estate to be built without insisting every home has a great big fibre pipe laid to it?

Whether it's connected to the grid or not in every new housing estate the infrastructure should be built in for massive data capability. Then when the councils / govt. get round to putting the fibre down the main road everyone lights up without hassle or digging up the block paving.

Ive never understood why back office staff are need in the smoke. Whilst the big whigs and pop stars might need to be there the purchase ledger, personnel and turn it off turn it on again telephone helplines don;t. Utter madness what some companies do - the Govt included.

However - so we agree on the fact it shouldn't happen - we might disagree on whose fault it is. I don't think it matters one blind bit who is in charge.
Both sets of idiots would do exactly the same.

 

It's clearly a vanity project I've just written a report for a think tank (centre left) about it I could stick some of the detail up but it's a bit dry for this sort of forum. It basically makes little or no economic sense. The government is clearly misleading about cost whether wilfully or not the money would be better served improving existing infrastructure but that's not as politically sexy.

 

This H2S business is an all-party project and was brought in before this government came to power.

 

It's not about speed, it's about capacity. The railway from London to Birmingham and Manchester will be hopelessly overcrowded long before HS2 gets built. You talk about "bollocked" infrastructure - the West Coast Main Line is probably the country's foremost example of that, and that's what HS2 is designed to fix.

 

Do you honestly think that in 50 years people won't be using quicker transport methods than a railway thats only a few minutes quicker than we have now? I'll give you a clue, there already IS a method that will get people from south yorkshire to london quicker than HS2 and unlike HS2 it will only get quicker in the coming years

 

Manchester Airport has spare capacity for an extra 30 MILLION passengers a year and can get from london to manchester NOW quicker than HS2 will be able to get you there in 30 years.

Birmingham airport has capacity for an extra 9 million passengers a year

Leeds has capacity for an extra 4 million a year

The list goes on and that doesn't include all the other airports like Donny that aren't in one of the few big cities that the government thought about

I know the only problem with this is the capacity of london airports but they're already planning on significantly improving that anyway.

 

A majob Project such as HS2 will see economic. Benefits through whole spine of England including. Barnsley