Brexit, for once some facts.

oldgroaner

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£5 of my hard earned money went towards Darren's legal fees to fight that ridiculous decision. Very happy with the outcome.
Fair enough but the real villains of the piece got away with it, and how much are you going to contribute to getting rid of Boris when you need to?
By the way the judge made a fair decision
But it looks more as if so called friends abandoned him in his hour of need than anything else, they were all millionaires and walked away leaving him to take the rap.
Note these tweets from 2018

Hardly exonerate the rest of the Leave Campaign, do they, just show them for the treacherous rats they really are.
And isn't it strange that the press don't point out that this act of treachery took place?
Not really, as it would have shown the leave campaign and those running it up for what they are.
Scum that regard a gullible young supporter as acceptable collateral damage.
After all look at the rewards at stake!
 
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oyster

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Nov 7, 2017
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I see that the cost of HS2 is predicted to rise by thirty-thousand million pounds to a total of eighty-six thousand million pounds. EIGHTY-SIX THOUSAND MILLION POUNDS.

This eighty-six thousand million pound investment will mean that if you catch a train in Sheffield at 8:00 am, you will arrive in London at 09:30 am instead of 10:00am. That’s assuming anyone in Sheffield needs to go to London, and if they do, arriving at 9:30 and not 10:00 is critical, and they couldn’t just catch an earlier train, and they are so technology deficient that they couldn’t do a bit of work on the train during the extra half hour journey time.

I’m a great fan of improvement to our transport infrastructure, but I really struggle to see the benefits of HS2, especially when everything else about our transport system is so shitty.
Have you noticed the justification seems to have changed? Seems to say the biggest benefit will come about from the freeing up of capacity on the existing lines.

The headline speed for the project has long seemed a nonsense. The massively greater fuel usage (whether considered as electricity input, or carbon dioxide output, or anything else) of 220 mph over 125 mph undermines the fuel efficiency usually attributed to railways. A large portion of the benefits of higher speeds is achieved even at lower speeds (150?, 175?) - together with better acceleration, altogether better track, and train management.

The "classic compatible" trains seem especially silly - having to run at the same very high speed in order to interwork with dedicated HS2 rolling stock but spending much of their lives on track not able to support more than about 125 mph. A huge expense.

It has always seemed crazy that there is no intention to link HS1 and HS2. And that the channel tunnel vehicle trains stop at the Folkestone terminal. The benefit of them coming up to, say, Watford, or Slough or somewhere could have been immense. (In the context of this thread, it could at least have reduced the Kent car park effect.)
 
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Woosh

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Have you noticed the justification seems to have changed? Seems to say the biggest benefit will come about from the freeing up of capacity on the existing lines.
when government wants to deflect criticism of inaction, they just approve a large project.
It costs them little because the bill is passed on to their successors but they can reap the reward by talking up the potential benefit.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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I see that the cost of HS2 is predicted to rise by thirty-thousand million pounds to a total of eighty-six thousand million pounds. EIGHTY-SIX THOUSAND MILLION POUNDS.

This eighty-six thousand million pound investment will mean that if you catch a train in Sheffield at 8:00 am, you will arrive in London at 09:30 am instead of 10:00am. That’s assuming anyone in Sheffield needs to go to London, and if they do, arriving at 9:30 and not 10:00 is critical, and they couldn’t just catch an earlier train, and they are so technology deficient that they couldn’t do a bit of work on the train during the extra half hour journey time.

I’m a great fan of improvement to our transport infrastructure, but I really struggle to see the benefits of HS2, especially when everything else about our transport system is so shitty.
The trouble is that it's this attitude that had left us with an archaic transport infrastructure that is vastly inferior to all of our neighbours and even many other countries worldwide.

Just looking at the cost alone is always a mistake and it's become a British disease, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

By now we should have been building HS5 into the West Country, with HS2 and 3 connected right through into Scotland on the west and east routes and HS4 into the Eastern Counties. Our continental neighbours did their equivalent many years ago.

If we'd done the same we wouldn't be needing more runways at Heathrow and the like, since we could have banned all the internal flights to make space for the international ones. Some other countries are already doing this. We could also have toll priced the motorways to drive people onto the high speed trains, thus greatly reducing our pollution and global warming related problems.

It's the foolishly blinkered habit of looking only at cost that has blinded us to all these other benefits we could have had by now.
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oyster

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Iran captures two British tankers and our Navy has a hole in its boat. Oh dear, who would ever have predicted something like this happening? We need a politician with rolled up shirt sleeves talking straight down the lens of the TV camera to provide reassurance that Iran isn’t going to kill us all. Anything less and I’m going to panic. Or maybe I’ll just fall off my chair laughing.
Cue Liza and Henry.
 
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Woosh

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The trouble is that it's this attitude that had left us with an archaic transport infrastructure that is vastly inferior to all of our neighbours and even many other countries worldwide.

Just looking at the cost alone is always a mistake and it's become a British disease, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

By now we should have been building HS5 into the West Country, with HS2 and 3 connected right through into Scotland on the west and east routes and HS4 into the Eastern Counties. Our continental neighbours did their equivalent many years ago.

If we'd done the same we wouldn't be needing more runways at Heathrow and the like, since we could have banned all the internal flights to make space for the international ones. We could also have tolled priced the motorways to drive people onto the high speed trains, thus greatly reducing our pollution and global warming problems.

It's the foolishly blinkered habit of looking only at cost that has blinded us to all these other benefits we could have had by now.
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I am not convinced that railways make efficient land use now that we are at the cusp of robotic driving.
Look at the M25. If you replace the M25 with HS trains, would you get a better return?
 
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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I am not convinced that railways make efficient land use now that we are at the cusp of robotic driving.
They are if used more fully, and I don't see robotic driving ever being an adequate mode of long distance travel. It could better serve at both ends of HS train journeys.

Look at the M25. If you replace the M25 with HS trains, would you get a better return?
The M25 was only created and expanded to cope with the huge excess of traffic. With people on trains for their major journeys there would be no need for a train equivalent, HS or not.
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gray198

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Apr 4, 2012
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The trouble is that it's this attitude that had left us with an archaic transport infrastructure that is vastly inferior to all of our neighbours and even many other countries worldwide.

Just looking at the cost alone is always a mistake and it's become a British disease, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

By now we should have been building HS5 into the West Country, with HS2 and 3 connected right through into Scotland on the west and east routes and HS4 into the Eastern Counties. Our continental neighbours did their equivalent many years ago.

If we'd done the same we wouldn't be needing more runways at Heathrow and the like, since we could have banned all the internal flights to make space for the international ones. Some other countries are already doing this. We could also have toll priced the motorways to drive people onto the high speed trains, thus greatly reducing our pollution and global warming related problems.

It's the foolishly blinkered habit of looking only at cost that has blinded us to all these other benefits we could have had by now.
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politicians are not known for their forward thinking. Instead they concentrate on short term fixes to make them look good and retain their hold on power
 
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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Whitehall fears Brexit backlash from a Johnson government

Deal or no deal, civil servants worry that they will be blamed if things go wrong
If true they are worrying about nothing, ultimately the public always blame politicians, never the civil service.

With one in six UK working people employed in the public sector, politicians blaming any public servants is unlikely to find a substantial sympathetic ear.
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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politicians are not known for their forward thinking. Instead they concentrate on short term fixes to make them look good and retain their hold on power
The blame isn't solely theirs though, the British public shares it with their nimbyism. Our lack of modernisation is a national fault, self inflicted and affecting every facet of our lives.
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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Boris will get the Vulcan out of mothballs and personally fly it to Iran to win the tanker back...
With his propensity for messing up anything and also being a journalist, he'd just end up in an Iranian jail with Mrs Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who he helped to keep imprisoned with his falsehoods.
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50Hertz

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jan 2, 2019
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The trouble is that it's this attitude that had left us with an archaic transport infrastructure that is vastly inferior to all of our neighbours and even many other countries worldwide.

Just looking at the cost alone is always a mistake and it's become a British disease, knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

By now we should have been building HS5 into the West Country, with HS2 and 3 connected right through into Scotland on the west and east routes and HS4 into the Eastern Counties. Our continental neighbours did their equivalent many years ago.

If we'd done the same we wouldn't be needing more runways at Heathrow and the like, since we could have banned all the internal flights to make space for the international ones. Some other countries are already doing this. We could also have toll priced the motorways to drive people onto the high speed trains, thus greatly reducing our pollution and global warming related problems.

It's the foolishly blinkered habit of looking only at cost that has blinded us to all these other benefits we could have had by now.
.
I disagree. I don’t see how eighty-six thousand million pounds spent to shave 30 mins off the journey from Sheffield to London is good value. Yes, our train system is archaic, so let’s spend eighty-six thousand million pounds doing it up. We might even end up with a system that provides transport to somewhere that we want to go instead of the arse-end of town.

It’s like our transport system is an old Austin Marina, but we want to upgrade it straight to a two seater Ferrari, which is fast, but not really practical. We need a Ford Mondeo type system first, something reliable, efficient and gets you where you want to go. Let’s spend the eighty-six thousand million pounds trying to achieve that.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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I disagree. I don’t see how eighty-six thousand million pounds spent to shave 30 mins off the journey from Sheffield to London is good value. Yes, our train system is archaic, so let’s spend eighty-six thousand million pounds doing it up. We might even end up with a system that provides transport to somewhere that we want to go instead of the arse-end of town.

It’s like our transport system is an old Austin Marina, but we want to upgrade it straight to a two seater Ferrari, which is fast, but not really practical. We need a Ford Mondeo type system first, something reliable, efficient and gets you where you want to go. Let’s spend the eighty-six thousand million pounds trying to achieve that.
I'm not making any comment on the value of this HS2 project, just making the point that we have to start somewhere. That will include some that are better, some that are worse, but finding reasons to block every proposal for modernisation isn't going to get us anywhere.

For example, take the M25 that Woosh has just mentioned, a failure before its build was even started. That was because it's origins were to solve London's traffic problems at a time when the rest of the country didn't have a severe traffic problem,

So to solve the London specific problem, Inner London and Outer London motorway boxes were proposed, planned and builds started. Indeed 30 and more years ago I used to commute to work driving on parts of the Inner London motorway and here in Croydon we have a substantial section of the Outer Motorway box that I often drive on.

But then the NIMBY crowd kicked off with a campaign called Homes before Roads and eventually the politicians panicked and cancelled the motorway boxes, leaving sections scattered about ending nowhere, like our on-road painted cyclepaths. But the homes weren't built anyway, so we got neither roads nor homes, a typical British NIMBY victory.

But of course London's ever increasing traffic problem didn't go away, so a just outside London motorway box was proposed so that traffic could circle London closely to transfer from one part to another. However that simply proved impossible, partly due to the scale of the infrastructure on the fringes and partly due to the new NIMBY mob, this time of some elites.

So the "just outside London" motorway called the M25 ended up too far away to do what it was intended to do. For example, I'm in a sticking out bit of London's southern fringe, but I'm still nearly ten miles away from the M25. So to use the M25 to jump from one part of London to another means some 20 to 40 miles of additional driving just to get to and from the motorway, without counting the length travelling around it, which makes it an impractical way to move around London.

The M25 has ended up a 125 miles long bypass, doing nothing to relieve London's traffic problems while making other's traffic problems worse by encouraging vastly more car use by those living anywhere else.

This is what we always do, cancel every start to modernise through nimbyism and end up either with nothing or something completely unsuitable.
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