[Gordon Booth]

Would you spend it on HS1 and HS2 in an effort to close the North/South divide?
We don't have it spare so we'll have to borrow it(at 6%) and with cost over runs you can guarantee it will double and that's not counting inflation.
If you live on Manchester Station and work on the London station you'll save one hour out of two.
If you live and work an hour from each station you save one hour out of four. Is that so important?
They say people can't afford to live and work in London so the solution is to move them all up here to live but keep the jobs in London! So we won't get the jobs but Northern house prices will rocket as rich London businessmen sell their expensive homes and push up demand in the North.
The capacity will be 370,000 seats each way each day,do we really have anywhere near that number of people wishing to make that trip? And if we do the normal lines will have less passengers and need more subsidies.
Over half the cash value and saving to the country will be in time- somebodies time must be worth an awefull lot of money and as you can't spend time the economy will see no benefit.
The High Speed lines on the Continent don't just cross much bigger countries, they connect several countries so the time savings can be quite big. Not in this little country!

Wouldn't it be better to give 33(or 66?) Northern cities and towns £1 billion each to build state of the art business centres, research centres etc. with reduced rent, tax and cheap loans? Pull the jobs from the South to the people who already live here?
How about electrifying all the Northern lines to get rid of the slow diesels and upgrading the lines, get more carriages and stop the South sending their 30 year old trains to us so we can use them for another uncomfortable 30 years?

It seems to me to be a status, prestige project- Blair went to war in Iraq, Campbell builds HS1 and 2.
And who pays for the rich business men on their expensive, expenses claims tickets to save 1 hour? You, your children and their children.