If you had £33 billion spare?

[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.

[cashman]

It aint even 1 hour saved,its around 50 mins, considering London is only 2 hrs 20 mins or so away on train these days, it seems to me the 33 Billion could be better spent in many other areas, but still that may not be concentrating on rich businessmen.

[Less]

How long do you want it for?
I've got a wonga account don't mind helping you out short term.

[Gordon Booth]

Originally Posted by Less

How long do you want it for?
I've got a wonga account don't mind helping you out short term.

I don't like being in debt, Less.
Just lend me £1 billion for a few years.

[Margaret Pilkington]

I'm not sure what I would do..........perhaps the first thing would be to make transport between cities cheaper. It is no damn good having a fine superfast rail service if it is too expensive to use.
I can see the sense of linking the cities, and it will do businesses in those cities no harm at all.

It is going to create some jobs while the infrastructure is being built....but then what?

I don't think giving 33 towns and cities a million each would be a great deal of good.......you don't get much infrastructure for a million quid these days.

I can see it causing much angst as the countryside is ripped up for track to be laid........for rich men to ride in style and comfort and save 50 minutes or so.
That doesn't answer your question Gordon, but that is as near as I can get.

[cashman]

It would be 33 a billion not million margaret.

[lancsdave]

Basically it's London providing fast links for all the Northerners to go and spend money down there and leave none up here.

All they have done is copy the model set by LCC and Blackburn Council, build a bus station in Accrington so everybody in Accrington can get to Blackburn and Preston quicker to spend their brass

[wadey]

What's the rush to get to London ?

[Gordon Booth]

Originally Posted by lancsdave

Basically it's London providing fast links for all the Northerners to go and spend money down there and leave none up here.

All they have done is copy the model set by LCC and Blackburn Council, build a bus station in Accrington so everybody in Accrington can get to Blackburn and Preston quicker to spend their brass

By the time the Northeners have paid for their HS ticket I don't think they'll have much left to spend in London, lancsdave.
Still, we could always go on Oxford Street begging- they say that pays quite well and we'd have to get the money to get home somehow.

[lancsdave]

Originally Posted by Gordon Booth

Still, we could always go on Oxford Street begging- .

It pays in Accrington, maybe we could club together and pay for some one way tickets for our experienced town centre beggars

[Gordon Booth]

Originally Posted by lancsdave

It pays in Accrington,

Really? I must come over there and try it. Less has already offered to lend me £1 billion but anything extra would be useful.

[Eric]

Seems pointless to me ... probably 'cause I come from a time when folks walked to work. If they wanted to cut down on travel time, they got themselves a bicycle.

So does it boil down to this: If you want to develop the crumbling northern and midlands cities, you make it easier to get to London? Or am I just not getting the point?

33 billion pounds is a big chunk of coin. It would go a long way to helping create jobs in areas where there are large numbers of unemployed (by "unemployed" I mean those who are out of work, and would like nothing better than to get back to work. Not the shiftless who spend their lives avoiding work.) On one hand, your govt. seems to be cutting thousands of jobs ... in the military for example ... and on the other, promising to create thousands of jobs on a mega project that may, or probably may not have any lasting economic and social benefits.

As an aside: Talking of the military, has anyone noticed that in the Middle East, and parts of Africa, there is this immense swiftly rotating object, and a tsunami of fecal matter is heading straight for it. Maybe some of that 33 billion would be better spent making sure that the men and women of your armed forces are well-equipped to deal with your inevitable involvement. After all, whose going to have to help out the frogs when they screw up and start legging it

[Less]

Originally Posted by Gordon Booth

Really? I must come over there and try it. Less has already offered to lend me £1 billion but anything extra would be useful.

Excuse me? I offered to arrange a short term loan for the full amount, for such a small loan I would actually want some form of references.

Now, let me collapse on the sofa in self pity, I can only reply during the adverts, I'm trying to fall asleep to daytime T.V. I really must be ill, 'cos it usually works.

[Margaret Pilkington]

Sorry Cashy, misread that.
Where is this chunk of money coming from?

[entwisi]

it amuses me that could get to London quicker than I can get to work in Knutsford by the same transport system....