David Craig, on November 19th, 2021Friday blog
Howling and moaning about a useless high-speed train
The decision by the Government to cancel the Eastern leg – Birmingham to Leeds – of the £100bn+ HS2 train project has been met with a great deal of howling and moaning from various Labour politicians and, of course, the UK-hating BBC and C4 News. Shadow transport secretary Jim McMahon called the plan “a great train robbery”, and said that it amounted to “a betrayal of trust, promise and investment in the North and the Midlands”.
As far as I can see, this is about the first sensible decision this useless government has made.
Fast trains in a tiny country?
Now let me explain why it is totally ludicrous to use a high-speed train in a tiny country like England
I’ll make this part of my blog today really simple so, were any politicians or BBC or C4 News supposed ‘journalists’ to read it, even they might understand.
We’re constantly being told that that the UK is decades behind France in building a high-speed rail network. But France is a big country – about 640,000 km2. The UK is a small country – about 242,000 km2. England is an even smaller country – 130,000 km2. France has an extensive high-speed rail network – the TGV. It makes sense to have high-speed trains in a large country. It doesn’t make sense to have high-speed trains in a small country.
Now let’s go a bit deeper. The French train route from Paris to Lyon to Marseilles can probably be seen as comparable to the UK train route from London to Birmingham to Leeds in terms of how it connects major cities. But the differences in distances are huge. Paris to Lyon is 292 miles, whereas London to Birmingham is only 128 miles. And Lyon to Marseilles is 488 miles, whereas Birmingham to Leeds is only around 100 miles:
The much greater distances in France justify a high-speed rail network. But squandering over £100bn on cutting just a few minutes off the train journey time from London to Birmingham and then even fewer minutes off the train journey time from Birmingham to Leeds is utterly ludicrous.
Plus, once the stupid thing got past Birmingham, the distances between stops at the East Midlands hub and then Leeds would be so small that the train would have to start slowing down almost as soon as it got up to speed.
Moreover, as far as I understand, the new HS2 won’t start at Euston. Instead it will start at a new station to be built at Old Oak Common in West London. This means it might be quicker for business travellers from or to Central London to use the old conventional line to Euston rather than the new HS2 line to Old Oak Common station. Good grief!!!!!
In addition, the Chinese Wuhan plague lockdowns have taught many companies that they can conduct much of their business using technology such as Zoom rather than constant travelling to ‘important’ meetings. So we can expect a reduction in demand for train use in the future.
Unfortunately, it’s too late to scrap the whole worthless project.
It seems strange to me that Labour politicians and mainstream media ‘journalists’ have never bothered to look at a map and so have never noticed that it’s rather pointless building a hugely expensive high-speed railway in a tiny country like England.
Category: 
Answer to your question, because they always have been stupid. Look at Concorde, another totally useless project, paid for by taxpayers for the benefit of the elites. HS2 benefits nobody except the construction companies. Then there was the Iraq war. Blair recently admitted that his biggest mistake was that he did not understand the politics of the area, so he became peace envoy. Add in immigration which is out of control, COP26 and the farce of the Climate Assembly which seems to have collected the thickest people in the country and is brainwashing them to the required answer.
For HS2 they made the fundamental mistake of ignoring the time taken to get from home to the station, and at the other end to their final destination. And they should have started construction in the north or at both ends. Shapps will probably achieve his promise of reducing train journey times in the north – to zero.
Remember Plato basically described democracy as the process of electing the most incompetent people to the most important jobs. We only have ourselves to blame.
I believe that this project was part of EU plans for high-speed travel throughout Europe. So it should have been cancelled when we left the EU.
Too late to stop it – there are too many ‘troughers’ expecting to profit from it.
The money wasted on it could reverse Beeching’s cuts twice over and we’d still have change!
I hope it’s all painted white, with a suitable elephant logo.
It is never too late to stop it, but it won’t be because of the embarrassment to politicians. Better to wait for years until it is obviously a complete failure and the politicians who are responsible are long gone.
I find the decision to waste billions on high speed rail in the UK fascinating because not only is it a not needed but it is also a great example of undemocratic decision making.
The EU transport commissar at the time was one Siim Kallas. He was from Estonia and prior to the collapse was a member of the supreme council of the soviet union. But then reinvented himself and found no doubt much similarities between the EU and the USSR.
So an ex member of the supreme council of the soviet union and now appointed to the EU, unelected of course, agrees a plan in Brussels to build a high speed rail network across the UK. Without discussion our parliament have rubber stamped this and regardless of cost or local objections implemented the plan.
The CCP must be envious of such blind obedience.
Originally a faster way for the Conservative party to spread all their new pets around the country once they’ve left their rubber dinghys and jetskis on the beach.
But now un-affordable as the reality starts to dawn on our Dear Leaders of the truly staggering escalation of HS2 costs coupled with Rishi’s policy of throwing vast amounts of cash that we don’t have at everything coupled with vastly lower tax returns because of lockdown.
It has also just occurred to Johnson that he’ll need the cash allocated to HS2 once the government starts to lose all that lovely petrol and diesel tax revenue once Carrie’s electric vehicles are the only ones allowed to be sold after 2030.
There was some numpty on TV moaning that Bradford had been betrayed, and it was a stab in the back to the people from Bradford, bla, bla bla.
Could I suggest that from a cultural point of view, the people of Bradford would be much more comfortable with a string of camels rather than a train that goes so fast that only a Genie, with Allah’s blessing could compete.
No doubt the fortunes of the Flea Market Bazzar will steeply decline and Boris will have to promise to “level Up” by handing out free chappatis’.
All of the huge amount of mental bollox is coming from the top down. Including the transphobia bollox. None of it would exist if it were coming from the bottom up.
The richest and most influential women get cancelled and banned just for stating biological truth, such as JK Rowling, who has been cancelled by the Harry Potter 20th anniversary special after her controversial tweets
about transgender people.
Another headline: JK Rowling and Churchill axed as school house names to ‘boost diversity’. Pupils at school in west London choose to replace them with
footballer Marcus Rashford and British-Jamaican nurse Mary Seacole.
Watch this excellent show on GB News presented by Mark Steyn on quite a bit of the bollox. He does it in a humorous way.
Mark Steyn | Friday 19th November –
Eric Legge.
Thank you for giving us the Mark Steyn broadcast which I enjoyed.
I have just read his three “main” books, albeit in reverse order and am well impressed with them all but especially “America Alone” which i think he published in 2002.
Back then MS predicted exactly the immigration farce of the Middle east moving to the west and our governments doing nothing about it.
Could I suggest for the convenience of David’s followers that you post Mark Steyn’s broadcasts here everyweekend as I am sure moost readers would enjoy them ?
I loved Mark’s guest talking about the boy shooter who was aquitted asking what his mother was thinking of driving him and his gun to the riot when he should have been at home doing schoolwork. That kid was very lucky to get the judge that he did, who unusually waswas not afraid to face up to the mob and MSM.