Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Darkjim wrote:

 r_squared wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
Friday; sorry, there's no money for regional railway improvements, but hey, at least you won't have to put up with all that pesky construction, digging holes, etc.

Monday; oh, but we have £30 BILLION for Crossrail 2, because London is sooo lacking in public transport infrastructure...

feth. Off.

Edit; spelling.

Yep, more blatant hypocrisy that will be handwaived by the Tories. Infrastructure outside of London and the South East is uneconomical and a poor investment, apparently.

At least London is having to raise at least half of the cost, which tbf, seeing as it entirely benefits Londoners, seems fair. However, now they do that, when Boston campaigns for its relief road, and is told it must rise half the cost too, we're basically screwed. This sort of thing happens regularly, with councils having to get the begging bowl out for local business to contribute and invest. Easy to do in the south east, not so simple elsewhere.

A lot of our infrastructure projects could be tackled if it wasn't for HS2 hoovering up such an obscene amount of cash. It needs to be scrapped.

Agree entirely, I use the HS2 route from time to time, and it is already a great service. I leave home in Cumbria at about 7.15am and can be in our office daaaaaaaaahn The Strand, 'avin a knees-up with Mother Brown, before 11. I have no idea how 20 minutes off that is worth £800squillion. But we apparently can't afford electrification to Windermere, which probably wouldn't even cost the PR budget for HS2.

I'm actually generally supportive of HS2; more capacity is desperately needed and about 25% of the £60bn is actually contingency funding, so hopefully actual costs should be lower. Everyone forgets that they spent £15bn on the West Coast upgrade to get only 10% more capacity, when passenger numbers pretty much doubled in the same period; we simply can't squeeze much more out of existing routes. But it needs to be done in addition to local rail improvements NOT instead of.

I personally think they should have started with the northern triangle (Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield+Leeds), before building the connection to London, as it would have given the biggest improvements first. Unfortunately phase 1 is too far along, so better to press on and get into phase 2 ASAP.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I have some sympathy with your view, though I can find arguments in favour of the licence fee. However, whatever we think about it, the country has much bigger fish to fry this Parliament.

Political news today:

Second round of Brexit talks ends with David Davis bright and breezy, Barnier less chipper.
Sir Vince Cable becomes head of the LDP and says he wants to position the party in the political centre ground.
Significant increase in crime as police numbers drop to the lowest since 1985.
"Grade inflation" in the number of first class degrees awarded by UK universities.

Apologies for reacting to old news, and I would have posted my reply sooner, but I'm just back from my holidays.

I'll spare people my usual rant, and save my blood pressure from hitting the roof.

I've been shot down in flames before for saying that criminal gangs are roaming the streets with impunity, that the British public is cowed and fearful of crime, and that our prisons and judiciary are at breaking point.

But here it is at last. Proof in black and white that crime is spiralling out of control. The stats and figures back me up! Sadly, I've been proved right on this

Those crime figures make for grim reading, but who the feth is going to do anything about it?

The country IS going to the dogs!

You weren't shot down for the argument you were making, you were shot down because you backed your argument up with three newspaper articles about isolated incidents. I'll also note that you're now totally OK with the eggheads when they agree with you.

Further, an increase in crime still isn't the same as backing up the claims you just made, that the British public is "cowed and fearful of crime" or that your judiciary is at "breaking point"

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I have some sympathy with your view, though I can find arguments in favour of the licence fee. However, whatever we think about it, the country has much bigger fish to fry this Parliament.

Political news today:

Second round of Brexit talks ends with David Davis bright and breezy, Barnier less chipper.
Sir Vince Cable becomes head of the LDP and says he wants to position the party in the political centre ground.
Significant increase in crime as police numbers drop to the lowest since 1985.
"Grade inflation" in the number of first class degrees awarded by UK universities.

Apologies for reacting to old news, and I would have posted my reply sooner, but I'm just back from my holidays.

I'll spare people my usual rant, and save my blood pressure from hitting the roof.

I've been shot down in flames before for saying that criminal gangs are roaming the streets with impunity, that the British public is cowed and fearful of crime, and that our prisons and judiciary are at breaking point.

But here it is at last. Proof in black and white that crime is spiralling out of control. The stats and figures back me up! Sadly, I've been proved right on this

Those crime figures make for grim reading, but who the feth is going to do anything about it?

The country IS going to the dogs!

You weren't shot down for the argument you were making, you were shot down because you backed your argument up with three newspaper articles about isolated incidents. I'll also note that you're now totally OK with the eggheads when they agree with you.

Further, an increase in crime still isn't the same as backing up the claims you just made, that the British public is "cowed and fearful of crime" or that your judiciary is at "breaking point"

When the facts change, I change my opinion, as somebody once said. Yes, you were right to criticise me for focusing on local crime, but we now have hard facts to back up the viewpoint that national crime is on the rise.

You can't argue with hard facts

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Further, an increase in crime still isn't the same as backing up the claims you just made, that the British public is "cowed and fearful of crime" or that your judiciary is at "breaking point"

When the facts change, I change my opinion, as somebody once said. Yes, you were right to criticise me for focusing on local crime, but we now have hard facts to back up the viewpoint that national crime is on the rise.

You can't argue with hard facts

You can certainly argue with the conclusions drawn from them (e.g whether people are 'cowed and fearful' or the whether the judiciary is at 'breaking point'), though, and statistics and facts aren't necesarily the same thing: although crime figures have risen, and most voices concede that it is in part representative of a genuine increase in the occurence of certain crimes, the majority of the statistical increase is in fact down to recording.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I have some sympathy with your view, though I can find arguments in favour of the licence fee. However, whatever we think about it, the country has much bigger fish to fry this Parliament.

Political news today:

Second round of Brexit talks ends with David Davis bright and breezy, Barnier less chipper.
Sir Vince Cable becomes head of the LDP and says he wants to position the party in the political centre ground.
Significant increase in crime as police numbers drop to the lowest since 1985.
"Grade inflation" in the number of first class degrees awarded by UK universities.

Apologies for reacting to old news, and I would have posted my reply sooner, but I'm just back from my holidays.

I'll spare people my usual rant, and save my blood pressure from hitting the roof.

I've been shot down in flames before for saying that criminal gangs are roaming the streets with impunity, that the British public is cowed and fearful of crime, and that our prisons and judiciary are at breaking point.

But here it is at last. Proof in black and white that crime is spiralling out of control. The stats and figures back me up! Sadly, I've been proved right on this

Those crime figures make for grim reading, but who the feth is going to do anything about it?

The country IS going to the dogs!

You weren't shot down for the argument you were making, you were shot down because you backed your argument up with three newspaper articles about isolated incidents. I'll also note that you're now totally OK with the eggheads when they agree with you.

Further, an increase in crime still isn't the same as backing up the claims you just made, that the British public is "cowed and fearful of crime" or that your judiciary is at "breaking point"

When the facts change, I change my opinion, as somebody once said. Yes, you were right to criticise me for focusing on local crime, but we now have hard facts to back up the viewpoint that national crime is on the rise.

You can't argue with hard facts

You're still sidestepping the fact that a crime rise doesn't have to mean that the British public is "cowering". Further, your "hard facts" are anything but "hard". For all we know reporting might have gone up while actual crime has remained constant. We know there has been an increase in the amount of reported crimes, but we don't know the cause.

You've now first tried to use local newspaper stories as proof of national trends and then tried to draw conclusions from data that just isn't supported by the data. Stop. Get your game together and make a proper argument. We usually don't agree, but you're usually a lot better than this.

 welshhoppo wrote:

Besides HS2 is very important, people need to leave Birmingham as quickly as possible!

In all seriousness, I dunno. I don't really feel qualified to comment on the whole HS2 thing. It seems one of those complicated subjects with lots of nuance and after effects and reprecussions, good and otherwise to fairly fit into a Newspaper headline or soundbite.

Is it true that HS2 will force the demolition of newly built houses? If so, that's just stupid.

No idea with HS2.

It just sounds like a pile of mess. But we probably can't pack up and move on.

High speed trains do sound fun, they'll looks amazing as they trundle along and I watch from my motorcycle.


As the way things are going, I won't be able to afford a ticket before long. Its cheaper for me to drive to Cardiff and back than it is to get a return trip, and my bike isn't exactly the most fuel efficient of machine.

I went to a lecture on future rail development in the UK a fair few years ago, when they were just starting to develop the plans for HS2; the lecturer put up a map of the UK with every conservation area, area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest, etc. etc. There is nowhere in the country you can build anything without hitting something.

His point was, we had two options; pick a route and provide compensation to everyone on it or delay the project several years and spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a public inquiry, which would then pick a route and provide compensation to everyone on it. Guess which option we choose

Knowing this country I would say we tried both simultaneously and simultaneously failed at doing either.

 r_squared wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
...I'm generally of the view that state pensions should be means tested. It seems unreasonable that someone on a £50k pension should still be entitled to the same state pension as someone that has no private pension. I also think the state pension is ludicrously low for those that have no other income. My view is that the basic pension would rise to match the minimum wage (lets say £12000) but that the state only supports paying it to top up a private pension up to a certain point (lets say £18,000 as an example). As such if you have a private pension of £12000 you'd be entitled to a state pension of £6000. I also think you should roll all the remaining benefits into this as well. So free bus passes, winter allowance, TV licence and so on should all be incorporated into an aggregated amount. The principle is that those on low incomes get the support they need, those that don't need it don't have that same support as they don't need it.

I agree with Kilkrazy, if you've earned it, you should keep it. It would be galling in the extreme for someone who has worked hard to put in £2-400 a month into a private pension for decades to receive a much reduced, or removed State pension which puts them on the same level of pension income as someone who didn't, or couldn't, save that amount each month.
As it is many people factor in their State pension entitlement when calculating how much to pay into their private pension, and the overwhelming majority of people that would be affected by this would be normal working Joes.
Ive heard that many of the wealthy refuse their state pension entitlement anyway. Don't know how true that is, but I can imagine that many wouldn't even notice £150 a week.

The problem here is where does that stop? I think we get too hung up on NI contributions go towards pensions etc but it doesn't really. It's just a type of tax that goes into one big pot and then gets spent as the Government of the day determines is best (in theory at least) for the populace. You could (and really should) get rid of NI and just introduce one tax (there would probably be savings in introducing that straight away as you can get rid of the machinery managing it). The NI you pay today goes towards supporting todays pensioners, it does not get put away by the government into an investment fund so we can get a pension tomorrow (which in theory happens with your private pension). If you consider it a tax to support society then why should you not be entitled to job seekers allowance or income support etc etc as you are paying into these systems as is. However simply our pension system is barely affordable now and will not be tomorrow (and even more so if we cut back on immigration to tens of thousands. One option is to raise the pension age. This adversely impacts the poorest as they have to work longer because they cannot support a private pension to keep them comfortable. The wealthy still pay partially because they retire early and take a hit on their private pension, but overall it's an inconvenience not a disaster. The poorest cannot do this. You then end up encouraging a two tier system. The poorest work until they die after they wear out and the wealthy get to retire (and likely because of the wealth) live longer.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jadenim wrote:
I went to a lecture on future rail development in the UK a fair few years ago, when they were just starting to develop the plans for HS2; the lecturer put up a map of the UK with every conservation area, area of outstanding natural beauty, site of special scientific interest, etc. etc. There is nowhere in the country you can build anything without hitting something.

His point was, we had two options; pick a route and provide compensation to everyone on it or delay the project several years and spend hundreds of millions of pounds on a public inquiry, which would then pick a route and provide compensation to everyone on it. Guess which option we choose

That is only thinking two dimensionally though. You could design an underground line, that is say 1/5 - 1/4 of a mile down. Yes it's more expensive but you avoid all the hassle of public enquiries and compensation and there is limited environmental impact. You can then also connect it to existing hubs relatively easily. There's an assumption that rail lines have to go on the ground and it is limiting.

Rail professionals are also worried about the future of electrification of the network. Mainly because any future shortfalls in energy production will directly impact the running of services.

Ask many and the recent announcement that certain lines will run 'duel fuel' was met with a little relief.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jadenim wrote:
Friday; sorry, there's no money for regional railway improvements, but hey, at least you won't have to put up with all that pesky construction, digging holes, etc.

Monday; oh, but we have £30 BILLION for Crossrail 2, because London is sooo lacking in public transport infrastructure...

feth. Off.

Edit; spelling.

Crossrail is now at a point where the capacity it was to provide has now been negated- or will be in a few short years.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Rail professionals are also worried about the future of electrification of the network. Mainly because any future shortfalls in energy production will directly impact the running of services.

Ask many and the recent announcement that certain lines will run 'duel fuel' was met with a little relief.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jadenim wrote:
Friday; sorry, there's no money for regional railway improvements, but hey, at least you won't have to put up with all that pesky construction, digging holes, etc.

Monday; oh, but we have £30 BILLION for Crossrail 2, because London is sooo lacking in public transport infrastructure...

feth. Off.

Edit; spelling.

Crossrail is now at a point where the capacity it was to provide has now been negated- or will be in a few short years.

That's an inevitability of projects like these. Some bypasses don't happen because the models show that they can draw traffic to an area and actually make things worse than better after a relatively short period of time. Basically by introducing the bypass/improvement it encourages more people to use that option over others. That cycle then repeats as you introduce more infrastructure in a specific area. What you really want to do is ensure that there is less reason to all congregate in one area (e.g. London and the South East) as that results in less pressure on the area at over capacity and utilises better those areas which are under used in terms of capacity.

This is the same problem HS2 will face and Heathrow faces and so on. It will 'beautiful' for 5-10 years and then as it draws more and more people in to use it will be a cramped, smelly, hell hole for passengers and the same arguments will repeat all over again. That is why there is a lot of argument for expanding services elsewhere in the country because it avoids avoidable internal migration. It largely comes back to lack of long term planning by successive governments, they see a problem and try and treat the effect rather than the cause and by doing so they continue and exacerbate the long term problems.

Still with global warming accelerating London will be under water soon enough (hurrah...?) and HS2 will be akin to a log flume rather than anything useful.

A long time ago I proposed that London should be roofed over with a massive concrete shield to provide maximum possible capacity for the movement and parking of motor vehicles.

Although this plan was not adopted, it can logically be seen that transforming the entire city into road transport still does not provide unlimited capacity for expansion.

It follows that there is a limit to the expansion of transport infrastructure in any one region (even teleportation, as imagined in Larry Niven's "Flash Crowd" stories) so that other areas of the UK will need to be brought into consideration. About 2/3rds of the population of the UK lives outside the south-east.

One of the important criticisms of HS1 and HS2 is that the building of high speed lines to "the provinces" in various countries historically has tended to draw more traffic into the centre rather than share it out to the periphery.

Regional growth cannot be stimulated by such a strategy, and regional growth translates into national growth.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Rail professionals are also worried about the future of electrification of the network. Mainly because any future shortfalls in energy production will directly impact the running of services.

Simultaneously the government has announced a new energy technology initiative that takes advantage of the rapid development of small scale renewable energy (like solar panels on house roofs) to radically reduce the dependence of the UK on the national grid's major power stations (such as the not yet built Hinkley Point B reactor.) This naturally will release capacity for running major systems such as electric railways.

Sometimes I fething despair about our government's strategic planning ability. Actually, I fething despair quite a lot, and I don't think it's just my age.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You can tell the "silly season" has started...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40658560

How to holiday like a prime minister

Harold Wilson Scilly Isles blah blah, John Major Spain blah blah, Cameron Cornwall blah blah.

I'm off to Japan for 10 days on Friday. Two days of work to go!!

 Kilkrazy wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:
You can tell the "silly season" has started...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-40658560

How to holiday like a prime minister

Harold Wilson Scilly Isles blah blah, John Major Spain blah blah, Cameron Cornwall blah blah.

I'm off to Japan for 10 days on Friday. Two days of work to go!!

I suspect TM will be shortly to move from holidaying to this...

Building HS2 30 years ago would have made sense. Now, in this age of cheap flights, automated cars on the war, and high speed broadband? It's a white elephant in the making

They're saying that 16,000 jobs will be created from 100 billion of spending.

You could probably pay those 16,000 a million a year for life to never work again, and still have billions left over.

Er no. You could pay them a million a year for about 6 years.

Crispy78 wrote:
Er no. You could pay them a million a year for about 6 years.

True, but even giving those workers a one off lump sum of 1 million quid each would be cheaper as they could live off the interest.

Having done the calculations, my original claim was wrong, and I admit that now

but it would still be cheaper to pay these people the average national wage for life not to work and would damage the environment less.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Building HS2 30 years ago would have made sense. Now, in this age of cheap flights, automated cars on the war, and high speed broadband? It's a white elephant in the making

They're saying that 16,000 jobs will be created from 100 billion of spending.

You could probably pay those 16,000 a million a year for life to never work again, and still have billions left over.

If those 16000 people only live for 6 years then yeah. Otherwise no.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Building HS2 30 years ago would have made sense. Now, in this age of cheap flights, automated cars on the war, and high speed broadband? It's a white elephant in the making

They're saying that 16,000 jobs will be created from 100 billion of spending.

You could probably pay those 16,000 a million a year for life to never work again, and still have billions left over.

If those 16000 people only live for 6 years then yeah. Otherwise no.

I'm one step ahead because I backtracked earlier

Alright, so I'm revising my original figure of 1 million down somewhat

but even paying 16,000 people the average wage of 30 grand a year for life would be cheaper.

High speed rail up and down the country (i.e. not just to Birmingham) would have huge benefits for people above air travel (which to be fair, is awful).

Internal air travel is only so popular because it's the quickest option currently. But you've still got to get to the first airport ~2 hours early to get through security and wait for takeoff, and then you're easily 30-60 minutes from the city you're visiting. And you can carry very little stuff with you.

So whilst it's only a 90 minute flight from Edinburgh to London, the journey (centre to centre) is actually about 5 hours.
I can get a train from centre to centre from about 4 hours 22 minutes. I don't need to make 3 transfers, get groped by security or pay a fortune for food/drink, and can bring all my stuff with me.

The closer you get to London the better trains look.

We'd still need to shave 25-50% off the journey time (and 75% of the cost) before I can do day trips to London via train.

Trains (where electrified at least) are a lot better for the environment than planes too. So we should be throwing massive investment into rail.

Take Japan for example - you can get a train from pretty much anywhere to anywhere at any time, at speeds we can barely dream of.

I'm all for HS2, on the basis that we need to do something, and that it'll be followed up by HS3, 4 & 5.

We should probably get everything electrified first, though.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Building HS2 30 years ago would have made sense. Now, in this age of cheap flights, automated cars on the war, and high speed broadband? It's a white elephant in the making

They're saying that 16,000 jobs will be created from 100 billion of spending.

You could probably pay those 16,000 a million a year for life to never work again, and still have billions left over.

If those 16000 people only live for 6 years then yeah. Otherwise no.

I'm one step ahead because I backtracked earlier

Alright, so I'm revising my original figure of 1 million down somewhat

but even paying 16,000 people the average wage of 30 grand a year for life would be cheaper.

Your average wage is off by around £5,000.

Employment tribunal fees unlawful, Supreme Court rules

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40727400

This is a good thing, IMO.

I am glad too that the government has immediately acquiesced and will pay back the fees to the claimants.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Building HS2 30 years ago would have made sense. Now, in this age of cheap flights, automated cars on the war, and high speed broadband? It's a white elephant in the making

They're saying that 16,000 jobs will be created from 100 billion of spending.

You could probably pay those 16,000 a million a year for life to never work again, and still have billions left over.

If those 16000 people only live for 6 years then yeah. Otherwise no.

Depends on whether you take the budget or likely final cost...

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Employment tribunal fees unlawful, Supreme Court rules

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40727400

This is a good thing, IMO.

I am glad too that the government has immediately acquiesced and will pay back the fees to the claimants.

Definitely. Big thumbs up. The very idea is an absolute disgrace.

I would just like my grandchildren to have decent trains around Wales.


Like want to rreduce our carbon footprint? Build more trains!

If the train line in Belfast was better I'd never use anything else. When done right, trains are the best way to travel.

Just need to nationalise rail first.

I find it morally obscene that something like HS2 is having billions upon billions of public money spent on it, only to be handed over to a private company to juice it for as much profit as they can.

Decent public transport infrastructure is a must for any civilised country. It helps the workforce maximise it's potential, and spreads wealth further away from centralised locations.

Look at commuting to London. The prices are frankly obscene. If the rail company's profits take a dip, they jack up the price to cover the shortfall, because commuters rarely have a viable alternative to using the rail network. And they claim government subsidies, which seem to get rolled up in their profit margin. That's right. We're collectively paying them to rip us off.

It's an utter shambles.

Yeah, we shouldn't be paying them subsidies if they are making a profit, that's mental.

Subsidies to keep them afloat because they are providing a necessary service, but it'd be better to just let them fail (as it's obviously not a viable model privately) and then re-nationalize them.

But then I think everything you count as necessary (health, trains, roads, electricity, gas, water, sewage, police, fire brigade, prisons, postal service) should be state owned, if not state run. Especially if they are likely to also be a monopoly (like trains).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Just need to nationalise rail first.

I find it morally obscene that something like HS2 is having billions upon billions of public money spent on it, only to be handed over to a private company to juice it for as much profit as they can.

Decent public transport infrastructure is a must for any civilised country. It helps the workforce maximise it's potential, and spreads wealth further away from centralised locations.

Look at commuting to London. The prices are frankly obscene. If the rail company's profits take a dip, they jack up the price to cover the shortfall, because commuters rarely have a viable alternative to using the rail network. And they claim government subsidies, which seem to get rolled up in their profit margin. That's right. We're collectively paying them to rip us off.

It's an utter shambles.

We need to Brexit before we can take back the trains.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Herzlos wrote:
Yeah, we shouldn't be paying them subsidies if they are making a profit, that's mental.

Subsidies to keep them afloat because they are providing a necessary service, but it'd be better to just let them fail (as it's obviously not a viable model privately) and then re-nationalize them.

But then I think everything you count as necessary (health, trains, roads, electricity, gas, water, sewage, police, fire brigade, prisons, postal service) should be state owned, if not state run. Especially if they are likely to also be a monopoly (like trains).

Privatization of key utilities and services has to be one of the greatest acts of criminality ever inflicted on the British public.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 welshhoppo wrote:
I would just like my grandchildren to have decent trains around Wales.


Like want to rreduce our carbon footprint? Build more trains!

Your grand-children will probably be using jet packs and teleporters by then