But out there on the right, the slew of Astroturf lobby groups whispering into the ear of gullible politicians - and they don’t come much more gullible than Sunak - keep on telling the PM that the project is somehow “unaffordable”, with the result that the Tories are briefing the economically illiterate excuse that proceeding with HS2 would leave “no money for anything else”.
Leaving aside for a moment John Maynard Keynes’ observation that “anything we can actually do we can afford”, something that is especially true when a Government is in charge of its own currency, it is high time that the economic, factual and technical illiteracy of the anti-HS2 cabal were analysed and exposed. Because this convocation of illiteracy is what informs Sunak.
We could see the convocation hard at work in the activities of the TPA, IEA and ASI (see Zelo Street passim). We can see it in the obedient recycling of the “no money for anything else” idiocy by those at the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph today. And we can see it in the Tel’s support act, the punditry of the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine.
Those who look in regularly on Zelo Street may recall a historically, technically and indeed factually illiterate offering from one Ross Clark trailed with the claim “There is a far better option than HS2 - and it already exists”. Clark had become fixated on the long-closed Great Central main line.
So what was his schtick? This is a selection of what Clark has written, with my corrections. “The alternative is the little-known Great Central Railway [it’s known to everyone in the rail industry, because know-nothing hacks are forever citing it as an HS2 alternative]. This ready-made high speed line [it was engineered for 75mph] takes almost exactly the same route between London and the Midlands as HS2 would [no it doesn’t].” There is more.
And it got worse. “The Great Central was one of the many casualties of the Beeching closures of the 1960s [mainly wrong - the run down of the GC began in 1958, five years before the Beeching Report], yet it remains almost totally intact [totally wrong]. A few agricultural buildings have been built across it, but otherwise its line remains clear [by ‘A few agricultural buildings’ he means ‘most of Nottingham city centre’]”. Illiterate is putting it mildly.
Now, Clark is back, and the level of ignorance is off the scale. He talks of “the link between Manchester and the North West Coast mainline”. Who is this “North West Coast mainline”? If he means the West Coast Main Line, perhaps he should say so. He is also shaky on when HS2 started.
“By the time that Johnson approved the project in early 2020”. Let’s consult the Wiki entry. “In January 2012, the Secretary of State for Transport announced that HS2 would go ahead in two phases”. Perhaps Clark means “Construction on the line began in 2020”, but that is not the same thing. And then he digs up the Great Central again. Sort of.
“Between London and Rugby the project could have used the existing, disused trackbed of the Grand Central line, the last of the great trunk routes to be built at the turn of the 20th century, but which fell victim to the Beeching cuts”. Who is this “Grand Central line”? And on that note, I have questions.
One, how do you get from Rugby into Birmingham along a double track line which is already at capacity? Two, how do you get from the Great Central into London, other than using London Underground’s Metropolitan Line (no way), or the Chiltern Line, which is, once more, already at capacity?
Because that is how the GC got into London. But enough: this is the kind of idiocy informing the Government. It’s the kind of idiocy that brought us Brexit. The idiocy that says the UK should leave the ECHR. The idiocy that feeds culture wars and all the hate that comes with them. The idiocy that treats everything as some kind of jolly game. The idiocy that is trashing the country.
And if Sunak listens to the idiocy again, it will trash the country a little more.
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5 comments:
Enough money for Crossrail. But not for HS2.
No surprise there then.
Should never have went ahead anyway.
How is it railroads in South America of far greater length than the 220 or so miles from londinium to Manchester can be built at a fraction of the cost of HS2 and over far more difficult terrain?
And why wasn't maglev considered?
Maglev might have been considered for about ten seconds, but sensibly ignored - it has been the transport of the future for at least 50 years but apart from the Shanghai Airport link and a test track in Japan nobody has built one.Too dear, too complicated, and too inflexible.
Yes, because they've been dead sensible about the conventionally-tracked and inexpensive HS2 haven't they?
I mean, it's only costing a couple of £billion per mile...up to now.
When it comes to rail infrastructure, services and investment, the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom) is decades behind the rest of Europe and getting further behind all the time. This is a problem with origins dating back to the 1950s and 1960s (when the disastrous Beeching Axe was wielded). Instead of investing in modern electric locomotives and electrification, the British Railways Board decided to buy hundreds of steam locomotives. Instead of electrifying the majority of the network, only some major routes were updated, e.g. East and West Coast Main Lines. The Great Western has been electrified as far as Cardiff, bypassing Bath and Bristol Temple Meads and ignoring Swansea (courtesy of Failing Grayling).
Therein lies the problem: rail has played second fiddle to the roads on this backward island.
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