More than a century ago, British engineers and their African and Indian labourers spent five years carving a railway through what would become Kenya in a bid to open up East Africa’s interior.
Not everyone was convinced and the radical MP Henry Labouchere denounced it memorably:
“Where it is going, nobody knows, what is the use of it, none can conjecture … It is clearly naught but a lunatic line.”
When the HS2 train was first announced it seemed that the BBC were all in favour if it….perhaps the thought of keeping their London pads whilst commuting up to Salford swayed their initial opinions.
Of late I get the impression that they take a more measured approach to the scheme, if anything a more sceptical tone overall.
It would be nice to have some figures though and some deeper analysis of the costs and benefits of HS2…for instance I have heard a lot recently about the government’s new claim that the train will bring in £15 billion per year…and will pay for itself in no time at all.
What’s missing is any scrutiny of those claims….at least when I’ve been listening…just how do those figures stand up to close inspection? The BBC is keen to ‘do the maths’ when it feels the need….say over immigration or crime stats.
On such a controversial and highly expensive project, in an industry renowned for never making a profit and high public subsidies even though privatised, I would expect a far more rigorous and detailed approach from the BBC.
Just for some light enterainment here is a story from the Telegraph about the last ‘Lunatic Express’ built by Britain in Africa (and of course ‘massively over budget’) and now being rebuilt by China for £3.2 billion….and that includes the price of a couple of hydro-electric schemes and other infrastructure development projects:
China moves in to rebuild Kenya’s lunatic line
The Chinese are exploiting the rift between Britain and Kenya to revamp a delapidated colonial railway nework, reports Mike Pflanz
‘be nice to have some figures though and some deeper analysis of the costs and benefits of HS2’
As mentioned, the BBC does seem to delve deep when it suits, and goes very vague when it does not.
Hence the belief sets of the Huhnatic or Davey or a ‘Pede on, say, wind power deliverables, still seem BBC-preferred gospel to any silly numbers from actual engineers.
You are all missing the point. The UK has been required to build HS2 because it is all part of the EU’s great and glorious plan for a pan Europe high speed rail network.
Like much of the legislation being adopted by the UK it results from EU Directives some of which (horror of horrors) arise from UN orders.
So much for independence.
…well said, nobody has mentioned this in any media.
A bit like the Post Office privatisation, no one recently has mentioned that this is the result of an EU directive. Unlike Norway, we have to comply, they told the EU to get lost.
Same applies to NHS privatisation. Resulting from EU competition directives, so that foreign corporations can own NHS functions.
The details of the Interoperability (a good EU giveaway of a word) of the Trans-European High Speed Rail Network. The intended routes, including those planned for Britain, are already laid out in rough if not in detail and are intended to go as far north as the Central Belt in Scotland and links to Liverpool and Bristol.
Our Governments have form for hiding the fact that they are simply Obeying Orders from Brussels by simply failing to mention the fact and giving us the impression they are the originators.
HS2 is part of a greater system called the Trans European Transport Network (TEN-T) which also includes a Trans-European Road Network with main routes having “E” numbers. There are many “E” designated roads in Britain, totally unconnected with our road numbering, which has been hidden from us by simply failing to road sign them. Brussels wants that system to be funded by Road Tolls (where have we suddenly heard about them recently? And yes, that Toll Road, on the A14 is part of an “E” route) which will be under the control of the EU, as is their norm.
With the High Speed Rail Network the costs will be born by individual countries, regardless of whether they are viable or not or make economic sense, simply because they are demanded as part of the Grand European Unification Project.
For my money all HS2 will do is enable even more of the national economy and business to be centralised in the London and the South East, damaging the economy of the rest of Britain even further, as commuting to London from further afield will be even faster and more readily accessible for business commuters.
If there is any economic benefit it will not be for Britain but only for London and the South East, which already has by far the lion’s share of the British economy concentrate there.
People might be surprised to know that when they think they are driving on the M62 from Liverpool towards Hull, they are actually driving on a section of the E20 motorway that runs from Shannon airport in Ireland all the way through to St Petersburg in Russia (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_route_E20 for an overview). The deeper you go in the hole, the stranger it gets…
‘When the HS2 train was first announced it seemed that the BBC were all in favour if it….Of late I get the impression that they take a more measured approach to the scheme’
Unsubstantiated nonsense. Completely down to your own perception, and unsubstantiated by any evidence. How does the whole of the BBC’s output, actually just the bits you’ve caught, move from one position to the next so seamlessly?
‘Unsubstantiated nonsense. Completely down to your own perception, and unsubstantiated by any evidence.’
Well, opinion does form a fair part of forum exchange.
Thing is, yours seems to be an opinion too, based on nothing different. Yet you appear more stridently convinced based on your belief that you are correct enough to make a less than courteous counter assertion anyway.
A bit like most BBC output.
Yes, I am correct. I usually find that I am.
You must be getting paid well to respond to all my posts. Are you on overtime?
Perhaps you have an explanation of how the BBC, broadcasting 24hrs a day, on the news channel, Radio 4, online etc etc by lots of different journalists/presenters including through independent production companies, changes its position on the HS2 of all things , and this is noticable to Alan? Are they targetting just him with their broadcasts now?
Opinon sure. But it’s worthless if its doesn’t have a single fact to back it up.
” by lots of different journalists/presenters including through independent production companies,”
All of whom went the same universities doing the same humanities courses, use the same restaurants in the same bourgeois ,income gated , enclaves .
And receive their theological guidance from the same pontificating periodical. That’s how they all come to have the same common purpose.
You should no that
Yes, I am correct. I usually find that I am
If you say so.
Though facts to back this assertion up would help confirm it.
You must be getting paid well to respond to all my posts. Are you on overtime?
Not paid. This is a site I enjoy surfing and contributing to, which I do morning to evening at work and at home during breaks.
Especially as it informs and serves a cause I find worthy.
So a personal commitment I’m happy to make.
Your contributions seem to lack facts, URLs or anything save attempts to distract or denigrate.
And if I post a lot in response, trolling trolls as it were (making the whinges even funnier), it seems you have a lot of time too to do these things in such a role.
If not money, what then is your motivation?
If defending the BBC, the manner you choose is not an association one might imagine the BBC can be pleased to have.
Unsubstantiated?
Perhaps the free rein that the BBC have given to HS2 opponents this week; during a Gameshow phone in and following McLoughlin’s midweek announcement.
Gameshow’s invited guests included objectors and the IEA, authors of a much criticised report claiming (dishonestly) inflated costs for HS2 – they had added into the cost of HS2 things that had nothing to do with it or were not part of the project, like Crossrail 3 in London and a link to Liverpool – they also double counted things that were already budgeted for in other schemes, like the tram link to Manchester airport and electrification of the railways in the North.
The Derbyshire show has two people debating McLoughlin’s announcement – both of them opponents. While Gameshow had someone on from the Manchester Chamber there was no one on either show from HS2, or the DfT or the government to counter the argument.
No balance there, then. But it’s not just me that’s noticed the shift in the BBC’s position. People in the rail industry, and respected commentators, naiive in their rose tinted view of the BBC and its integrity, have been taken aback by the BBCs unbalanced unchallenging coverage.
One said that the IEA’s dishonest claims were represented by the BBC as fact and that the problem is that most people trust the BBC so when they say something, people believe it, and then others, like Sky, chip in. These are people, not enthusiasts or vested interest groups. They are people who are suddenly waking up to find that the BBC is not the organisation that they once trusted and believed in.
My own suspicion is that Labour, seeing an electoral advantage will pull the plug on HS2, opportunistically leaving the Tories high and dry (a la Syria), and that the BBC are aligning themselves and playing their part in this.
This site isn’t about the merits of HS2 or otherwise, it’s about BBC bias. The BBC in it unbalanced coverage seems to be taking a position on yet another issue – one that it is not entitled to do.
Well, that’s a bit more like it. Maybe you should be doing the authoring and not Alan?
Now, gimme a date of these programmes, an iPlayer link would be even better and we have a discussion!
Any evidence of the views of these people in the rail industry too would be helpful.
I’m not disagreeing with you, just think Alan is crap.
I’m always interested to hear someone say the BBC has repesented something as fact. It usually means an interviewee has stated it, and if it wasn’t challenged then its represented as fact.
HS2 came into being when Labour transport minister Lord Adonis marched into the ministry and boomed that Britain needed a high speed rail network and so it came to pass that the reasons and justifications were found to support one.
Many people will recognise that this is the wrong way around and it should be that the figures lead us to the conclusion that something needs to be done and the solution to it.
The people pushing the HS2 are nearly all self interest groups such as contractors who stand to gain contracts for construction, materials, etc etc, plus a slew of lobbyists, working to put their masters cases.
So we are told there is a case because of capacity, but this figure has been derived by continuing growth at the same percentage rate for 20 years ! This is of course almost a impossible achievement, with exponential growth needed, and there is already evidence it isn’t going to happen. So no capacity issues.
Then there is the assumption that every traveller on the train is a business person, and that each one of them does no work at all. A value is then ascribed to the ‘lost’ hours and the time saved multiplied by the number of passengers, and the ascribed amount to arrive at the amount it would ‘add’ to the economy.
That’s just two examples of the trickery being employed to make the case for this white elephant.
I wonder when someone will get around to working out just how much extra energy is required to double the speed? I’m told it needs 8 times as much power, and I bet you can’t guess whose going to pay for that? Well it’s you & me, and we will have to pay the carbon tax on the generation of the power and yet another levy on the Gas & Electric.
Now I bet you didn’t know that !
HS 2 really splits opinion.
There is a basic problem. Railways do not pay. They cost taxpayers money and I doubt HS2 will be any different.
The VIctorians made railways pay .In some cases very profitably indeed- the Barry Railway in South Wales for one.
But times and technology changed and they now do not pay.
Probably they never will.
So all the cost analysis for HS2 is so much wasted effort.
In the end we will be persuaded perhaps because it wil help the North and Scotland. Again emotion over reality. Which is how we are governed these days.
A brief aside to those who complain about the “unfair” treatment of roads. Roads benefit everybody and are essential to life in this country. Some of them are still in the same place they were centuries ago and still providing the same links.
I like and spend a great deal of time with railways but I recognise the problems of cost and subsidy and just how they differ from roads.
How is it going to help the North & Scotland when it’s only going to run to Manchester & Leeds?
Phase one goes to Birmingham, Phase 2 to Manchester & Leeds, but as yet there are no plans to go any further than this.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if ‘Conspiracy Theory Central’ and ‘the men in white coats’ are the same person. There appears to be no difference in the way they type, the phrases they use, or the frequency of their outputs. Not that I don’t believe for a second that there aren’t many, many other people as deluded as them that could post similar drivel, but it seems like a hell of a coincidence that they happen to be almost identical.
I’m going to say something unusual – I don’t actually know whether HS2 is a good idea or not. I don’t know what to believe because, as usual, I don’t recall seeing a first class, informed debate on the BBC (or anywhere else).
I am prepared to believe that we need more capacity, but the cost of a high speed solution will be massive. Have other options been really considered? Many countries seem to like double decker trains. What would be the cost of widening and raising bridges? Is the extra time needed to get on/get off a significant factor? Would more sophisticated signalling allow trains to run closer together at a lower cost?
As for the impact on the North, I can see that better access to London might benefit London. Being from the North, I’m well aware that part of the problem is attitude, and better links to London will make it easier for the highly motivated to make their money elsewhere. However, that sounds like an argument for cutting off the North for its own good.
Spending tens of billions in a small, overcrowded country with a huge existing debt based, apparently, on conflicting evidence, sounds like one of those bad decisions that will go down in history, like the Bristol Brabazon. However, I’m also mindful that this country seems to have lost the courage it once had and dithering seems to be a national characteristic.
I just don’t know.
“I just don’t know” but then again who does?
The problem with the BBC’s ideologically driven reporting of this and most other issues is that it stifles any real debate. And there is one to be had about the future shape of transport in this country and more specifically the building of new railways ,what their for (passenger or freight) where they go and how they go their. None of this will be possible while we have dominating state broadcaster that sees every issue in terms only relating to its own pseudo-theology
Unlike the man in the straight jacket above , I don’t believe the BBC’s change in position has been seamless. My perception (and what other evidence is there of a broadcasters message?) is that it was a very sudden change in tone ,as if by dictate from INGSOC. (Perhaps tory bashing trumps green drum beating, how will we ever know). But whatever the cause the fact remains that the BBC has again shut down debate, Now HS2 is an expensive vanity project end of story.
P.S. Dave S. some railways could be made to pay, but they would have to be run very differently. And that’s another debate we wont have
Alan I to have noticed the Beeb uncertainty on HS2. Normally this is something they would be all over. An old fashioned Keynesian waste of money (sorry boost to the economy) that originated with Labour which even goes “up North” so will help us flat capped types take our whippets down to London town in no time at all. To start with that did seem to be the tone of the reporting and they were willing to forget that the Tories were behind it.
However the groundswell of public opposition to this massive waste of money seems to have taken the political elite and as a result the MSM by surprise. Now reporting from not just the Beeb but the MSM seems to be all over the place. “Reporting” these days seems to consist of repeating what ever was in the latest pro or anti HS2 report. Some kind of analysis is desperately needed but you have to realise the MSM just can’t do that any more. If you want analysis these days you go online.