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Sunak speaks like he is reading a story to a small child. And despite 13 years of Tory chaos he will tell us all its not his fault. 13 years !! As for HS2. What a complete and utter farce.
Still guess it’s an improvement on Cruella Braverman. She is full of poison.
“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously'
A large part of our problems are associated with planning delays, HSE and environmental issues and most costly is the need to tunnel and culvert a good deal of the route as a sop to Tory voters in counties along the HS2 route who dont want their views of the countryside affected..
SUnak has reannounced for the third or even fourth time something that was already pledged previously. Remember Northern Powerhouse? The East West infrastruture improvements for the north announced previously by George Osborne and Boris Johnson that have still not even started and which he has reannounced all over again? As for the £36bn "saved" from HS2 much of that money was included within the HS2 budget to build / rebuild stations at places like Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds that will now have to be funded out of that £36bn because we don't have the station capacity or the line capacity to actually run any extra trains between those cities. So the result of his great announcement is firstly to turn HS2 into a 150 mile version of the Waterloo and City Line, and secondly to spend a lot of the money on things that were going to be spent on anyway - only they'll be built with all the expensive 350kph track and signalling standards of the 21st century but with the slow train speeds no faster than when Jimmy Saville sat on an Inter City 125. What a great result. And to think Sunak bragged about long term infrastructure being safe in their hands, when he's just cancelled a project that Civil Engineering and construction companies have invested their own long term plans in and spend a fortune ordering equipment now no longer needed. Ask McAlpine and Balfour Beattie what they think about that and ask the young graduate engineers whose jobs have now shifted to places where High Speed Rail project are going full speed to completion - Saudi Arabia for example.
The only reason Sunak is seen as doing a steady job is because compared to the lies of Boris and economic illiteracy of Truss, he is Mr Boring.
On HS2 he sees a chance to kill several birds with one stone.
HS2 was first approved by a Labour Gov't in March 2010. Two months later they were out of office and it's been a Tory project for the last 13 years. To find int he last few weeks that the numbers don't add up, can be nothing less than the Tories taking their eye of the ball.
The money "saved" will be put toward Network North. In reality any rail project takes at least a year to plan and another to execute. So the alleged £36bn made available for Network North, makes a great soundbite but almost none if it will be committed or spent before the next election. This allows the Tories to "borrow" it to pay for tax bribes to us southerners in the hope that they keep the seats. I think they know that they face annihilation in the North so why spend money there.
The axing of the project will also anger the Boris faction (Priti Patel Rees-Mogg, Mad Nad, etc) and Sunal will be hoping that they show enough disloyalty to get themselves expelled from the Party.
It also appeals to the moderates in his party and once he fires Cruella (a truly despicable person with either some unsavoury views and/or who has no integrity and is willing to say things just to score political points), he has a bunch of yes men around him.
Finally why is Shapps (Minister of Transport for four years) missing in action when the transport engineering project of the century is canned for short term political gain. Spineless.
This is the same man that when he was chancellor was responsible for the now infamous “ eat out to to help out scheme “ which it is estimated resulted in Covid infections increasing by 17 percent.
He then appeared on a T V news stunt to take credit for not increasing fuel duty.To demonstrate how wonderful that decision was he had to borrow a petrol station employee’s car, didn’t even know how to use a petrol pump to fill it up or how to use a card to pay for the fuel he had struggled to put in it.
When Johnson was forced to resign he contested the leadership election and was second choice ( yes, second choice ) to Liz Truss who herself having increased everybody’s mortgage payments, ultimately lasted a shorter period of time as P M than a lettuce.
Today, whilst personally being happy to fly short distances in a helicopter he cancels the northern section of HS2. Then in the same speech he tells us that in the future someone born at 23.59 in December will in be able to buy cigarettes, however someone born two minutes later at 00.01 in January will be banned from doing so.
Is it any wonder that so many of his own MPs have already thrown in the towel and are seeking alternative employment in preference to having to face their voters at the next general election ?
HS2 extension would be cancelled by any sensible person seeing its costs and timings are out of control. The original justification for the project is no longer valid with travellers now able to work IT on trains.
That's a bloody stupid remark on what had been a reasonable post. If you don't know about a subject keep your mouth shut. Every contract was scrutinised and ridicuously over-audited by so many civil servants in so many different groups from the ORR to the NAO it led to some of the delays that contributed to the cost overruns.
it didn't need such scrutiny the money could have been spent far better elsewhere IE improving the overall rail network, plus oh i dunno education, NHS
I've worked on projects - huge sums of money involved - with Civil Servants and people from Network Rail (as it then was) and various other formerly state owned enterprises.
Meetings with officials could take hours because they turned up mob handed. After several meetings with such mobs, actually getting a decision was close to impossible. On one deal, my boss, frustrated at a lack of progress following months of talks, asked the Civil Servants in the room, what they did and why they were there.
Turns out that 12 of the 14 present were juniors or there to take notes for others. Of the two with some clout, one admitted that he was hoping the deal would not finish before he was due to retire three months later and the other admitted that he was not able to understand the finances and would have to rely on others.
That deal did close 6 months later but by then the cost of the kit had risen and so had interest rates. The endless circling back and double checking (an excuse to not make a decision) probably cost you and me - the taxpayer - £10m more than it should have done.
So yes, endless audit and checks but all designed to cover the backside of the Civil Service and all of it leading to higher cost.
The project justification included saving journey time so that business folk could be more productive. With the commonplace IT usage business is now frequently carried out online by phones or laptops face to face remotely but ‘in person’.
Politics is unfortunately always subject to cliche speak.
If your favourite political party tells its MPs and advisers to start using a particular phrase, then it quickly enters the public consciousness and becomes part of how we describe things.
"13 years of Tory chaos". Search Hansard. I think this has been said more then 100 times by Labour and opposition parties in Parliament.
It's become - as noted - trite and meaningless.
The reality is that we only really judge political parties on the last few months plus "highlights" from the past. We remember for example Brexit and Cameron bailing in a tantrum. We remember Corbyn being kicked out. Otherwise we're left with an impression but lose sight of the details.
It's the uniparty, there is no substantial difference between any of them, they all follow orders from above. Pick any colour you like, it won't make a difference anymore.
Sunak is just a WEF poster boy parachuted in, much like the equally vacuous Macron or Trudeau.
All diversionary stuff to keep us arguing amongst ourselves.
I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to the death your right to say it.
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