HS2 under review

[runs as required]

I haven't dropped into this thread for a long time but I was surprised to find it is now about about Brexit in or out implications at a macro-level - with disagreements about the validity of EU research documents.

Can  I ask a simple question about research by the ERG group?

Has anyone ever seen any list of credible research publications from them on any aspect of Brexit? Their only raison d'etre seems to capture the media to discrediit other bodies' research findings. 

 

When I was an academic it was the bane of my life to maintain my list of  peer- reviewed research publications annually upgraded against time-consuming project based teaching. It was the only basis on which one could secure funding for further research and projects as vehicles for teaching.

dhmv

[Mark Saunders]

1 hour ago, runs as required said:

I haven't dropped into this thread for a long time but I was surprised to find it is now about about Brexit in or out implications at a macro-level - with disagreements about the validity of EU research documents.

Can  I ask a simple question about research by the ERG group?

Has anyone ever seen any list of credible research publications from them on any aspect of Brexit? Their only raison d'etre seems to capture the media to discrediit other bodies' research findings. 

 

When I was an academic it was the bane of my life to maintain my list of  peer- reviewed research publications annually upgraded against time-consuming project based teaching. It was the only basis on which one could secure funding for further research and projects as vehicles for teaching.

dhmv

 

My personal thoughts are the word Research is an oxymoron rather like Democratic in several countries names!

[Dava]

1 hour ago, runs as required said:

I haven't dropped into this thread for a long time but I was surprised to find it is now about about Brexit in or out implications at a macro-level - with disagreements about the validity of EU research documents.

Can  I ask a simple question about research by the ERG group?

Has anyone ever seen any list of credible research publications from them on any aspect of Brexit? Their only raison d'etre seems to capture the media to discrediit other bodies' research findings. 

 

When I was an academic it was the bane of my life to maintain my list of  peer- reviewed research publications annually upgraded against time-consuming project based teaching. It was the only basis on which one could secure funding for further research and projects as vehicles for teaching.

dhmv

 

The ERG is a caucus, it doe not produce publicly available research of any kind. Here is an extract from the Wikipedia entry which is a fair summary.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Group

 

"ERG subscriptions are taxpayer funded through Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA)-funded pooled service within the formal IPSA Scheme of MPs' Business Costs and Expenses and is one of two such publicly funded pooled services maintained for Conservative MPs.

The ERG has drawn criticism for its lack of transparency regarding its use of public funds to carry out research. A 2017 report by openDemocracy found that more than a quarter of a million pounds had been claimed through MPs' official expenses since 2010, after which Labour MPs called for an inquiry to be carried out by the IPSA into the group's practices.[80] OpenDemocracy's September 2017 report commenced:
Taxpayers’ money is being used to fund an influential group of hard-line pro-Brexit Conservative MPs who are increasingly operating as a "party-within-a-party".[81]

In July 2019, a tribunal declared that the ERG's research must be made public.[82]

The ERG has also been funded by a secretive group called the Constitutional Research Council.[83]"

 

[runs as required]

1 hour ago, Mark Saunders said:

My personal thoughts are the word Research is an oxymoron rather like Democratic in several countries names!

Quite !

I worked in an Architecture/Planning/Civil Engineering consultancy in Tanzania at the time of Idi Amin's reign of terror in neighbouring Uganda.

The "State Research Bureau" was the name of his feared execution squad.

Their ever more horrific methods of dispatch without expenditure on ammunition were not kept secret but widely disseminated by local and international news media. 

dh

[locoholic]

10 hours ago, Mark Saunders said:

 

My personal thoughts are the word Research is an oxymoron rather like Democratic in several countries names!

Strictly speaking, one word cannot be an oxymoron, as it can't contradict itself. 

 

Back on topic, I'm guessing the latest anti-HS2 blast by fictional comedy journalist Jonathan Pie and Chris Packham will get people on here very hot under the collar. It even makes me wince, and I'm no fan of HS2, and that's without considering all the swearing. It is quite literally "fake news".

 

 

[Joseph_Pestell]

14 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Correct but wrong...

 

internet based jobs are increasingly overseas, where you can get IT resources for a 1/10th the cost of the UK.. when I say resources, thats not just people, but land, access to power & climate... Building a £300mn IT facility in the UK gets you 2 or 3 in other places and much cheaper to run them, in turn providing support skills and industries closer to them.

 

Their are pockets of IT technology in the UK,but new IT (especially cloud)  doesnt require travel in any great volumes like the days of consultants, hardware, installers, training etc... IT itself has moved on, an AI / Machine Learning / Cloud are the future, and these things aren't hosted in the UK anywhere close to volumes that traditional IT is today.

 

Indeed if you read the US/UK proposed trade deal, the US wants freedom to retain data & access to it, from within the US entity, which means many IT facilities and personnel will no longer be required here, but doesn't necessarily mean in the US either.. it just means they are freed of constraints to planning infrastructure in the UK..which since 2000 has supported 100k’s of jobs and bn’s of £, especially software industries with it.

 

i’m not sure our elected leaders understand this (especially as the industry isn't very “green”), and exporting IT permanently from the UK to Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich and Frankfurt has been one of the largest IT project management contract recruiting areas in an otherwise over capacity IT market in the UK already in the last 2 years, but the new technology investments replacing it, are not being set up in the UK, which means those new skills aren't either.

 

How does this make relevence to HS2...

it doesnt.. because one of the largest markets for HS2 businesses, higher paid industries like (IT/Finance/Legal) , will most likely have greatly reduced need of it in the future... through permanent export, reduced domestic presence, and new technology that doesn't require significant travel using over seas skillsets, unlike today.

 

 

 

You make some good points here but are not perhaps drawing all the right conclusions. And which of us can claim to have much idea of what the world will look like in 50 years time as technological change gets ever quicker?

 

One can indeed outsource many standard IT functions abroad. But this is not the major part of most businesses. The really skilled stuff, not just IT but engineering, product design, etc., needs to remain onshore. Firms that have tried going totally overseas are often bringing back many of the more difficult jobs.

[rockershovel]

On 30/07/2019 at 18:03, Mike Storey said:

 

This is your interpretation, but there is a very different one, which contradicts much of what you propose as "fact". But this is not the forum to debate it.

 

Let's just say two things:

 

a) A Franco-German axis does not exist. They disagree over most things. What each fears, as do many other countries, is that Britain was the only serious counter-balance to both of them. But that may be about to end.

 

b) Federalism across the EU has got precisely nowhere.

 

 

Well, quite so. France and Germany really have very little in common, as the period 1790-1945 demonstrates abundantly. The very core of the nascent EU was founded upon the countering of the core problem of 1870-1939, the separation of the Lorraine/Alsace region, Ruhr and Rhineland on geopolitical grounds. It was correctly concluded that if the French and German coal and steel industries were united, many of the associated problems would tend to either dwindle, or resolve themselves; and this has been proven to be so. 

 

O’course, having Uncle Sam encamped in your midst, armed and ready, for fifty years did no harm to THAT cause. 

 

There’s a problem with being the counter-balance to France and Germany; British policy from the Middle Ages onwards, to 1914 revolved around doing no such thing. 

 

 

The EU not Federalist? It has just elected the most avowedly Federalist leader so far, who presides over an armed gendarmerie and a currency effectively controlled from Berlin and Frankfurt. Look back to the 1950s and 1960s, and you will see that leading figures of the time, from Attlee to Heath, Benn to Gaitskell recognised this clearly, spoke upon it at length  and were firmly against it (I will avoid mention of a Conservative figure of that time, who almost forms a sub-set of Godwin’s Law). Ernest Bevin summed it up in the notoriously mixed metaphor “if you open that Pandora’s Box, you never know what Trojan ‘Orses will jump out”.. and now they are amongst us, it seems. 

 

They have a de-facto Constitution (embodied in a Treaty, following several rejections in Referenda) and are overtly talking about financial consolidation - by which (primarily) Germany adopts indefinite liability for the debts of the Greece et al, the PIIGS countries as they are sometimes called. The German Chancellor takes it upon herself to give instructions to the British PM. 

 

I’m afraid that I have spent most of my adult life, in the belief that Britain’s relationship with the EU would inevitably end in a major political and constitutional crisis. Now, it seems, it is upon us.

 

 

[rockershovel]

On 30/07/2019 at 17:50, Mike Storey said:

 

This is what you said, in connection with the development of HS lines "....are directly linked to EU political and ideological ambition". As many have already illustrated, that is the imaginary bit.

 

These are economic links.

 

I did say that it was a fairly weighty read, but I can only refer you to the website of the Committee of Regions, where you will find enough for a long, tedious but instructive read. One instructive element is the devolution of England into autonomous “regions” which have not existed in a thousand years, or never existed at all; you might wonder why Blair was so keen on this, leading to the Regional Referenda of 2004, in which the proposal was heavily defeated but simply morphed into a variety of proposals for elected Mayors etc. 

 

You might wonder why; that is the reason. All there, in print, in the public domain. 

 

 

 

 

[corneliuslundie]

It was mentioned that the Curzon Street contract received no bids from contractors. Was this because of technical or "political" risk? And if "political", was it because of the general approach of DafT to "running" the railways or to the current political mess?

Jonathan

[rockershovel]

Regarding “reviving depressed areas”, that seems to me to be another issue giving off a strong smell of red herring. My recent travels around Lincolnshire have led me through any number of isolated villages and minor towns with huge medieval churches; indeed, you might wonder why the inconsequential market town of Boston boasts its Stump, or Ely its Cathedral? 

 

The answer is simple; they were once the centres of economic forces which have long since played themselves out. No amount of politicking will bring them back. Bolingbroke’s Castle, once home to the most powerful man in England, is now a grassy mound inset with a few low walls, where occasional stray travellers stroll or picnic. 

 

The Chancellor of England sits on a sack of wool; but few could now tell you why. Where is Stamford University, once equal to Cambridge and Oxford? The Warden of the Cinque Ports is now a picturesquely titled sinecure, but that Officer was once a great man in the land; but now four are inconsequential byways (one best known for its miniature railway) while the fifth has disappeared under the North Sea. 

 

I was in Birmingham in 2017, and had occasion to visit a housing estate with names like Armoury Road and Bantam Close. It suddenly occurred to me that this was all that remained of the once-mighty BSA works, a huge enterprise well within my lifetime. 

 

No, times change, and we all change with them. 

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

Shall we start a new thread about HS2 (and nothing else)?

[locoholic]

3 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Shall we start a new thread about HS2 (and nothing else)?

It's been tried already!

[Mike Storey]

5 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

I did say that it was a fairly weighty read, but I can only refer you to the website of the Committee of Regions, where you will find enough for a long, tedious but instructive read. One instructive element is the devolution of England into autonomous “regions” which have not existed in a thousand years, or never existed at all; you might wonder why Blair was so keen on this, leading to the Regional Referenda of 2004, in which the proposal was heavily defeated but simply morphed into a variety of proposals for elected Mayors etc. 

 

You might wonder why; that is the reason. All there, in print, in the public domain. 

 

 

 

 

 

In connection with railway lines, which is what this thread is about, utter tosh. As has already been pointed out several times, by others.

[Mike Storey]

5 hours ago, corneliuslundie said:

It was mentioned that the Curzon Street contract received no bids from contractors. Was this because of technical or "political" risk? And if "political", was it because of the general approach of DafT to "running" the railways or to the current political mess?

Jonathan

 

Precise reasons not stated. There was just a reference to a general "unacceptable risk" for the contractors within the contract envisaged.

[Christopher125]

On 28/07/2019 at 22:26, Ron Ron Ron said:

We were told early on, that as a result of the extra capacity provided by HS2 and the extra capacity released to the classic lines,  the Underground network at Euston Station, would not be able to absorb such a large increase in passengers.

Even with Euston Square being integrated into the the Euston Underground Station complex.

Apparently, the modelling showed that it would overload this part of the underground system.

Crossrail 2 is supposed to be part of the long term solution to this issue.

.

 

IIRC the Mayor/TfL argument that you couldn't have HS2 without Crossrail 2 was rather misleading - passenger growth was predicted to overwhelm the tube lines serving Euston regardless of HS2.

[runs as required]

13 hours ago, Christopher125 said:

 

IIRC the Mayor/TfL argument that you couldn't have HS2 without Crossrail 2 was rather misleading - passenger growth was predicted to overwhelm the tube lines serving Euston regardless of HS2.

It is illuminating to click back page 1 of this thread and "go forward" (my favourite current politicos' phrase  - based on Chamberlain's / Brum's famous Motto ?) rather than click back 

dh

[Ian Hargrave]

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps announces a review of its future by the end of the year and does not rule out scrapping the project.

[Fenman]

For masochists who enjoy government-speak, here's a link to the terms of the review.

 

Paul

[Dava]

The review of HS2 has been announced this morning by Grant Shapps [spelt correctly]. The specification is here

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hs2-independent-review-terms-of-reference/terms-of-reference-for-the-independent-review-of-hs2

 

At least Liz Truss is nowhere near it.  The outcome could well be major changes or cancellation. A lot of work to do to report by 'Autumn 2019' [November, after Brexit and election?].

 

Lets see what happens.We have a maniac government right now.  It will be political. 

 

Dava

[4630]

A cynic might suggest that government never announces a review unless it knows the recommendations and outcomes it wants in the final report.

[Bon Accord]

I suppose the cash for all the upcoming parliamentary and electoral bribes has to come from somewhere, so HS2 shall be the sacrificial lamb to provide it. Of course a decision to cancel would also delight a certain segment of the electorate who care little of the future implications of this and many other things.

[TheQ]

I suspect the review is so MP's can say they are reviewing it during the imminent election, after that it will be back on. It's is a vanity project supported by both main parties..

[admiles]

Perhaps Messers BoJo & Co realise that the country could be even shorter of cash than it is now after a certain upcoming political event?

[Trog]

No doubt that will be another few million pounds wasted, and us no nearer having the extra north south rail capacity we need at the end of it.

[Jol Wilkinson]

For a look back at the UK's appalling management of its transport industry, I suggest reading "What we have lost - The dismantling of Great Britain" by James Hamilton-Paterson. 

 

The Cross Rail saga, HS2, etc. are just more examples of a national inability to correctly identify, manage and finance major projects of omicron importance.