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36 minutes ago, Clearwater said:


Sorry but there will need to be a stimulus to the economy.  This is ready to go and to spend and creates immediate jobs in the construction sector.

 

This isn't a cancellation, just a suspension as building it is not deemed an essential service.  The logistics of keeping works separate, combined with keeping portable toilets virus free, are such that worksites are just as dangerous as a pub or any other public gather for Covid-19 spread.

 

Once things are safe, the jobs will restart and thus be creating those stimulus jobs.

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7 hours ago, 62613 said:

HS2 Ltd. has no responsibilty for the H & S for  the workers on the ground. Most of those will probably self-employed or limited companies, who are working via an agency, and as such are contracted to the various companies actually piecing the job together. HSE law makes it clear that as such, they are responsible for their own H & S. 

 

Actually my understanding of H&S law is rather different.  The site operator (HS2 Ltd) is responsible for the welfare of everyone on their site, whether employees of that company or any other (and even trespassers).  You cannot in law delegate that responsibility, only the authority to act.  Otherwise every worker on the site would be a contractor of the company "above" them and no company could ever be prosecuted for a H&S breach. 

While you are responsible for the safety of you and your co-workers - you can't flout safety practice and expect your employer to take all the blame - the absolute legal responsibility lies with HS2 Ltd here.

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6 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Actually my understanding of H&S law is rather different.  The site operator (HS2 Ltd) is responsible for the welfare of everyone on their site, whether employees of that company or any other (and even trespassers).  You cannot in law delegate that responsibility, only the authority to act.  Otherwise every worker on the site would be a contractor of the company "above" them and no company could ever be prosecuted for a H&S breach. 

While you are responsible for the safety of you and your co-workers - you can't flout safety practice and expect your employer to take all the blame - the absolute legal responsibility lies with HS2 Ltd here.

Not quite. HS2 are the client so whilst they do have H&S duties under law, the main responsibility for works on site rests with the Principal Contractor (so even the client has to obey the rules that the PC impose). CDM 2015 are the applicable regs and sit under H&SWA (which is the normal prosecution route).

 

on HS2 sites, it is the JV that will be acting as PC, eg Align JV, BBV JV etc

 

even then, your immediate employer (ie trade contractor) has specific responsibilities under H&S law, as does each individual to follow instructions & safety rules imposed on them.

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10 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

The whole point of the current measures is to avoid the predicted 260,000 deaths in the U.K. 

 

 

If you are talking about the Imperial College model, they recanted;

 

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A model from Imperial College London predicted between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths in the UK „from“ Covid-19, but the authors of the study have now conceded that many of these deaths would not be in addition to, but rather part of the normal annual mortality rate, which in the UK is about 600,000 people per year. In other words, excess mortality would remain low.

 

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13 minutes ago, billbedford said:

 

If you are talking about the Imperial College model, they recanted;

 

 

If you kept reading that article, you would have seen this

 

Quote

How many extra deaths could there be?

A team from University College London (UCL) has attempted to unpick this by looking at the expected number of deaths you would normally see, and then mapped out how many extra deaths coronavirus could cause.

The paper, which has not been peer reviewed yet, shows those from the at-risk groups - the over 70s and people with health conditions - have a 4.4% risk of dying in the next year regardless of coronavirus.

That is to say, one in 20 would not be expected to be alive one year later.

To factor in the impact of coronavirus, there are two variables which are as yet unknown - how much it increases the risk of death by, and how many people become infected.

If it turns out to be as deadly as flu and just 1% of people are infected (the upper limit of what we should be aiming for given the measures in place according to researchers), the number of extra deaths will be under 1,400.

But many believe it will be more virulent than flu, so the researchers mapped different scenarios.

If it was five times as deadly - a "reasonable" estimation, researchers said - there could be 6,900 excess deaths.

If 10% of the population were to be infected with more relaxed measures, the excess death figures would increase 10-fold. But these are just models.

What is needed now that the virus is spreading, is for researchers to get good access to hospital data and in particular intensive care records, so they can more accurately work out the impact the pandemic is having, says Amitava Banerjee, who is leading the UCL research.

So its inaccurate to say there will be no excess deaths over the norm. No government would be shutting the economy down if there was to be no increase in deaths. There is clearly enough fear \ evidence to suggest a very bad outcome and none of us on here know the truth and have to trust in those that do.

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5 hours ago, black and decker boy said:

Not quite. HS2 are the client so whilst they do have H&S duties under law, the main responsibility for works on site rests with the Principal Contractor (so even the client has to obey the rules that the PC impose). CDM 2015 are the applicable regs and sit under H&SWA (which is the normal prosecution route).

 

on HS2 sites, it is the JV that will be acting as PC, eg Align JV, BBV JV etc

 

even then, your immediate employer (ie trade contractor) has specific responsibilities under H&S law, as does each individual to follow instructions & safety rules imposed on them.

 

A commercial client certainly does have very important duties under CDM, in particular:

 

making sure that any principal designer and principal contractor appointed carry out their duties in managing the project

 

Thus, there is a clear supervisory role, one which I undertook many times, albeit under a previous version of CDM. The evidence is manifold, where NR have been hauled in front of the beak, along with the relevant contractors, when incidents have occurred.

 

I cannot see any way in which HS2 Ltd would not be so classified under this regime.

 

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27 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

 

A commercial client certainly does have very important duties under CDM, in particular:

 

making sure that any principal designer and principal contractor appointed carry out their duties in managing the project

 

Thus, there is a clear supervisory role, one which I undertook many times, albeit under a previous version of CDM. The evidence is manifold, where NR have been hauled in front of the beak, along with the relevant contractors, when incidents have occurred.

 

I cannot see any way in which HS2 Ltd would not be so classified under this regime.

 

I've not said HS2 are off the hook, merely that the vast burden of H&S law rests on the principal contractor (a role I undertake daily) which is not HS2 Ltd. 

 

It was in response to Northmoor suggesting HS2 Ltd are the site operator and so wholly responsible for all people at work on that site which is factually incorrect.

 

NR are often appointed as PC and do carry out works in house so are not just a client.

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4 hours ago, billbedford said:

If you are talking about the Imperial College model, they recanted;

 

Not really, it is more of a subtle issue.

 

Yes, particularly given the group that is hardest hit by Covid is older with health problems, they don't have a great life expectancy out to 12 months anyway.  So a percentage of those who die from Covid-19 wouldn't be expected to survive to this time next year anyway.

 

But there is a big different to have X people die over 12 months, and having that X people all die in 1 month, in terms of hospital utilization.

 

Now add in all those people who would survive the 12 months who Covid-19 kills (we have had deaths amongst younger people, and even some apparently otherwise healthy people), and we get the issue of overloading the health care system so that if we do nothing there is a period of time where getting sick becomes a death sentence for many because there is no available resources to treat them.

 

And it also turns things that are currently survivable, like a heart attack or serious car accident, into death sentences because there is no ICU capacity available.

 

So, as said it is subtle and difficult to measure, but what isn't difficult to measure is what happens if things get out of control because we can see that in Italy amongst other places.

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On 22/03/2020 at 10:38, The Stationmaster said:

Going way OT, sorry, my son has been working from home for just over a week but is in touch regularly by Skype with all his regular contacts in the company in various other countries so nothing different there although the company cancelled all international travel about a month back so face-to-face meetings have had to end.  But he is having to take a walk every day just to get out of the house for a while and he did dig part of the veg patch yesterday (first time ever!).

 

This is not offtopic at all, it is bang on topic, this is why HS2 is not required, new ideas need to be used, not harping backwards to the way we used to do things, they have to change or the world & humans will become extinct. We need to come up with new ways of working not continue to make people commute into large clusters using huge amount of resource, sorry if this sounds alien to you or even all hippy dippy but it's real!

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31 minutes ago, Phaeton said:

 

This is not offtopic at all, it is bang on topic, this is why HS2 is not required, new ideas need to be used, not harping backwards to the way we used to do things, they have to change or the world & humans will become extinct. We need to come up with new ways of working not continue to make people commute into large clusters using huge amount of resource, sorry if this sounds alien to you or even all hippy dippy but it's real!

 

This experience will likely result in change, and likely in changes that nobody is currently predicting.

 

But my suspicion is a lot of people are going to discover that despite previous moaning about endless meetings and other nuisances, they are more productive going into an office and interacting with people physically.

 

It won't be all, and at least some companies will shift (or attempt to shift) to work from home.  But part of the hindrance to that is going to be the reality that few people have space wherever they are living to set up a dedicated "office space".  It's fine currently to work from a chair and lap, or a dining table (although even at that people may discover they start having various physical ailments from not sitting correctly) but those won't work for the rest of their working life.  Many people will come to resent constantly seeing a reminder of their job even when it is their family time.  With housing costs (and the related issue, poor salaries) being what they are, there will be pushback from many to attempt a full time work at home transition.

 

Not to say Covid-19 isn't serious, because it is, but it will take something a lot worse than Covid-19 to eliminate the need for HS2.

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My company has basically decamped all staff to working from home including those that operate council call centre operations.

 

What has been very beneficial for this is our new cloud based telephony solution which has worked like a dream in these difficult times, one of our partners has adopted the same system as a result of covid and will be deploying it tomorrow less that 2 weeks after signing contracts.

 

Business can move swiftly when faced with massive challenges, but it's not without resistance.  Many staff who are working from home will be glad to get back to the office again, their home situation, lone living or preferences being to be out of the house.

 

Great effort is being put into keeping social and even I succumbed to using my webcam this morning in a meeting, something I have rarely done in 6 years of homeworking.

 

Whilst all this is being forced upon us by the pandemic I am not so sure that it means that future transport planning will be affected that much.  I believe as soon as we are allowed to go about normally then people will return to a lot of old habits and being social animals that means lots of face to face time.  Certainly some people will venture into the office less but I think we will still need HS2

 

 

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10 hours ago, woodenhead said:

 

Whilst all this is being forced upon us by the pandemic I am not so sure that it means that future transport planning will be affected that much.  I believe as soon as we are allowed to go about normally then people will return to a lot of old habits and being social animals that means lots of face to face time.  Certainly some people will venture into the office less but I think we will still need HS2

 

 

 

Indeed; there may even be a "bounce" effect, as after WW2, when a lot of restrictions were lifted on what people could do, or not.

 

Having said that, I don't think things will be completely the same. In what ways, I don't know, but we'll see.

 

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2 hours ago, 62613 said:

 

Indeed; there may even be a "bounce" effect, as after WW2, when a lot of restrictions were lifted on what people could do, or not.

 

Having said that, I don't think things will be completely the same. In what ways, I don't know, but we'll see.

 

Things won't be the same no.

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14 hours ago, Phaeton said:

 

This is not offtopic at all, it is bang on topic, this is why HS2 is not required, new ideas need to be used, not harping backwards to the way we used to do things, they have to change or the world & humans will become extinct. We need to come up with new ways of working not continue to make people commute into large clusters using huge amount of resource, sorry if this sounds alien to you or even all hippy dippy but it's real!

 

I seem to recall people talking about the end of commuting due to video conferencing about 30 years ago - It hasn't happened yet !

Many jobs, eg mine (before I retired), require immediate unhindered direct contact with other people, which could never be achieved working from home.

 

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56 minutes ago, caradoc said:

 

I seem to recall people talking about the end of commuting due to video conferencing about 30 years ago - It hasn't happened yet !

Many jobs, eg mine (before I retired), require immediate unhindered direct contact with other people, which could never be achieved working from home.

 

It's one thing to maintain existing interpersonal relationships whilst working from home for (hopefully) a finite period, but building new ones as people change jobs etc is something else. You can only really do that face to face.

 

I wouldn't be at all shocked if one outcome was more working from home than was going on before, but we're not solitary creatures so I can't see it being a huge shift.

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19 hours ago, billbedford said:

If people really wanted to live in your world they would have emigrated to Pennsylvania and joined the Amish years ago...

 

I actually would love that, but it's not realistic is it, you're just being flippant as you think your way of life is at risk, now if you want a grown up conversation

 

3 hours ago, Zomboid said:

It's one thing to maintain existing interpersonal relationships whilst working from home for (hopefully) a finite period, but building new ones as people change jobs etc is something else. You can only really do that face to face.

 

I wouldn't be at all shocked if one outcome was more working from home than was going on before, but we're not solitary creatures so I can't see it being a huge shift.

 

Why has the call centre got to be 2000 people in the centre of London, why not have 20 call centres around the country in 20 towns or cities, why has the square mile in London have to be there, again why cannot it be multiple sites around the country, we have to rethink what we are doing. I admit I use Amazon, but do I really need to have deliveries every day, could I not have all my parcels held somewhere & I get a delivery once/twice a week. I know this seems to be off topic from HS2 but it's not it's all part of the same problem, we have to ask what are we trying to achieve & is there a better/different way, I don't have the answer, but shoving a new train line up the centre of England, which misses nearly every city is not it.

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The UK will be a very different place when we are eventually over this pandemic as months of shutdown will have affected many companies shops transport often terminally.Rail companies already in financial problems might find themselves unable to work as before .They will have to be replaced by government companies as running LNER and Northern .Projects will have to be looked at with a microscope as to their future due to funds needed for other ones that will be thought more important to the actual grass root recovery.This period could well last for some years and will push up the cost of borrowing which will restrict what goes ahead.The priority will probably be projects which help the population get back on their feet .Industry has to be a priority as it is the life blood of the UK and perhaps production will be brought back to the UK thus reducing imports and  maybe boost jobs. The future is troubled but we can get ourselves back but certain projects will go on the backburner.

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Call centres in central London? Not a chance. They're where the office space and labour is cheap, not in London.

 

And twice weekly deliveries? The genie is well and truly out of the bottle on that one. Might have been ok years ago, but wouldn't wash now.

 

Neither of which have anything whatsoever to do with HS2, which so far as I can tell actually serves most of the major cities between London and Lancashire/ Yorkshire.

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37 minutes ago, lmsforever said:

The UK will be a very different place when we are eventually over this pandemic as months of shutdown will have affected many companies shops transport often terminally.Rail companies already in financial problems might find themselves unable to work as before .They will have to be replaced by government companies as running LNER and Northern .Projects will have to be looked at with a microscope as to their future due to funds needed for other ones that will be thought more important to the actual grass root recovery.This period could well last for some years and will push up the cost of borrowing which will restrict what goes ahead.The priority will probably be projects which help the population get back on their feet .Industry has to be a priority as it is the life blood of the UK and perhaps production will be brought back to the UK thus reducing imports and  maybe boost jobs. The future is troubled but we can get ourselves back but certain projects will go on the backburner.

 

But HS2 fulfills a lot of your arguments, generates jobs in many sectors, construction, steel manufacturing, quarrying and manufacturing like machinery. JCB might do okay out of it as well as others like plant hire and maintenance. HS2 is a big project made up of lots of small jobs creating growth.

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1 hour ago, Phaeton said:

 

 

 

 

Why has the call centre got to be 2000 people in the centre of London, why not have 20 call centres around the country in 20 towns or cities, why has the square mile in London have to be there, again why cannot it be multiple sites around the country, we have to rethink what we are doing. 

We had small call centres dotted around the country, but it is more efficient to have one large one, so they were mostly closed/merged. The same applies to other sorts of office (like my final job on the railway!)

 

cheers 

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57 minutes ago, Rivercider said:

We had small call centres dotted around the country, but it is more efficient to have one large one, so they were mostly closed/merged. The same applies to other sorts of office (like my final job on the railway!)

 

cheers 

 

More efficient for whom? The customer, the owner, the shareholders, the local economy, we have to ask are all these commuter miles the only way to do it. 

 

I'm not a tree hugger, but we have to change the way we do things, every time a new road/bypass is built all it does is attract more traffic, it never solves the problem.

 

Our first aim should be to get as many HGV's off the road, an integrated freight backbone would be the first step, so what if commuters are delayed, they do have a choice.

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4 minutes ago, Phaeton said:

 

More efficient for whom? The customer, the owner, the shareholders, the local economy, we have to ask are all these commuter miles the only way to do it. 

 

I'm not a tree hugger, but we have to change the way we do things, every time a new road/bypass is built all it does is attract more traffic, it never solves the problem.

 

Our first aim should be to get as many HGV's off the road, an integrated freight backbone would be the first step, so what if commuters are delayed, they do have a choice.

I agree with you on points 1, 2 and 3.

Regarding call centres/offices etc I would also like more kept local, but I think we are swimming against the tide there. I would add shopping, or that part of it which is still done by actually visiting a shop. My town will have next to no large shops left (Bright House next to go?), so folk travel to Bristol, which is not strictly HS2 related, but I think the overall principle applies.

 

cheers

 

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