UK Strategic Planning

[chrisp65]

13 minutes ago, blandy said:

You make that read like 5 billion was deducted from Wales budget and spent on HS 2 instead. It’s not true is it?

Yes, it is true. HS2 has been designated an ‘England and Wales’ project and as such includes £5 Billion from the Wales budget under the Barnet Formula.

Every time the cost goes up, it takes more money from the Wales budget.

I’m not completely opposed to that in principle, I can see how money spent in one place can benefit another. But see up thread for how this same money could have been used for so many other projects across the whole country that didn’t include yet another vast building project …. in London.

 

 

[blandy]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Yes, it is true. HS2 has been designated an ‘England and Wales’ project and as such includes £5 Billion from the Wales budget under the Barnet Formula

It isn’t true. Money hasn’t been deducted from Wales budget. It’s more that additional money hasn’t been added into Wales budget, surely?

[bickster]

If Wales has lost £5bil a year from its transport budget, over the last 12 years it's more than paid for phase 1 of HS2 on it's own. (£44bil cost)

[OutByEaster?]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

If Wales has lost £5bil a year from its transport budget, over the last 12 years it's more than paid for phase 1 of HS2 on it's own. (£44bil cost)

Why 12 years? 

Is that how long HS2 has been underway?

[chrisp65]

5 minutes ago, blandy said:

It isn’t true. Money hasn’t been deducted from Wales budget. It’s more that additional money hasn’t been added into Wales budget, surely?

Ok, how about this reading of it. England and Wales are having HS2 which will cost circa £80Billion.

Due to the rules around block grant funding, this has resulted in a proportionate amount of money going to Scotland and Northern Ireland.

All of the £80Billion allocated to for this England and Wales project, is being spent in England. But I’m really trying not to make this a Plaid Cymru thing, that’s why I’ve been trying to use examples like Felixstowe and Lincolnshire. As it has sucked £5Billion away from Aberystwyth and Pembroke Dock and Holyhead, so the same must be true for Exeter and Plymouth, Boston and Kings Lynn. It’s yet more money being spent in London that would have had a far greater benefits spent elsewhere.

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

If Wales has lost £5bil a year from its transport budget, over the last 12 years it's more than paid for phase 1 of HS2 on it's own. (£44bil cost)

Not a year, total.

 

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

Why 12 years? 

Is that how long HS2 has been underway?

Yep

[Genie]

Has anyone suggested how making the project take even longer to complete saves money?

Anyone who isn’t the CEO on a reported £620,000 per year. 

[Davkaus]

11 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

 

Not a year, total.

 

This did make me laugh. The entire budget for Welsh government is £25bn a year, I love the idea there's a spare 5bn a year to cut just from transport 

[Panto_Villan]

1 minute ago, villa4europe said:

See I'd happily discuss whether or not it is a white elephant, I think they'll price the general public out of it meaning they'll be relying on business trippers which might still work but it won't have the impact on travel that it's supposed to have but I say that as someone who has no knowledge of how busy virgin are on these routes, I'm expecting the media to run riot with stories on how it's cheaper to travel from London to brum via malaga with Ryanair

And I say that as someone who completely agrees with foreveryoung, it's still a worthwhile project

I think there’s different kinds of white elephant. You get the kind that nobody wants to use, like sports stadiums built in silly places during the Olympics or whatever, and you get the kind that people do want to use but are too expensive for the project to make financial sense to build (but get built anyway).

I think the latter category is more forgivable, and is probably where HS2 ends up. It’ll be useful for the country even if it doesn’t provide a good return on investment.

It does occasionally end up working out though. The Millenium Dome found a good place for itself in the end. The Channel Tunnel wasn’t a sensible investment but I’m glad it exists, etc.

[bickster]

Just now, Genie said:

Has anyone suggested how making the project take even longer to complete saves money?

Anyone who isn’t the CEO on a reported £620,000 per year. 

It saves money temporarily on a year by year basis from the Govt budget, it increases the cost of the project overall

[Panto_Villan]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

Has anyone suggested how making the project take even longer to complete saves money?

Anyone who isn’t the CEO on a reported £620,000 per year. 

Their argument is just that it costs less per year, not less total. Because the government wants to bring down annual spending this is a (short-sighted) way to make that happen.

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

It saves money temporarily on a year by year basis from the Govt budget, it increases the cost of the project overall

 

1 minute ago, Panto_Villan said:

Their argument is just that it costs less per year, not less total. Because the government wants to bring down annual spending this is a (short-sighted) way to make that happen.

More madness, and more turds for the next government to try and flush down the blocked toilet the Tories are leaving them. 

[StefanAVFC]

12 hours ago, villa4europe said:

Germany actually show a really good comparison with just how London centric we are as a country

If you look at the top 20 companies in the UK 16 of them London, 4 locations in total, 19 of them are in the south 

Germany in comparison only 1 is in Berlin, the cities with the highest are Munich and bonn with 2, I think there's 14 locations in total mainly west, south and bayern 

Same in Poland. Especially in IT/Services. Really split around. Huge companies are in every major city.

[chrisp65]

38 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

This did make me laugh. The entire budget for Welsh government is £25bn a year, I love the idea there's a spare 5bn a year to cut just from transport 

The executive monorail to the Senedd building down the bay has not been cheap. 

[villa4europe]

53 minutes ago, Genie said:

Has anyone suggested how making the project take even longer to complete saves money?

Anyone who isn’t the CEO on a reported £620,000 per year. 

De risks it, let's them design it properly and then mitigate the design should it be too expensive / require value engineering

The way the budget has increased I can only think that they've started doing too much work before the design was at the stage it should be

The parliament project is the same, committed £3bn before fully surveying it and discovering they actually need £7bn

The problem is then the cost plans and budgets, which is a long story as to why they tend to be a load of bollocks to start with

[blandy]

57 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

it has sucked £5Billion away from Aberystwyth and Pembroke Dock and Holyhead, so the same must be true for Exeter and Plymouth, Boston and Kings Lynn.

It hasn’t “sucked” money away from anywhere. It’s not the subtle (credit to you for that) Plaid argument which I am trying to address, it’s more the maths side side v slightly pejorative language. I completely get and agreed that different choices could have been made instead of HS2. I tend to favour other choices myself. What I dispute is that money has been deducted from Wales transport budget and been spent instead on an English rail line. It has hasn’t been.    What’s been done is a ton of extra money from the UK Government has been allocated to HS2. Because the Gov’ts and transport advisors deem that England and Wales will get transport benefits from HS2, but Scotland and NI won’t, under the Barnett formula those 2 nations have to be given proportionate sums extra for their transport networks.

Im completely ok with an argument that says it would have been a better use of the HS2 money to have been spent instead on Felixstowe or Lampeter or Holyhead or Durham or wherever. That’s fine. It’s the bit about deducting money from Wales or anywhere else that is, as I understand things, not true. 

[blandy]

59 minutes ago, Panto_Villan said:

Their argument is just that it costs less per year, not less total. Because the government wants to bring down annual spending this is a (short-sighted) way to make that happen.

Absolutely. And also, if they are to be believed (they shouldn’t be) then the benefits of HS2 will not be present for the delayed years, so costs go up and benefits from the spend are reduced compared to what they would have been. It’s pure accounting stupidity.

[tinker]

13 hours ago, KentVillan said:

That wasn't a conscious political decision, though, but a mix of its relatively late unification in the 19th century (similar to Italy), its natural geography and position in the centre of Europe, and to a lesser extent the Iron Curtain

The issue with the UK is London has been the major city since at least the 10th century, and the south east of England has always been the closest point to mainland Europe, so it's very hard to avoid that geographical pull when it comes to trade and migration and foreign investment.

I'd be interested in any examples of countries where they've managed to rebalance away from an obvious established centre. The French have never done it, and we've never done it. Is there anywhere that has?

We have been here before , there was a conscious effort to suppress Birmingham 

This article from is from 2015, it's a big eye opener to Birminghams past.

"Birmingham finally bouncing back after 70 years says Centre for Cities

City is now finally overturning a deliberate policy to stifle economic growth lasting seven decades as influential thinktank reveals Birmingham is finally becoming a boom town again"

https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/birmingham-finally-bouncing-back-after-8772639

 

As for countries that have rebalanced wealth , see my post on Germany after the reunification, there is less inbalance economicaly between East and West Germany than there is between the South East and the rest of the UK, they have managed that over 30 years, wish we had their politicians......

Edited March 10, 2023 by tinker

[limpid]

13 hours ago, Lichfield Dean said:

I always used to take the Chiltern service from Moor Street to Marylebone. Sadly that too has gone up in price now so as to make it less worth taking.

Cost me £40 return last week with an anytime return.

[NurembergVillan]

2 hours ago, bickster said:

It saves money temporarily on a year by year basis from the Govt budget, it increases the cost of the project overall

Like a massive credit card.