Spend like there is no tomorrow and there will be no tomorrow.

Spend like there is no tomorrow and there will be no tomorrow

The more we spend, even if it's green or renewable projects, the more greenhouse gases get emitted and the deeper the crisis.  We are well and truly snookered.  But we can't give up.  We have to do what we can, individually and in our working lives, to postpone extinction instead of accelerating it as we are doing with a host of unhelpful spending projects.

Spending hundreds of millions of gg (or GHG) on nuclear power and HS2, which take many years to build is the height of folly.  We don't know how many years it takes for a nuclear power station to pay back in low gg electricity what gg it has emitted in its construction (an example of not very helpful net zero that everyone raves about).

HS2 never even gives us anything useful like power.  It simply is an undeserved bonus for the rich with a First Class seat guaranteed only for those who could take the plane, anyway between the Big Four Important Cities.  And it stops at two of their airports, too!  So what is the point of it when it races us to extinction?

Metro ​has contributed to the wrecking of public transport with seven railway lines now destroyed and eleven bus routes permanently giving all public transport users a longer, slower and worse journey for those many buses that use Five Ways from Brum, Dudley and Sandwell.  The buses are relegated, forever, to a longer, slower and worse rush hour jammed diversion.  Even self-powered bikes are banned from most of Broad Street and all of Five Ways underpass!

The railway industry is the only set up to destroy/obliterate one-third of its infrastructure, to then build HS2 and, electric "bus on rails" Metro on its railway lines!  Truly bizarre!

This is absurd, nonsensical from top public schoolboys!

 I know I am in a very small minority in pointing this out.  However, do I have a point?

All you politicians are fully in support of destroying the UK's very last and, one of only two, north-south mainline railways between Brum city centre and the Welsh coast.  This is the principal, Derby to Devon via Dudley and Worcester Railway.  This destruction on 16 Kms is costing over half a billion pounds (for light rail, very light rail and, ultra-light rail on this major, heavy rail route!).

At the same time, you are all united in wanting HS2 to give a very small minority of people the choice of either train or plane when travelling between the Big Four, English cities and, two of their airports.  Some of the trains may stop at Crewe and Toton but nowhere else because it goes so fast!!  This is costing us all over £100 billion in both cost and, in fast-rising, deadly greenhouse gases to bring horror and catastrophe, we are told.

Please give me your rebuttal, your reasons for why I am wrong and you are right.

First Class HS2 for the Big Four; and second class high speed for the rest!

 

B L Tim Weller sorry, I think my point was badly illustrated. London was by far the largest urban agglomeration in the United Kingdom in 2020, with an estimated population of 9.3 million people, more than three times as large as Manchester, the UK’s second biggest urban agglomeration. The English cities of Birmingham and Leeds had the third and fourth largest populations respectively, while the biggest city in Scotland, Glasgow was the fifth largest. Therefore it stands to reason that most of the passengers on the current West Coast mainline will have no interest in stopping at Stoke or Wigan or wherever.... The current express services on the West Coast mainline sacrifice many of the stops in favour of speed. If you simply remove all of those London to Manchester passengers from the west Coast Mainline to their own dedicated route you can then just substitute all those express services to local stoppers, meaning more regular services to all those in-between stations. Like I said, it is about capacity, not speed. Doesn't it make logical sense to connect the 4 metropolis cities together? Thank you so much for this explanation that is clearer than what was offered up by Gareth Dennis or David Frankal. What you are saying is that the four biggest cities deserve to have a super-duper high-speed line because they have the largest populations and, therefore, must have the most passengers on the existing high-speed line.  The smaller 'in between' town and cities served by the present high-speed line will still have the existing trains and may even get more services. However, it will have to be a second-class high-speed service for them because the best, fastest and newest trains will be on HS2 services and be First Class High Speed. The problem is that the fewer passengers wanting to stop at the smaller towns and cities will feel they have been downgraded and may end up with fewer services each day because the majority of passengers from the Big Cities on the intercity trains will all be on First Class HS2.  That minority of second-class high speeders may feel left out and having been given second best.  And, their trains will still end up in Brum, Manchester, Leeds and London, anyway!  It reinforces the UK's class-ridden society that is not egalitarian by any stretch of the imagination. It is all about competing with the plane companies that already connect the four Big Cities.  It is all about attracting business away from planes onto rail.  Therefore, it does have to be about speed, every step of the way. And, the Big Four Metropolitan Cities are already very well connected and have been for over 150 years.  It is just that they want preferential treatment by not having irritating stops to delay them to their much more important destinations than the Wigans and Stokes of this world.  In other words, it is about speed and reinforcing our unfortunate, class-ridden mentality, and making for unnecessary duplication at a most colossal cost from even more greenhouse gases, to speed us all on our way to climate catastrophe and THE END.