Ursula von der Leyen questions PM’s understanding of sovereignty while OBR expects Brexit to hurt GDP

from: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/24/borisjohnsons-vows-to-pit-uk-against-eu-in-race-for-success?utm_term=7bae36feb9971cec13ef78cf0954fc2f&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUK&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&CMP=GTUK_email

His optimism contrasted with the expectations of the government’s own independent forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which expects Brexit to shave 4% off GDP in the medium term.

Now the Brexit blame game will play out at the door of No 10

David Gauke

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From 1 January, most UK nationals will lose the right of free movement and British businesses will face significant extra costs in doing business with its biggest export market.

The European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, gently questioned Johnson’s understanding of sovereignty, the watchword of the British negotiation led by David Frost, as she welcomed the agreement.

She said: “Of course, this whole debate has always been about sovereignty. But we should cut through the sound bites and ask ourselves what sovereignty actually means in the 21st century.

“For me, it is about being able to seamlessly do work, travel, study and do business in 27 countries. It is about pooling our strength and speaking together in a world full of great powers. And in a time of crisis, it is about pulling each other up. Instead of trying to get back to your feet, alone.

“And the European Union shows how this works in practice. No deal in the world can change the reality of [the] gravity in today’s economy. And in today’s world, we are one of the giants.”

Von der Leyen referenced Shakespeare, the Beatles and TS Eliot as she ushered in the new era. “It was a long and winding road, but we have got a good deal to show for it. It is fair. It is a balanced deal. And it is the right and responsible thing to do for both sides,” she said. “At the end of a successful negotiation I normally feel joy. But today I only feel quiet satisfaction and, frankly speaking, relief.

“I know this is a difficult day for some, and to our friends in the United Kingdom, I want to say parting is such sweet sorrow but, to use the line from TS Eliot, what we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is often a beginning. So, to all Europeans, I think it is time to leave Brexit behind.”

The Land of Make Believe or, You Can't Make This Up if You Tried!

The Land of Make Believe or, You Can't Make This Up if You Tried!

This must be the biggest and longest running scandal in UK transport history -passenger trains kept off freight only railway lines and mothballed (or, 'out of use' designation ignored), alongside traffic choked roads and motorways!

This is all about the four Black Country boroughs and, supposedly, the Second (worst polluted) City in the land.  The Black Country and Birmingham - both bereft of sense; abounding in idiocy and bursting with incompetence.  Here are 40 points as the evidence for such a scathing but accurate description.  There is even more sad evidence - Metro One and Snow Hill Station - that I have not included, here (but see ** at foot).

I think, the excuse for inaction and wrong action by the railway experts at Network Fail is, "Well, we have to spend all our days writing reports, strategies and studies, don’t we?  Don’t blame us.  We’re just doing our job".  Thus, they end up:

1. ​Running homes, cars and shops ​down urban railway lines alongside main roads with bumper to bumper traffic (very mixed up kids run our transport, here in the West Midlands).
2. Putting Homebase on Kings Heath railway station, while still running some passenger trains on the line!
3. Forgetting to put trains and stations on the UK's only, it's all there, unused but easily reinstated, double track, mainline, strategic railway.
4. Even the Ordnance Survey think it is a working railway line in the Black Country section!  See all their latest maps.
5. Spending many millions of pounds on the underpasses and bridges as main roads have been widened and motorways built to cross this same strategic railway of phantom trains and invisible stations.  
6. In 2014, planning a test track for 2 Kms on the same unfinished, 120 Kms mainline railway to shuttle passengers to the next mainline in the neighbouring borough!
7. Then being told, "But we want it for Metro trams and have done so since the early 1980s."  This was in 2015.
8. These idiots - sorry, experts at Dudley Council - should have known that.
9. "Well," they said, "We'll just have to send the test track in the opposite direction through Dudley Castle Hill tunnel, then."
10. Next, putting it about that they have only done so because the test track needed the 'not one brick out of place', double track railway tunnel all along!
11. So why did the Warwick Manufacturing Group not tell them that in the first place?  Or, was someone lying?
12. Building a monorail at Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the late 1980s and failing to connect it to the unfinished, with all the double tracks in place, 120 Kms mainline railway - the Black Country Railway, as I call it.  It fell short by 400 metres!
13. The monorail was built by the foremost and well respected Swiss engineering company, Von Roll.  But they closed it after about two or three years in the early 1990s.
14. Next, they sold it and reports indicated it went to Sydney.
15. Our railway experts spent £750 million (of railway money?) "to enhance the passenger experience" at New Street Station.  Quote is courtesy of David Golding of Network Rail in a phone conversation with me in 2014 or 2015.
16. Now called 'Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Station Tagged Along as an Afterthought in the Basement of the John Lewis Store'.
17. GCSC&DPSTAAAAITBOTJLS for short!
18. This must make it the longest name for a railway station outside Anglesey.
19. The longest name and the longest waits for trains!
20. Because, they are still failing to build the additional railway tunnels at both approaches to GCSC&DPSTAAAAITBOTJLS.
21. Negligent Rail failed to do so even when all the buildings above the existing tunnels had been razed to the ground!
22. And, twice too - at first Brindleyplace (80s/90s) and, then, when the Bull Ring Shopping Centre was rebuilt (90s/00s).
23. Failing to realise that they could have then, easily, put in the cut and cover tunnels (and even additional platforms, according to Railfuture).
24. Failing to twig that they could have "enhanced the passenger experience" by getting railway customers away on their trains more quickly and efficiently by building the tunnels and platforms when the obvious opportunities arose.
25. Illiterate economics in replacing buses and trains with electric trams at 4 to 14 times per Km more expensively than simply using diesel trains on important railway lines.
26. Each new tram is ten times more expensive than a new bus.  (FoI answer)
27. Only local "bus on rails" * trams ever go on railway lines; rarely, regional and national trains.  (the rarity was the 6 Kms from Smethwick Galton Bridge to Moor Street Sta; and, Walsall to Rugeley - but, this took 50 years!)
28. 11 Km Wolverhampton to Walsall railway line was tried but it was never extended to Brum via Sutton Park or to Derby via Lichfield and, therefore never got enough passengers.
29. It has been closed for some years but, it is this 11 Km that they want to resurrect, a second time, rather than returning the trains and stations to the unused 56 Kms out of the 120 Km Black Country Railway.
30. We run trees, trams, a test track and goods trains on our 120 Km Black Country Railway.  Aren't we clever?  (Actually, 64 Kms are normal with useful passenger trains.  56 Kms only are wasted or destined to have slow, "bus on rails" * trams!)
31. We can't blame Beeching.  Only today’s transport experts.  Simply because train services that were hardly used in the 60s should have been mothballed and not sold off, piece meal and lost for ever.  What complete stupidity!  The railway industry is wet behind the ears; is walked all over and, yet even today, good transport infrastructure is still wasted!
32. Our local and regional transport bosses are all subservient to Network Rail.
33. When this mighty organisation tells them that they don’t need the Black Country Railway until the 2040s, at the earliest, and then only for freight, the other transport bosses roll over, meekly accept it and start (in the 1980s) to turn it into a tram line!
34. Wasted and many kilometres of destroyed railway lines are the everyday business of Network Rail.  This government agency in the public sector has no interest in its own infrastructure so local and regional transport bosses come along and take over the railway lines from them to use as tram lines, housing, shops, test tracks and linear woodland!
35. See ‘The Times’ report of 12 October 2017 by Graeme Paton, ‘Network Rail’s upgrades monopoly shunted aside’.
36. Our, “still a very old Victorian railway” was spoken about by Sir David Higgins, Chief Executive of Network Rail on the ‘Today’ programme on 8 January 2013!
37. He mentioned, “500 Victorian signal boxes and 300 are from the 1960s”.
38. He spoke, in 2013, of Network Rail having £37 billion to spend in one year.  Now, ‘The Times’ report has, “Government investment in the railways of £4.2 billion was the lowest level in 15 years.”
39. Yet, the budget on defending the UK from attack by foreign forces is now 2% of GDP and is going up, in real terms, by 0.5% in every year of the present administration!!  (BBC ‘Today’ website earlier in the year)
40. Thus, top priority for two new aircraft carriers (£7 billion) that are the biggest and best ever but, now need a flotilla of warships around them for protection.

* as used by one Director from UK Tram Ltd and the Croydon MP on the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme, the day after the Croydon tram crash that killed seven passengers in November 2016.

** Metro Two, the extension that cost over £60 million/Km to take it to Grand Central Shopping Centre and Diesel Perfumed Basement Station means that there is no longer a tram stop for Snow Hill Station - since 2016.  The tram bypasses Snow Hill completely and goes straight to Grand Central.  Yet, it was built to connect Snow Hill with Grand Central!  Platform 4 at Snow Hill Station is still wasted and unused.  It would still be in use to this day if they had only put back the much more cost effective, financially prudent and responsible trains all the way to Wolverhampton Low Level Station (now no more).

Metro Three to Edgbaston is costing £75 million/Km for the 2 Kms to the west of Five Ways from Grand Central.  Putting diesel trains back on our Black Country and Brum 106 Kms of mothballed/wasted or freight only railway lines would could cost no more than £6 m/Km, according to the 2015 Borders Railway rebuilding (not needed for ours) to the middle of nowhere in the back of beyond but, beautiful Southern Uplands.

Tim Weller 14 October 2017