When Gordon Brown proposed the HS2 nationalised new railway line project it was to go from London to Birmingham and on to both Leeds and Manchester, creating a Y shaped new railway between major cities in England. It was to cost £37 bn and was to get the UK up with or ahead of Japan and France with their fast trains running on straight track between major cities.
Labour, Coalition, Conservative and now Labour governments have all wanted the project to work, and have all ended up cutting back the ambition in the face of runaway costs and endless delays. Ministers rightly get the blame, but Ministers just asked senior managers and officials to do it better and cheaper and each time ended up with its considerably dearer and slower. Each enthusiastic Minister wanting to help deliver a success was faced with yet another list of undesirable cuts and options as they wrestled with the absurd and unacceptable budget overruns. The highly paid consultants and senior managers have some questions to answer.
HS2 has become a warning to all those who think a nationalised railway will be so much better. Here is a fully nationalised railway which has had access to an effectively unlimited budget of subsidy and free money paid for by taxpayers. No one can tell us when anyone will be able to travel from Old Oak Common to Birmingham on it, let alone from Euston. All agree we will never travel to Manchester or Leeds on it as promised originally.
Some say it will now cost £100 bn to just do the Birmingham to Euston part of it that remains, three times original costings for well under half the railway. There needs to be much thinking by the government about how it has come to this. We need to see a new business case for what they now hope to deliver. We need a more demanding timetable for the completion to lower the extra time costs. Maybe the railway should end at Old Oak Common, as the costs to complete new track into Euston will be large.
This is a most inauspicious start for an all nationalised railway. As they cut the speed it can attain it loses its original main selling point. It will increase capacity on a route which currently does not lack capacity, so getting any financial return now seems impossible. No wonder growth and productivity are so disappointing when a major project like this hits the buffers. This is the first railway massively delayed and part cancelled by too many twenty pound notes from taxpayers on the line.
May 19, 2026
What a waste of money who from our part of country is going to use it when you can go on a train to Birmingham via Reading. This will probably be slightly slower but who will go to London too save a few minutes and pay a premium. Also what I see architects are building grand station when bog standard would do.
May 21, 2026
HS2 is a f disgrace.
All that money – to go to Birmingham (no offence against Birmingham but not worth £100 Billion to get there). It’s actually insane as well as a disgrace.
May 19, 2026
Off topic
HM Revenue & Customs is to claw back about £17 per month from state pensioners whose income is over £35,000 per year. HMRC wants pensioner households that are over that income threshold to repay Winter Fuel Payments issued in the tax year 2025-26.
Why no mention of the feckless workshy who coin it in every year in benefits but don’t have there income taxed, something not quite right here, the useless workshy sit on there arses watching daytime tv drinking there cans of white lighting all day while the pensioner who may have put 50 odd years of graft into working get sod all but treated like second class citizens, disgraceful
May 19, 2026
Strange the way they are doing it. I missed the deadline last year but this year I have now cancelled my winter fuel payment via HMRC.
May 19, 2026
Agree.
Perhaps it is time to tax all Benefit income for everyone, the same way as earnings and Pensions are taxed, and have stricter rules apply to who can apply to get them.
May 19, 2026
I’m a pensioner, who’s still working part-time as a landlord. I’m having to repay my Winter Fuel allowance and from next year have to pay 42% tax on my rental income. Most of my annual savings now go towards my ever growing tax bill. My Retirement Pension is not tax free, even though it is now called a benefit, unlike all the benefits the ever growing feckless receive. I don’t even get a full pension after 43 years of NI contributions. My take home RP works out at £561 a month after tax, yet someone who has been on benefits and never worked receives £1,045 because they have received free NI credits. Hard work hardly pays at all in this country and this is what politicians fail to understand.
May 20, 2026
Indeed, many already now thinking why did I bother to work long hours and try and live within my own means, when the feckless and work shy get it all for nothing.
May 19, 2026
HS2 is costing more than NASA’s manned mission to the moon.
You only have to look at the job adverts Network Rail is running for their new name Great British Railways to know how bad they are going to be as the Stalinist providers of rail travel.
I see Swatch have adopted the NHS approach to delivering service to customers, fortunately they are not monopoly providers who have already taken payments via taxes like the NHS is.
May 19, 2026
Alternatively, we just scrap the white elephant now and save the rest of the money …. which is what PM Cameron should have done, but didn’t. PM May should have done, but didn’t. PM Johnson should have done, but didn’t. PM Sunak should have done, but didn’t.
Still, it’s only £100 billion+ of borrowed money, which will end up costing us a great deal more of that over the decades needed to repay it. And it’s not their money so it doesn’t matter to them.
May 19, 2026
Agree, in the real world, in the commerical world, in the business world, in the private sector world this would be stopped today ……but its a public and taxpayer funded world ….yeah know a like net-zero
May 19, 2026
£600bn spent by Boris and Sunak on Covid Vaccines and lockdowns that did vast net damage and was never even needed by most people even if they had been safe and effective.
Also given that you can work on trains, make calls, email, watch movies, edit spreadsheets, write books, reports… who cares if it take ten mins longer on the train especially if that means the end connections are 30 mins longer.
School children in the UK being indoctrinated to believe that black people cannot be racist agains white people it seems (this in addition to Climate Alarmism and other lies). Surely this teaching is blatant racism and idiotically encouraging them to be racist – we also have blatant misandry taught in school. Primary school teachers can often be over 80% female.
Schools blasted for teaching children that black people cannot be racist to whites — Sheffield schools are teaching children as young as seven that white people have racial ‘privilege’ and that black people cannot be racist. Rather a denial of history all over the world.
May 19, 2026
Jacob Rees-Mogg was an early Conservative critic arguing that HS2 should be abandoned rather than continued simply because money had already been spent.
He repeatedly described HS2 as a “waste of money” and invoked the idea of the “sunk-cost fallacy”.
He explained that previous spending shouldn’t justify throwing even more money at a project whose costs had mushroomed. In 2019 he again argued that escalating costs were a reason to STOP, not continue.
At this now much later stage, it would cost as much to stop as continue owing to the commitments that have been allowed to build up. Disgraceful.
May 20, 2026
Politicians invariable like grand and usually disastrous projects spending the money on hundreds of small improvements across the network and it could have been spend far better. Spending it in reducing road congestions would have been even better. Only about 2% of trips are by train anyway. Circa 7% by distance as usually longer trips.
May 21, 2026
HS2 is certainly a Grand Project, yet it confers only disgrace on those associated with messing it up.
Remedying the UK’s continuing overpopulation would be more effective than stuffing more of it into train capacity.
There has been far more time, effort and money put into producing HS2 than shaving minutes off journeys would likely be worth. Consider all the travel and journey time of workers and materials having to come and go from site for years, just to deal with each tiny part of building it. Commuter connections and obstructions at both ends in reaching their final destinations and the normal knock-about of daily events also cut into any saving.
If something is so instantly important, a text, phone call or Teams link up would be far faster and inexpensive.
May 19, 2026
Donna,
You are of course correct; but now it is even worse. The socialist cabal in Downing Street are finding new and creative ways of wasting even more money. I could name them, but they are many; starting with the fantasies of net zero and the EU. My problem is that the people who are supposed to restrain the excesses of politicians are no longer active. The treasury, the CS where, we are to believe, the cream of our top universities quietly manage and protect us from the small brains elected to represent us. We no longer function as intended, the guard rails are gone and we are heading over the cliff.
May 20, 2026
A real Conservative once said that the problem with Socialists is that they eventually run out of other people’s money.
Unfortunately, the Socialists in the Labour Party don’t believe it and don’t care. And the Socialists in the Not-a-Conservative-Party ignored her.
May 20, 2026
They ignored her and the. evicted her. But then she did rather foolishly appoint the daft as a brush John Major as Chancellor and then let him join the ERM!
May 19, 2026
Good morning.
The UK railways were, much like the canal system before it, a private venture. Individuals would create a company, seek Statutory permission from Parliament, and go to the financial markets to raise capital to build the project. If it failed investors lost their money and, in some instances the company was purchased and a new people would try to complete the project if it was still viable.
Today we have a system whereby the government acts as both the company and the investor. Neither of which, for both financial and especially political reasons, can go bust. So more and more endless money is poured in. This is because you have removed the ‘risk’ element from the system. The old; “Too big to fail.” comes in.
Finally I would like to ask. Has anyone been held responsible for this failure ? ie Has anyone lost their jobs ? I suspect like all government projects this was done by committee and so their is collective responsibility and so no one can be held to account. This must change !
May 19, 2026
Not their money and not they who get the value. Lots of vested interest on the make. They care not what they spend not what value if any they deliver. Better value than the £600billion spend doing vast net harms with lockdowns and dangerous net harm Covid vaccines – about a 5% of cost value delivered I estimate. They could have fixed all UK potholes for about 20% of the cost and build many new roads, underpasses and bridges too. With self driving cars and taxes on the way road with door to door transport is the way to go especially on most journeys and especially shorter distances of up circa 300 miles or so.
May 19, 2026
Although no one will ever be held responsible we might at least find out why the original figure was so inadequate (or the final figure is so inflated £37 billion seems quite enough to build a railway to me). Who has trousered the money? Let’s see the top paid 200 suppliers.
May 19, 2026
Private venture would be the way forward with HS2. Stop pouring money into it and offer it for sale as is. If no one wants to buy it, that should tell you something.
May 20, 2026
Nor was a single public officer charged with negligence in public office or worse for all the rape gang (let’s turn a blind eye to that. No police officer, social workers, councillors, teachers… not one!
Nor for negligently spending £600 billion on the net harm Covid “Vaccines” or net harm Lockdowns.
May 19, 2026
We need a business orientated government and it is none of the above.
May 19, 2026
We have a business destruction government that does a growth, growth, growth rain dance while doing all this economic vandalism. Are they very dim or deliberately evil or both?
May 19, 2026
It was always a mad project also supported by Cameron, May, Boris & Sunak’s Tories. NASA’s mission to the moon to cost less it seems, but to be fair unlike the moon mission I suppose the train line will have some utility value perhaps 5% of its cost rather than zero value for the moon mission,
High speed can only really be high speed if the train does not stop much. But if it does not stop much then the end connections (often double car/taxi trips at each end) are longer on average so overall (door to door) times are inevitable longer on a high speed few stops train. Cost of HS2 will be about the cost of building 2 million decent new houses.
Unemployment up to 5% it seems well done Doom Loop Labour. 1/6 of the Sunday Times rich list leave in 12 months. US GDP is now double EU average we need cheap energy, border controls, less red tape, lower taxes, less government, freedom of choice, free speech… we need U turns on every Starmer policy.
May 19, 2026
Australia’s Full Federal Court made a landmark ruling in the Tickle v Giggle gender discrimination case, affirming that transgender women are protected under the Sex Discrimination Act. The court found that excluding a trans woman from a female-only app constituted direct discrimination and doubled her damages.
Thank goodness our Supreme Court is, so far, not quite as deluded as Australia’s. Though many of our two tier courts, justice system and sentencing council are clearly bonkers!
May 19, 2026
Exactly, the project was never ever going to be viable given the short distances involved, high speed anything only gives you a real advantage over very long distances.
If it really was a capacity problem, then other less expensive solutions could have been an option.
Longer trains and station platforms have already been introduced on some routes, and sensible time tables with efficient inter train connections with other services would also help.
125mph is about the right, proven, and efficient top speed for the UK given station distances.
May 19, 2026
David Blunkett almost says something sensible for once in the Telegraph.
“Rejoining the EU would be suicidal for Labour”
Except Starmer has virtually killed the party already and fully intends to rejoin in all but name ratherclike Theresa May tried.
Also Blunkett later says “There is a clear economic case for greater alignment, but the politics remain toxic. Given that the political parties most favourable to Europe contest an incredibly crowded political niche, any focus on this is, for the moment, is suicidal.”
There is no case economic or political to rejoin the EU Mr Blunkett – nor for greater alignment – quite the reverse.
Blunkett was a Methodist local preacher based at Southey church in the Sheffield (North) Methodist circuit. He told the Methodist Recorder: “My politics come directly from my religion. As a Christian I see myself as a Socialist; not exactly a Donald Soper, but that way inclined”.
Oh dear David!
May 19, 2026
HS2 like any other government projects will become a money pit. Open ended contracts, Bat tunnels and Newt highways adding billions to an already flawed project. Hinckley Point is another classic example of the sheer wastage of money, disco music in the seawater intakes being another frivolous cost.
Until the strangle hold of the eco loons is broken these gravestones will continue
May 19, 2026
I see Kent police have recorded a one year old as a crime suspect, you really couldn’t make up how crap our public sector is.
May 19, 2026
The humungous HS2 cost overrun rests with the fateful decision that the trains should travel at 230mph. Trains this fast need long stretches of dead straight track, which also needs to be very strong and flat. HS1, which travels at 180mph, was much cheaper per mile of track.
The London to Birmingham stretch meant HS2 would need to go through the heart of the Chilterns, an area of outstanding national beauty. Many Tory MPs, speaking on behalf of unhappy Chilterns residents, demanded expensive tunnels, noise abatement and cuttings to keep the trains out of sight.
In the end, 11 tunnels were commissioned between London and Birmingham, burying the line for 32 miles of the 140 mile track. There were 50 viaducts. Not to mention the notorious £100m bat tunnel.
HS2 was always controversial. Right from the start there were problems managing the contractors, co-ordinating the planning, disagreements over build sequencing and civils. As with dozens of massive, taxpayer funded projects over the past 20 years, we proved to be incapable of bringing it in on time and budget.
With the benefit of hindsight, we should have appointed the American firm Bechtel to build HS2 on a fixed price contract. Had we done so, it would be running now. Bechtel can build large projects on time and budget. The only construction firm that we have that comes near is Sir Robert McAlpine, who have successfully executed many large projects for the government. The Olympic stadium comes to mind. As does the £1.4b outstanding new Bloomberg European HQ in Cannon Street.
May 20, 2026
Those with foresight knew that the original budget was woefully inadequate; so ridiculous it could be argued that it was a deliberate deception and the whole project should never have started.
The benefit of hindsight only applies to those who have no foresight and who should have scrapped the white elephant when they had the power.
May 19, 2026
HS2 lost its purpose as soon as they abandoned the northern leg. The savings to Birmingham are not worth it when you take in the time to get into London (and for us in John’s territory it is quicker to go there via Reading). There were gains if going to Manchester but we have lost those. The opening keeps getting put further and further back, when business commuting will be declining even more, and for many of us it won’t be open in our lifetime. A sad tale of something that could have worked well if it had been done properly and not from the bottomless pit that is HS2 limited.
May 19, 2026
HS2 has become a physical example of all that is wrong with centralised command in the Public Sector.
There are no penalties ever, for officials that fail to deliver their objective. The only sector that ever suffers from state folly and failure is the tax payer, the very sector who had zero control or influence over the doomed initiative.
With most built up areas across the country now being forced to adopt ever lower speed limits on the roads, vastly increasing the time to cross any major conurbation. How did someone, somewhere, persuade government ministers it would be a great idea to reduce the time to travel from Birmingham to near London by ten minutes, when policies were being progressed that added hrs. to travel the remaining few miles at both ends of the journey?
The dead hand of socialism has worked its magic capability to destroy national progress and confidence in state decision making yet again.
May 19, 2026
Politicians should take all the blame. A vanity ego driven project where early stage criticism and cost benefit analysis was skewed, negatives ignored.
Then you have the so called value for money tendering process in which companies are driven to the bottom knowing that once they get the contract the politics mean cost overruns, almost certain (London Olympics cost twice the initial estimate, Cross Rail?) will be met.
Add zero project management skills in the civil service and the ridiculous view that Ministers had any knowledge, experience, ability to oversee it and you have the recipe for the disaster it is now.
The worrying, indeed shameful thing is the continuing sloping shoulder responsibility denial of the politicians (Covid/Post office) zero blame/accountability so nothing changes or will change. Maybe Palentir will succeed in the NHS but as ever there is push back from the dinosaurs.
The MOD hasn’t been fit for purpose for decades.
The State is a lost cause.i can’t even get angry about it now,
May 19, 2026
One good thing that could come out of this farce (but won’t) would be legislation that any government project that is forecast to cost more than 20% of budget is immediately cancelled with no more money paid. This can be written into contracts.
An independent review should also be commissioned to see why in China the projects are delivered speedily and to budget but here they are not. The outcome will be environmentalism, health and safety and net zero which must start a debate about the level of regulation in this country,
May 19, 2026
The (white) elephant in the room rhetorical question: “If HS2 was fully functioning and opened tomorrow, what would be the cost of a return ticket from Birmingham to London, and how would it compare with the cost of a conventional New Street to Euston ticket?”
A follow up question: “Given that the HS2 station at B’ham Curzon Street does not adjoin New Street, Moor Street or Snow Hill, and will leave connecting passengers from e.g. Telford, Shrewsbury or Walsall with the need to get to Curzon Street by shuttle or on foot, is the notional time saving for those passengers a fiction?”
May 19, 2026
Only politicians want HS2. It’s not just that Old Oak Common is highly inconvenient. The new HS2 Curzon Street station in Birmingham is nowhere near the central business district and the main Bullring shopping centre. It’s far more convenient to travel on the existing Euston to Birmingham New Street line in about one hour and twenty five minutes. You then arrive exactly where you want to be!
May 19, 2026
I was always against HS2 as a public sector scheme as being for too expensive and very poor value for money even on the original costings. However it ought also to be said that far from having an excellent civil service and one of the best in the world, our civil service is in reality even by the poor standards of public sector activities evidently one of the least efficient and worst in the world. It is certainly worse than those of France, Japan and China and the other countries that managed to actually complete high speed railway projects and at a fraction of the cost of our failure. This is not the only instance of failure. I may blame Ministers, especially Prime Ministers for idiotic policies but the idiocies and bad consequences evidently have not been foreseen and advised against, as they should have been, by civil servants.. For instance when during Brexit evidently Theresa May was clueless about how to negotiate or the proper negotiating principle that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed (and you don’t hand out preliminary concessions), it is clear that her principle professional civil service negotiator was equally clueless. Yet instead of being sacked then he was promoted to Permanent Secretary of the Foreign Office and given the opportunity to mishandle the Mandelson appointment which he promptly did. Faced with this useless civil service their overall numbers should be drastically reduced and those top civil servants whose advice is useless should be replaced. Perhaps it should also be a requirement for Permanent Secretaries that they should previously in their careers have worked successfully outside the Civil Service (as tends to happen in France). One of the few success stories was Boris Johnson’s appointment of an outsider, Kate Bingham, to oversee vaccines policy during Covid along with a Minister who had succeeded in the world outside of politics.
May 19, 2026
Another example of the Government’s failure to build big projects on time and on budget, which applies to both this and past Governments. Let’s face it, we are still waiting for a third runway at Heathrow. But who has been fired as a result of this failure?
May 19, 2026
Nobody will ever admit that this project is a failure.
They will keep pouring money into it until they can announce it’s a success.
Be grateful that it’s just a railway – in Ukraine it’s a war and every sleeper is a man.
May 19, 2026
“There needs to be much thinking by the government” you are talking about a concept that has deserted Parliament this Century. No one ever thinks beyond the next election and the sound-bite that might get them elected.
People need to be reminded and kept being reminded they debt they have still to pay down created by Gordon Brown(Labour) when in office. They have now got him back!
All tax bills should now show a break down, what portion is for the here & now and what portion is the debt that those that don’t think created.
Keep making the same mistakes, digging the same holes and Parliament gets surprised when the same result materialises.
May 19, 2026
Who in London would find the need or desire to travel from a place west of London to outside Birmingham.
It is said as the track isn’t being built to allow top speeds throughout its length, many restricted zones and that 10-20 mins travel time will be saved between those 2 venues.
I live in Wokingham, a sort of suburb of London. In to-days World I can drive to Birmingham International(and I have,without speeding) in the time it would take me to get to Old Oak Common by public transport. Then again that might be the plan with the aggressive 20mph restrictions slow people down to public transport is quicker
May 19, 2026
We are a small country with a good Victorian rail network plus many airports. There was never any need for high speed travel at a time when the internet made face-to-face meetings easier without travel. This is a vanity project of politicians. If capacity were an issue on the existing route then longer trains and platforms was one answer.
HS2 demonstrates every worst aspect of what goes wrong with large scale public infrastructure projects and deeply depressing.
The other vast infrastructure project driven by government is energy production and distribution driven by politicians steeped in irrational fear of climate catastrophe, which has now been declared by the IPCC as “implausible”, but which will destroy our countryside, farmland and marine environment with wind and solar farms and the attendant pylons, with the highest energy prices in the world and deindustrialisation, let alone the adverse effect on our whales, bats and birds.
May 20, 2026
It was originally proposed as part of the EU’s beloved Trans-Europe Transport Network.
May 20, 2026
+1
May 19, 2026
Lord Redwood – forgive me for repeating something you have often said, the same money spent on bring the existing network up to scratch, better signalling etc would move more people daily and save the country money while earning the country money. The money for the national upgrades has still got to be found before it all falls apart.
People mustn’t be allowed to forget that HS2 is not some modern railway structure/network. It doesn’t offer the performance of that found in China or Japan, this is an old rail system in new clothes. Old type speeds etc. we can hope that the new hard benches they call seats elsewhere don’t turn up.
May 19, 2026
Great appearance of our host on GBNews yesterday – made some very good points, but so annoying how the other leftie panel member wouldn’t concede anything about Brexit but kept on talking over JR.
May 19, 2026
The runaway train came down the track and she blew the budget.
May 19, 2026
Every single PM since Gordon Brown should have cancelled this ridiculous project but the sunk cost fallacy fooled them all. However, the total one-off cost of £100bn is not that much in the context of annual debut interest payments of £111bn.
May 19, 2026
HS2 was the Uniparty bending to the EU to provide a fast European train network for EU bureaucrats and politicians to use at tax-payer expense. There was never was an economic case for it and now with improved internet connections it is a total white elephant. I argued from the start that such a line should be high capacity, high frequency at low prices to enable there to be really cheap travel up and down the country. A jumbo jet service (double train height and double track width) and not a Concorde for the elites. If the line must now be used can we not at least cancel the expense of running high speed trains to save just 20 minutes from somewhere outside central London to somewhere outside central Birmingham?
May 19, 2026
Don’t you think that after two hundred years it is a bit late to be installing new rail track, the country that gave railways to the world is now a railway laggard. Railways have now passed their sell by date in the UK. Better to concentrate on Airlines and self driving vehicles. You can already see self driving cars in use on the streets of Amsterdam, that well known industrial giant, are we going to be left behind in the self driving vehicle industry as well!
May 19, 2026
The project should now be abandoned. It could be presented as a candidate for this year’s Turner Prize, with excursions (by bus, of course, as no trains run) to admire the savage vandalism with which the countryside has been wantonly, permanently despoiled. The Proms could commission a related composition from one of Radio 3’s young, vibrant composers. And a special edition of Monopoly could be launched, with some novel features: ‘Pass Go and collect £200 billion’; ‘Bottomless Community Chest’; and ‘Go to Jail? You must be joking!’
May 19, 2026
It was never ever going to work.
It was going to cut time from London to Birmingham by 40 minutes and was going to bring the north closer to the south
Cost started at £49 billion now at £95 billion and rising and what about the extra cost of the rolling stock to go on it.The real truth about cost is nearer to £170 billion
Now it’s not 225mph its down to 200mph;
Why has no-one stopped this catastrophic waste of money;
No wonder we’re going bust as a country.
If the majority of the public can see what’s going on why cant the politicians.
May 19, 2026
missions to the moon etc were mor than just salute the flag.It generated the vast explosion of technical
development in so many spheres that ensure USA is way above USSR and The People’s Republic.
Trump(despite Beeb’s anti-him posts(gratis CBS) is committed to maintaining it whilst President.
USA has 2yrs of a strong government.Good for investment,corporate or private.What do we face:
Starmer and a head of state who prefers to smell the roses
May 19, 2026
Madness money pit thinking by folks who boast they won’t & don’t need any lectures, yet hypocritically say “Lessons will be learned” …
Carry on wasting our money as no one takes any responsibility and ownership unless it’s good news.
In fact they seem to get promoted on the basis of the size of the mega budget experience regardless of success or failure.
Squandering our scarce resources this way seems beyond their shallow thinking.
May 19, 2026
Britain is becoming/has become/(has long been?) a joke. The Transport Secretary said £102 bn for HS2 and possibly operational by 2039!
Japan had started its Shinkansen bullet trains in 1964, France started testing its TGV-1 in 1971 and developed its network from 1977, Spain its Renfe AVE trains from 1992. Italy its first Pandolino train in 1989, Germany its first ICE trains in 1991, Poland its own HS trains in 2014.
Given I don’t think it is a lack of qualified engineers in Britain, what could be the reason for such a dismal state of HS trains in Britain? Stupid politicians come to the top of my head, you know those with the idea that private companies will always do a better job and for a better price, hee hee hee. As for water companies, energy companies, …
May 20, 2026
There would be no trains were it not for Britain’s private inventors and investors.
Your whole post explains why we British look on you Continentals as a joke. You have not even comprehended that the State invents NOTHING, never has done, never will do. You cannot understand that Corporatism is a killer and Capitalism is life.
You are not even in the starting stalls, retarded in fact, though usually we are too polite to say so.
May 20, 2026
You consider yourself as a direct descendant of those clever English/British people of the Industrial Revolution. Fair enough.
‘Capitalism is life’ you say, but is there only one true capitalism? In which case which country/who is the best present representative of it, Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, … you should tell us because there is quite some difference in private property rights, business freedom, trade openness, regulatory efficiency, … between countries at the top of the capitalist countries (as seen for example in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom).
Or in your view is it like religion, only one true religion? Or in party politics only one true Restore party?
May 21, 2026
Some exceptions: nuclear power and satellite communications were both funded by the state to get them off the ground and into service.
May 20, 2026
Well those private companies would suffer their losses (or go bust) as has happened more than once hefner.
With your preferred nationalised system you and me are paying.
With no end in sight.
May 22, 2026
I can go from Lille to Montpellier (970km) with a one-way ticket for €45 if I take it three weeks in advance.
I can go from Reading to London Paddington (45 km) with a one-way ticket for £23.40 on 03/06 (maximum advance date I can see on the website).
As you say people are paying for their preferred system.
May 19, 2026
price controls on food in all but name. no doubt we will be asked to put our names down on the waiting list for trabants too. as if we couldn’t hate this government more.
May 19, 2026
Unbelievable. Except it’s not, it’s sadly entirely believable. Conservative ministers and PMs who should have known better had a chance to kill this monstrous white elephant, probably Boris Johnson was the last one in office prior to the point of no return. Perhaps the main benefit for future generations is it will stand as a monument to the hubris and folly of such grandiose state schemes. We should at least have a Hall of Fame featuring the chief villains who enabled this terrible waste, both politicians and officials.
May 19, 2026
Have you seen Dominic Frisby’s song on FB ?
May 19, 2026
J D Vance speaking more common semse about the UK than the entire UK political class again I see…
May 21, 2026
The High Speed Rail 2 project originated in the EU’s policies on rail and infrastructure and cross border free movement of people so it was always a political project. It has never had a solid business case inside the UK but was pushed through by the EU worshipping Labour Government (Blair/Brown). Even HS 1 (The Channel Tunnel rail into London) is absurd because of speed restrictions on the UK segment of the line. Don’t socialists just love splashing other people’s money around on pointless boon doggles! What UK really needed was better cross-Pennine links including rail, and freight rail links between ports and industry centres.