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"Partygate was significantly overplayed?" You're missing the point - perhaps deliberately. Many people were fined huge amounts, such as the landlord interviewed on News at Ten tonight, who was fined £4000, for a lesser offence than that committed by Boris, who was fined just £50. But the...

Maybe I'm late picking up on this but I hear there was recently a wrestling match in County Durham which got seriously out of hand with two wrestlers beating each other with various equipment, a lot of blood and with children in the audience. Apparently a female representative of the club said...

All this discussion about the best route, its all appreciated. BUT ... its not so straightforward for the unfamiliar, especially when pulling cases etc. And yet wouldn't it be so easy and cost very little for the authorities to provide signs or a painted line to follow. But no, they would rather...

Beeching was doing the bidding of Prime Minister MacMillan. Political bidding and transport advances almost invariably mix badly, which explains why HS2 has been so badly developed and progressed. Boris has a lot to answer for with his early enthusiasm for Heathrow as part of HS2. Back to...

You may well be right. The problem is, when the concept of HS2 was sold to the UK public in 2011 or so, it was on the basis that the entire Eastern leg would be open by 2033. Leaving an announcement for another year or two is cutting it fine for something that will go ahead ten years before...

It’s now six months since the Eastern Leg of HS2 was officially scrapped. When Shapps made the announcement he promised an alternative, with £96bn of spending on a scheme that would “improve services in the Midlands and northern England ten years sooner”. Does anyone know how this alternative...

A one sided tirade against Iolo is too easy. We need investment in railways and HS2 has many flaws. In that respect at least, Iolo has a point, and if he was engaged in a dialogue there may be a lot less "anti rail advancement" to his thinking than his tweet suggests.

Can I just make a simple suggestion? If the country is going to employ 90,000 more staff, wouldn't they be of greater value in the Health Service? Isn't saving people from dying in ambulances, or at home waiting for them, somewhat more valuable than saving people waiting quite so long on the...

No, I didn't know anything about that story. I was referring to trouble in many towns and cities where (for example) loud gangs of people exhibit very threatening behaviour. This happened to a female friend recently in her fifties who was physically assaulted (albeit not severely), but the...

I'd continue this, but I'm at risk of going off topic.

Yes, it was absolutely right to relieve capacity on WCML, but a route closer to the M1 corridor with a spur via Birmingham would have achieved that, whilst providing far more sensible links to Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds, before we even start on less environmental damage. The...

Yes, hurting people's feelings seems to be taken a lot more seriously than muggings and beating people up. Our legal system has become deeply entrenched in twisting language to argue technicalities, such that indeed many of us might be very close to being in big trouble. Meanwhile the use of...

One of its most spectacular failings has to be that it only provides slightly quicker journeys along WCML routes whilst no longer providing the much more useful and far bigger time savings from Birmingham to Leeds etc. And what about the Northern Powerhouse uses for better rail links? HS2 should...

A true sign that I'm getting older, I believed that our legal system was about solving serious crimes and bringing seriously nasty people to justice. So here we are in 2022 where two of the most expensive UK legal cases of the year, are about seeking the truth into whether top MPs were at a...

For many years I've believed that HS2 is a terrible design which could and should have been so much better, but the objections to it have been even more of a joke and I'm not sorry to hear that the final camp has been removed. Maybe I'm just an ageing cynic, but I'd compare HS2 with the Tory...

mods note - split from here. Hmm, just when I was despairing about the state of UK politics, I've just listened to GMTV news this morning. In the USA, Biden's sister is saying Biden will be running for re-election in 2024. At his age! Then she says Meghan Markle would be a welcome addition to...

I hate to say this but it looks like this thread is losing momentum, for the reason that we seem to be stuck with Boris for the foreseeable future. It seems we have neither a worthy alternative leader for the Tories, nor a worthy alternative political party. What a sad reflection of the state of...

Does anyone know why we have to wait until the end of the year to stop importing Russian oil and gas, when only a small percentage of our consumption comes from them?

Your comments all sound very hopeful about Putin being in difficulty. Trouble is, things are nothing like difficult enough for him.