I’m not, but it’s largely irrelevant anyway because thankfully the chancellor has elected to cut domestic APD. The sad thing is rail passengers are not taxed to the same extent as air passengers.
All well and good, but every single one of them relies on burning fossil fuel so they can't match a 40 year old electric train when it comes to low carbon transport, so pretty irrelevant
For anyone interested in the maths for the CO2 - I used the example of Octane which most people are familiar with. Diesel is different - no question - as is Jet A. However here goes:
This is a myth supported only by your own bias.
When you say "to use an example", what you really mean is "to use a very extreme, very obscure example".
Last I checked, there’s still plenty of trains running on fossil fuel, and a heck of a lot of electricity used by any electric train still involves burning of either fossil fuels or biomass that produces CO2.
Huh? Maybe they are profitable but they are certainly not taxed - the profit might go to subsidise other routes and thus reduce the overall tax burden of the railways but that’s about all (note the railway industry involves heavy subsidy by government through taxation while the aviation industry is not taxation funded but contributes to the treasury coffers). On this basis alone, any “evening up” should involve lower taxation and / or greater government funding for aviation, not the other way around. Thankfully the chancellor has chosen to reduce domestic aviation’s tax burden (although sadly he chose to penalise international aviation which is an easy target with which rail will never compete).
So tell me when this great white elephant starting at Euston is going to make meaningful inroads into the time it takes to get to Glasgow or Edinburgh by train - and thus make A meaningful abstraction from the domestic aviation activities so many on this forum seem to loath… When? When is HSx going to cut journey times to the central belt of Scotland to any significant extent?
There are no domestic air services from London to Liverpool or Leeds, mainly because the train has become the mode of transport of choice. This has happened because the train offers a better solution for most, not through punitive taxation. Manchester is a different case as it still carries a lot of connecting air traffic.
Calling it a white elephant is by definition your bias talking. A 20% cut in journey times between London and the Central Belt is more than sufficient sufficient to make "meaningful inroads", especially because the capacity is so much greater.
It's likely to shrink permanently yes. Same with oil and gas. The responsibility isn't to save those jobs however. It is to support the people not the roles.
You still haven’t told me when I’ll be able to get to the central belt in 20% less time. If - if - that is achieved at some time decades into the future, at that point it may be the time to discuss taxation of domestic aviation. For now though, rail journey time reductions are just wishful thinking.
The same Treasury is providing funding for the construction of the route that will generate the journey time reduction. By the time of the next General Election the powers will be in place to construct the route between London Euston and Golborne. They're already in place between London Euston and Crewe. It's not really an if.
Aviation isn’t going to shrink permanently - it’s going to continue to grow. Innovation will continue to reduce emissions per passenger (as has been the case for decades), while the other motivating factor is that aviation contributes the treasury whereas rail is a burden. Crippling aviation now through the sort of punitive taxation some on this forum advocate would risk stifling such innovation, and thankfully the government is effectively aware of the benefits (to treasuring income and the overall economy) a thriving aviation sector represents and won’t try to kill it off.
It's certainly the way it's going in the time scale that HS2 will be complete.
Yes, it’s one in the eye for the knuckle-draggers who’ve jumped on the climate change bandwagon in the hope we’ll all ultimately end up living in caves and eating grass.Brilliant message to send out ahead of COP26.
Precisely . From my UK home in Preston I am certainly not driving to London and taking a plane from either Liverpool or Manchester to London would be crazy. Train is sensible. But to go to Newquay for a weekend break/holiday I would absolutely consider flying.
As said above there are no flights between Liverpool or Leeds and London, and the only flights from Manchester to London are really for connecting passengers. Abolish those, and much of that traffic will instead fly to Dublin, Amsterdam or Dubai for onwards connections
Indeed - through tickets are often available with KLM and likely others. Things like Norwich to Inverness are tiny niches in market, but an interchange in Amsterdam is highly time competitive.
Climate change is happening, whether or not you accept it. It is superimposed on the natural variability of the earth's climate, so there will be some years that are cooler than average. But the overall trend is rising temperatures. That means a tendency for worsening weather** - more rain, more storms, more floods - and rising sea levels.
Higher humidity is possibly one of the more noticeable effects in the UK the mean Relative humidity in the UK has risen by 4 percentage points in the last 50 years. Warmer certainly = wetter in the the UK.
Network Rail electricity is 100% nuclear.
www.networkrailmediacentre.co.uk
Its not, it just says EDF will "match" NR requirements with nuclear generation in overall output. The power comes off the grid from wherever, not a specific Nuclear to NR cable.Network Rail electricity is 100% nuclear.
Ten-year deal powers Britain’s biggest rail electrification programme in a generation
Network Rail has awarded EDF Energy a ten-year deal for the supply of low carbon electricity to power Britain’s growing electrified rail network.
It may take another few years for this to become widely accepted, but I absolutely think that ultimately this is true.
I think that this is a really good point. Unfortunately at the moment we seem to have a number of diesel trains that emit an awful lot of atmospheric carbon without being able to actually practically carry many people.
Yeah, I'm sure we all know how the grid works. But it's close enough as we can get without a dedicated grid just for NR.
Who cares? The majority of the population don’t, and will care even less if punitive taxation in the name of climate change really starts to hurt their wallets. The majority who have jumped on the climate change bandwagon are using it as part of a socialist agenda to level everyone up by pricing them away from “elitist“ forms of transportation such as private cars and aeroplanes. The great news is that - whatever the climate change groupies think - as part of this week’s budget the chancellor has chosen to invest in aviation by reducing domestic flight APD and in personal road transport by freezing fuel duties again.
