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 2033!
The next General Election is 2 years away.
Interesting and thanks for posting this. I guess that in best Government project mismanagement form, they will delay things time and again whilst leaving huge swathes of land blighted. Then they'll suddenly realise that Rishi Sunak has given all of the available money away in the blatant attempt to soften the public attitude over Partygate, which of course he's already started doing. Government will rely on the fact that Boris & co. will use their usual ducking and diving which they've become so incredibly good at, to make the replacement Eastern Leg as much of a fantasy as are the chances of equal punishments for all over Partygate. But of course none of it will ever be the Government's fault. And sadly there's nothing anyone can do about it.
I wish I could share your optimism. Sadly I've seen to much disinterest from politicians to share your hope.
I'm not sure quite what you mean about electoral systems being a high priority. We do urgently need a review of electoral systems in order to encourage people to vote rather than to be sufficiently disillusioned with the performance of our MPs as to not vote. However, the only review that MPs (by which I mean Labour and Tories) ever have an interest in, is tweaking boundaries to try to give a marginal candidate a better chance of being elected. They're certainly never going to be interested in something like proportional representation, even though it's the only genuine way to run a democracy, because they both benefit form the bias that the present system affords them.
The incumbent government is looking to restrict access to the vote through voter ID law and shoring up their unfair advantage through the Parliamentary boundary review and by moving some types of election over to First Past the Post that do not currently use it. A government formed of opposition parties would have an unknown agenda at this point in time but we can be sure it'd be important to them to reverse some of this work or maybe even amend the Parliamentary elections to make them more proportional.There is essentially no possibility of a Labour majority government. A minority government or a special arrangement with the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party would see constitutional and election issues "on the table". This is really not on topic here however and I'm sure it's common ground that HS2 isn't a priority compared with these kinds of changes.
She also promised that NPR would serve Bradford directly.
But interestingly the figures in the financial annex at the end suggest that forecast spending in FY22-23 has been cut from a budgeted £100m to zero. Which rather suggests to me that the Eastern
Presumably until 17th November no funding of anything is absolutely certain and if they do have a £30bn black hole to fill quite a lot will be deferred to CP7 at best
Boundary reviews really shouldn't be controversial. Failing to have them shifts the advantage towards parties that are strong in urban areas as their populations fall in comparison to rural ones. (i.e. Labour). Can you seriously argue we shouldn't have constituencies that are similarly sized? The boundaries are decided by an independent commission, this isn't the US where the governing parties decides what the constituencies should be.
That's absolutely the correct theory. However in practice it will go down differently. Gerrymandering is an established practice which the Conservatives are keen to import, same as voter ID.
That was the general picture post-war, but it's changed in the last decade or so with urban area populations increasing again, particularly in city centres.
The proposals also need to be approved by parliament. This has been uncontroversial historically, but given the current state of politics who knows whether it will remain so?
If we put Heathrow aside for a moment, the design with OOC and Euston is not too bad in terms of interfacing HS2 with London and the wider catchment, particularly if Crossrail 2 ever gets built. So while the thinking may have been flawed the process still produced an adequate output.
It is long been noted that incremental schemes almost never happen.
MML to South Kirkby/Doncaster is part of all serious options shown in the IRP technical annex. e.g. 'Hybrid to Leeds', so that bit is probably a no-brainer.
Honestly though, I think that these things can work both ways.
That's because TPU is rapidly mutating into another WCRM or GWRM style debacle.
I'm not suggesting it's the best solution
Were getting funded. After Thursday I think quite a lot of things will get scaled back
What's Thursday got to do with it?
