Having to go via Victoria is less convenient but does not add an hour. It's less than 5 minutes extra train journey and 15 minutes on the tube (allowing 5minutes to go up and down the escalators) so thats 20 minutes. Also Vic to Padd is 20 mins vs an unreliable 10minutes on the Circle/Hammersith and City Line from St Panc so again about 15 mins extra tops so thats hardly isolated!! Also if you factor in that the Vic train journey has been slowed down to make HS1 more appealing then actually all HS1 saves you is the tube journey. I agree tube journeys are a hassle but Vic to STP is direct and the change at Oxford Circus is a flat cross platform one so hardly challenging. It is sad that the only way HS1 can really be justified was by slowing the normal trains down or claiming tube journeys take longer than they actually do.
Before someone says, I agree Ashford is much quicker but that again is due to the dramatic slowdown of normal services. The only station with a big undoctored journey time saving is Gravesend.
When they were building HS1, I went down there to have a look (when they used 4-CEPs). It may have been due to inconvenient connections at Charing Cross (I had to wait for half an hour) but it cost a full hour in time to Folkestone. In 2008, I was able to do Dover, Margate and Canterbury in one day, whilst barely able to do Folkestone in one day in 1997. A while later, I did Folkestone and Canterbury in one day plus huge waits for
Tangmere at both and a walk to the harbour at Folkestone. The only real problem was getting from Ebbsfleet to anywhere else before the through service started, but I came back via Victoria because it was required line at the time, which was an absolute pain and took ages. Perhaps I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but east Kent benefits a lot from faster connections north of London.
Of course, a few HS1 services to Waterloo International would go down pretty well, but there probably isn't the capacity through Brixton.
