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Grebfromgrebland

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By Grebfromgrebland, in General Chat

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Wymsey

Wymsey

Posted
Posted (edited)

Hope this is not another poisoning, or something similar, by Putin and co against a well-known opposition figure..

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-49144327

Bit suspicious, as his spokesperson said the affected individual never had an allergic reaction before.

Edited by Wymeswold fox
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Buce

Buce

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, Carl the Llama said:

Looks like they still intend to drag their feet on it. Believe it when I see it (about 50 years from now)

 

12 minutes ago, Innovindil said:

HYS is open on the story now. More noise about it the better imo. 

 

No chance.

 

Ultimately, it'll be decided by 150,000 elderly Tories, just like everything else.

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Countryfox

Countryfox

Posted
Posted

What a load of cobblers ...   whats wrong with the old fashioned way ...   if you knock him off more times than he knocks you off you win on points and if you lance him right through the gizzard or knock his block off you win by knockout/death.   

 

Simples ! ...   :thumbup:

 

 

 

 

IMG_2592.jpg

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davieG

davieG

Posted
Posted

Not news as such but.....

 

There is a far better option than HS2 – and it already exists

Reopening the Great Central line would save billions

 

 

Ross Clark

3 August 2019

 

9:00 AM

Just 48 hours before the conclusion of the Conservative leadership contest, Allan Cook, chairman of HS2, wrote to the government to confess that the costs of the project could rise from the current projection of £56 billion to as much as £86 billion. Given that Boris had already announced that he is to review the project, it was pretty much akin to a condemned prisoner writing a letter of confession.

The Prime Minister is not fond of doomsters and gloomsters who pooh-pooh things for the sake of it, and as we know is partial to the odd vanity project. More-over, he seems as fond of trains as he is of model buses. But he could do us all a favour by ditching the wretched HS2 and replacing it with a far cheaper and more practical alternative — a project which actually offers something to the communities which have been fighting the high speed link and which, while speeding up and improving rail links from London northwards, would also release billions of pounds for much needed improvements to public transport between and within northern cities.

That alternative is the little-known Great Central Railway. This ready-made high-speed line takes almost exactly the same route between London and the Midlands as HS2 would. It sits there, its viaducts and bridges unused, begging for trains. It did once have them — at one point it had the fastest expresses in the country. Opened in 1899, it was the last and the best–engineered of all the main lines in Britain. It was built with the vision of operating 125mph expresses, and used a ‘continental loading gauge’ — which means that, uniquely for British lines, the wider trains used in mainland Europe could be run along it.

The Great Central was one of the many casualties of the Beeching closures of the 1960s, yet it remains almost totally intact. A few agricultural buildings have been built across it, but otherwise its line remains clear — a recently-built housing estate in Brackley, Northamptonshire, respectfully leaves its course as an undeveloped green corridor, just in case. There is a question of what would happen at the London end — whether to share existing tracks to Paddington or Marylebone, or to tunnel to Euston. But for much of its length the Great Central could be reinstated with little earth-moving, tunnelling and without the need to demolish residential properties or foul sites of special scientific interest.

The reopening of the line has, indeed, already been mooted. Between 1996 and 2003 a private company, Central Railway, did extensive work on reinstating the line as a goods and passenger route. At the time when the project was dismissed by the Blair government in 2003, its cost was put at £8 billion — and that included upgrading and reopening sections all the way to Liverpool. The project then briefly resurfaced again in 2013, when Ed Miliband’s Labour looked at it as a cheaper alternative to HS2.

The Great Central fulfils all the main objectives of HS2 without the excruciating cost, the environmental objections and absurdities of the latter project. True, no train on the Great Central is going to reach 225mph — the projected speed for HS2. A maximum line speed of 140mph is more realistic. But then no one has ever explained why a compact country like Britain needs the fastest long-distance railway in the world, other than for the purpose of national willy-waving. International experience suggests that high-speed railways transform the market for travel between cities — knocking out airlines and creating a substantial new market for day-return travel — when they reduce journey times to below about two and a half hours.

Yet the cities which would be linked by HS2 — London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds — already are within this travel time. Small reductions in travel times have to be weighed against other factors. As HS2 trains would require advance booking and not be available to passengers who want to turn up and go, there is little point in shaving 20 minutes off your journey if you are then going to have to turn up at the station 20 minutes earlier to be sure of catching the train on which you are booked. HS2 would only really be justified if the new lines went on to Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, but it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, the disadvantage of running trains at 225mph is that they can’t stop very often. As a result, HS2 misses out the towns which are most in need of regeneration: Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, Leicester. Derby and Nottingham would be served by a station between the two — requiring a long tram ride to the centre of either. In Birmingham, HS2 trains would terminate at a new station, Curzon Street, rather than New Street, where all the connections are to other towns in the West Midlands. As for East Midlands airport — that is the most ludicrous situation of all. Which other country would burrow a high-speed rail line under the runway of an international airport and not have a station there?

A reopened Great Central line, by contrast, would plug much more naturally into the existing rail network. Moreover, it would allow two new stations to be built at important locations — at Brackley, a growing part of Northamptonshire which has not had a rail service since the 1960s, and at the intersection with the old Oxford to Cambridge line, itself the subject of reinstatement proposals. The Oxford to Cambridge corridor has been proposed as a growth area for development in decades — why not put a high-speed rail station with connections north and south bang in the middle of it?

The main job of the Great Central line would be to create extra capacity between London and Rugby, to relieve pressure on the West Coast main line. North of that point, there are fewer capacity problems because the West Coast main line splits, one section going to Birmingham, the other towards Stafford. As for the billions saved by not building HS2 — just a fraction of the money could transform public transport in northern cities. The proposed three-line Merseytram, abandoned in 2005 after a disagreement between the Blair government and the Merseyside authority over who would underwrite the financial risk, was costed at £325 million, less than 1 per cent of HS2. The similarly abandoned Leeds supertram was similarly costed at £500 million.

In backing a new Transpennine line, Boris has signalled he understands where investment is most urgently required — between and within provincial cities. He can find the cash — without abandoning the need for an extra north-south inter-city line — by reviving a forgotten gem of Victorian engineering.

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/there-is-a-far-better-option-than-hs2-and-it-already-exists/

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Kopfkino

Kopfkino

Posted
Posted (edited)
34 minutes ago, davieG said:

Not news as such but.....

 

There is a far better option than HS2 – and it already exists

Reopening the Great Central line would save billions

 

 

Ross Clark

3 August 2019

 

9:00 AM

Just 48 hours before the conclusion of the Conservative leadership contest, Allan Cook, chairman of HS2, wrote to the government to confess that the costs of the project could rise from the current projection of £56 billion to as much as £86 billion. Given that Boris had already announced that he is to review the project, it was pretty much akin to a condemned prisoner writing a letter of confession.

The Prime Minister is not fond of doomsters and gloomsters who pooh-pooh things for the sake of it, and as we know is partial to the odd vanity project. More-over, he seems as fond of trains as he is of model buses. But he could do us all a favour by ditching the wretched HS2 and replacing it with a far cheaper and more practical alternative — a project which actually offers something to the communities which have been fighting the high speed link and which, while speeding up and improving rail links from London northwards, would also release billions of pounds for much needed improvements to public transport between and within northern cities.

That alternative is the little-known Great Central Railway. This ready-made high-speed line takes almost exactly the same route between London and the Midlands as HS2 would. It sits there, its viaducts and bridges unused, begging for trains. It did once have them — at one point it had the fastest expresses in the country. Opened in 1899, it was the last and the best–engineered of all the main lines in Britain. It was built with the vision of operating 125mph expresses, and used a ‘continental loading gauge’ — which means that, uniquely for British lines, the wider trains used in mainland Europe could be run along it.

The Great Central was one of the many casualties of the Beeching closures of the 1960s, yet it remains almost totally intact. A few agricultural buildings have been built across it, but otherwise its line remains clear — a recently-built housing estate in Brackley, Northamptonshire, respectfully leaves its course as an undeveloped green corridor, just in case. There is a question of what would happen at the London end — whether to share existing tracks to Paddington or Marylebone, or to tunnel to Euston. But for much of its length the Great Central could be reinstated with little earth-moving, tunnelling and without the need to demolish residential properties or foul sites of special scientific interest.

The reopening of the line has, indeed, already been mooted. Between 1996 and 2003 a private company, Central Railway, did extensive work on reinstating the line as a goods and passenger route. At the time when the project was dismissed by the Blair government in 2003, its cost was put at £8 billion — and that included upgrading and reopening sections all the way to Liverpool. The project then briefly resurfaced again in 2013, when Ed Miliband’s Labour looked at it as a cheaper alternative to HS2.

The Great Central fulfils all the main objectives of HS2 without the excruciating cost, the environmental objections and absurdities of the latter project. True, no train on the Great Central is going to reach 225mph — the projected speed for HS2. A maximum line speed of 140mph is more realistic. But then no one has ever explained why a compact country like Britain needs the fastest long-distance railway in the world, other than for the purpose of national willy-waving. International experience suggests that high-speed railways transform the market for travel between cities — knocking out airlines and creating a substantial new market for day-return travel — when they reduce journey times to below about two and a half hours.

Yet the cities which would be linked by HS2 — London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds — already are within this travel time. Small reductions in travel times have to be weighed against other factors. As HS2 trains would require advance booking and not be available to passengers who want to turn up and go, there is little point in shaving 20 minutes off your journey if you are then going to have to turn up at the station 20 minutes earlier to be sure of catching the train on which you are booked. HS2 would only really be justified if the new lines went on to Newcastle, Edinburgh and Glasgow, but it doesn’t.

Meanwhile, the disadvantage of running trains at 225mph is that they can’t stop very often. As a result, HS2 misses out the towns which are most in need of regeneration: Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry, Leicester. Derby and Nottingham would be served by a station between the two — requiring a long tram ride to the centre of either. In Birmingham, HS2 trains would terminate at a new station, Curzon Street, rather than New Street, where all the connections are to other towns in the West Midlands. As for East Midlands airport — that is the most ludicrous situation of all. Which other country would burrow a high-speed rail line under the runway of an international airport and not have a station there?

A reopened Great Central line, by contrast, would plug much more naturally into the existing rail network. Moreover, it would allow two new stations to be built at important locations — at Brackley, a growing part of Northamptonshire which has not had a rail service since the 1960s, and at the intersection with the old Oxford to Cambridge line, itself the subject of reinstatement proposals. The Oxford to Cambridge corridor has been proposed as a growth area for development in decades — why not put a high-speed rail station with connections north and south bang in the middle of it?

The main job of the Great Central line would be to create extra capacity between London and Rugby, to relieve pressure on the West Coast main line. North of that point, there are fewer capacity problems because the West Coast main line splits, one section going to Birmingham, the other towards Stafford. As for the billions saved by not building HS2 — just a fraction of the money could transform public transport in northern cities. The proposed three-line Merseytram, abandoned in 2005 after a disagreement between the Blair government and the Merseyside authority over who would underwrite the financial risk, was costed at £325 million, less than 1 per cent of HS2. The similarly abandoned Leeds supertram was similarly costed at £500 million.

In backing a new Transpennine line, Boris has signalled he understands where investment is most urgently required — between and within provincial cities. He can find the cash — without abandoning the need for an extra north-south inter-city line — by reviving a forgotten gem of Victorian engineering.

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/08/there-is-a-far-better-option-than-hs2-and-it-already-exists/

 

Why when the issue is capacity on the WCML between London and Rugby (as the piece identifies) would the solution be to reopen a line that would barely take trains off the WCML and doesn't actually really still exist.

Edited by Kopfkino
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Nick

Nick

Posted
Posted

My friend provides surveying services for HS2.

 

His current opinion is that whilst the first part to Birmingham will get built he suspects the rest won’t.

 

Interesting that Boris announced like instantly about a new rail service between northern cities on his second day as PM.... 

 

Maybe HS2 scrapping helps makes some funds available for Brexit!

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ozleicester

ozleicester

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Buce said:

 

Murdoch's News Corp have reached a new low by mocking Greta Thunberg's autism.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/02/greta-thunberg-hits-back-at-andrew-bolt-for-deeply-disturbing-column

Andrew Bolt is an out and out cvnt, he is purely the propoganda arm of The Liberal (Conservative) party and Murdochs puppet.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, Buce said:

 

Murdoch's News Corp have reached a new low by mocking Greta Thunberg's autism.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/02/greta-thunberg-hits-back-at-andrew-bolt-for-deeply-disturbing-column

Those the powers seek to destroy, first they make insane - or make it look like they're insane, anyway. Especially if it's a girl/lady, because we know just how hysterical and irrational they get, right?

 

This doesn't surprise me at all - I wish it did.

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Bellend Sebastian

Bellend Sebastian

Posted
Posted
22 hours ago, leicsmac said:

Those the powers seek to destroy, first they make insane - or make it look like they're insane, anyway. Especially if it's a girl/lady, because we know just how hysterical and irrational they get, right?

 

This doesn't surprise me at all - I wish it did.

Obviously this stuff is written for an audience, but if you're going to accuse someone of being mental then surely you'd put more effort into doing it in a way that doesn't make YOU look batshit crazy

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, Bellend Sebastian said:

Obviously this stuff is written for an audience, but if you're going to accuse someone of being mental then surely you'd put more effort into doing it in a way that doesn't make YOU look batshit crazy

This is the post-truth era, my friend - the audience don't need any kind of proof-based arguments, all they need is someone telling them something that fits the narrative and that's it.

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Bellend Sebastian

Bellend Sebastian

Posted
Posted
7 hours ago, leicsmac said:

This is the post-truth era, my friend - the audience don't need any kind of proof-based arguments, all they need is someone telling them something that fits the narrative and that's it.

Oh, absolutely. I think that's always been the case, but the thing that seems to have changed is that as long as they're saying the things you want to hear, nothing else matters a jot. I mean, when the tape of Trump going on about grabbing women "by the pussy", I assumed that was him done, as surely no women would vote for him after that, but of course, that wasn't the case.

 

Sounding completely mental while slagging someone else off probably barely registers

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The Syrup

The Syrup

Posted
Posted (edited)

Another day, another mass shooting in the US (third this week apparently)... multiple casualties after a shooting in a Texas shopping mall. Unconfirmed reports of 18 dead. 

 

Edit : Mass shooting is classed as 4+ deaths not including the shooter from what I understand

Edited by The Syrup
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