The media have given a generous response to the Chancellor's Budget, emphasising that the grim assessment of the prospects for the British economy supplied by the 'Office for Budget Responsibility' gave the Treasury team very little leeway to take any risks.
The torrent of publicity and public pressure that must have made the Chancellor's life quite unpleasant ever since he accepted the job came to a peak in the days before the Budget was announced; and many 'leaks' and hints and briefings had already made it clear what the principal elements in the speech would have to be. If no more money had been allocated to the National Health Service the fuss would have been intolerable for the whole government: though exactly how much more is being given than had previously been announced is obscured by the possibility of double counting. The relative regression of the British educational system, compared especially to those in emergent countries, has been shaming for many years; so small steps to tackle the issue are the least that could be done.
As founder of a housebuilding firm, Mr Hammond can be assumed to have a direct and personal grasp of the issues about housing which had to be addressed. While still fiscally cautious, the measures announced to increase construction and to begin to restore the dream of a 'property-owning democracy'.
The intrinsic theme of the Budget, as had long been foretold, was the desperate state of the British economy: most especially the deplorable level of productivity and the yawning north-south divide. In the past year, plans to electrify the main line to Sheffield and a transpennine route have been axed, thus the lie is given to the words about redressing regional inequity. Still the government is pressing on with HS2 and Hinckley Point, which will do no good for anybody but will take up both engineering capacity and money.
Nothing will be done about productivity until radical change is introduced to the economy at large. That will be my theme for the next few days, when I will be based in Derbyshire and thus can probably have a better perspective on things.
Showing posts with label HS2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HS2. Show all posts
Thursday, 23 November 2017
Friday, 1 September 2017
Shabby Britannia!
As I reported a couple of days ago, Mrs May's expedition to Japan turned out to be a salutary learning experience. Far from being welcomed as the harbinger of a new trade pact between isolated post-Brexit Britain and Japan, she was told in no uncertain terms that Japanese investment in the United Kingdom depends unconditionally on Britain remaining in the European Economic Area.
While she was in Japan, David Davis her 'Brexit secretary' was making a fool of himself in Brussels by refusing to play the negotiations as the EEC [all 27 remaining countries] said they must be played.
There should now be no room for doubt in Mrs May's limited mind, that at least tens of thousands of jobs will vanish from the UK within a decade, as Japanese investment is shifted to continental Europe, unless a form of Brexit that is acceptable to external investors is secured. In a blatant item of propaganda which Dr Goebbels would cherish as a model of incompetence, Dr Liam Fox [who has been with Mrs May in Japan] said that the EU 'must' begin negotiations on the future trade relations of the UK with the the Union because 'business' is demanding that progress is made. It had been made clear in Kyoto and Tokyo that Japanese business, in particular, needs speedy reassurance as to Britain's future trading status. Japanese motor firms operating in the UK produce a greater proportion of their complete vehicles in the UK; but, like all the other firms, they need to buy some components from the continent. It is a fact that some parts of cars pass over the channel two of three times between different plant, and thus the future of the entire motor sector [as several others] depends on the free movement of goods and of the experts who manage their creation.
Britain is indeed under pressure, to take up a stance on Brexit that is uncongenial to Dr Fox, who is seen as a representative of the 'hard Brexiteers' who choose to imagine than Britain alone would be able to negotiate deals all over the world on terms at least as favourable as those now standing to the EU. This is nonsense: isolated Britain, with a market of 60 million people who have declining real incomes, would have a negligible fraction of the leverage that the EU has when negotiating for a market of 300 consumers who include millions of the richest in the world.
The EU representatives can just sit this one out, as the British government begins to learn in depth just how deep would be hole into which the United Kingdom would fall if the calamity of a 'hard Brexit' comes about; because of the stupidity and incompetence of Mrs May and her chosen team.
Meanwhile, that team is going forward with the unnecessary and excessively costly new railway from London to Birmingham, HS2. As the existing end-to-end journey now takes around seventy minutes, all that is needed is greater capacity on the existing line: especially to bring commuters into and out of London from stations much nearer to the capital then Birmingham [who would not be served by HS2 anyway; as a large number of stops to take on or drop off many passengers would slow the high-speed train down to a journey time longer than that for the existing line].
While Mrs May was in Japan, China announced that it was considering building an innovatory 600 mile-an-hour link between major cities, which are already linked by high-speed trains. It has been suggested to HM government - who have ignored the proposition - that the major centres of the thus far nugatory 'northern powerhouse' could probably be linked by such a system, more cheaply than the cost of building the unwanted HS2. This is just another example of the shoddy, limited thinking of the May gang. There will be no end to their stupidity: they should go soon. The idea of Mrs May standing in the next election verges on insanity.
While she was in Japan, David Davis her 'Brexit secretary' was making a fool of himself in Brussels by refusing to play the negotiations as the EEC [all 27 remaining countries] said they must be played.
There should now be no room for doubt in Mrs May's limited mind, that at least tens of thousands of jobs will vanish from the UK within a decade, as Japanese investment is shifted to continental Europe, unless a form of Brexit that is acceptable to external investors is secured. In a blatant item of propaganda which Dr Goebbels would cherish as a model of incompetence, Dr Liam Fox [who has been with Mrs May in Japan] said that the EU 'must' begin negotiations on the future trade relations of the UK with the the Union because 'business' is demanding that progress is made. It had been made clear in Kyoto and Tokyo that Japanese business, in particular, needs speedy reassurance as to Britain's future trading status. Japanese motor firms operating in the UK produce a greater proportion of their complete vehicles in the UK; but, like all the other firms, they need to buy some components from the continent. It is a fact that some parts of cars pass over the channel two of three times between different plant, and thus the future of the entire motor sector [as several others] depends on the free movement of goods and of the experts who manage their creation.
Britain is indeed under pressure, to take up a stance on Brexit that is uncongenial to Dr Fox, who is seen as a representative of the 'hard Brexiteers' who choose to imagine than Britain alone would be able to negotiate deals all over the world on terms at least as favourable as those now standing to the EU. This is nonsense: isolated Britain, with a market of 60 million people who have declining real incomes, would have a negligible fraction of the leverage that the EU has when negotiating for a market of 300 consumers who include millions of the richest in the world.
The EU representatives can just sit this one out, as the British government begins to learn in depth just how deep would be hole into which the United Kingdom would fall if the calamity of a 'hard Brexit' comes about; because of the stupidity and incompetence of Mrs May and her chosen team.
Meanwhile, that team is going forward with the unnecessary and excessively costly new railway from London to Birmingham, HS2. As the existing end-to-end journey now takes around seventy minutes, all that is needed is greater capacity on the existing line: especially to bring commuters into and out of London from stations much nearer to the capital then Birmingham [who would not be served by HS2 anyway; as a large number of stops to take on or drop off many passengers would slow the high-speed train down to a journey time longer than that for the existing line].
While Mrs May was in Japan, China announced that it was considering building an innovatory 600 mile-an-hour link between major cities, which are already linked by high-speed trains. It has been suggested to HM government - who have ignored the proposition - that the major centres of the thus far nugatory 'northern powerhouse' could probably be linked by such a system, more cheaply than the cost of building the unwanted HS2. This is just another example of the shoddy, limited thinking of the May gang. There will be no end to their stupidity: they should go soon. The idea of Mrs May standing in the next election verges on insanity.
Monday, 17 July 2017
High-Speed Idiocy: and Some Sense
Today will see another series of announcements on the scheme to build a completely new high-speed railway between London and Birmingham, with branches to Manchester and Leeds.
I am one of the many who deplores the London to Birmingham venture. The existing line from Euston takes only 70 minutes, non-stop. The need on that route is for more capacity to take stopping trains that can bring commuters more effectively into London from towns and cities on the route, and on feeder routes to that line. The environmental damage that it will inflict is immense, and the cost will be added to the effective national debt [from Britain to aliens, largely Chinese state-owned enterprises] even though it is to be wrapped up as corporate lending. That borrowing will have to be paid for: so if British people decide they cannot afford the prices that will be slapped onto tickets to travel on HS2, the cost of the daft first-stage enterprise will either be offloaded onto the prices of rail tickets nationwide, or onto taxes.
The so-say second stage: or, at least, investment in the improvement of main rail routes for travel across the north midlands and the south of northern England, is absolutely essential. Direct trains from Sheffield to London have been improved, and thus times on the route via Chesterfield, Derby and Leicester, with a sideline to Nottingham, are acceptable. The fast trains on the west-coast mainline that bypass Birmingham on the way to Edinburgh and Glasgow do not serve any major city in northern England: and they are slowed down by stopping at some selection from the list of Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle. The history of railway company formation, and the consequential construction of lines, means that there are various cities and towns to be served in Yorkshire, causing there to be barely-adequate services to York, Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax, Huddersfield and Hull from the metropolis: only after Northallerton is there a clear principal route via Darlington, Durham, Newcastle and the north: and this all leaves Sunderland and Middlesborough at the edges of the map. Huge expenditure is needed on that infrastructure to bring it up to the level that is common on the European continent. Half a century has been spent closing railways and parts of routes and despoiling the railways of the land that could have been sold to provide the cash to fund updating of the system. While the Osbornian HS2N plan may not be feasible, the investment is necessary: and it should come from a state-led infrastructure pool to which crowd-funding from the British people should be added. It is not necessary to add to the public external debt of the nation to improve this infrastructure: the state should lead, the people can follow, and the spending that will be generated by the construction work and then the operation of the lines will help to revive the economy. It is necessary to build not just 'strategic' main lines, but the ensure that all the 'bypassed' towns - even Darwen and Accrington - are effectively linked in to the new system.
Before one gets too depressed at the present state of the British railways, one should look at the home of capitalism, the United States of America: and at its financial capital, New York. There the railways are in a state of extreme dereliction: with collapsing bridges, five-mile-an-hour speed limits, frequent derailments at the major stations and [literally] century-old wiring providing power to some routes. President Trump trumpeted his intention to change all this, with massive investment in infrastructure, including in his home city: but so far he has cut down on the Obama-era commitment of federal investment.
Thought must be given to the effects of economic thinking, both in the neo-Keynesian era and in the more recent period when 'rational markets' theory has predominated, on the real structure and infrastructure of human life in the urban environment. It is Economics that got us down into this mess: economic dogma will not help us out of it.
I am one of the many who deplores the London to Birmingham venture. The existing line from Euston takes only 70 minutes, non-stop. The need on that route is for more capacity to take stopping trains that can bring commuters more effectively into London from towns and cities on the route, and on feeder routes to that line. The environmental damage that it will inflict is immense, and the cost will be added to the effective national debt [from Britain to aliens, largely Chinese state-owned enterprises] even though it is to be wrapped up as corporate lending. That borrowing will have to be paid for: so if British people decide they cannot afford the prices that will be slapped onto tickets to travel on HS2, the cost of the daft first-stage enterprise will either be offloaded onto the prices of rail tickets nationwide, or onto taxes.
The so-say second stage: or, at least, investment in the improvement of main rail routes for travel across the north midlands and the south of northern England, is absolutely essential. Direct trains from Sheffield to London have been improved, and thus times on the route via Chesterfield, Derby and Leicester, with a sideline to Nottingham, are acceptable. The fast trains on the west-coast mainline that bypass Birmingham on the way to Edinburgh and Glasgow do not serve any major city in northern England: and they are slowed down by stopping at some selection from the list of Crewe, Warrington, Wigan, Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle. The history of railway company formation, and the consequential construction of lines, means that there are various cities and towns to be served in Yorkshire, causing there to be barely-adequate services to York, Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Halifax, Huddersfield and Hull from the metropolis: only after Northallerton is there a clear principal route via Darlington, Durham, Newcastle and the north: and this all leaves Sunderland and Middlesborough at the edges of the map. Huge expenditure is needed on that infrastructure to bring it up to the level that is common on the European continent. Half a century has been spent closing railways and parts of routes and despoiling the railways of the land that could have been sold to provide the cash to fund updating of the system. While the Osbornian HS2N plan may not be feasible, the investment is necessary: and it should come from a state-led infrastructure pool to which crowd-funding from the British people should be added. It is not necessary to add to the public external debt of the nation to improve this infrastructure: the state should lead, the people can follow, and the spending that will be generated by the construction work and then the operation of the lines will help to revive the economy. It is necessary to build not just 'strategic' main lines, but the ensure that all the 'bypassed' towns - even Darwen and Accrington - are effectively linked in to the new system.
Before one gets too depressed at the present state of the British railways, one should look at the home of capitalism, the United States of America: and at its financial capital, New York. There the railways are in a state of extreme dereliction: with collapsing bridges, five-mile-an-hour speed limits, frequent derailments at the major stations and [literally] century-old wiring providing power to some routes. President Trump trumpeted his intention to change all this, with massive investment in infrastructure, including in his home city: but so far he has cut down on the Obama-era commitment of federal investment.
Thought must be given to the effects of economic thinking, both in the neo-Keynesian era and in the more recent period when 'rational markets' theory has predominated, on the real structure and infrastructure of human life in the urban environment. It is Economics that got us down into this mess: economic dogma will not help us out of it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)