David Cameron

HS2 … the high-speed train route with the same old staggering fares

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http://www.theguardian.com/money/blog/2013/nov/02/hs2-train-fares-commuter

With commuter tickets already costing thousands of pounds, will anyone be able to afford to travel on it?

Image of channel tunnel trainThe government says its proposals for High Speed 2 “assume a fares structure in line with that of the existing railway”. So we can probably expect to fork out an absurd sum for a ticket unless we trawl through websites three months in advance, can be absolutely certain we are going to travel on the 3.42pm on a Tuesday afternoon, and we craftily split the journey half way to Manchester. Get any stage wrong and the inspector will haul you off the train and land you with a huge fine.

It is remarkable that in the debate on HS2 so little has been said about fares. Will taxpayers be expected to pump billions upon billions into a Mitterrand-style Grand Projet then find it’s out of the reach of anybody other than swish executives on expense accounts? The omens, despite the government’s reassurances, aren’t good.

Take the prices for travelling on our only existing high-speed track, HS1, that whizzes through the Kent countryside. If you live in Ashford, the opening of the line promised a huge improvement in train times into the capital. Sure enough, it now takes just 35 minutes into London St Pancras compared to the 61 minutes it takes on the former route into London Victoria.

But at what cost? A season ticket for commuters from Ashford to a London terminal using the old route, plus an onward journey on the tube, costs £4,996 a year. That’s a pretty staggering sum for a 54-mile journey (about the same as London to Brighton). But if you want to take the HS1 trains, and save half an hour, the cost rises to £6,360. A commuter paying 40% tax has to earn £10,600 a year just to pay to get into work (oh, and there’s a £700 to £900 a year bill to park at the station).

The Ashford example suggests that using HS1 costs 27% more than the fare structure of the existing railway, which I think we can rely on as a better indicator of what fares will be like on HS2 than what the politicians are telling us. The – so far – lacklustre economic gains that HS1 has brought to north Kent should also deflate some of the more ambitious claims about the impact of HS2 on northern cities. An analysis in the Economist this week suggests HS1 has brought benefits for London, but little elsewhere.

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Russell Brand on Revolution

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Well worth reading and I will adopt and adapt some of his suggestions.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/10/russell-brand-on-revolution

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Cameron, Osborne, Boris, all of them lot, they went to the same schools and the same universities that have the same decor as the old buildings from which they now govern us. It’s not that they’re malevolent; it’s just that they’re irrelevant. Relics of an old notion, like Old Spice: it’s fine that it exists but no one should actually use it.

We are still led by blithering chimps, in razor-sharp suits, with razor-sharp lines, pimped and crimped by spin doctors and speech-writers. Well-groomed ape-men, superficially altered by post-Clintonian trends.

We are mammals on a planet, who now face a struggle for survival if our species is to avoid expiry. We can’t be led by people who have never struggled, who are a dusty oak-brown echo of a system dreamed up by Whigs and old Dutch racists.

We now must live in reality, inner and outer. Consciousness itself must change. My optimism comes entirely from the knowledge that this total social shift is actually the shared responsibility of six billion individuals who ultimately have the same interests. Self-preservation and the survival of the planet. This is a better idea than the sustenance of an elite. The Indian teacher Yogananda said: “It doesn’t matter if a cave has been in darkness for 10,000 years or half an hour, once you light a match it is illuminated.” Like a tanker way off course due to an imperceptible navigational error at the offset we need only alter our inner longitude.

Capitalism is not real; it is an idea. America is not real; it is an idea that someone had ages ago. Britain, Christianity, Islam, karate, Wednesdays are all just ideas that we choose to believe in and very nice ideas they are, too, when they serve a purpose. These concepts, though, cannot be served to the detriment of actual reality.

The reality is we have a spherical ecosystem, suspended in, as far as we know, infinite space upon which there are billions of carbon-based life forms, of which we presume ourselves to be the most important, and a limited amount of resources.

The only systems we can afford to employ are those that rationally serve the planet first, then all humanity. Not out of some woolly, bullshit tree-hugging piffle but because we live on it, currently without alternatives. This is why I believe we need a unifying and in – clusive spiritual ideology: atheism and materialism atomise us and anchor us to one frequency of consciousness and inhibit necessary co-operation.

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[7.30pm edit: I don’t want anyone thinking that I intend to be some political or spiritual leader. There were suggestions of this in the Jerusalem Post articles of 7 & 8th July 2005 which were the script to be followed in the July 7 bombings and investigation.

Brand acknowledges the role of materialism and self-interest in his article. From a personal perspective, many years ago I had a young man and a young woman presenting themselves to be used and I have the different odd nod of acknowledgment [1/11/13 and respect which is appreciated] every now and again. Apart from that it’s been a real pain and nothing but a real pain. Granted while I am occasionally successful in my endeavours, I don’t personally benefit from it and it does take some effort. ]

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News of the World editors ‘must have approved hacker’s contract’

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24754518

Image of Rebekah Brooks

News of the World bosses must have approved the contract of a private investigator who later admitted phone hacking, the Old Bailey has heard.

Prosecutor Andrew Edis QC said senior figures would have been involved in the decision to give Glenn Mulcaire a written contract in September 2001.

Former NoW editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson are among eight defendants facing trial.

They deny charges including conspiracy to intercept communications.

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The jury heard Mulcaire was paid a weekly fee until September 2001 when he moved onto a written contract.

The court heard on Wednesday that the private investigator was paid around £100,000 a year for his services.

“It is if course part of the prosecution case that a contract like that, a big contract, involves the senior management, in this case the editor, the deputy editor and the managing editor, the three defendants whom you have to try for phone hacking in addition to Mr Edmondson [former NoW head of news Ian Edmondson] – that is Rebekah Brooks, Andrew Coulson and Stuart Kuttner,” Mr Edis said.

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HS2: MPs to vote on releasing money for preparation

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24753394

MPs will vote later on whether to let the government start spending money on preparations for the HS2 rail project.

Money released by the vote would pay for surveys, buying property and compensating evicted residents.

Some Conservatives are expected to vote against the plans amid continued uncertainty over Labour’s support.

In June the government revised the estimated cost of building the high-speed link between London and the North of England from £32.7bn to £42.6bn.

HS2 would see lines built between Birmingham and London, followed by a V-shaped second phase building separate tracks from Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds.

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[HS2 is a total waste of time and money. Instead of being a part of an integrated transport policy it simply replicates already existing train routes.]

 

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Hinkley Point: nuclear power plant gamble worries economic analysts

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http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/30/hinkley-point-nuclear-power-plant-uk-government-edf-underwrite

Liberum Capital analysts flabbergasted by UK government’s deal with EDF and decision to underwrite nuclear power station

Image of Hinkley PointThe government’s agreement to underwrite the Hinkley Point nuclear power station could turn out to be economically insane and hugely costly to consumers, City analysts have warned.

Analysts at Liberum Capital said the government’s deal with France’s EDF will make Hinkley Point the most expensive power station in the world with the longest construction period in the world.

The government gave the go-ahead last week for EDF to build the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset. Its two reactors will cost £8bn each and will provide power for about 60 years once it starts operating in 2023.

The energy secretary, Ed Davey, has made a huge bet that fossil fuel prices will rocket by the time Hinkley Point starts operating in [2023], Liberum’s Peter Atherton and Mulu Sun said in a report published on Wednesday.

They said: “The UK government is taking a massive bet that fossil fuel prices will be extremely high in the future. If that bet proves to be wrong then this contract will look economically insane when HPC commissions. We are frankly staggered that the UK government thinks it is appropriate to take such a bet and underwrite the economics of any power station that costs £5m per MW and takes nine years to build.”

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