[Yug]

Thanks to Mr McCoy's post on the Sophists, my brane has started working. Thinking about sophistry, splitting hairs, careful use of words. Sir Keir said he wouldn't reverse the Tory changes to child benefits. He didn't say he wouldn't change, adapt or alter them. As long as they don't go back to exactly what they were before nobody can say they were reversed. Also, all this refusal to commit to this, that, and the other has the trots shrieking their disapproval across the internet. Every time the trots make disapproving noises it reinforces the fact that Labour under Starmer is nothing like Labour under Corbyn, a message which cannot be repeated too often.

I think Sir Keir knows exactly what he's doing.



I deliberately didn't capitalise "trots" as a mark of disrespect.

[Tubby Isaacs]

As I say, I think you're wrong on this. He went further than he needed to on the two child limit. Can't commit would have been OK. The signal isn't just being picked up by Trots.

[Andy McDandy]

The people who will moan about the lower orders breeding too much will moan anyway. Others will see the new "third child bonus" (or whatever it's called) come in and the sky not fall in.

But seriously, cancel HS2. It's a sunk cost, let it go. Pay off whatever you need in compensation and stick a load into refurbishing the northern lines. You'll win a shedload of votes in middle England, you can offer the north something solid and useful, and you'll have a very handy stick to beat the government with (and on one of their stronger subjects, too).

[Tubby Isaacs]

Passengers from the North will used HS2, or would have done if it had got built. Even if it's only built to Crewe, the benefit to the West Midlands (which is economically "north") isn't to be sniffed at.

The Government have done their best to make sure Labour get the shit sandwich but that doesn't mean it should be scrapped, and as I understand it, investment isn't really a problem for Labour's fiscal rule, at least in the amount its likely to get spent.

[Andy McDandy]

So far it's cost billions and gone nowhere. It's a sunk cost. Bin it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The nature of high speed rail is that it doesn't go anywhere till its finished. It's not like you can run an Amersham-London shuttle or whatever. It can only open when it gets to Birmingham, which it's scheduled to do.

Built in full, it relieves 4 existing lines.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Sir Keir said he wouldn't reverse the Tory changes to child benefits. He didn't say he wouldn't change, adapt or alter them. As long as they don't go back to exactly what they were before nobody can say they were reversed.

That's the lawyer...

[Andy McDandy]

The nature of high speed rail is that it doesn't go anywhere till its finished. It's not like you can run an Amersham-London shuttle or whatever. It can only open when it gets to Birmingham, which it's scheduled to do.

Built in full, it relieves 4 existing lines.

When? When it was originally scheduled to do so?

Also, just as conferencing tech did for Concorde, the need to get from Brum to London (or vice versa) in an hour just isn't there. Or you could move to Rugby. Or Atherstone. Boom, there in no time.

It's over 10 years since they detailed the full HS2 route, and everyone could see which Chiltern gardens would get flattened. Since then, how much track has been laid, how much line cut? In that time they've built a massive freight depot off the M1 at Donnington, station and road links and all. There's a huge industrial park at Markham Vale, a bit further north. South Leicestershire has huge warehouses springing up and industrial parks swelling like Mr Creosote. Those are big and actual things. Same as the massive sheds lining the M62 from Warrington to Liverpool, the university campus just south of here building an entire new medical school, city centres being redeveloped. It is a big pile of shit that will never be completed, or perhaps even started. The money is disappearing into the same ether as all the PPE money. Bin it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

ETA for Birmingham is now early 2030s. That's way later than it should have been, but that's not an HS2 specific thing- see East West Rail.

Time isn't really the main factor for London to Birmingham, though it should be 35 minutes faster and hard to see that won't have an effect. It's capacity. All those places London-Birmingham fast trains don't stop at can get a much better service because their regional trains won't need to get out of the way. Four lines are improved like that by the full HS2. Far more capacity for freight too.

[soulboy]

Freight capacity is the no brainer for me.

Building 300000 homes a year? How do aggregates get from quarries?

A nation obsessed with Temu tat? Do we really want lorries clogging up our ports and motorways?

Freight rail is the green option but most Freight trains spend hours in sidings or slowing up commuter services. Get all that Inter City traffic on to high speed rail and we can actually get the country moving.

[Boiler]

On HS2 around Birmingham:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-c ... e-66199790

I'd like to know how much the Werrington "dive-under" has helped capacity on the ECML because now, freight trains can take the Lincoln Loop (freeing up the ECML for passenger traffic south of Doncaster) and no longer need to cross the ECML on the level there to get to the lines heading west or to Felixstowe and Lowestoft.

[Tubby Isaacs]

"It's a lovely facility, it's nice and airy and beautiful," said parent Chloe Wan on her first visit to the new hall.

"But it's a real shame that so much has been taken from the communities that it has disrupted.

"Taking minutes off a train journey is not worth the devastation it's had to the environment."

Yeah, electric railways. that scourge of the environment.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm wary of "you should have seen me fighting in there" Nick Clegg style headlines, but this is encouraging.

I don't think it'll effect the by elections though.

[Andy McDandy]

Huffington Post may be left leaning, but it's still shit stirring wannabe Ollie Reeders trying to convince folks they've got the inside juice.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Fair.

[The Weeping Angel]

Whilst I'm not happy about this annoucement I am finding some of the criticism OTT in some quarters. Here's an example

[Tubby Isaacs]

The investment and Labour market stuff are pretty different to the Tories.

But I take her point about current spending. Trouble is taxes have already been whacked up already, and nobody has much appetite to take them higher. There aren't as many rich as people think, and not like there's a "peace dividend" or anything heading down the track- the opposite. So you're scrabbling around for things like VAT on private schools and pass through income (both worthy) but only about £2bn a year in total. Think the mansion tax is still on, though it'll probably be some way over the £2m it was proposed to be in 2015, wisely I think. That might be another £1bn or so.

[Abernathy]

Not for the first time, La Toynbee explains things simply for the uncomprehending ctitics:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... on-britain

Listen up, critics: first let Labour win power. Then scrutinise its real record

Time for some perspective. Even the prospect of winning a rock-solid Tory seat should remind doubters of what has been an epic climb by Labour from the despair of its 2019 near-death experience. Labour’s leader had a strategy mapped out from day one, and nothing has distracted him from it: two years to fix the party, ruthlessly expunging any who damage it; a set of five cast-iron missions; and fiscal discipline, avoiding all spending traps ahead of the manifesto. And the result is an astounding 20-point lead. Are Labour people satisfied? Of course not. We see glum faces among the left-leaning commentators, who say Labour will only win as the result of the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss catastrophes. They want to know a Labour government will be transformational, exhilarating, brave, inspired: instead they complain of extreme caution and affronts to Labour values. But this is the time to remember May 1997, and how euphoric that Labour victory felt. Understand that the closer Labour gets to the winning post, the greater its fear of one false step, one fatal slip. It won’t matter how excellent Labour’s policies were for the poorest people in Britain if it returns to the miserable opposition benches. Keir Starmer has said from the outset that winning is his purpose.

I point out the remarkable similarities between 1996/7 and the present time, some say, ad nauseum.. But they're there. And uncannily parallel.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Jez has popped up to criticise Starmer on benefits. That's this Jez.

Labour manifesto ‘would keep £7bn of planned Tory welfare cuts’
Analysis by Resolution Foundation shows Jeremy Corbyn’s party would go ahead with most of George Osborne’s planned benefits reductions

Sure, the policy was much better in 2019, but the fact remains, he was happy to pull this shit in order to get votes off rich students and their parents.

[Youngian]

Tackling child poverty with universal perks like free school meals is a better way to go than trying to convince voters to give more money to benefit claimants to have 3+ kids. Good luck with that.