HIGH SPEED FRAUD
What will Scotland get from investing its share of UK money in the billions required for the high speed link between London and Birmingham?
How many Scots travel regularly between London and Birmingham?
What will Scotland get from investing its share of UK money in the billions required for the high speed link between London and Birmingham?
How many Scots travel regularly between London and Birmingham?
January 10th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
Don’t forget illegal wars, the cross London rail link, extending the London Underground, the Channel Tunnel, the M25 and oh, of course the Olympics.
January 11th, 2012 at 12:27 am
Scottish parliament building, initially thought likely to cost around £50m, it ended up costing £414m. How many scottish families could have been housed for that ?.
January 11th, 2012 at 9:48 am
“HIGH SPEED FRAUD”
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/01/scotlandengland-maritime-boundaries/
January 11th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
The difference with the Parliament building fiasco and the rail link is that we in Scotland have the power to oust those responsible for the former, as many subsequently were.
January 11th, 2012 at 3:19 pm
H n C
Agree with you re my omission of the Scottish Parliamnet building - the great vanity project of Donald Dewar, who would rather spend millions on this than adapt the old Royal High School building, simply because the RHS was the suggestion of the SNP, the party whose suggestions the Labour Party are unable to stomach, no matter how plausible and beneficial they may be.
January 11th, 2012 at 5:22 pm
“Royal High School building, simply because the RHS was the suggestion of the SNP”
The SNP very soon came around to give their full support though, didn`t they!. Was it not one Linda Fabiani MSP/SNP that became a leading light and defender in the building of the monstrosity. The ONLY party that was against it was the SSP.
January 11th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
“Donald Dewar”, the socialist millionaire, truth be known perhaps the word multi should go before millionaire in Dewar`s case!, there again, we will never know, these off-shore accounts are hard to trace!.
January 12th, 2012 at 12:33 am
The railway link between London and Birmingham by, (maybe-perhaps), the year 2026 was launched as a piece of banal Southern England news to ensure that not all the discussions were scrutinising and dominated by the Independence referendum. It played to a packed house.
Look at the marked contrast when Moore the Tory/libdem mouthpiece eventually described “The biggest constitutional question to face the uk for 300 years”- that played to an MWP audience of, er, 57 souls and isn’t going to happen in 2026 but in 2014.
The Westminster unionist coalition, including of course the infamous labour party, want it to be “sooner” but most of them couldn’t be arsed hanging around a little while longer to listen to what was quite deluded Westminster mischief making about legality over a referendum that the press are joining in with (at the moment) pretending it is a realistic stance from a constitutional perspective.
We will see about that.
I have not a bit of interest in decreasing the train time between London and Birmingham, an more than a labour Tory or libdem MWP interested in having high speed rail in Scotland which the blessed union would deliver in about 2126 if ever let’s be a bit more honest on that.
January 12th, 2012 at 9:49 am
How many travel from London to Glasgow? At the end of this centuary the oil will be running out. What eletricaly powered intercity transport system will we use then?
January 12th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
Having spent some time in both cities I’d imagine that there would be a very lively market for an express to somewhere, anywhere, else.
January 13th, 2012 at 10:24 am
An independent Scotland needs a strategic hop, skip and jump transport policy to counter what could be the economic vulnerability of the southern land border being bottlenecked - the breakup my not be amicable and Scotland should plan for this.
January 13th, 2012 at 4:53 pm
I wonder if anyone has thought that buying up the now liquidated Sea France ferry company would save Scotland a fortune in transferring the ferries to operate out of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. May work out a lot cheaper then having to build new ones if Scotland goes independent ?. Many in France would want to help Scotland. At the moment England has a monopoly in UK ferry operations to europe!.
January 25th, 2012 at 9:04 am
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February 7th, 2012 at 2:34 am
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February 7th, 2012 at 2:34 am
Hi, I’m in tenth grade in America. I’m doing a heroism report on you for language arts, and was wondering if you’d like to say anything.
February 11th, 2012 at 9:12 pm
@haggis&chips “Many in France would want to help Scotland”… Who the f do you think you are? Allan Breck Stuart? This is 2012 not 1712! France would look after itself first if it isn’t totally in the purse of Germany by then!
February 11th, 2012 at 10:27 pm
shoodybong, many in France like the scots, don`t like the english though!, of course not all, but many. I remember reading just a few years ago that one french couple filled up their tank before leaving France so they didn`t have to stop in England on their way to holiday in Scotland.
By the way, “Allan Breck Stuart” although based on a person that exsited, is for the most part made into a romantic literary hero by Sir Walter Scott in order to sell his book, I am sorry to tell you it is historical fiction.
February 11th, 2012 at 10:58 pm
I meant Robert Louis Stevenson not “Sir Walter Scott”, I was thinking off Sir Walter Scott who wrote Rob Roy. I don`t read a lot of fiction!, never have.
February 14th, 2012 at 11:12 am
Shoodybong is right. Sorry to burst your bubble ‘haggis and chips’, but whilst the Scots celebrate the Auld Alliance but once a year on their trip to Disneyland with their anti-English ‘Ecosse’ stickers proudly displayed, most French people have never heard of the Auld Alliance, and those who have couldn’t give a mélanger. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be laughable. To many Scots the idea of displaying a GB sticker would be like a Rangers fan wearing green. If it wasn’t so pathetic, it would be laughable. Man up you Scots - and don’t be surprised when your sticker doesn’t afford you favourable treatment when you get to the other side!
February 14th, 2012 at 11:26 am
And while I’m on my high horse…I came to this blog via Scottish Review where I’ve just read “There is more racial abuse towards us in the English papers than we would ever think of using towards England.” This is utter nonsense. I am a Glaswegian who has lived in London for 12 years. I visit Scotland at least once a year, and am dismayed to read anti-English sentiment in Scottish newspapers evey time I’m back. I honestly thought that our proud nation was beyond that, but it is petty jealousy, not least because Scots are largely ignored in London. Not ignored in a malicious way, but ignored as we are integrated into the multi-national gallimaufry that makes up the capital.
February 14th, 2012 at 1:02 pm
Just a wee comment as someone who frequently travels Glasgow to Birmingham and sees the poverty and deprivation of many areas in the north of England. London is NOT England. It is a beautiful city with wealth and abundance but it is not right that other areas are neglected in favour of funding the rich. Scotland will do well to become free of London rather than England. The fact is that wealthy London is largely ignored in Scotland and largely resented by the rest of the UK, as the recent riots in less privileged areas of London and so many other English cities have shown. Londoners live well but, like their government, they are largely immune to the problems hitting other areas due to the old boy network of control in Westminster. The rich looking after the rich is how I see it. And in what way is Ecosse anti-English? You must be joking, Hoodytwoshin.
February 14th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
Hoodytwoshin, I am NOT “sorry to burst your bubble”. My first comment was not aimed in anyway at “anti-english” sentiment, what I was thinking when I wrote “Many in France would want to help Scotland” was the FACT that if “Scotland goes independent” the french along with many others would want to help Scotland as Scotland would make a good member of the EU after going independent, hence the topic of my post on “buying up the now liquidated Sea France ferry company”. England it seems does not want to play a big part within the EU. shoodybong took it to mean something else!, which I find interesting in itself!, what made shoodybong and you thought/think something else ?, could it be that you both knew that the something else was also the case, I think so!. That I pointed out in my follow up post to shoodybong was agreeing that (sadly) there is “anti-english” sentiment all around the world!, that is also sadly a FACT.
February 15th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
High speed rail. This will only benefit London, not Birmingham. Travellers in the Midlands will be expected to make the day trip to London for business meetings (indeed this already happens). It will not happen in the other direction. What Londoner would travel to Birmingham for a business trip? All that high speed rail will do is increase London’s sphere of influence further beyond the home counties. In addition there are plenty of tory-voting folk in the Chilterns hopping mad at the thought of their rural idyll being spoilt.
If the government wants to introduce high speed rail, it would be better to ignore the first phase of the plan, and proceed directly to the second phase, linking Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham.
March 30th, 2012 at 5:37 pm
Its nice to see yet more reasoned debate by the ABE’s on this website. Really some of you need to grow up. The Capital of the UK is London it will therefore have the best transport links.
To burst a few bubbles here their won’t be any high speed link North of Manchester and its very doubtful that section will be built. Simply no economic reason to do it. Its got stuff all to do with being anti-Scottish few of you have got very short memories (Blair Brown Darling and Co, all Scots) didn’t see a need for it either.
this constant crap about national identity you spout is fundementally born out of a percieved view that you have been hard done by. To keep rolling events of 250 years ago merely confirms this. The UK is a nation within it we have regions a Yorkshire man is no different to you in the fact that he is not from London and their percieved views are gebnrally the same as yours. 1605 is a long time ago and most soverign nations that exist now didn’t then. Believe the SNP lies if yyou want about a better of indepedant Scotland but trust me when i say the you will reap what you sow and this crop is sown on very thin soil.
Go look at Ireland and see how they are doing as an independant nation in hock up to their eyeballs to UK banks. You seriously beileve you would be any different?
April 21st, 2012 at 11:46 pm
Nolan Bushnell founded Atari (with a couple of other partners) and sold it to the Warner Media Group as they were becoming a huge Cable TV and broadcast media conglomerate. Warner later sold Atari. Tramiel I think bought into it after Warner had already divested it to someone else. I met Nolan Bushnell at a Video Game Designer’s symposium at UCLA in 1978 or ‘79. I met Jack T. at Comdex (of course) in the ’80s. I still have his business card.I was also an Amiga Developer (after being a Coleco developer for the Adam) during the Jack years. Had they brought out the 500 sooner than they did, it might have been much more successful. They instead tried to sell $2000 machines with $500 add-in PC-compatibility cards, competing against 386 clones at half the price. They got WordPerfect and the Lotus Suite, but no Microsoft software (announced but never released). The graphics were light years ahead of the competition, but they couldn’t figure out how to market it properly.Jack is wholly underrated for his contribution to computer history.