Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "Sunak scraps HS2 leg - saying he knows what 'north really needs'" video.

  1. No. You weren't listening. The £37.5B costings were from 2017. The latest public costings from 2021 (BEFORE INFLATION) were £71.2B, double and they'd be even higher today factoring in inflation. Closer to £90B and no sign of those ballooning costs stabilising. Given the time scale remaining on HS2 completion it's realistic the project could end up costing somewhere between one and two hundred billion pounds. Many of the costs come from red tape and the need to build huge sections underground for various reasons. Whilst costs for the project continue to rise, other infrastructure projects have their funding robbed. Private investment may be a way forward for it, but we just don't know whether that has been explored or not. What do you think would be better, another 2 decades of infrastructure maintenance, upgrades and new projects put off to the side to fund HS2, or scrapping HS2 to ensure these things can happen over the next 20 years? I'm not sure, I suspect different people will answer that question differently. But what is exceedingly clear given the budget position of the UK, is that you can't have both. You have to choose. Be aware that some of these projects do involve sections of HS2 track, so presumably those sections will still be completed. It may be the case that a future government can simply join those sections together to effectively deliver HS2 (probably by another name) at a point when the UK doesn't have a half trillion pound budget deficit anymore that's grown over the last 20 years of bipartisan governments since Blair. Perhaps might I dare to say, when the budget has finally returned to surplus, however hard to imagine that ever happening might be, particularly if Starmer who is on record wanting to make the deficit larger, gets in at the next election.
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  2. How disingenuous of Gary Gibbons. For the last week, and every day of this conference CH4 have reported rumours and lamented the apparent glacial pace of the decision being made on HS2. Now that the decision is made, it's apparently happening at "brake neck speed". What a joke. I know CH4 and thejr labour campaign masters have been itching to complain about HS2 all week, but you missed the story. Yes, HS2 will be cancelled. But the transformation of education being proposed is nothing short of a revolution. The education system across the whole of the union under this proposal will finally come into line with all the other education systems across the OECD. The decision to convert into a grade 11 and 12 system with Math and English MANDATORY for all years is a fundamental game changer for future generations. You want to talk leveling up, that's it for real and in ways far exceedingly anything a railway ever could. It's the fundamental groundwork to enabling domestic hi-tech manufacturing to be built at scale in the UK. It's the groundwork to ensuring future economic growth and allowing Britain to remain competitive internationally. The teachers union will have a complain that they'll have to do their jobs, and I'm sure CH4 will cover it only from their side. But honestly, it couldn't be better news for Britain. This is real policy change that will encourage foreign investment and endow the next generation with the skills for local investment too
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  3.  @propagandaisnottrue2121  Excuse me? What are you claiming is "copy and paste"? There's nothing fake about my profile, unlike yours. Edit: Your sock puppet account is absurd. Just look at the kinds of comments you're leaving
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  4.  @thepenguin9  Might I say that your statements about the economy aren't accurate. The economy didn't get into this state recently. It's taken 30 years of bipartisan mismanagement to get it to this position. The budget deficit, that is not enough money in government coffers to cover costs so they have to take loans, started under Blair at £50Bn annually. By the time the Tories took over in 2010, Labour had ballooned that out to £328B annually. That's a third of a trillion pounds in loans the government had to take EVERY YEAR. The Tories took over and they managed to balloon it even further to £489B annually by the time Sunak took office. That's effectively half a trillion pounds in loans taken every year. Half a trillion pounds added to the national debt yearly. Under Sunak and Hunt, in just 18 months they've managed to drive that deficit back down to £327B, effectively where Labour left off. Sunak has a plan and goal of getting rid of the deficit altogether by 2030, he's on his way and his plan makes perfect sense economically. The lower that deficit is, the more money the UK has for large infrastructure projects and the more attractive it becomes for investment. Inversely, the higher the deficit, the worse the quality of services will be, the poorer the infrastructure and the less attractive the UK becomes to investment. Starmer is ON RECORD saying just a few weeks ago that he would fund many of his pie in the sky policies on borrowed money. That is, his intention is to GROW the deficit, not shrink it and try to return the budget to surplus like Sunak. Now, you can obviously vote however you like. If you want to vote Labour, please do so. But please do not misrepresent the facts. BOTH major parties have been abysmal with the economy, and Labour under Starmer would like to continue being abysmal with the economy. If that appeals to you, all the power to you my friend.
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  5.  @reddeano  Maybe ask your parents before you use the internet
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