Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "The Guardian" channel.

  1. The ship canal will just be a wider barge canal, like those in France, with containers offloaded at Liverpool to be barged up.  The canal and Manchester cannot accommodate the large ships of today. The locks are too narrow and the bridges are too low. The depth of the canal is OK, the locks can be made wider, but the prohibitive cost is the raising of the bridges.
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  2. To prosper and use the canal again, Manchester has to turn to manufacturing again and stop trying to be a commercial city. The city must play to its strengths.  Large ports naturally are commercial cities, like nearby Liverpool.
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  3. Modern ships are much taller than the old cargo ships. They hold far more cargo for a given hull size. They get the accommodation and bridge aft and tall to get more freight in. There are a few ships a week still using the canal. They are dedicated bulk coasters, not general cargo. The canal is heavily used from Eastham to Runcorn, around the Mersey estuary. The long stretch from Runcorn to Manchester is just about dead. It could be filled in, or drained, from Runcorn upwards and HS3 run on it, also linking Liverpool and Manchester airports by very fast rail, merging the two. It is ideal.
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  4.  @markjones4704  Most ships could not go up the canal. They were not prepared to pay to adjust the ship to accommodate just one port which takes a day to get up a canal and day to get back.
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  5. +LemonZeppelin "The UK is finished". That's why I'm leaving this country, it's going downhill fast. Bye, bye! `Britain is flourishing, helped by a world-class performance in transforming wealth into prosperity. However, prosperity created is not prosperity shared. The opportunity for flourishing is not open to all. Despite strong prosperity generation, the absence of life chances in urban areas limits its reach. -The Legatum Institute The UK is number 3 in generating prosperity. But the prosperity does not reach those at the bottom, with 1 million using food banks and amongst the most expensive domestic homes and rents in the world. The fruits of prosperity stays at the top.
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  6. I can't take Owen Jones seriously because he looks and sounds like a boy.
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  7. Adonis is so out of touch, he was saying Milton Keynes has a bigger economy than Liverpool.
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  8. Bort Wovell The last thing we need is him in charge of transport. He is so South East biased all the budget will be on South East rail.
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  9. The canal could be partially filled, made half the width, so Northern Powerhouse Rail can run on it. From Runcorn to Manchester it is largely redundant. Being half the width, coasters can still run up it. It would be one-way, so just leave passing bays. It is going to waste as it is. I do not know how the Runcorn to Manchester section financially justified.
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  10. Owen speaks too fast.
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  11. HS2 is not needed. ► The MML and the Chilton Line can be electrified, ► The WCML and the ECML can have the bottlenecks removed. ► The Birmingham train can be moved back to the Chiltern Line. ► Fast tilting train can be bought. The current trains only go 125mph The times from London to Manchester will be a few minutes less than HS2. Leeds will be about the same time. We need to spend on local & regional rail, where the need is. Take them off the mainlines and we are left with mainline expressways. Then we get two for the price of one. High-speed rail was to connect provincial cities with the Continent, that is not happening. There is no point in this expensive white elephant.
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  12. After nine years nothing happened.
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