How does infrastructure spending impact your bills?

TTIP is antidemocratic and a whip for big business to use as they please and we will foot the bill all the way to their bank. Parliament or even EU will be directed by the courts even more than now. We will not be equal before the law. Makes the spare bedroom tax very small beer. If the clauses have to be discussed in secret the obvious conclusion is that they are not acceptable to the electorate. Similarly the failure to produce all drug trial results is equally unjust. Cartels are illegal and the burden of proof should be that all communications between colluding company’s should be in the public domain. Too much reliance on commercial confidentiality leads to moral corruption. All bids for competetive tender should be made public along with the reasons for accepting the winning bid. Open society is the basis of trust. That trust has been betrayed severely over the last few years.

I certainly think your final sentence hits the thumb firmly on the nail. The whole point of government engaging in fundamental national infrastructure is that its covenant is so good that it can borrow money at far lower rates than any other contender [but that should not be used as an excuse to go on a reckless spending spree just because its credit card is hot and handy]. Over the past fifteen years [or longer perhaps] governments have lost control of power generation, health services, transport, welfare, education and – probably – security and defence. It appears to me that so much of the ‘investment’ that has been made in these fields has been tainted by the most appalling incompetence, procrastination, and financial waste so that we are now far worse off than we should be and are having to play catch-up big time to keep the lights on and the traffic moving. I can’t altogether share Malcolm’s opinion on the new railway capacity being projected to the northern cities – although to some extent it is a ‘vanity project’; I am conscious that we have the safest railways in Europe but some of the most chronically congested roads so I would capitalise on that and opt for rail over roads as taking much less land and being much greener in operation. I strongly advocated wind turbines for energy generation in certain previous Conversations. I still think it was the right thing to do but it has been bungled abominably: it is taking too long to bear fruit, comes at great financial penalty, and is technologically inhibited by the lack of energy storage investment [which the UK once pioneered].

I’m with you on that Malcolm, but I suppose if you’re building a new railway you would naturally give it the potential to go fast. It doesn’t mean that all the trains have to go at maximum line speed all the time [that would be not be energy efficient] and provide no intermediate journey opportunities [escpecially as there is talk of HS2 being joined to HS1 which goes to Paris and Brussels]. The only thing that persuades me to support HS2 conceptually is that it should release a lot of capacity on the original lines which could get more freight off our roads; a downside is that it will also release capacity that could be used to increase long-distance commuting. In another one of these perverse incentives, season ticket-holders pay the least pro rata for the network and its actually cheaper per mile to commute for longer distances – lower housing costs balance the equation but nothing makes up for the lost time although people say the quality of life is better when you get there.

John, I believe the high speed of HS2 adds very substantially to the cost of the rolling stock and track, and limits the route due to necessary track alignment. Plus it does not give intermediate stops. I would rather spend the money adding to and updating conventional railways and vehicles – I see them as fast enough for most of us normal mortals.

I see today that the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has concerns about value for money, the potential for cost over-runs due to poor project control to be concealed within the contingency provision, and the government’s lack of a clear strategic plan for the railways. The Department of Transport, which has traditionally been so tight-fisted over railway investment compared to highways, burbles away – “HS2 will have a transformational effect, rebalancing the economy and helping secure the UK’s future prosperity, providing high value for money to the taxpayer”. So that’s alright then. As Malcolm says, a more modest investment in track and trains might achieve a better-value outcome – potentially quicker to deliver too because the results would arise incrementally [although the current rate of modernisation of the English railway network is not exactly electrifying].