[spireitematt]

Looks like HS2 is going to cost upwards of a 100 billion and finish at Birmingham.

It's a waste of money. They should update the current tracks we have and reopen new lines and look at the lines which Beeching shut in the 60s. We need better new and improved trains and not the ancient rattlers. We need to bring back the railways into public ownership and not have European companies running our trains.

One of the reasons why European train travel is so cheap is because British taxpayers subsidise there ticket prices through the profits that companies like Keolis, Arriva and Abellio make from owning British franchises. Keolis is 70% owned by the French Government national rail service SNCF which own 35% of Govia which runs Thameslink, Southern, Southern Eastern and London Midland. Arriva run Chiltern, CrossCountry, Grand Central, Northern, Arriva Rail London and Arriva Trains Wales which is owned by Deutsche Bahn whose sole shareholder is the Federal Republic of Germany. Abellio is the international arm of the state owned by Dutch national rail operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen.

It isn't just trains though, it's public utilities as well and it doesn't matter if we are in the EU or not as it will continue. The fault lies with the Tory party of the 80s/90s because they thought public ownership was bad but thought foreign ownership was good and now it's come to bite them on the arse as we see companies like Northern not being able to run trains on time and the trains which are being run are 40 years old with no heating, no air conditioning and lots of overcrowding but the only thing which seems to be changing is the ticket prices as they seem to increase year on year without any letting up.