[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.

I thought the point of HS2 was to facilitate wealthy Londoners and southerners expanding their buy to let property portfolios into the Midlands ? In fact I'm pretty sure its a major factor. You cant accuse the tories of not looking after their own.

But you are right about the joke that is the franchising schemes in the UK rail industry. The tories rail against state ownership, unless it's a foreign state owning our trains where they can sell them off and make a killing.....meanwhile the service goes down the shitter.

Even worse than rail is water being privatised down south - that is an absolute outrage in this day and age.

HS2 in the main was about shaving minutes off journeys for commuters and the fact that the main big London stations like Euston etc will get renovation. HS2 will rip the country in half, affect wildlife and it will mean some people will have to sell their houses to the Government when they start building the tracks around the Midlands and the North of England, not sure how long it will take to connect to Scotland if ever. Boris Johnson said a few years ago that train travel on HS2 could cost around £3.00 a ticket. Considering it costs more on a train to get to certain parts of the country than to fly, I can't see it. I would love to meet the person who works out the fares on the trains because none of them make any logical sense.

If they want people to go more green and drive less cars then we need better transport links, infrastructure, greener trains and buses and cheaper fares.