Sunak kills the Northern Powerhouse.

AGAA4

According to Sunak people in the North are second class citizens. He has demolished levelling up by cancelling HS2 to Manchester.
I hope the people in the north remember this when they go to vote at the next GE.

Manchester is a main station hub. It will not lose out due to cancelling HS2. Look how many trains travel the country from there. Unlike us, the very much forgotten NE, bottom half,that no one bothers about, we would have had no difference with that train. We can't even get a straight through to London, let alone anywhere else. Manchester even destroyed our direct link to the airport. So sorry if I shed no tears over this.

Rishi Sunak announcing £36bn investment in transport to link northern and other cities. There’s the Northern Powerhouse restored but better.

We can't even get a straight through to London, let alone anywhere else.

Well, that's odd, Freya. I've lived in the NE for almost 40 years and I've always been able to get a train straight through to London, or Edinburgh, come to that.

Whereas travelling across country is not quite so simple.

How many homes have been compulsory purchased and destroyed, ancient woodlands and animal and insect environments laid waste all for the sake of getting to work, when not working from home ,a little faster? That is the price we are paying whether it be in the North or South.

They never intended it to reach further than Birmingham. £billions spent to reduce the journey time from London to Birmingham by 20 minutes.

Think what that money could have been used for.

The money they 'save' (actually don't spend) won't be used to improve the North or anywhere else unless there is a profit in it for them or their cronies.

LauraNorderr

Rishi Sunak announcing £36bn investment in transport to link northern and other cities. There’s the Northern Powerhouse restored but better.

Plans for Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield and Hull trains/connections look promising.

Cabowich

I am so glad.

Now, please, can they scrap the bit from London to Birmingham?

All the ancient woodland, and other parts of the natural environment being dug up just to subtract a few minutes from the journey time.

Sunak's reasons for scrapping it don't gel with my reasons for never wanting it started in the first place, but I am so pleased that he has. Good for him.

I wonder what Labour would do with the London to Birmingham bit of HS2? They are staying remarkably quiet about this.

The London to Birmingham line is staying, and reverting back to starting at Euston.

For now. 🙄

Sunak is worried that Tory Mayor, Andy Street, will resign within days.

GranyGravy - the proposals are what our mayor Andy Burnham and others have been asking for in years.
It’s easy for Sunak to shout about his belated conversion to sense. He’s unlikely to implement any of it

GrannyGravy13

LauraNorderr

Rishi Sunak announcing £36bn investment in transport to link northern and other cities. There’s the Northern Powerhouse restored but better.

Plans for Manchester, Bradford, Sheffield and Hull trains/connections look promising.

I won't hold my breath for Hull. They've never done anything for us before.

Freya5

AGAA4

According to Sunak people in the North are second class citizens. He has demolished levelling up by cancelling HS2 to Manchester.
I hope the people in the north remember this when they go to vote at the next GE.

Manchester is a main station hub. It will not lose out due to cancelling HS2. Look how many trains travel the country from there. Unlike us, the very much forgotten NE, bottom half,that no one bothers about, we would have had no difference with that train. We can't even get a straight through to London, let alone anywhere else. Manchester even destroyed our direct link to the airport. So sorry if I shed no tears over this.

Divide and rule alive and well then, set one region against another despite so many shared concerns
How did ‘Manchester’ destroy your link to (which) airport

It is all unicorns of course.

How can you trust a government to deliver anything when they don’t complete anything they’ve promised, from roads to rail to new hospitals to protecting our borders.

Nothing Sunak has announced today will come to fruition.

Quote from a Tory MP.

“The only thing worse than a white elephant, is half a one”

He enunciated well.

I do like the idea of the smoking plan though. People like Mogg, Truss etc will be appalled.

I hope Labour pick that up and run with it.

I think he's just lost the millennial.

millennials

so it's now been cancelled.. bet the money saved doesn't go anywhere near the North

No announcement into a proper look at where it's gone so far.

DaisyAnneReturns

Your glad the Northern Powerhouse will be killed off Cabowich?

I don't think it will be killed off at all, whatever the Northern Powerhouse actually means. I'm just so pleased that this part of the white elephant has been abandoned, and hope the rest of it is, too.

There is going to be a lot of money poured into improving east/west links in the North, which is where it is really needed (and HS2 was never going to solve that problem). I just wanted a major overhaul of existing trains and their infrastructure, not yet more destruction of our precious natural landscape.

I don't want to see a worsening North/South divide (I am a Northerner, after all) but HS2 was not the instrument to solve this dilemma and I am just so damned happy Sunak has seen sense at last. I was getting very annoyed with him this week for keeping everyone dangling, though.

Sunak gave the speech of his life. Starmer will need to up his game or the GE will be much closer fought than the polls presently suggest.

It's just disgraceful, after all the disruption, another broken promise, a job half done. Who could really believe that 'the money' will be spent on local improvements? Half a job isn't cost effective. So, now we can get to Birmingham fast - but who wants to?

Apparently there is no plan for the Sunak’s announcement re the north infrastructure.

It isn’t going to happen.

People have also mentioned that the housing crises has had zero mention.

Iam64

Freya5

AGAA4

According to Sunak people in the North are second class citizens. He has demolished levelling up by cancelling HS2 to Manchester.
I hope the people in the north remember this when they go to vote at the next GE.

Manchester is a main station hub. It will not lose out due to cancelling HS2. Look how many trains travel the country from there. Unlike us, the very much forgotten NE, bottom half,that no one bothers about, we would have had no difference with that train. We can't even get a straight through to London, let alone anywhere else. Manchester even destroyed our direct link to the airport. So sorry if I shed no tears over this.

Divide and rule alive and well then, set one region against another despite so many shared concerns
How did ‘Manchester’ destroy your link to (which) airport

There’s a direct train from Newcastle to London Freya5, which takes the same time to get there as it does from Manchester.

Whitewavemark2

I do like the idea of the smoking plan though. People like Mogg, Truss etc will be appalled.

I hope Labour pick that up and run with it.

I only heard the end of his speech. Did he say anything about vaping? There’s no point stopping smoking if people are just going to vape, and vaping draws in young people that would never have smoked cigarettes.

Agree with WW2 it’s all unicorns; pie in the sky; flying pigs. Like Johnson’s 40 new hospitals! Sunak knows he can promise billions of £s of new rail infrastructure in the North … because he knows he’ll never deliver it. We’ll have to put up with a year of this gaslighting before the General Election!