Sunak kills the Northern Powerhouse.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Your glad the Northern Powerhouse will be killed off 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.

They should restart in the North, sort out all those links because if they stop the project now the money will just disappear..

I wonder what he'll do with all the money that he's "saved"?

What's the betting that we're about to see some blatant pork-barrelling- very generous grants and subsidies to every "red wall" constituency they won in 2019 for a start?

Bella23

Having spent many an evening standing at Leeds station for a Liverpool train that either arrived full,not on time or not at all for my onward journey to Hull [the forgotten City] I hope the money is spent up north.
I wholly agree with Iam64.

Getting to Hull has been a problem since the 1960s.
No one ever thinks about East-West travel. It's all North-South.

That said up here in the NE we've long stopped expecting an improvement in services. We've started to take the contrary view. It's nice up here let's keep it that way and stop them southerners finding out about what they are missing. {Mind some of them keep turning up for holidays now. I blame Robson Green!)

Levelling up - another Tory failure.

DaisyAnneReturns

Greyduster

I don’t know why anyone is really surprised. Right from the outset we were firm in our belief up here that it would never happen and guess what? The plans for anything east of Manchester were nebulous to say the least, and no surprise when they crashed and burned fairly early in the proceedings.

I'm not sure anyone is surprised.

Why just east of Manchester? Services in, and to and from Wales are abysmal too, unless you want to travel from Cardiff to London. It’s a joke for the government to talk about levelling up.

karmalady

Instead of pouring endless billions of money into the big black hs2 hole, they are going to spend on existing minor transport up north. I would rather that for my taxes any day and perhaps they can add on the sw while they are at it. It is the right thing to stop the hs2 money pit

That is never going to happen.

HS2 was appalling planned and appalling managed. The east/west infrastructure was premised on thecHS2.

The problem is entitling the Tories hands.

The outrageous costs of HS2 arose from setting to high a speed requirement which required very straight track and too many tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the shires. £394m/mile for HS2 compared with about £40m/mile for the latest French TGV track.

Having spent many an evening standing at Leeds station for a Liverpool train that either arrived full,not on time or not at all for my onward journey to Hull [the forgotten City] I hope the money is spent up north.
I wholly agree with Iam64.

Greyduster

I don’t know why anyone is really surprised. Right from the outset we were firm in our belief up here that it would never happen and guess what? The plans for anything east of Manchester were nebulous to say the least, and no surprise when they crashed and burned fairly early in the proceedings.

I'm not sure anyone is surprised.

I don’t know why anyone is really surprised. Right from the outset we were firm in our belief up here that it would never happen and guess what? The plans for anything east of Manchester were nebulous to say the least, and no surprise when they crashed and burned fairly early in the proceedings.

Instead of pouring endless billions of money into the big black hs2 hole, they are going to spend on existing minor transport up north. I would rather that for my taxes any day and perhaps they can add on the sw while they are at it. It is the right thing to stop the hs2 money pit

Iam64

MrsKen33 is saying something we hear frequently here in ‘the north’. If HS2 had started in Manchester, there is no doubt it would have continued to London, no matter the cost.

Thatcher began the destruction of town and villages that built the Industrial Revolution. Mines, ship building, engineering factories all closed down with no attempt to rebuild with our infrastructures and create jobs.

Our public transport links are inadequate and expensive. I’d have much preferred HS2 not to have happened with the money invested in improving, modernising our rail and bus routes. To pull the plug on the Manchester link though, at this late stage is infuriating, insulting and wrong

Great post Iam. I imagine many are feeling the same this morning.

Not much has been said by the Liverpool and Manchester Mayors who are usually vociferous on behalf of their areas.
Do they know something we don't?
For years some people in the north have been shouting for better links between the Northern Cities West ,East and the towns that people commute from into these cities. Might these links be expanding and improved?

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.