UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
view the rest of the comments
Was literally discussing this last night. China built a whole high speed rail network across its country for £300 billion and we're £100 billion in and don't even have a single train available. It's actually insane.
The land cost alone for hs2 runs into the billions, it’s just very expensive to do.
Do you believe the land costs in France, Spain, Germany, China and Japan weren't expensive?
China is not. The CCP can just seize the land and force you to accept a pittance in compensation.
I genuinely can't continue this conversation in good conscience given the fact that I don't have sources. I can only go off of some YouTube documentaries I watched once upon a time where the government made a valuation on some land, sent in some archeologists and rehoused residents taking them rural living conditions with an outhouse to newer houses with toilets. In each case I saw the government deemed the projects more valuable than the people's land/houses and time has proven them right as they have high speed rail and economic growth in all areas the rail network extends to and beyond.
You only mentioned china, where they don’t report on land costs because all land is state owned but yes I do believe land compensation is much less in china, not least because HS2 land compensation is significantly above market rate. Also; an authoritarian regime with only superficial regard for the health and well-being of their workers, that are paid almost nothing is certain to be cheaper. Suggesting otherwise is banal.
Edit to add Troll alert.
Source?
I’ve only got two decades of civil engineering experience in Europe china and now the uk to draw on. I can’t provide a source for the absence of Chinese reporting on land costs because you can’t prove a negative. Although it should be blatantly obvious that comparing the cost of building something in the uk to the cost in china is simply pointless. Here’s a link to a high speed train collision in china that killed a heap of people: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wenzhou_train_collision And another one: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/high-speed-train-derailment-china/ … and a link to construction labour deaths https://clb.org.hk/en/content/china’s-most-dangerous-industry-getting-more-dangerous
The point being that china has a very different equation when they go about doing things to here in the uk.
Frankly I shouldn’t have to do this for you.
You're supposed to be providing sources about how the land was forcefully purchased at a low and unfair price. Not that trains derail.
As I stated, china don’t publish that information and it doesn’t take a genius to work it out. Troll.
When my beloved Arsenal built the Emirates, people said that they were low-balled. That claim is part and parcel with any forced possession. However asking you to prove that the valuations were low isn't asking a lot.
Obviously blocking you doesn’t work otherwise I wouldn’t see this nonsense. I’m not your personal Fucking google assistant.
If someone tells you it’s raining outside do you ask them to prove it or do you look out of the fucking window?
You've never been challenged on things you say before?
That's not really comparable. China bulldozes through land with little regard for the societal or environmental impact. The UK is a place of natural beauty and has laws against doing that. It's right that we have proper surveys and planning permissions needed for this sort of thing, in my opinion!
Not sure why people are downvoting you, you're right. Checks and balances cost money, and in broad terms we're right to have those checks and balances. Maybe we need to reduce the burden slightly but our approach isn't totally wrong.
Even the chaotic Spanish have managed to build a decent high speed rail network. While they don't have the population density of the south east of England, they seem to be much more organised. Perhaps it's really Britain that's chaotic, certainly when it comes to infrastructure projects that aren't for cars?
Spain is basically empty outside of the larger cities, and property prices are often very low, so it is different.
The Netherlands is perhaps a better example. Very high population density, technical challenges due to a lot of reclaimed land, high property prices.
If they can manage it...
The Netherlands has plenty of normal rail, but actually hardly any high speed. Same problems...
"Problems". The Dutch government doesn't WANT to spend the money.
HAHAHAHAHAHA now that's a good one
?
Don't believe me, have a look for yourself:
https://www.idealista.com/
Valencia, Murcia... it's quite easy to find a house for under 10k. You'll have to renovate it, but still.
Erm.... Valencia is the third largest city in Spain.
Here's a perfectly nice flat in the centre of Madrid, no renovation required, less than 100k, near a metro station, 15 minutes to the centre of Madrid:
https://www.idealista.com/inmueble/97370404/
I look forward to you finding me a similar flat in the middle of London.
Because most Spanish people don't live in a small tourist trap, and don't want to live in a small tourist trap, just because it happens to be popular with foreigners.
Also, when building a rail network, it's unlikely that you'll have to build most of it in fucking Benidorm. LOL
Not defending anyone's position, but even Italy managed to build one. I think costs were around 30+ billions.
I don't even know what to say to this. You have inherent biases and that's fair, but you should try and address them internally rather than just posting them. To suggest that China doesn't do proper surveys and just bulldozes through land without regard for societal or environmental impact sounds racist AF.
France has 3000 kilometres of high speed rail compared to our 100.
I’ve worked as a civil engineering consultant in china, comparing how the deliver a major rail project to here in the uk is frankly moronic. It isn’t bias, it’s fact
Well considering they've actually delivered their rail projects 🤷🏾♂️