HS3 - Heavy Spin 3?

Today's speech in Manchester by George Osborne, outlining a proposed HS3 Manchester to Leeds railway, promises to continue the legacy of regeneration brought about by HS1 (formerly the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) and HS2. But is it all that it seems?

Osborne was accompanied by civil engineer Sir David Higgins, chair of HS2 Ltd and formerly of Network Rail. Higgins' job seemed to be to stand behind Osborne and point out that when George said "new railway line", what he actually meant was "no new line per se, but upgrades to the existing route". 

This, in a way, makes sense - Manchester and Leeds are already linked by two existing inter-regional railways: the Calder Valley route from Manchester Victoria via Rochdale, Summit Tunnel Todmorden and a reversal at Bradford Interchange, and the faster Standedge route, through Stalybridge, Huddersfield and Dewsbury. The latter is primary used by First TransPennine Express - a hermaphroditic franchise which attempts to cater for both long-distance travellers and commuters and generally fails both, miserably, no thanks to decisions taken over the past decade by the Department for Transport with regard to rolling stock procurement. 

Where would a new TransPennine railway line go? The obvious answer is between the two - following the Saddleworth Moor route of the congested M62. There is no point in us considering the frequently called-for reopening of the Woodhead route via Dinting to Sheffield, as this would not achieve Osborne's goal of linking with Leeds. As we've seen with the plans for both phases of HS2, any new railway line is likely to be met with much resistance by the usual unholy alliance of NIMBYs, Nigel Farage-worshippers, MailOnline commenters, and parish council bores. The cost would also likely be high - with little benefit, compared to HS2, which is necessary in part to replace the West Coast Main Line, rapidly approaching its 200th birthday and creaking at the seams, despite a £8.8bn upgrade project (which was four times over-budget and still fell way short of its original intentions). 

So, the answer is fairly obvious - improve what we've got. I'm not normally an advocate for such a conservative (small C) approach, however the Standedge route actually gives us this opportunity. The route possesses two major feats of engineering - the two-track Saddleworth Viaduct, which crosses the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, and the two-track 3 mile, 60 yard long Standedge Tunnel. However, the tunnel is parallel to two more disused single-track railway tunnels, both of which are maintained by Network Rail, and one of which is used as an evacuation route from the main double-track tunnel. 

So one of the main engineering obstacles on the route has already been conquered, more than 150 years ago. Admittedly, major work undoubtedly needs doing to the old tunnels, in order to bring them up to a standard whereby they could be used by modern, fast trains, but they are remarkably straight, end to end, and could play an essential role by providing a four-tracked TransPennine route for nearly four miles, if further track relaying was carried out on the Huddersfield side of the tunnel. 

And where to then? The cheapest option would be to continue eastwards through Huddersfield, upgrading the route to allow for a higher line speed en route. After Huddersfield, the line joins the Calder Valley route at Mirfield (more four-tracking could take place here), before heading eastwards towards Wakefield. However, trains currently make for Leeds via Dewsbury. I'd propose running them through Wakefield Kirkgate and then building a spur diverging between there and Normanton, whereby the trains would join HS2 for the remainder of their journey to Leeds. This would give the added advantage of the trains being able to head for York and thence Tyneside or Teesside, which would give us a true Northern Hub of the great cities of the North, and with another spur in the Garforth area, a link could be made from HS2 to the Leeds-Selby-Hull line, allowing for a connection to Humberside. 

Looking westwards, the lack of a connection to Liverpool (which will only be served by HS2's "classic compatible" trains) is noticeable. Here, work is needed in Manchester, possibly in the form of a four-platform station underground at Piccadilly - with two platforms for Liverpool and two to the Airport via HS2 (and thus all points south). This station would be part of a Manchester tunnel which would start on the eastern side of the city in the Stalybridge area, thus allowing for higher speed running and a reduction in overground congestion on the existing lines. Liverpool would then be served by a high speed line which would take a similar path to the existing Chat Moss route via Newton-le-Willows, with provision for a curve from HS2, allowing High Speed trains from London access into Merseyside. 

So - much to think about! It seems that Lord Adonis, Labour's last Transport Secretary, will be outlining his own thoughts on rail and economic regeneration in the north in a few days' time - no doubt that will bring plenty of its own ideas to think about. 

It's time to stop being vague and to start setting out plans which will clearly help as many regions as possible, while providing the rail network with new and improved infrastructure to increase capacity and speed up trains. 

Osborne says that we need to think big. I say that we need to cut through the spin and think even bigger. 

On voting

If you can't be bothered to engage with politics...

...then politics certainly won't be bothered to engage with you.

---

Inaction changes nothing.

People fought and died for your right to vote.

It's your responsibility to carry out your civic duty.

---

This year's Budget was a Budget for the rich and the old. Why? Because they're the people who go out to vote without fail. It was a short-termist Budget to keep the core Tory vote sweet. There was nothing in it for younger people or the low-paid. That will remain the status quo until younger people become the demographic where an election is won or lost.

Why vote? Because it affects your future. It is in your best interests to engage with politics. You will never affect the tent if you're urinating onto its waterproof exterior. You will if you're peeing all over someone's sleeping bag. If you want to change the game, you've got to play it - otherwise you just end up being played.

By all means - spoil your ballot paper. I don't care what with, "none of the above", expletives, large phallic shapes, whatever. Your conscious abstention will be counted. Your reluctance to get off your backside will not.

So, please, go and vote - there's still two hours before polls close. You might even enjoy it.

Vote Gove, have sex

Good news, friends! Everybody's favourite Secretary of State for Education, The Rt Hon Michael "never cross a picket line" Gove MP, has come out with yet another non sequitur.

Question at Cabinet meeting: "Why do people come to London?"
Michael Gove: "For loads of hot sex!"

Click here to read the full story (apologies, it's from the Daily Mail)

Mr Gove says that young businessmen and women from across the globe flock to London because of the wealth of opportunities for both success and sex. Now, as someone who migrated a great distance to London only five months ago, I feel that I need to ask which parts of London Mr Gove is frequenting, as "loads of hot sex" seems to be few and far between in my neighbourhood. I'm heartened to know that it's not just me. I mean, I can't say I'm surprised that Mr Gove knows all about the sexual exploits on offer in old London Town - just look at him, the rampant sex god that he is.

With the various rumours circulating about Mr Gove's Conservative Party leadership ambitions, I can exclusively reveal the first policy of the Goveian manifesto - #LetThemHaveSex. Everyone will be so busy bonking each other that we'll never notice the reforms he'll be bringing to the healthcare system, the work and pensions system, or anything else he can get his hand on.

Mr Gove has successfully singlehandedly turned a whole profession against this government in one fell swoop. Others have tried (Lansley and then Hunt at the Dept of Health, IDS at Work & Pensions), but none can compare to the efficacy of Gove's pissing-as-many-people-off-as-possible doctrine.

So without further ado, I'm starting the "Gove for Leader" fund. I've found a couple of 2ps down the back of the sofa to get us up and running. Any donations are welcome - buttons, fluff, mouldy Smarties, whatever. He's electoral gold for the Labour Party, ensuring that the Tories are kept out of office for rather a long time, and if for some baffling reason he did manage to sneak into No. 10, then at least we'd all be too busy shagging ourselves senseless to care. Win-win.

Political jokes...

Spotted this in a John Rentoul comment from The Independent a few years back. It's a joke told be Jeremy Hunt, of all people, at an event back in 2008. I hate to admit it, but it is quite funny...

---

Vladimir Putin, George W Bush and Peter Mandelson are summoned to heaven by God. God says to them "Go back to your people and let them know that I've decided that the world will end tomorrow".

So Putin goes back to the Kremlin and says "Ok, I've got two bits of bad news. 1 - turns out that God exists. 2 - the world's going to end tomorrow". 

Bush heads back to the White House and says "Right, we'll I've got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that God exists. The bad news is that the world's ending tomorrow". 

Mandelson goes back to Downing Street and, the wily political spinner that he is, says to Gordon Brown "I've got two bits of good news. 1 - I'm one of the three most important people on the planet. 2 - David Miliband won't be replacing you as Prime Minister!".

Rail in the North: ambition needed

Today, I went along to a Westminster Hall debate called by Labour on railway rolling stock allocation to the north of England, after the news that First TransPennine Express are to lose their nine Class 170 two-car units next year, ultimately due to the bungling incompetence of the DfT over the West Coast Main Line franchise renewal.

It is time that ambition and a vision was brought forward, in order to get our railways in the north back on track. The investment has been piecemeal and hardly integrated and cohesive. It is all very well to preach repeatedly about the electrification brought about by the Northern Hub and Transpennine upgrade projects, but unless there is the provision of electric trains to use the new infrastructure, then it is quite frankly rather a waste of many millions of pounds.

I would support moves towards a devolved rail network for the north. The investment and improvement in the London Overground network since it was taken in-house by Transport for London has been remarkable, and the consequent rise in passengers has proved the old adage that is applicable to the railways - "build it* and they will come" (*providing you build something that people want/need). I have seen it with my own eyes. People tend not to use trains because they want to, but rather because they have to. They're put off using trains if the timetable is inconvenient, the journey time too long or the fares unaffordable. But if you provide a service that is attractive to passengers, then you can guarantee that they will take up the offer.

I come from a part of the world where a 30 mile stretch of railway sees no trains for nearly 12 hours every night and between 1900 Saturdays and 0600 Mondays. The same stretch of railway, serving the Sellafield nuclear site, which employs 17,000 people, has a commuter service which is virtually non-existent. But if you were to provide a decent half-hourly service to Sellafield from both the north and south during the peak periods, I guarantee you that people would use it.

I'd like to see areas such as Merseyside and Tyneside/Wearside/Teesside given the freedom to operate the rail services in their conurbations and beyond. A full-electrified network of lines stretching from Preston potentially to Wrexham on the west side of the country, with modern electric trains operating throughout.

This would include extensions of the Merseyrail network from Ormskirk to Preston, from Kirkby to Wigan, Birkenhead to Wrexham, Ellesmere Port to Runcorn and Warrington, and Chester to Warrington. Most of these lines are currently served infrequently by ancient, dilapidated rolling stock, and could potentially be transformed by a revitalised regular, efficient and pleasant modern service.

To the east, I'd advocate a frequent stopping service between Morpeth and Newcastle, electrification westwards to Hexham, the reopening of the Blyth and Tyne freight lines to passenger trains, and the electrification of the Durham Coast from Newcastle to Middlesbrough via Sunderland and Hartlepool. With wires also reaching from Northallerton to Teesside, this route would then provide a diversionary route for electric trains on the East Coast Main Line. With frequent through services from Bishop Auckland to Saltburn via Darlington and Middlesbrough (all newly electrified, of course), then the North East would be able to claim its own railway rebirth. Let us not forget that it is this very same line, the Stockton and Darlington, that started it all in 1825.

This is all just back-of-the-beermat stuff really, but I truly believe that unless someone with a vision and an ambition to see our railways transformed, then they will never see them achieve their full potential. If there are no more Brunels or Stephensons in this country, we may as well board the slow train to Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road.

Ahead of Labour's Special Conference

Ahead of tomorrow's Labour Party Special Conference, which is being held to vote on reforms to the party's links to the trade union movement, here's a few thoughts of my own on the party and the future.

On the back of my party membership card is the following; Clause IV -

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect. 

There is only one true "workers' party" in this country, and it's not the Conservative Party. There's only one party that seeks to unite all British people under one banner - the teachers, nurses, factory workers, cleaners, cooks, builders, train drivers - the people who keep our nation going. And there's only one party out there that has set out to represent and fight for those who are unable to fight their battles alone.

One party to represent all people in Britain, regardless of nationality, race, sexuality, beliefs, background, or age. A party that supports those in need and provides for our future. A party that does not abandon huge swathes of society to despair and hopelessness.

I am not a trade union member, but the unions must play a vital role in our society and our party, because it is the very people of whom they are comprised that our party exists to represent and fight for. And that is what unions are there for - to fight for their members' workplace rights and to ensure that they are not being exploited.

It is important that we never lose touch with the majority of people in this country. According to Nigel Farage, "immigration is the number one issue in this country". Not if you actually go and ask people - normal, working people. They're worried about the healthcare system, the education system, the bedroom tax, pensions, wages, a lack of jobs, businesses closing, spiralling energy prices, and whether they'll have enough money to put food on the table for their families. These are the people in society that we need to stand up for, and these are their concerns that we need to be tackling, in order to change our society for the better.

Thirteen years of Labour government helped transform this country from the dark era of Tory rule. The prosperity, health and growth of our services under Labour has stagnated under the Coalition government, who are bumbling along without any real sense of direction, now they've successfully interfered with our education, healthcare and welfare systems on wild, ideological experiments.

The people of Britain deserve better than a Government that holds them in such low regard, a Government that seeks to divide society and exploit it for its own ends. It is time to take the fight to the Government - to show them that we are a united society that has ambitions to improve our country and our quality of life. To form a Government for the people, by the people.

By the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone.

The Spectator does House of Cards

The Spectator has done its own little spoof of House of Cards, featuring the writer of the original novels, Lord Michael Dobbs, and some well-known political faces - Nadine Dorries MP, Michael Fabricant MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, Chris Bryant MP, and Boris Johnson.

I don't think Mr Spacey need worry about job security for the time being.