How To Save The NHS At A Stroke.

[ANGELFIRE1]

I have a cunning plan to save our NHS.

 

Which is the most important to the well being of the Country.

 

1) The NHS

2) Saving 20 mins on getting to London by HS2 Train.

 

I would go for the NHS every time if asked.

 

My cunning plan, abandon the white elephant that is the HS2 at a cost of 55 billion. (By 2026 it will be at least 75/85 billions to complete it.)

 

Put half the money 30/40 billion into the NHS, saving it at the stroke of the pen.

 

The other half into upgrading our existing Railways, re nationalising them first, then running them as a service, not as a money making venture for a few billionaires.

 

Angel1.

[sgtkate]

Now, I'd half agree with you here, however, the main reason for HS2 is nothing to do with getting places faster, it's to do with managing congestion on the railways. We have a HUGE bottleneck on the London lines to northern England and ever increasing demand for more train services which cannot be run at present as all the lines are fully subscribed. Therefore HS2 will deploy new track which offers greater capacity. The fact it's a bit quicker really is a tiny part of what it's about but because it sounds better than we can have an extra 5 trains per day, it's been speed that's been generating the headlines. You could simply add additional track without the HS2 trains but the cost would be largely the same so you might as well do it properly for once. Someone who knows a lot about trains educated me when I was slagging off HS2 over dinner a year or so ago!

 

But, are trains (quicker or not) worth more than the NHS fullstop? What are the costs to our tax coffers of people not being to get to London quickly and efficiently? There must be a cost, same as why we build new roads to help with congestion because someone somewhere can put an actual price on things like that. I'd suggest that the financial benefits of having additional trains (not faster, just more of them) almost certainly more than make up for the cost and quite possibly turn an effective profit back to the taxman.

[Flexo]

HighSpeedUK is a much better plan that HS2. It achieves a new north-south route, modernises the whole of the rest of the railway and is £20bn cheaper!

 

£20bn is the same amount of money that the Leave campaigned promised to spend on the NHS in their leaflets and on their big red bus.

 

So, yes, scrap HS2 and do HighSpeedUK and £20bn to NHS instead.

[sgtkate]

HighSpeedUK is a much better plan that HS2. It achieves a new north-south route, modernises the whole of the rest of the railway and is £20bn cheaper!

 

£20bn is the same amount of money that the Leave campaigned promised to spend on the NHS in their leaflets and on their big red bus.

 

So, yes, scrap HS2 and do HighSpeedUK and £20bn to NHS instead.

 

That's interesting. I'll take a look at their plans, as I've said above the key 'good' parts of HS2 are about increasing capacity and not speed, speed is a red herring. Interested as to how these people think they can do it for considerably less than HS2.

 

Shame their FAQs don't work on my computer so I can't read a great deal about how it's cheaper...

Edited April 3, 2017 by sgtkate

[Bargepole23]

I have a cunning plan to save our NHS.

 

Which is the most important to the well being of the Country.

 

1) The NHS

2) Saving 20 mins on getting to London by HS2 Train.

 

I would go for the NHS every time if asked.

 

My cunning plan, abandon the white elephant that is the HS2 at a cost of 55 billion. (By 2026 it will be at least 75/85 billions to complete it.)

 

Put half the money 30/40 billion into the NHS, saving it at the stroke of the pen.

 

The other half into upgrading our existing Railways, re nationalising them first, then running them as a service, not as a money making venture for a few billionaires.

 

Angel1.

 

No need, we will have money coming out of our ears, post-Brexit....£350m a week if I remember rightly.

 

The NHS is a bottomless pit. There will always be better equipment, better drugs to buy, an ever-growing ageing population to help. What about all those Brexit-voting pensioners on the Costa del Sol, they'll need supporting, they'll be heading back soon I imagine. Or not.

[sgtkate]

No need, we will have money coming out of our ears, post-Brexit....£350m a week if I remember rightly.

 

The NHS is a bottomless pit. There will always be better equipment, better drugs to buy, an ever-growing ageing population to help. What about all those Brexit-voting pensioners on the Costa del Sol, they'll need supporting, they'll be heading back soon I imagine. Or not.

 

Maybe they can go to Gibraltar. Oh hang on.

[Harrystottle]

HS2 is indeed a pile of crap. I live near Wakey and all it's bringing us is negatives. A massively noisy, massively ugly (huge earthen embankments as wide as a football pitch smashing right through our countryside) and massively expensive white elephant. 80 billion to knock off twenty minutes to get to London? Crazy.

Plus our village is slated to have a huge rail yard to service the sodding things which will be open 24/7 and lit up all night. It will close roads, ruin countryside, destroy house prices and reduce our quality of life. They can stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

And that's before you examine the conflicts of interest which unaccountably aren't making the TV news.

https://order-order.com/2017/02/22/200-staff-went-through-hs2-revolving-door/

[sgtkate]

HS2 is indeed a pile of crap. I live near Wakey and all it's bringing us is negatives. A massively noisy, massively ugly (huge earthen embankments as wide as a football pitch smashing right through our countryside) and massively expensive white elephant. 80 billion to knock off twenty minutes to get to London? Crazy.

Plus our village is slated to have a huge rail yard to service the sodding things which will be open 24/7 and lit up all night. It will close roads, ruin countryside, destroy house prices and reduce our quality of life. They can stick it where the sun doesn't shine.

And that's before you examine the conflicts of interest which unaccountably aren't making the TV news.

https://order-order.com/2017/02/22/200-staff-went-through-hs2-revolving-door/

 

I really don't rate HS2 at all, I'll also be adversely affected with no benefits as I'm down near Rother Valley. However, I've no problems whatsoever with expanding the current track and having more trains as that's the really issue we are hitting, not speed. I think HS2 tries to do too much and ends up doing too little. It wants faster links and more trains, and will end up most likely with neither. Whereas if it just went for expansion of the current tracks and re-routing if needed (I'm not a NIMBY, if we need more lines then use the ones near me and I'll get over it!) the costs would be lower and the main problem of a lack of capacity would be solved. Driverless cars will be mainstream within the next 20 years I'd say making trains pretty much redundant even before HS2 is completed.

[Flexo]

Interested as to how these people think they can do it for considerably less than HS2.

 

HighSpeedUK has a slightly lower top speed than HS2 and this means that the corners can be a bit tighter so the new line can be built along the M1 corridor instead of HS2's less sensible route. They have produced very detailed maps of the whole proposed route to show how it can be done.

 

They list HighSpeedUK's benefits as:

 

• Capital cost of around 25% less than HS2.
  
• All 9 primary cities of the Midlands, the North and Scotland directly interconnected by high speed trains running at hourly (or better) frequency.
  
• Direct hourly high speed services to Heathrow from all 9 primary cities of the Midlands, the North and Scotland.
  
• Many other regional cities (Bristol, Southampton, Reading, Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton, Leicester, Derby, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Warrington) directly connected to all 9 primary cities.
  
• Intercity journey times reduced by an average of 40% across entire intercity network of the Midlands, the North and Scotland (whereas HS2 might manage 5%).
  
• Journey times to London equivalent to those of HS2.
  
• Step-change capacity enhancement on all main line corridors (except Great Western).
  
• 4 new tracks on critical London-Leicester section.
  
• Full interconnectivity between local and national high speed network.
  
• Easy access to HS1, achieved at minimal cost.
  
• High speed services accessing all existing intercity hubs – no new termini or parkway stations.
  
• Major regional growth generated through improved regional connectivity.
  
• Environmental damage minimised through following existing transport corridors.
  
• Step-change road-to-rail modal shift enabling potential 600Mt reduced CO2 emissions over 40 years, in broad compliance with targets of 2008 Climate Change Act (whereas HS2 will be no better than ‘carbon neutral’).
  

 

It all sounds like just what the rail network needs.

 

I think HighSpeedUK won't happen, HS2 won't happen and the NHS won't get it's £20bn (£350m/week).

[martin6]

What a sorry shower you lot are, we need modern infrastructure whether you like it or not. Why should all our taxes go in to health care, we need to fix the problems rather than throw money at it.