Northern Rail Betrayal !

WELL we have finally been been told something we knew would happen ,and that is this government total disrespect for the north of England in as much that they have cancelled the H2 RAIL Link system to LEEDS they promised a "Northern Power House " well we know just what they think of that now .. So we will have to do with "hand -me -downs "second class train that the rich affluent southerner's don't want anymore .The over-crowding of trains ,the late or cancelled trains , the congestion on our roads ,but to be honest what else did we expect ?????? GB

What about the £billions wasted already on this white elephant

How many properties including farmland has already been bought by HS2 between Birmingham and Leeds? No doubt they will be flogged off back to the gentry at reduced prices.... More noses in the trough.

It wasn't long ago that you were moaning because HS2 was being built GB.......now you are moaning because it isn't being built.

very true BB. Some very interesting names of people who bought land and housing.

The only people moaning about this are the Labour Party, because what they are doing, is what I suggested a few months ago, so maybe Grant Shapps has been reading what I wrote on Wigan World

Seriously though, the media the BBC the Biased Broadcasting Corporation, have been putting out a Brexit style put down of the scheme announced today, which is much better than the original HS2 project, which was designed 11 years ago.HS3 was proposed to run from Liverpool via Manchester to Leeds and Hull.

The new IRP LINK

Instead of splashing out billions on just three high speed lines, they are going to spread the cash out over a much larger part of the network.

Today's proposals have indeed cancelled the phase2 leg of HS2 from Nottingham to Leeds, but instead they have given it to the Northwest of England, which if some of you did not know, is where we live.
A new high speed line will run from Warrington to Marsden on the outskirts of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, trains will run on the existing line from Liverpool to Warrington, which will be electrified, and then on to the high speed new line from Warrington to Manchester and Leeds, but although they say they are not building a new line high speed line, from Liverpool over towards Manchester, it should be realised that the existing line, between Warrington and Liverpool, runs absolutely straight for most of the way, so it probably does not need to be modified to operate high speed trains upon electrification, and they say that by doing it this way, upgrading and electrifying existing lines, there will only be a four minute difference in train times, between the new proposals, and old proposals.

Two other things too, they can get started on these upgrades and improvements to the existing network straight away, but as it stands if the existing proposals had been kept, HS2 phase 2 and HS3 would have only been completed in the 2040s, but by doing it this new way, it will only take a few years to complete, instead of a few decades.

They are also reversing the Beeching cuts, and reopening up 83 lines closed during the 1960s LINK they have already started doing that, and they reopened a Beeching cut line yesterday.

I personally could not care less if it had been the Labour Party in power announcing this package, or the Tories, as long as it gets done.

your wrong 1stroke there are millions of people who are up in arms about this . how can you extol the so-called virtue of this abysmal party & the things they have done over the years ? . people had died under this regime with the dodgy medicals they have had to endure. is this wot you want for the people of this country ? & i notice the reopened line was down south. and as for a act of betrayal IT CERTAINLY IS .

The Lostock Junction Hindley Ince Wigan (North Western) electrification scheme approved in September, completion by 2024.

They can't electrify into Wallgate due to Wallgate bridge being held up by supports, falling to bits, too low etc (needs rebuilding). Costly as it has buildings on it.

This will allow electric trains to easy get to the new Springs Branch depot, as well as an electric service Wigan to Hazel Grove via Man Picc. The Leeds trains from Wigan will remain diesel for quite a while though.

Wigan is not too badly off railway wise these days. Electric trains to Liverpool, Blackpool, Birmingham, London, Glasgow, Edinburgh & diesels to Windemere, Barrow in Furness, & Manchester Airport.

Nowt to Leigh though (thank God) !!!!!

GB: this line was imposed upon us by the EU, it was part of TENS (Trans-European Network for Energy). It was a policy focused on linking the energy infrastructure of EU countries. So that, for example, you get on a train in Manchester and go straight through to Hamburg, or wherever.
It was bloody expensive and unnecessary.
That money could and should have been spent on upgrading lines in the north. Hopefully, now it will be more specific and viable.

They are going to run the electric trains to Manchester from the bay platforms on Wigan North Western station, instead of Wigan Wallgate, because as gasmon says, they cannot electrify the line into Wigan Wallgate station.

There are other reasons too, more trains to Liverpool Lime Street, are calling at Wigan North Western, rather than originating from Wigan North Western, this means that the bay platforms on Wigan North Western are under used, so platforms 2 and 3 being the bay platforms, are to be extended, to take six car train sets, and the crossover junction on to the Manchester line is to be remodelled and thus improved, to provide two cross over lines, instead of just the one there is at present

Whupsy

"i notice the reopened line was down south"

They are reopening Golborne Railway Station, which was right at the side o't pit in Gowbern LINK

And can I remind yoo Whupsy, that I am a Gowberner, me dads family lived in Golborne, and me Grandad and Granny are buried in Golborne Churchyard, which is across the road from where the old station was located

So if they had not closed Golborne Train Station, yoo could have caught train t'pit every day from Bryn or Garswood, whichever station would have sooted, and it would have saved that long slog down Spindle Hillock, t't bus stop, with your snap tin and davy lam,p hanging from your pit belt, and of course you would have been sparking clogs on't cobbles, and fritnin t'horses

Hee,, good old days eh !!!!

wot has a cheap shot at the miners got to do with it 1stroke ? . it shows how childish you really are when you cant win an argument .who shut it in the 1st place , the torys & your favourite thatcher.do you actually think it,s goin to happen , do you believe this lot who cant be trusted ? . think about this , it was in the tory manifesto that they promised they were going to continue the over 75s tv licence , did they ? .

Whupsy

Listen,,, I am going to give yoo a quid, so that yoo can go down to Wigan Market and buy yourself a sense of humour

Whupsy Daisy, your mate Keir campaigned for HS2 to be abandoned altogether, a bit rich now considering the remarks he's making. The government are putting £96 billion into the north's rail and the travel times are very much in line with what HS2 was going to do, further, it is going to be more for all. TTS is correct in what he's saying and I read an excellent article today "The Integrated Rail Plan for the North", you should look for it.

Zoom and working from home have destroyed the business case for HS2. It was originally costed at £57 billion, current estimates put the finished cost at 4 x the original. It should be scrapped and the money spent so far should be written off.

listen platty your mate johnson is a bare faced lair & so is that idiot shapps . it,s time you woke up to the truth about this lot of shysters & con men & that,s only the cabinet . i,m sure the over 75s can attest to that .

Daisy, you are soooo wrong. Boris et al are no mates of mine. However, your good friends have shown big time how they will never be friends of mine ever again.
Clearly, given the opportunity to look at the facts, you just want to be a "follow my grandad vote" man. The £millions paid on your generation and following on education for an independent mind, has been wasted.

As an aside, if you worked with someone, or you were in the private sector trying to sell something to the other side and you called them "scum" and you heard that, would you buy, would you work with them?

Platty ,what do you mean about millions being wasted on education to my generation It was not wasted on me and most people of my generation that I know.

Should they have kept the 11 Plus, and the Grammar Schools and Secondary Modern Schools, system ?

Retep: I was answering Daisy. He only votes for whatever his grandparents voted for (and rightly so for them at the time) but now we have moved on.
I have no idea of your affiliates or your ability to view the political scene in a different way and move/change... etc., Daisy is stuck in a ruck. He still believes in the landowners and miners going down t'pit in their clogs, 18 hours a day and all the millionaires being Tories living down south.
He is blind to the trillionaire Tony Blair, rich Gordon Brown, extra work rich Sir Kneel Starmer and the really rich Millibrand family.
I was saying the education of the era had gone over his head.
Too long down t'pit me thinks.
My mistake to say "your generation" and apologies, just Daisy.

your not mentioning the betrayal by the TORY party are you & just 1 of many . your still stuck in the victorian era were people shud doff their cap to the likes of lord snooty lookalike jacob reese mogg .

Well, £96 Billion does sound like a lot.

But

More than half of the sum is relevant to work south of Birmingham.

And it seems around £20 Billion is money in existing budgets, not a new financing cost.

So, spread over many years, they will spend less, much less, on rail development in the North, than the £37 Billion of tax payers' money they blew in months on abortive 'test & trace' endeavour. (hobbled for ideological reasons, so was never going to succeed)

We will never know the figure, but I suspect that it is even less than the amount they pilfered from the taxpayer when crooked behaviour prevailed during the anomalies in contracts in early response to Covid 19.

This Government is like the drunk rolling home late on pay day, then telling his family there is no money for food or rent for next week!

The thing is that they are starting to upgrade and electrify NOW, they have already started on upgrading the trans Pennine route, so stuff HS3, I don't think it would have built in any case, because you are talking of 22 years before the thing would have opened, but we need improvements NOW, and that is what you are getting.

enamalcup:: ALso another you should take into consideration is that this particular thieving Chancellor ( SUNAK ) IS planning to steal BILLIONS OF OUR POUNDS££££ FORM OUR PENSION FUNDS IE ,ONE TO MENTION THE N.U.M PENSION FUND OF WHICH THIS GOV HAS ALREADY STOLEN BILLIONS . Just keep an eye on your pension fund ( if you have any)
GB.

If Boris gets his way with the care proposals currently being aired, the wealth that will be transferred from North to South of England will be far greater than any 'levelling up' which he might achieve.

When HS2 was debated in Parliament, there was much so called pork-barrel politics. To get support of MPs whose constituencies did not stand to benefit, they had to be bought off. So those constituencies reaped their benefits at that stage: an advantage not enjoyed by those who expected to benefit from High speed rail, but who now will not. That is not levelling up, it is not even maintaining the status quo. It is increasing the disparities in provision of infrastructure.

Yes patching up inadequacies in our rail system which should have been done long ago, need to be done now.

We heard the same nay-sayers oppose HS1 with just the same arguments, though once built, it is claimed to have been a boon to stimulating economic activity in the locations served. Perhaps HS2 will not do this. Maybe the North is too decayed to be restored.

On another thread, tonker described Britain as a shithole.
I would not use such terminology, but I think England is rapidly becoming a backward country.

Golden Bear

The pension tax you mention, which would help pay for the Covid-19 costs, would only affect the pensions of the higher rate tax payers, which starts at £50,271 per year, or £966 a week.

Ena

I don't think that any of the proposed, and previously proposed schemes will fix the Social Care situation, and the problem is the perfect storm of much higher population numbers (EU immigration), along with much higher numbers of people living to an increasing older age, the human body maybe living longer, but it is as though the human brain isn't, hence the large number of people with dementia.

The only solution I can think of is too tax people throughout their working lives towards the costs of social care in their retirement, so instead of that the increase in National Insurance by 1.25% from next April, and which from 2023 will be called the Health and Social Care Levy, should be increased to something like 5% and let people keep their houses.

HS1 was different in that it was an extension to the Channel Tunnel, because on the continent the Eurostar trains were travelling at 186mph on high speed lines in France, but over here that was down to 70mph on the congested Southern Region rail network, and HS1 is only 67 miles long.

As part of last week's announcements the existing line from St Pancras in London, to Leeds, is to be upgraded and electrified to Leeds, at present it is only electrified as far as Corby, and that line once went on to Manchester, so that section through the Peak District (the monsall trail) could be reopened as another route to London.

iv,e not seen a tory yet that doesnt start at the bottom . "the rich must be protected at all times " which is the tory mantra.they have only took £ 5 billion from the mpf in 27 yrs.

Whupsy

How much did Gordon Brown (Labour Party, Chancellor of the Exchequer) take from the Miners Pension fund ?

It's not only the miners pension fund.Every pension fund pays into the same pot from the SURPLUS earnings.there is a cap on what they can earn and when that cap is exceeded the goverment of the day whether tory or labour will take their slice.

Sonlyme

You’re right about pension surpluses. Because contributions go in tax free any actuarial surplus in the funds has to be distributed to employers and scheme members so the tax can be collected.
Since employers have contributed from the schemes creation , often generations ago, and the members for much shorter periods then they get a larger share of the surplus.

i dont know 1stroke . why dont yoo tell us ? .

Wot doo yoo mean, yoo don't know Whupsy, yoo know everything there is to know, about everything, and everything is the fault of the Tories, we might be getting some snow in the next week or so, and that will be the fault of Tories too

It'll be nowt doo wi winter

i,m waiting of your reply .

TOMMY , I will try and check but i think you are wrong with regards sunak stealing from the miners pension fund ,and not only him previous chancellors before him have been dipping their greedy stickyfinger's in where they shouldn;t have this was stolen well before co-vid ,,,,GB

1994 was when the deal was struck & been mentioned several times that it,s an unfair deal .

Why didn't tony blair scrap it in 1997 when prime minister.

maybe it,s because he was a tory at heart because that,s where he come from .

When the scheme was privatised in 1994 it was agreed that the Government would get 50% of the surplus In return for guaranteeing the value of the pensions would not decrease.
Bearing in mind the amount of employer contributions made by the NCB, and the risk taken on by the government, any actuary would probably conclude that it was a fair deal. At the time the Mineworkers union could have secured an actuarial summary of the deal and taken it to court for a judicial review. Why not?

gaffer they hav,nt paid a penny to any miner over 65 like they shud have done & the mps have been paying it . this has been reviewed several times & been judged an unfair deal ? .where is that money going because it certainly isnt benefiting any miner , i know because i was 1 ? .

Whups

My mother had a widows pension from the MPS.. it was paid from 1994 to when she passed away in 2018. Going from memory she had an increase in her pension payment every year. I used to read the investment notes that were sent each year and regularly concluded that the trustees were doing a good job.

Gaffer the actuary concluded it was unfair the government of the day (tory) ignored this advice ,they then tried to hide any written evidence of this actuary,s finding ,it is ongoing but the government are nation fighting tooth and nail to keep control of this cash cow

your wasting your time colin all he does it to look for an excuse . the rise on the mps is farcical & i know because i get the same rise . just wait till the triple lock comes off , i wonder wot he will think of his beloved torys then . maybe he,ll think it,s justified like this lot sending their money out of the country or blowing taxpayers money on white elephants like HS2 ? ..