Good to see them up in Manchester buying off the North. Will they succeed?

The might be saying that they'll be building "high speed rail link" between Liverpool and Hull, but I think its just the foundations for a wall.

I agree in principle about the need for better transport infrastructure between the major cities in the north. But I don't think just an HS3 between Leeds & Manchester will do that.
If it ran from Hull to Leeds to Manchester to Liverpool that'd be better in my opinion, but it has to be backed up with better and faster branch line services, much better road connectivity and, crucially, better road infrastructure within cities themselves.
Leeds certainly needs a "proper" ring road for instance. I'm sure other cities are the same, even Manchester borrows part of the M62 for its ring road.

All of which is more important than shaving 20 minutes or so off a train journey to London in my opinion.

I just dont understand the dash for a high speed service, unless the politicians have a "personal" interest of course - what is needed NOW is a service of dedicated lines between major cities that can use existing stock but wont be subject to delays caused by slower local services using the same lines and platforms.

As a for instance I have in the past been a frequent user of the Leeds/Birmingham x-country service, its good, was always on time give or take a handful of minutes, and took exactly 2 hours, which is fast enough for anyone who needs to attend meetings etc, in fact it gives you 2 hours of preperation time for whatever business reason & most people on the 8.11 service that I used to use worked on laptops for the whole trip, uninterrupted.

Im down here for a while now but I drive it simply for the fact that its cheaper for the company to pay me 45p a mile than it is to buy me a train ticket, its a ridiculous state of affairs because it takes me at least 50% longer and Im one person in a car burning deisel, the up side is that it only cost me £12 worth of deisel each way - I'll let you do the maths.

Double post.

I'd like to see more motorway links across the Pennines. Make the M65 go all the way to Bradford past Keighley and give Shipley a by-pass. Also take the M67 all the way across past Sheffield and link it onto the M1. The M6 through Staffordshire and Cheshire desperatley needs widening too.

Yep, there are plenty of links to the "smaller" cities and areas that are needed too alongside by-passes and ring roads. Where I live in York is in desperate need of an improved ring road.

A couple of posh blokes hoping to woo the natives with promises of an iron horse to solve all the problems. I'm surprised they didn't bring some brightly coloured beads and bottles of firewater to give away.

How about releasing capital to build a few thousand council houses that could be let at truly affordable rents? That would do more to help "the North" than HS3

Osborne must have just discovered BBC iPlayer. There was a programme a few months back called Mind the Gap: London v the Rest which touched on the subject of connecting Leeds and Manchester to make one big super city.

Whilst touching on the subject of infrastructure, where I live on the outskirts of York, City of York Council are planning to allow large amounts of house building. Which would be fine were it not for there being no planned infrastructure improvements whatsoever.
They are looking to increase the size of the town by approx 30-40% without any transport, education or health improvements. The town centre is already packed full on a daily basis, the roads are packed at rush hour and the schools are oversubscribed, partly due to the council closing a school a few years ago.

It's just ridiculous.

Funny you should say that because the same thing is scheduled to happen in Chester on Green Belt land to the South of the City. For those who know the area it is on land between Wrexham Road and Westminster Park housing estate which means its next to Chester Business park.

The significance of that is this area is already gridlocked at busy times and no infrastructure improvements are planned here either. There are also concerns about how it will affect drainage (read flood risk!).

When this plan came up the first time it was based on some study suggesting Chester needed 4000 new homes. That figure has been revised down considerably since then but the plan is still to build 4000 houses.

Councils are supposed to plan new building to meet requirements so when it was first planned they were complying with legislation but now they aren't. They are not supposed to enter into developments that can be deemed "aspirational" i.e. developments built on the hope they will be required rather than based on a need.

Still pencilled in to go ahead though!

The last time Chester's Green Belt was threatened it was for a Sports Centre and flats for the University (not commissioned or requested by the University but more speculative development) in an area about a mile outside the city. The Tory chair of the planning committee cast his vote to overrule the planners thus voting the proposal down so his Tory colleagues sacked him, appointed a puppet who then waved it through.

It got stopped when it came to light several Tory councillors had a vest interest in the development and had not excluded themselves from a full council vote as they needed to do. When this came out the vote was overturned and scratch one development.

I am waiting for something similar to crop up again!

A lot of Tory councils are acting in an Stalinist land-grabbing fashion.

In our small town there are 3 over-subscribed secondary schools which surrounding villagers have traditionally sent their kids to. Demand has increased through additional numbers. The County Council had a moth-balled school in the next, smaller town (one of the "villages"icon_wink.gif which despite a demand crisis they sold a couple of years ago for housing development (adding to the demand crisis!). Their proposed solution is to compulsorarily purchase a bit of farm land on the end of our town (on the road to where the sold off school was!) and build a whopping academy, totally out of keeping with the locality and on a small A road which is already a bottle-neck!!

To me a total abuse of power - sell off an existing asset and then use powers to buy land cheaper and then act against the will of local residents.

A recipe for corruption if you ask me.

The solution to the housing crisis is to follow that example, just as happened immediately post WW2. Buy up cheap agricultural land with no planning permission on it, hence why it is cheap. Grant yourself planning permission and build affordable homes to rent. If you also introduce LVT you can then charge land taxes on banked, undeveloped land that already has planning permission and is simply sitting there "waiting for the market"

It's not corruption it's policy! Don't you see?

The giveaway was the word "academy" in your post. There is literally shed loads of money available from central government if you want to set up one of those. I am sure the will to make them happen re planning/land is there as well.

Well I know all the above is true as it is what is happening here.

It's usually a sign of an upcoming election when Gideon and his ilk express faux concern for the North. Personally I'm not bothered about getting to Manchester quicker but wouldn't mind a seat now and again. Just putting another carriage on would suit me fine!

Could the money be better spent? www.standard.co.uk/business/busi ... 64930.html

Could the money be better spent? www.standard.co.uk/business/busi ... 64930.html

I can't see the Conservatives being in power at the next election so this is all pie in the sky.

Making Northern Rail modernise their rolling stock would be a good start to improving transport in the North, I believe their contract has no clause for replacing their trains, hence we have 70s/80s trains still.

I agree with another poster that we need more than just a high speed rail link, as RL fans know more than most as soon as the M62 has a delay the North is at a standstill, we need more alternative routes and bypasses.

On the contrary, I can, I dont see any opposition to them with any sort of domination in the media that will present any sort of challenge. The deciding majority of votes in any general election are usually decided within the last few days before polling and in that respect its all down to what the media decide to tell you - the football supporter style voters may think that they control an election but its the majority who have no allegience who decide and they will put a cross in whatever box they have been told to, the Tories currently hold all the aces and you wouldnt want to be in charge of an oppositions PR campaign right now with what they have.

On the contrary, I can, I dont see any opposition to them with any sort of domination in the media that will present any sort of challenge. The deciding majority of votes in any general election are usually decided within the last few days before polling and in that respect its all down to what the media decide to tell you - the football supporter style voters may think that they control an election but its the majority who have no allegience who decide and they will put a cross in whatever box they have been told to, the Tories currently hold all the aces and you wouldnt want to be in charge of an oppositions PR campaign right now with what they have.

Yep. It's a major factor in why I don't go to away games on the other side of the Pennines.
Firstly, there's the awful York Ring Road to negotiate, which adds a half hour to the journey to start with, and then obviously the packed M62. Then, certainly when getting to Wigan, the roads after leaving the M62 are a nightmare too.

Basically if I want to watch Leeds away at Wigan on a Friday night I'd have to set off at around 4pm/4:30. Which is ridiculous for a journey of less than 100 miles.

I am a delivery driver going all over the North West so I often see huge build ups of traffic in certain areas. I've seen a couple of websites which detail local and national governments plans for new roads from around 50 years ago to the present day which have never happened. Every single one of them makes sense.

One plan was to carry the M58 on around the south of Wigan and join it on to the M61 close to Bolton. Anyone who's ever driven hrough Wigan town centre will know how congested it gets and that road would go a huge way toward alleviating this.

What I find perplexing is that St. Helens, a town with a population of around 20,000 more than Wigan, is an absolute doddle to get around in comparison.

Yep.
I've just found out that York Council are planning many more house building areas all around the city. In total plans are to build 22,000 new homes, leading to an increase in population of the City by between 15-30%.
The sum total of planned transport improvements? A new park & ride (on an already busy and clogged section of the Ring Road) and an expansion of 2 others.
Sum total of planned Education improvements? An expansion of one of the Universities and some more sports fields for a single secondary school.

On top of which they've just revoked the car parking scheme whereby York residents got discounted car parking in council car parks.

I went to a council meeting a while back and it revealed just how out of touch they are. They wonder why people don't use buses (they're expensive, slow & uncomfortable), they wonder why people don't use bikes (not everyone can, the roads are dangerous, not enough facilities at workplaces, cycle lanes are dangerous & too small).
They wonder why people don't go into the city centre (because it costs £2 per hour to park and there's not enough). They wonder why people don't use the train station more (because it's a nightmare to get to, deliberately made harder by City of York Council traffic policies, the parking is expensive and there's not enough of it).

The funniest thing I heard was them bemoaning the fact they'd installed cycle & bus lanes around an out of town shopping park but no-one was using them. Until someone asked the question of how you fit a weeks worth of shopping on your bike.

There are mass house building projects going on all over the place which will only add more traffic on to the roads. These need major but expensive road systems to cope with the added traffic but local councils take the cheap option and add mini roundabouts and puffin crossings which will only compound current problems instead of adding graded junctions and subways/footbridges which cost more.

How could you [inot[/i vote for him???