Restoring your railways

[fillyboy]

Part of the 'levelling up' guff, lots on the local news down here about the line from Exeter to somewhere in Devon, Okehampton I think. Encourages tourism, opens work opportunities, sounds like there might be quite a few more of these around the country, even some more down here.

The 'Beeching' cuts were savage in their day but of course in those days car ownership was becoming the norm and some of these local lines lost big money, today, we want people out of cars.

Our 'boys' days out (pub crawls) tend to be dictated by where we can get a cheap day return on the train. The main line ends at Penzance which is a regular trip for us, there's a branch line to Falmouth from Truro which is a good call, St Ives from St Erth is OK, Looe from Liskeard is another, other than that, not many branch lines left down here.

 

[Notch7]

Levelling up……is a lie, most of the money has gone on rich Tory constituencies.

 

[Deleted member 18243]

Restoring some of those old railway lines would be a better use of the money that's being thrown away on HS2.

 

[sxturbo]

Infrastructure is just too expensive these days and so what has been lost will never be put back into service.


I can't decide of what beeching done was good or bad.

Ultimately public transport is just no where near as good as having personal transport. Personal transport provides so much more freedom to the individual.

A guy at work is mid to late 20's lives in Harwich and work is in Colchester, it used to take him an hour and half by train, and he used to have to get the 6am train, to ensure he was at work for 8, he turned up half hour early each day, then when he left work his train was at 5.45 and got into Harwich at 7pm, he finished work at 5.

He's just passed his driving and wishes he'd done it years ago, he said the freedom he has now found is unreal and he didn't realise how much he was missing. He now gets to and from work in 30 minutes, he gets so much more leisure time either side of work and he feels much more relaxed.

Unless your working in London, or travelling to major large towns/cities, public transport doesn't really work for most.

In London there is zero need for a car,

 

[JohnD]

Levelling up……is a lie, most of the money has gone on rich Tory constituencies.

Can that be true? Surely the money was intended for the poorest and most deprived areas?

Oh yes

It can.

Give the tuck shop keys to Billy Bunter and he will help himself

And his mates.

Well-known tory sleazeball Jenrick, and his buddy Berry, both housing ministers, approved funding for each others constituences from the money intended to be given to the most deprived areas.

Will anybody be surprised to hear that their constituencies are not among the most deprived areas?

"The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government allocated the investment to Newark, along with 99 other towns, as part of its drive at “levelling up” deprived areas with £3.6bn in funds.

Newark is reportedly the 270th most deprived area in the country and thus not as poor as many other towns in the UK.

The call for an investigation follows a report in the Times that 32 towns on the list fell outside the 300 worst-off in England, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Jenrick, a former corporate lawyer and director at auction house Christie’s, and Jake Berry, his junior minister, were allegedly responsible for choosing 61 of the towns to receive funding. They also chose Darwen, a town in Berry’s constituency".

The funds experienced a curious gravitational pull towards Conservative areas.

"If you end up with a list of 45 areas where the funding is going in and 'by coincidence' 40 of them are where there is a Conservative MP, I think people would be saying, 'What's going on here? This looks fishy.'"

 

[JohnD]

Ultimately public transport is just no where near as good as having personal transport. Personal transport provides so much more freedom to the individual.

Or, like well-known corrupt Tory sleazeball Jenrick, you can use both for the same journey.

Or, at least, CLAIM for both for the same journey.

ooops

"Despite being a man of financial means Jenrick was forced to pay back expenses earlier this year after it was found he claimed for both petrol costs and rail tickets for a return trip to his constituency in Newark.

The communities secretary was caught red handed by one of his constituents after they brought it to the attention of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority.

The trip in question was made on September 6th 2019 when Jenrick headed north to announce the government’s £3.6 billion towns fund.

He claimed £61.20 mileage for each of two car journeys of 136 miles, and a £159 return rail fare for the visit."

 

[Deleted member 18243]

Can that be true? Surely the money was intended for the poorest and most deprived areas?

How would you put the money to good use in deprived areas? That is the question.

Henceforth I won't use the phrase deprived area as nobody in Britain is deprived (plenty are depraved though). I'll use the better description "sh!thole".I've seen billions spent on my local sh!tholes and they remain sh!tholes. Enforcing the law of the land in these places would work better, and kicking out all the economic immigrant parasites.

 

[Notch7]

economic immigrant parasites

it’s disgusting the way foreigners come here to care for our elderly, clean our hospitals, pick our fruit and veg…….

We must get rid of them

 

[Notch7]

as nobody in Britain is deprived

there are people on benefits going hungry.

there are people on benefits living in accommodation with damp walls and they can’t afford heating.


I’d call that deprived.

 

[AngleEyes]

How would you put the money to good use in deprived areas? That is the question.

Henceforth I won't use the phrase deprived area as nobody in Britain is deprived (plenty are depraved though). I'll use the better description "sh!thole".I've seen billions spent on my local sh!tholes and they remain sh!tholes. Enforcing the law of the land in these places would work better, and kicking out all the economic immigrant parasites.

it’s disgusting

It's also disgusting that such comments are allowed to be aired on social media without some sort of censure.
Andy11 is a blatant racist.

 

[AngleEyes]

I’d call that deprived.

I'd call andy11 depraved.
How anyone can sneak such a comment into a thread about railways is beyond belief.
But then such opinions as Andy11's is also beyond belief.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I can't decide of what beeching done was good or bad.

Ultimately public transport is just no where near as good as having personal transport. Personal transport provides so much more freedom to the individual.

In my opinion, it was mostly essential at the time - the big mistake was in not moth-balling the infrastructure so it could be reopened if a case could be made for it later. Since then many lines have been proposed for re-opening, but had to be dropped because the routes had been built over. It was much easier to build the routes when they were first laid down, than it would be now, because so many people are able to object.

My father and much of his family had railway connections going back to the beginning of railways, I have a photo of my great uncle proudly stood alongside the express engine he drove back in the 1920's. My father saw what was coming in the 1950's with Beeching and decided to get out whilst he could and moved to insurance.

 

[^woody^]

it’s disgusting the way foreigners come here to care for our elderly, clean our hospitals, pick our fruit and veg…….

there are people on benefits living in accommodation with damp walls and they can’t afford heating.

Do you see the irony of your own words?

 

[SirGalahad]

Infrastructure is just too expensive these days and so what has been lost will never be put back into service.


I can't decide of what beeching done was good or bad.

Ultimately public transport is just no where near as good as having personal transport. Personal transport provides so much more freedom to the individual.

A guy at work is mid to late 20's lives in Harwich and work is in Colchester, it used to take him an hour and half by train, and he used to have to get the 6am train, to ensure he was at work for 8, he turned up half hour early each day, then when he left work his train was at 5.45 and got into Harwich at 7pm, he finished work at 5.

He's just passed his driving and wishes he'd done it years ago, he said the freedom he has now found is unreal and he didn't realise how much he was missing. He now gets to and from work in 30 minutes, he gets so much more leisure time either side of work and he feels much more relaxed.

Unless your working in London, or travelling to major large towns/cities, public transport doesn't really work for most.

In London there is zero need for a car,

USA has poor public transport and their highways are clogged with cars and their solution - build public transport.

You have to take an approach where you build out public infrastructure and run it publicly where the benefits accrue to society over time. It has to be Government lead as private investors would want guaranteed returns and on top they would have higher borrowing costs than the public sector.

 

[SirGalahad]

How would you put the money to good use in deprived areas? That is the question.

Henceforth I won't use the phrase deprived area as nobody in Britain is deprived (plenty are depraved though). I'll use the better description "sh!thole".I've seen billions spent on my local sh!tholes and they remain sh!tholes. Enforcing the law of the land in these places would work better, and kicking out all the economic immigrant parasites.

So you live in a sh it hole. Why don't you move? You seem to hate where you live, move. What's stopping you?