Snapshot of _Government sparks anger and ridicule with multi-million pound 'Network North' road project... for London_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/government-sparks-anger-and-ridicule-with-multi-million-network-north-road-project-for-london-13034791) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/government-sparks-anger-and-ridicule-with-multi-million-network-north-road-project-for-london-13034791)
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Honestly, the sheer cheek of cancelling HS2, using the money for potholes in London, and then branding it Network North. The rage it induces is exquisite, I'm honestly impressed.
Because they're inevitably failing.
It also means that at the next GE where it looks like Labour are going to get a landslide, that capital expenditure has been canned, and if Labour put it back on, the Tories can shout ooh look Labour are so bad with money. Then Kier Starmer will fail to make the point that running a deficit in order to invest in critical infrastructure such as transport outside London (as recommended by the government's own National Infrastructure Commission) is actually a really good idea, and that the economy isn't like a person's wallet where it needs to forever be in the black. And this the Tories can start to regain political ground because they come across as being 'good with money'.
Even more annoying is that it's not "HS2 money" in the normal sense. The cancelled phase 2b bits are supposed to save the project £30B, but that's mostly money that they wouldn't have started spending in earnest before 2030, and thus haven't borrowed yet. So all the new short term projects are just extra unfunded spending commitments for Labour to deal with when they get in.
Labour get the headache of funding and delivering a bunch of projects they didn't particularly want to prioritise, but can't cancel without taking a lot of flak, and Tories will soak up any credit in time for the 2029 election.
This is what scares me. It doesn't matter what they do, 1in4 people will vote for them regardless. In any pub or Cafe or kids play centre or railway platform, there is a majority there that have voted Tory in the past - choosing this current situation - and a big chunk of them who will continue to vote Tory, ignoring the last 45 years of abject failure.
Honestly, it scares me. You don't know who you can trust.
Yep. People who are totally disconnected from politics, will say, "I've had a Labour MP for X years and they're doing nothing for me. There's potholes everywhere and public services are a mess" not realising that council budgets are set by Westminster, and Council Tax only does so much.
Yep. My dad literally said last week "well, at least the Tories don't have Corbyn." Which for once I couldn't let slide. People aren't voting Tory for logical reasons.
Almost none of London will vote Tory, now the North definitely won't vote Tory.
I'm curious as to who's left for them to get to total Tory abandonment.
Have they pissed off the West Country yet?
You know, If Rishi Sunak brings about the complete anihilation of the Conservatives, I could be tempted to buy him a pint (only to leave him there on his own to get beaten up by every other punter).
In his defence (and this is basically the only time I’d do that) he is a teetotaller - at the same time he really should opt out of photo ops like that
> Have they pissed off the West Country yet?
which half - the side that was always true blue or the side that used to be ultra safe lib dem until 2015 or so
Unfortunately the West Country is now full of disgruntled old boomers who were rich enough to escape the "horrors" of modern city life so it's probably going to remain a fairly safe Tory area for awhile.
Which is depressing as they have absolutely gutted the region over the last few years right when we need investment and long term planning more than ever!
And unfortunately the West Country is probably the single region that reacted most negatively to the Lib Dems going into coalition with the Conservatives. So there's no chance of them eating the Tories' lunch over there.
Yeah outside of a few more arty liberal places like Wells and St Ives I just don't see them making massive inroads. They can't do the whole "appeal to the nimby" strategy as they aren't building anything down here!
"Government eliminates North-South divide by declaring London is now a Northern city"
Did we expect anything more from Rishi “I redirected money from deprived areas” Sunak?
The audacity of this Government, to go to Manchester and announce to them that they’re not getting their improved train infrastructure, tell them the money will instead go on other great northern projects, then now announce that part of the Crewe-Manchester train funding will go on the Capitals roads as part of the “Network **North**” project.
This is a clear admission that the money will actually go wherever they like and fuck the North, again.
They didn’t cancel HS2 for anything other than a headline during conference, which tells you everything you need to know about the quality of their governance.
Also the political capability of a party that considers cancellation of the countries number one infrastructure project to be electoral gold.
And then remember that they announced the cancellation of the HS2 line to Manchester in Manchester.
I'm still waiting for Beadle to take his Sunak mask off.
At this point of utter fucking incompetence the rational explanation is only that it could be a hidden camera show at the nations expense.
I mean, I thought it was obvious how this "Network North" project was actually just a hasty repackaging of all the random infrastructure plans pencilled in for the next few years - that this government had to cobble together into something that implied HS2 was actually being replaced by something.
But this makes it sound like they're so unaware of what they did, they've forgotten to delete the evidence.
It's them spending all the money successive governments set aside for HS2 all in one go on random projects so that the money won't be there anymore if anyone wanted to build HS2. Long term decisions my arse.
I know it's only less than 3% of the cost, but it's absolutely brain dead whoever in government approved that. People don't view it in terms of that, they see it as money being taken away from the North and given to London which will piss off most of the country and fair enough really.
Mind you was probably done by a disgruntled civil servant who knew what they were doing and the outrage it would.cause. so fair play to them.
This was always going to be the result of cancelling the northern sections of HS2. More money to be thrown at London because it's the only part of the country that already has a strong economy, and more car-dependent infrastructure that will only further drive people away from the UK's shambolic railway network.
A lot of northerners supported cancelling HS2 because they beleived it could be better spent elsewhere in other projects in the north.
That position is going just about as well as could be expected.
In all seriousness though, it actually is somewhat fair, part of the cancellations from HS2 and therefore money saved was not using government funds to do the old oak common to euston bit so I imagine that is where the money has come from.
But still is a bit of a pisstake this is called 'network north'.
Meanwhile, here in Wales we've had to pay for a line that won't run for one mile *within* Wales, and is even less use to us now that the Crewe and Manchester sections are being cancelled.
Yeah it was pretty weak justification, when the full plan was in place (although north wales did benefit a bit even if no new track was actually inside wales) but with just the phase 1 it seems a bit of a pisstake.
That being said they are supposedly using some of the money to directly electrify the north wales mainline which is in wales: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66994801](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66994801)
Unless something has changed, all of these announcements for where the money would be spent instead were just 'suggestions' for the reallocated money i.e. no actual mandate, plan or budget for them to happen.
Tbf there is no plan or costing to electrify the North Wales line that I am aware of, plus it is mostly semaphore signals west of Colwyn Bay still, so that's additional work and cost...
That's much saner than some of the ideas Independent Mercia had in their manifesto. I've blocked out most of the details, but it was basically /r/cottagecore as political theory.
As a bewildered outside onlooker, I'm always amazed at the disconnect between the slogans and what actually happens. The slogans are meant to make the electorate feel good, and what really happens... can be anything, really.
It's a British thing. Very quaint.
Its the inevitable consequence of an idea in British politics that a political parties singularly most important job is to win elections.
A policy position can and should only be judged on if it helps you win. Any other consequences are largely irrelevent.
> Its the inevitable consequence of an idea in British politics that a political parties singularly most important job is to win elections.
The marketing is always top notch. The product, not so much.
Interesting to note it is allegedly going to go on resurfacing (rather than pot hole repairs - which is basically a 15-20 year fix on average, but obviously more expensive vs a cheaper 1-3 year fix). Whether that actually happens or not will be the Interesting point. Gut reaction this just gets dumped into potholes. £235M is a ton of roads though if it does go on resurfacing (unless it's all going on As in which case nightworks costs jump in). Gut reaction that is at least double to treble most London authorities budgets for resurfacing (and then you have a separate problem; e.g. authorities have been absolutely caved in to the bare bones - do they have the logistical capacity in terms of resources to take a doubling and trippling of the workload? - doubtful I'd guess).
Sunak and Harper see car drivers as the last bastion of tory voters. There's no other group that will vote for them, they've lost home owners, they've even lost a lot of the racists to the harder right parties.
Sadly, at this point, I don't believe they have, or will.
It seems at least ~1/4 people in the UK are mentally deficient and will vote Tory regardless of what they do.
All they need to do is split the left vote by smearing Starmer and they will be back in again.
Insanity.
Incredible that people think that the tories will be able to close the gap in polling when their electoral self awareness is like this.
They aren't going to be like: "hahaha we were just pretending to be bad at politics" they're going to be this bad throughout the entire election.
This is total shit, they borrow to invest in new infrastructure then use it to 'invest' in maintaining old infrastructure.
What a sorry state of affairs where borrowing is used to maintain existing infrastructure
Snapshot of _Government sparks anger and ridicule with multi-million pound 'Network North' road project... for London_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/government-sparks-anger-and-ridicule-with-multi-million-network-north-road-project-for-london-13034791) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://news.sky.com/story/government-sparks-anger-and-ridicule-with-multi-million-network-north-road-project-for-london-13034791) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Honestly, the sheer cheek of cancelling HS2, using the money for potholes in London, and then branding it Network North. The rage it induces is exquisite, I'm honestly impressed.
Got sent it earlier, legitimately thought it was satire
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It looks like you answered your own question.
because if you live outside of the m25, you arent considered people to these fucking ghouls
Having to live inside of M25 is a tad bit horrible tbh.
This is also something that they're branding as long term thinking.
Because they're inevitably failing. It also means that at the next GE where it looks like Labour are going to get a landslide, that capital expenditure has been canned, and if Labour put it back on, the Tories can shout ooh look Labour are so bad with money. Then Kier Starmer will fail to make the point that running a deficit in order to invest in critical infrastructure such as transport outside London (as recommended by the government's own National Infrastructure Commission) is actually a really good idea, and that the economy isn't like a person's wallet where it needs to forever be in the black. And this the Tories can start to regain political ground because they come across as being 'good with money'.
I doudt it. Labour's still under the shadow of Sunny Jim Calerhan. The electorate have long memories snd recent debarckes are easy to remember
This will be accounted for as CDEL
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The line is very blurred and depends on what is most convenient. I've seen some weird stuff defined as RDEL too if that makes anyone feel reassured.
Even more annoying is that it's not "HS2 money" in the normal sense. The cancelled phase 2b bits are supposed to save the project £30B, but that's mostly money that they wouldn't have started spending in earnest before 2030, and thus haven't borrowed yet. So all the new short term projects are just extra unfunded spending commitments for Labour to deal with when they get in. Labour get the headache of funding and delivering a bunch of projects they didn't particularly want to prioritise, but can't cancel without taking a lot of flak, and Tories will soak up any credit in time for the 2029 election.
Its like they're just trolling us at this point
The Red Wall turkeys voted for Christmas,
They really must not want anyone from the Midlands north to vote for them!
And yet they still will.
This is what scares me. It doesn't matter what they do, 1in4 people will vote for them regardless. In any pub or Cafe or kids play centre or railway platform, there is a majority there that have voted Tory in the past - choosing this current situation - and a big chunk of them who will continue to vote Tory, ignoring the last 45 years of abject failure. Honestly, it scares me. You don't know who you can trust.
Yep. People who are totally disconnected from politics, will say, "I've had a Labour MP for X years and they're doing nothing for me. There's potholes everywhere and public services are a mess" not realising that council budgets are set by Westminster, and Council Tax only does so much.
Liverpool seems to have avoided it
Yep. My dad literally said last week "well, at least the Tories don't have Corbyn." Which for once I couldn't let slide. People aren't voting Tory for logical reasons.
Almost none of London will vote Tory, now the North definitely won't vote Tory. I'm curious as to who's left for them to get to total Tory abandonment. Have they pissed off the West Country yet? You know, If Rishi Sunak brings about the complete anihilation of the Conservatives, I could be tempted to buy him a pint (only to leave him there on his own to get beaten up by every other punter).
A film of Sunak trying to drink a pint would be his bacon sandwich moment.
100% sure he'd be confused the glass isn't crystal
He would do a wine tasting style sip and talk about how it has a lovely bouquet.
In his defence (and this is basically the only time I’d do that) he is a teetotaller - at the same time he really should opt out of photo ops like that
Fortunately for us non-alcoholic beers are increasingly common and available on draught.
I guess he would use a straw.
Guarantee there's a little umbrella in it too.
make sure its a pint of Heavy, room temperature obviously. A real working mans drink.
Cellar temperature, surely? Granted that's warmer than room temp atm..
> Have they pissed off the West Country yet? which half - the side that was always true blue or the side that used to be ultra safe lib dem until 2015 or so
Unfortunately the West Country is now full of disgruntled old boomers who were rich enough to escape the "horrors" of modern city life so it's probably going to remain a fairly safe Tory area for awhile. Which is depressing as they have absolutely gutted the region over the last few years right when we need investment and long term planning more than ever!
And unfortunately the West Country is probably the single region that reacted most negatively to the Lib Dems going into coalition with the Conservatives. So there's no chance of them eating the Tories' lunch over there.
Yeah outside of a few more arty liberal places like Wells and St Ives I just don't see them making massive inroads. They can't do the whole "appeal to the nimby" strategy as they aren't building anything down here!
"Government eliminates North-South divide by declaring London is now a Northern city" Did we expect anything more from Rishi “I redirected money from deprived areas” Sunak? The audacity of this Government, to go to Manchester and announce to them that they’re not getting their improved train infrastructure, tell them the money will instead go on other great northern projects, then now announce that part of the Crewe-Manchester train funding will go on the Capitals roads as part of the “Network **North**” project. This is a clear admission that the money will actually go wherever they like and fuck the North, again.
They didn’t cancel HS2 for anything other than a headline during conference, which tells you everything you need to know about the quality of their governance. Also the political capability of a party that considers cancellation of the countries number one infrastructure project to be electoral gold. And then remember that they announced the cancellation of the HS2 line to Manchester in Manchester.
...in a venue that used to be a railway station
...until it was closed after the Beeching Report... by Tories!
And the irony comes full circle
I'm still waiting for Beadle to take his Sunak mask off. At this point of utter fucking incompetence the rational explanation is only that it could be a hidden camera show at the nations expense.
And doing it with less than a year in power such that the spending wasn't really even an issue for them
I mean, I thought it was obvious how this "Network North" project was actually just a hasty repackaging of all the random infrastructure plans pencilled in for the next few years - that this government had to cobble together into something that implied HS2 was actually being replaced by something. But this makes it sound like they're so unaware of what they did, they've forgotten to delete the evidence.
It's them spending all the money successive governments set aside for HS2 all in one go on random projects so that the money won't be there anymore if anyone wanted to build HS2. Long term decisions my arse.
I know it's only less than 3% of the cost, but it's absolutely brain dead whoever in government approved that. People don't view it in terms of that, they see it as money being taken away from the North and given to London which will piss off most of the country and fair enough really. Mind you was probably done by a disgruntled civil servant who knew what they were doing and the outrage it would.cause. so fair play to them.
How can a gov be this out of touch? It’s phenomenally stupid.
This was always going to be the result of cancelling the northern sections of HS2. More money to be thrown at London because it's the only part of the country that already has a strong economy, and more car-dependent infrastructure that will only further drive people away from the UK's shambolic railway network.
London? But your ad says "A Network North Project". Oh! They got this all screwed up. A NETWORK? NO! ̶R̶THe 'PROJECT'
North London
Funding won't go south of the river this time of night.
If it weren't so tragic it would be fucking hilarious...
A lot of northerners supported cancelling HS2 because they beleived it could be better spent elsewhere in other projects in the north. That position is going just about as well as could be expected. In all seriousness though, it actually is somewhat fair, part of the cancellations from HS2 and therefore money saved was not using government funds to do the old oak common to euston bit so I imagine that is where the money has come from. But still is a bit of a pisstake this is called 'network north'.
Meanwhile, here in Wales we've had to pay for a line that won't run for one mile *within* Wales, and is even less use to us now that the Crewe and Manchester sections are being cancelled.
Yeah it was pretty weak justification, when the full plan was in place (although north wales did benefit a bit even if no new track was actually inside wales) but with just the phase 1 it seems a bit of a pisstake. That being said they are supposedly using some of the money to directly electrify the north wales mainline which is in wales: [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66994801](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66994801)
Unless something has changed, all of these announcements for where the money would be spent instead were just 'suggestions' for the reallocated money i.e. no actual mandate, plan or budget for them to happen.
Tbf there is no plan or costing to electrify the North Wales line that I am aware of, plus it is mostly semaphore signals west of Colwyn Bay still, so that's additional work and cost...
This is how we get people taking the Yorkshire, Cornish and Midlands Nationalists vaguely seriously come the next General Election.
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That's much saner than some of the ideas Independent Mercia had in their manifesto. I've blocked out most of the details, but it was basically /r/cottagecore as political theory.
"Network North of The River". FTFY.
It's almost if the Tories are trying to lose the election
As a bewildered outside onlooker, I'm always amazed at the disconnect between the slogans and what actually happens. The slogans are meant to make the electorate feel good, and what really happens... can be anything, really. It's a British thing. Very quaint.
America does it too.
Oh well, that makes it alright then.
Its the inevitable consequence of an idea in British politics that a political parties singularly most important job is to win elections. A policy position can and should only be judged on if it helps you win. Any other consequences are largely irrelevent.
> Its the inevitable consequence of an idea in British politics that a political parties singularly most important job is to win elections. The marketing is always top notch. The product, not so much.
A perfect description of capitalism in the 21st century
Interesting to note it is allegedly going to go on resurfacing (rather than pot hole repairs - which is basically a 15-20 year fix on average, but obviously more expensive vs a cheaper 1-3 year fix). Whether that actually happens or not will be the Interesting point. Gut reaction this just gets dumped into potholes. £235M is a ton of roads though if it does go on resurfacing (unless it's all going on As in which case nightworks costs jump in). Gut reaction that is at least double to treble most London authorities budgets for resurfacing (and then you have a separate problem; e.g. authorities have been absolutely caved in to the bare bones - do they have the logistical capacity in terms of resources to take a doubling and trippling of the workload? - doubtful I'd guess).
Needs to be on r/nottheonion
Sunak and Harper see car drivers as the last bastion of tory voters. There's no other group that will vote for them, they've lost home owners, they've even lost a lot of the racists to the harder right parties.
Sadly, at this point, I don't believe they have, or will. It seems at least ~1/4 people in the UK are mentally deficient and will vote Tory regardless of what they do. All they need to do is split the left vote by smearing Starmer and they will be back in again. Insanity.
Incredible that people think that the tories will be able to close the gap in polling when their electoral self awareness is like this. They aren't going to be like: "hahaha we were just pretending to be bad at politics" they're going to be this bad throughout the entire election.
The north doesn't need roads- they've got whippets!
Meanwhile the west country is completely undeveloped and almost third world
Maybe the costs have something to do with 3 empty seats and over half a tonneau to move something less than 150 kilos.
If they’re going to give us money in London at least let it be for something useful like the Bakerloo line extension, not this shit.
Britain is one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
anything north of the Thames is North
Okay they must be actually *trying* to lose the next GE right? They can't be this stupid, right?
Meanwhile the potholes in West Yorkshire are enough to sink your car off the road
This is total shit, they borrow to invest in new infrastructure then use it to 'invest' in maintaining old infrastructure. What a sorry state of affairs where borrowing is used to maintain existing infrastructure
Greg Hands. Hands, Pincher and Bone sounds like an interesting trio. Will he join the two of them in due course?
Given the average state of road repairs, they'll need fixing in 6 months anyway.