What that means is that what we need now is an industrial strategy, which is something no UK government has had for decades. Money has to be spent, wisely. This is, of course, why we need a Green New Deal and a national investment bank to direct it, including by taking stakes in companies.
There’s a certain handwaving assumption there, that government direction of investment will mean money being spent wisely. You know, HST 2 and all that. Even, as the P³ himself says:
The government has shown no more awareness of this economic consequence of coronavirus, and the long term impact it will have, than it has of the epidemic itself. It has randomly bunged money (no other term is appropriate), without reason, and with indifference to consequence,
So, err, more government direction of investment solves this problem how?
As part of an EU project to join up Europe by high speed rail HS2 is, or should be, vulnerable under the new dispensation. Scrapping it would send a signal that we’re not going to play the EU boondoggle role any more.
Philip, can you imagine the resistance the Civil Service will put up?
From being Lenin yesterday, Spud has now become Anthony Wedgwood-Benn
The logic is consistent..
The first pragraph involves the Government chucking large amounts of cash at the Spud, with a possibility of Ermine at the end.
The second paragraph involves the Government not entertaining Spud’s pet peeves, and not tossing money at him.
Any instance of the Government not entertaining paragraph A is Bad Government, by default.
Of course, the people frequenting here would prefer paragraph B, probably with extreme prejudice…
What that means is that what we need now is an industrial strategy, which is something no UK government has had for decades
Ahem
https://www.gov.uk/government/latest?topical_events%5B%5D=the-uks-industrial-strategy
Or does he mean one he approves of?
philip,
Sadly, the obsession with high speed choo-choos goes beyond the EU. They are A Good Thing to them. They don’t really understand what trains are used for, though.
TOCs are predicting a permanent fall of 20% of commuters. Which sounds about right. My guess is that we’ll see that slowly climb in the following years. That’s going to have a big hit on the running costs of trains.
Government will no doubt spunk money on trains for some years, but at some point, Beeching II is going to happen.
@BoM4
A 20% fall sounds to me like an optimistic assessment from the TOCs. I don’t know how many regular commuters have the type of job that can’t be done from home (though presumably most of those would still be commuting, and the trains are at present, to a good approximation, empty). But of people who *can* work from home, my prediction is that most of them *will continue* to work from home, most of the time.
I wouldn’t be remotely surprised in a 40% drop in rail commuter traffic after things return to normal. And to aggravate the problem for the TOCs, if there’s a substantial drop in road traffic to match, that will make driving to work a more attractive option than rail.