The Arguments Start On The Todmorden Curve
I’m not going to comment except suggest you read this article in the Burnley Express.
Has Cameron’s Honesty Settled The Election?
For a few years now, I’ve believed that whoever wins the election in a few weeks, will have a good chance of winning again in 2020. In Is George Osborne A Closet Trainspotter, I detailed all of the big rail projects finishing in the later years of this decade and said this.
Whoever wins the election in 2015, will be the biggest beneficiary of all this planned spending, as many projects like Crossrail, Thameslink and the Great Western Main Line, will be fully implemented just before the 2020 General election.
Cameron’s obvious desire to step down at the end of a second term, if he wins the election and lead a normal life, will give his successor a good hand for the 2020 Election.
His honesty has certainly put him in a totally different box to all of his rivals.
It may not win the Tories the election, but his decision probably will help many voters make up their minds.
Perhaps he also remembers that the last Prime Minister with a reasonable popularity level and a very supportive family, forced to call an election, won the resulting contest!
The Train Now Arriving Is Fifty Years Late
When I went to Liverpool University in October 1965. According to Wikipedia, electric trains between London and Liverpool and Manchester, started public service in April 1966. I can remember once taking a late train to London from Liverpool and a time of five hours forty minutes stricks in my mind.
The electric service between the North West and London is faster and more frequent now, but in some ways services between London and Blackpool and other places, is worse than it was in the 1960s, when there were direct trains.
In addition Leeds and Newcastle were connected to London by an electrified East Coast Main Line in 1990.
Over the last fifty years, since I first emerged into Lime Street, Liverpool and Leeds have developed local electric railways and Manchester has created a tram network. On the negative side, the electrified railway between Manchester and Sheffield has been ripped out.
The contempt for the North shown by successive Governments under Wilson, Callaghan, Heath, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, by not even creating a plan to build a modern electrified railway from Liverpool to Newcastle and Hull, is one of the greatest political disgraces in this country, ranking with the day that Chamberlain thought he’d got a deal with Hitler.
But now, that plan is emerging to create that railway that the French or the Italians would have built before the 1970s. It’s here on the BBC and this is the first two paragraphs.
Plans to overhaul transport across the North of England, including with multi-billion pound rail schemes, have been laid out by the government.
The Northern Transport Strategy report details what George Osborne believes will create a “northern powerhouse”.
It contains a long-term plan to improve road links and speed up train times between major cities.
This plan or at least a simpler one which only used 100 mph trains, should have been created in the 1960s. All those politicians who failed the north should hang their heads in shame.
I blame Harold Wilson in particular, as surely being a Yorkshireman representing a Lancashire constiuency, he should have known the value of good rail links across the country.
I suppose that until recently, trains didn’t get any votes outside London and the South East, but wide and empty new motorways do.
In some ways, I find that all the rail developments in the North are being driven, by that most unlikely champion; the St. Pauls and Oxford-educated Tory Chancellor; George Osborne, who said this about the plans according to the BBC report.
Connecting up the great cities of the North is at the heart of our plan to build a northern powerhouse.
From backing high-speed rail to introducing simpler fares right across the North, our ambitious plans for transport mean we will deliver a truly national recovery where every part of the country will share in Britain’s prosperity.
But then Osborne is someone, who spent a lot of their formative years in London. I suspect as a teenager he roamed all over the city on the Underground and the buses, as I did. It is the sort of experience, that gives you the opinion that good public transport is a necessity for prosperity for all those who live and work in an area.
Sorting out the public transport in the North with electrified fast trains and contactless ticketing at its heart, should be something that anybody standing in the May election should be made to sign up to, before they are allowed to be a candidate.
Will Osborne Abolish Tax On Savings Interest?
This is said in this article in The Independent.
Tax on income from savings will be abolished for millions of people in the Budget today as George Osborne woos pensioners and “hard-working taxpayers” ahead of the May general election,The Independent has learnt.
So is the paper right?
It would make a lot of sense.
1, It would certainly encourage saving.
2. Encouraging saving may mean that more money will go into peer-to-peer lending, which will help lower interest rates for borrowers and give the banks a bit of a kicking. So a by-product of abolishing tax on savings interest could be better availability of finance for individuals and businesses.
3. I can see those who provide homes for savings like banks, building societies and peer-to-peer lenders getting increasingly innovate in finding ways to create high-interest, instant-access accounts.
4. It could put a lot of financial advisers out of business, as if say you had a lump sum to invest, you could easily work out what would be the best savings account, to keep the money until you need it.
5. But surely, the biggest benefit will be that as savings will now be held in an account, that doesn’t carry any tax, it will simplify tax accounting and returns for banks, building societies and savers alike.
If he does do it, then just imagine how any party who put it back would fare in an election!
On a personal note, if it does happen, I’ll be putting more of my money into Zopa!
George Osborne Sets Out His Vision Of Yorkshire
This article in the Huddersfield Examiner is entitled Chancellor George Osborne to set out long term economic plan for Yorkshire during visit to West Yorkshire.
Read it and there are some interesting snippets, that he believes will be part of a long term plan for Yorkshire.
One of them is this.
We will also increase speeds on the East Coast Mainline to 140 mph
It is already planned and if and when it happens it will significantly reduce journey times all the way up the line between London and Edinburgh.
George is not actually promising anything for which funds have not been allocated, but his words show he understands the value of infrastructure, something that can’t be said for all Chancellors of the Exchequer since the Second World War.
The one thing that George or any future Chancellor can ensure, is that by not cutting funds they will get this valuable project carried out!
The Bill Somebody Affair May Be Getting Serious
Ed Balls got his Bills all mixed up, as outlined in this article in The Independent entitled Bill Somebody: So who is Ed Balls’ mysterious Labour business supporter?
After watching George Galloway do a Daniel act in a den of Jewish lions on Question Time, I decided to see if billsomebody.com and billsomebody.co.uk have been registered.
One certrainly has and you can read it here.
It was registered yesterday!
The Eden Project, Geothermal Energy And Fracking
In Iceland last summer, I saw the benefits of geothermal energy, with one of the most spectacular being the amazing Blue Lagoon.
We don’t have any volcanoes in the UK, but in places like Cornwall and London Bridge station, projects are starting to test the feasibility of using heat from deep in the ground.
According to this article in the Glasgow Herald, the Eden Project is investigating geothewrmal energy. This is an extract.
Given the prominence of Friends of the Earth in the shale gas debate it often comes as a nasty surprise to local anti-fracking groups that most green groups do actually support drilling and fracking for deep geothermal projects. Only yesterday, the famous Eden Project in Cornwall announced such a project.
Today though, I read in The Times, that this £35million project is now under threat from an anti-fracking amendment in a bill in Parliament.
I suspect that the problem is if you wrote down all the science known by Members of Parliament, it would just about fit on a small postage stamp.
I wonder what will happen when politicians find out about the ground source heat pump at London Bridge could use fracking techniques, to enable it to be built properly and run efficiently.
It All Happens In London In May
May is looking to be a big month for the infrastructure of London.
I’ve just read this article in the Hackney Gazette, which is entitled Canary Wharf Crossrail Artwork Released.
But as the article says, we won’t see the artwork until 2018, when Canary Wharf Crossrail station opens.
But what the article does say, is that the shops, restaurants, bars and the roof garden will open to the public in May.
So what else is happening in May?
1. Crossrail will take over the Shenfield Metro services in May. I have spoken to staff about this and everybody I spoke to seemed positive about the move and there has been the odd article like this one in the Btrentwood Gazette that has shown a positive tone.
2. Cossrail has put out this report, which says that tunnelling will be complete in the Spring amongst other things.
3. The Lea Valley Lines become part of the London Overground on the 31st of the Month. I don’t think you’ll find many, who believe it was wrong that London took over the North and East London Lines to create the Overground in 2007. So probably the sentiment for this takeover is positive.
4. Today on Hackney Central station, I asked a London Overground employee, when the pedestrian link to Hackney Downs station will open. It should be in May. He also told me about all the other developments at Hackney Central that are being planned, like extra lifts. The Overground does seem to have instilled infectious enthusiasm into its staff.
There is also the little matter of the first General Election of 2015.
Mansion Tax To Pay For 1,000 Nurses In Scotland
This is the front page headline in The Times. It is subtitled.
Labour targets southern England to woo north.
These headlines are based on a policy statement by Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour Leader. The Times also says he didn’t clear it with Ed Miliband.
My house would probably not be worth enough to pay a mansion tax, although knowing politicians, they’d probably change the rules to make most houses in London and the South East pay the tax.
But I thought that the NHS in Scotland was devolved.
One thing I find, is that if I talk about the NHS to people in England and Scotland, those in places like London, Liverpool and East Anglia, are much more satisfied with prerformance than those north of the border.
Is Nigel Farage Like Joan Rivers?
Having seen and read a lot about Nigel Farage, I sometimes think that what he says is not unlike things said by Joan Rivers.
But there’s a big difference! Joan Rivers based a lot of what she said on things that most of us think, but she was not expecting to be taken seriously, except as a comedian. Nigel Farage on the other hand, although he bases his statements in a similar way to Joan Rivers, very much expects to be taken seriously.
I didn’t watch Farage’s performance on Question Time and his confrontation with Russell Brand, but the reports I’ve read, reinforce my conviction, that Farage’s policies are not for me.
I hope that in a few years time, we’ll all be able to look back on Nigel Farage and his politics as a hiccup in history.
If he makes us think the unthinkable in sorting out our serious problems, like obesity, poverty, pollution, smoking, health, illegal drugs climate change, child protection etc., the hiccup will have been a good thing.
A lot of the old ideas have failed, so we’ve got to consign them to history and move forward.
The Anonymous Widower 