Manchester To Get a Borken or Kenbor?
In my view the London Mayor has been a success. And I don’t just mean one of them!
They have fought for London and have won the battles to get improvements to London’s transport system.
Two years ago, I put forward my reasons why Manchester needs a mayor, with responsibility for the wider area.
Yesterday, George Osborne said he’d agreed that Manchester should have a mayor.
I’ll believe it when it happens!
But it is certainly overdue and also overdue in Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Nottingham and Newcastle.
I would also add cities and towns with a large population and transport system and probably major strengths or weaknesses.
So that would include at least Blackpool, Brighton and Cambridge!
Should UKIP Supporters Be Called Kippers?
Matt Ridley has an opinion in The Times entitled Spare me the selfishness of the eco-toffs. It is well worth reading, He says this at one point after looking at the profiles of green and UKIP supporters.
In Downton Abbey terms, Greens are a lady upstairs in the dining room; kippers are a footman downstairs in the servants’ hall.
Does this mean you have to be kippered to vote for UKIP?
Whatever it is, it’s a good choice of a word.
It should help Farage with his choice of neckware!
Goodbye Darling!
Or good riddance to the MP, who as Chancellor spent £45billion on a bust bank and then proceeded to ruin another one.
How come someone, who has that disaster on his c.v. is still held in such regard?
I wouldn’t trust the man to run my whelk stall!
But then that is politics for you. The mediocre and the downright incompetent get voted in. I’ve met a few MPs, but I’d trust only two with the bus fare home.
How many people, who’ve done real jobs like a doctor, engineer, scientist or teacher are there in parliament? We’re even short on sportsmen and women at present.
After Sol Campbell’s interview in Saturday’s Times, someone should sign him up!
But think about that wasted £45billion!
It is a £1,000 for every man, woman and child in this country.
It would have paid for the Northern Hub, Crossrail, HS3, Glasgow Crossrail and the upgrading of the Great Western Main Line and left quite a few billions over for other worthwhile projects, like training all the people to work on the projects.
Lib Dems Dither Over More Runways In The South East
According to a report on the BBC web site the Lib Dems are thinking of making a U-turn over their aviation policy of no more runways in the South East. This is the first bit of the article.
The Liberal Democrats are heading for a possible U-turn over their opposition to airport expansion.
The party has been committed to a blanket ban on the construction of any new runways in south-east England.
But two Lib Dem MPs at the party’s conference in Glasgow have tabled an amendment that would allow Gatwick Airport to be exempted.
I have been feeling that the only policy on airports in the South East that will work in the short-term, is to wait until we’ve seen the Crossrail/Thameslink effect work its way through the system. This will make Central London an enormous terminal to the current three runways at Heathrow and Gatwick. No-one can predict how the passengers will react, but coupled with the growth of Manchester Airport, I suspect that the transfer traffic at both Heathrow and Gatwick airports will decrease as a proportion of traffic over the next few years.
As I write this note it has just been announced on the BBC that Virgin is closing their Little Red airline.
Virgin Atlantic has said it will stop running Little Red, its UK flight network launched in 2013, next year.
The flights between London Heathrow and Manchester will stop in March, while those between Heathrow and Edinburgh and Aberdeen will end in September.
Obviously, it hasn’t been bringing in the transfer passengers for Virgin’s long haul flights.
We should be pushing on with developments that will take the pressure of runways in the South East.
1. Eurostar has just announced that they are making Geneva services easier from St. Pancras. The trains could go to direct to places like Amsterdam, Cologne, Geneva and Lyon from London now, if only governments could sort out the political problems, like immigration and security.
As the European high-speed network grows, we could be seeing a large shift from plane to train, which will mean a big reduction in short-haul services from the South East airports.
The French are even talking about building a new line to make London to Paris under two hours. If they could make onward connections in Paris easier, it would increase the number of passengers going by train from London. Better and more welcoming French stations in the style of St. Pancras and Kings Cross would help too!
2. Over the next few years we will see a tremendous improvement in the rail services between Scotland and the South East. Both the East and West Coast Main Lines are being upgraded to remove bottlenecks and allow running at 225 kph, allowing Edinburgh and Glasgow to be within the magic four hours from London. So will most passengers between the South East and Central Scotland, go by train at the end of this decade?
I think they will and we must do those improvements that make England Scotland rail services even better.
3. An interesting knock-on from the previous point, is that even today Glasgow to Heathrow Airport by train, takes well over two hours longer than going to Manchester Airport. The train services have increased in recent months, but Scots are increasingly seeing Manchester as their long-haul airport of choice.
We should be improving the rail links across the North of England as fast as we can, so that if you live North of the line between the Mersey and the Humber, you use Manchester as your long-haul airport.
All this can only make Manchester Airport a bigger rival to the airports in the South East. British Airways might not like it, but they should fly where the passengers are, not where they say they should be!
4. HS2 from London to Birmingham, will make is easier to go to Birmingham Airport from the South East. This extract is from Wikipedia.
According to Birmingham Airport‘s chief executive Paul Kehoe, HS2 is a key element in increasing the number of flights using the airport, and patronage by inhabitants of London and the South-East, as HS2 will reduce travelling times to Birmingham Airport from London to under 40 minutes.
That makes Birmingham Airport closer to Central London than Stansted, so will we see more flights out of London Birmingham International.
5. Trains though, have some very big advantages advantages over flying.
- They generally go from city centre to city centre, where major cities are concerned.
- There is generally, no requirement to get to the station and be subjected to endless security checks, except possibly in Spain. It’s certainly turn up at the barrier with a valid ticket, which has often been purchased just a few minutes before, sit in your seat and go. When was air travel last like that?
- The UK is also showing the way with creating stations, which are very welcoming with decent shops, bars, cafes and restaurants. St. Pancras must rate with the best airports for what it provides the customer.
- But on the trains, we are seeing more and better services, with an improvement in on-board services like wi-fi and catering.
6. Virtually, the only advantage left to flying by air, is that you can drive to the airport and leave your car in the long-term car-park.
For many though, this is decreasingly becoming another facet in the old adage – Time to spare, go by air!
7. Those wanting a new runway in the South East are discounting ingenuity and innovation.
- Ryanair have said that they will be starting low-cost transatlantic services. Knowing them, they won’t be using an expensive airport in the South East.
- Icelandair have been very successful at getting passengers to split their transatlantic flight. So will we see the same happening in London? Perhaps fly from America to London, where you check out the city and then onward by train or short-haul flight to Europe. This will be more relaxing and London will benefit.
- Airliners will get bigger and quieter, so the amount of runway space we’ll need will be less, but the number of passengers through each airport will rise. The latest Boeing 737s to be delivered in 2017 will carry 220 passengers, as opposed to about 160 today. So if all airliners have that sort of increase in capacity, that is almost equivalent to an extra runway for Heathrow and Gatwick.
So perhaps we’ll get the extra capacity without building it?
But in the end are the passengers having the final say and not flying in the same ways they have for years?
I think that any political party that backs another runway in the South East wants its credentials examined.
Why No Sensible Person Would Vote Lib Dem
The political headlines this morning are about Nick Clegg saying he will raise taxes to cut the deficit.
This may well be what will have to happen but because I’m on a pension, it probably wouldn’t effect me very much.
So has Nick Clegg consigned his party to oblivion, as surely no sensible person in the squeezed middle will vote for someone, who pledges to squeeze them even more? After all commentators say that Ed Miliband’s poor showing in the polls is because many voters don’t trust him with the economy.
But on a wider note, surely for Nick Clegg to say it so forcibly, because of its negative effect, is not the thing to do.
Nick Clegg has had his five minutes of fame, and perhaps now is the time to let someone else have a go at the most forgettable job in British politics!
Miliband Forgets The Deficit
I suppose strictly speaking, it’s not his deficit, as it was stared by Blair/Brown, but I see Miliband’s omission of the deficit in his conference speech rather worrying.
I certainly wouldn’t vote for any politician, who omits to tell the full picture.
Miliband is certainly second-rate even compared to Gordon Brown, as he has shown in the last few weeks over the \scottish Referendum.
And Now Balls Dithers On English Votes For English Laws
After Miliband’s dithering yesterday on the English Votes for English Laws question, Ed Balls refused to answer the question directly on BBC Breakfast this morning.
In my view, it is essential that this simple measure is brought in as soon as possible. If we don’t bring it in, then I predict the next General Election will be handed on a plate to the ridiculous UKIP.
Run Miliband Run
This little snippet is on the BBC web page that follows the Scottish Referendum.
Ed Miliband will be speaking on The Andrew Marr Show from the Labour party conference in Manchester. However, the BBC’s political editor in the South of England, Peter Henley, is reporting that the Labour leader has cancelled other BBC interviews.
Peter Henley: Ed Miliband has pulled out of planned BBC interviews tomorrow. They’ve cancelled BBC English Regions, Scotland, NI & Wales.
It looks like he’s running scared. Perhaps, a detailed analysis of who voted Yes and No in the Referendum, has revealed that after next year’s General Election, Labour’s core vote in Scotland, that so annoys the English (I can’t comment about the Welsh and Northern Irish!), will be very much reduced!
We’re Back To The West Lothian Question
A good leader always picks the issue, place and time for their battles to ensure that he or she wins in the end. Planning should be meticulous and hopefully it all works out as they want it.
Compare Margaret Thatcher and her government and military’s response to the invasion of the Falklands by Argentina with other campaigns fought in Iraq and Afghanistan recently. The Falklands was a smaller conflict, but very little was left to chance, although it could be thought of as a close run thing.
Other British Prime Ministers and influential politicians have brought contentious legislation through to law, by making sure they plan and win every battle. Take Cameron’s law on same-sex marriage as a recent example. But then there are many others.
So when Alex Salmond proposed a vote on Scottish independence, I thought if he got it right, he could win.
His mistake was that he didn’t plan and get decent concessions on tax and spending, before he even called for the poll. That way, if Devo max had been successful and acceptable to all parties, after a few years, Scotland would probably have had an agreed separation, in much the same way Slovakia separated from the Czech Republic.
But he pig-headedly called the referendum as early as he could.
And he lost. So we’ve now been kicked back to the West Lothian Question, but with more variables than it ever had before. Tam Dalyell must be laughing from his grave.
It has been suggested this morning that large cities have more powers, something that I agree with.
But Scotland now has the Glasgow Problem, as surely what is good for London, Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle must be good enough for the one of the largest cities outside London in the UK.
Alex Salmond, who in a overly-passionate campaign led us to this mess, should resign!
Does London Need Devo Max?
In the Standard today, Labour politician, Margaret Hodge is asking this question and says that London needs it.
She says this about housing.
The capital’s population will be twice Scotland’s by 2030. Yet we already desperately lack the homes and infrastructure we need to meet the needs of 8.5 million Londoners. Our housing crisis dwarfs that of other parts of the country. Some 800,000 new homes are needed by 2020. Yet in the year to May, only 16,800 were built. Despite London’s great successes, we are becoming ever more grotesquely unequal. Inner London is increasingly only accessible to the very rich.
I would agree with some of what she says and go further to say that all cities and conurbations should have more powers.
The trouble is that it would change the political map of the UK for ever and think of all those bench warmers in Westminster, who would be out of a job.
But I do think that competition between cities would create jobs and better places to live. Some provincial cities need a real kicking to bring them into the twentieth century.
It would also be very good for London, if when they wanted to build something like Crossrail 2, they didn’t have to go cap-in-hand to the Government and compete with other necessary projects elsewhere.
If say London financed Crossrail 2 from its own resources and population, would anybody outside the capital have a right to complain? I don’t think so!
The Anonymous Widower 