What an expensive white elephant this is turning out to be, we have the internet, surely it was proved during the Covid outbreak face to face meetings weren’t required therefore journeys from north to the south vice versa are not necessary, just a jolly for the boys.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64901985

What planet are these tw*ts on?

To delay some of the work is supposed to reduce costs.

Rather the opposite as delaying anything - material, labour etc WILL INCREASE the costs as everything will continue to rise.

This has been a nightmare in terms of costs and no doubt been organised by complete and utter brain dead t*ssers.

What a waste of billions. Just think what this could have been used for to benifit the whole country.

When have MPs ever spent money for the benifit of the WHOLE country................

It shouldn’t have been started in the first place.
The big selling point is it can save half an hour on the journey between London and Birmingham…why not just move the train time forward half an hour and use the money on better rail services across the entire country…and actually what difference does that half hour time saving make to anyone…?
This vanity project will make no difference whatsoever to the vast majority of rail users…and to be honest, who can afford to travel on trains anyway.

Setting off half an hour earlier to get to that London half an hour sooner is an utterly brilliant idea.

And that Birmingham too.

Could have used to buy some useless PPE or the Track and Trace System, jokin’ how much money has the government thrown away, its criminal but they are answerable to no one, tax payers money, bottomless pit !

the reason people do not use trains is they cannot afford to do. doubt anyone checks train times and say i,d use it if it was 30 minutes quicker to get anywhere. anyway its all about london anyway and not other places it stops at. do other countries capital city get the investment over everywhere else that london gets. there is a north/south divide. is there a divide also down south as well between london and the rest.

Hopefully history will say these people were criminals.

Wasn't HS1 charging towards failure until the French and British governments called in Bechtel from the US?

Why would anyone want to go to Birmingham…..? The course in conversational ‘Brummy’ would be bad enough.

The justification was more to increase capacity than to cut journey time but i think now it has become apparent that no capacity increases are required as its now just going to Birmingham. The other bits to Crewe, Manchester and the East Midlands will be gradually shelved over the next few years. They are also scaling back the work in London to match expected demand.

We may yet get 4 carriages on our local trains if the money is vired over.

Ah the two coach runaway trains we’re still lumbered with…..how come we never get attractive appealing trains to travel on?
Open the Nort East up, replace the coast line with metro trains that run from Newcastle through to Redcar/Saltburn,….frequent trains truly would open the North East up and make lots more things accessible.

[quote="Bluestreak"]The justification was more to increase capacity than to cut journey time but i think now it has become apparent that no capacity increases are required as its now just going to Birmingham. The other bits to Crewe, Manchester and the East Midlands will be gradually shelved over the next few years. They are also scaling back the work in London to match expected demand.

by capacity i suppose you mean the track trains are running on. if the west coast mail line has had it reduced like the trans pennine route from leeds to manchester via huddersfield has then its a problem thats been created by short time planning that saved a few minutes between leeds and manchester. 4 lines becoming 2. every thing is about time now and the cost comes a poor second. it does not bother me having to change 3 times to get to pools games on a saturday its the fact its twice as much as my diesal car costs and i,m paying a tenner a week just to have the priveledge of having it on the road used or not.

a coast line that once had trains travelling to manchester and liverpool in the early 60,s.

Any project managed by the government always ends up over budget and never meets the deadline, the government are just a cash cow, bottomless pit. They don’t employ either experienced people or the contractors just run rings round them. In the oil and gas industry costs are closely monitored and deadlines have to be met as there is a product to get out the ground to pay for the project and there are usually penalty clauses as well written into the contracts I’d deadlines aren’t met.

Agree entirely. I will write to Ben about it and no doubt he will agree but all politicians are focused on next year's election and will promise the world.
I am sure those in hartlepool will even go to such extreams as cancelling the £32 brown bin tax just introduced.

The current government are currently focusing on illegal immigrants in the hope of some miracle that it will be a vote winner in the local and the next G.E.
A little village like Hartlepool doesn’t come into the equation, what happened about all the talk about extending the Metro to the Boro, Jill might be looking into it though then again who is Jill ?

If it is ever finished, some time in about 50 years, a new form of transport will be discovered.

PERSONAL PASSENGER DRONES

You heard it here first.

Village

Yes that's the only policy but after 13 years you would have thought it would be sorted now and we would have full employment for "true" UK nationals.

Hartlepool is a non entity in politicians eyes, it might as well just be a village, we had Mandelson as our MP only because at the time it was a safe Labour seat and Blair up the road. I don’t recall any major investments when they were about.

I voted for Mandelson not because I liked him, but simply on the purely cynical basis that he was close to the pinnacle of power…… never again. I recall no benefits whatsoever, we were taken for complete mugs and he was really pissed off when H’Angus won the Mayoral election, we were written off after that.

him and his cronies were the start of the new political elite that we have at present.

Yep Leo Giilen was the candidate who was expected to win, Pools actually funded H’Angus, great publicity for the club.
Gillen might have been different because Drummond was initially controlled by the terrible twins Christopher Akers-Belcher and Stephen Akers-Belcher, they managed to get rid of the mayoral position and took control of the Council, I wonder where they are now ?

I always thought of them as a Beadle type stunt..I was wrong , Always posing in the Mail every night…if lightning flashed they’d immediately strike a pose thinking it was tha Mail photographer.
They all quit Labour to join Scargills Party and found obscurity.

Christopher is still manager of Healthwatch a completely and utterly useless organisation that is supposed to monitor Health Services in Hartlepool. I understand the money for it comes via Hartlepool Council.
£131k down the drain which could be used to fund the brown bins.

The lowest point in Hartlepools political history even Jill Mortimer is not that bad as them as she simply does nowt.

I think they unwittingly helped Mortimer’s election.

They used discrimination to the fullest, one them won a few thousand in compensation for being discriminated against albeit the other one or maybe the same one got sacked for saying he was going to a funeral when in fact he was on a jolly to the Warrior in Portsmouth or where ever it is now.

Aye and then appealed to a tribunal but failed to turn up on the day.
Laughed when there was march past at the war memorial for a section of the light infantry getting the freedom of the town ….the big one was on the saluting platform along with two officers… when the troops marched past the officers saluted, the big one complete with Trumpton Mayoral outfit did a double take and gave a Benny Hill style salute too…..someone should have told him he didn’t have to…or did they?

another non job like loads more across the country. once something like that would not have been a paid job but by a volunteer with a lifetime in that industry.

How many charities are there in the country…..I saw one where a food bank was being run from a garage…the husband and wife classed themselves as joint Chief Executives of their ‘charity’. Jeez.

Some of the C.E.s of the bigger charities are on big money, here is list of them,
https://www.theguardian.com/society/sal ... 77,00.html

The only decent one is the Chief Exec of the Salvation Army on 10k a year. Respect.

The Sally Army is one charity who I always support. Got a lot of time for those people.

Some in Hartlepool are on big salaries for the size of charity or CIC. Some even have other companies and get paid multiple full time salaries. Check out your favourite charity at the Charities Commission or Companies House and look at the salaries info. and how the same trustees are often on the board of multiple charities & CICs.
Have fun.

Me too i like a young lady in a uniform.

Don't you mean you prefer her out of it.

Yes the only one I support throughout the year with a little bit for the British Legion on Poppy Day.

think there are better forces charities to denote to than the british legion as i,m sure they are another who are top heavy with big wage earners. those that are sponsored by the bbc are others to swerve.

My other one is the RNLI.

People have their favourite charities and support them as best they can. A
n argument could be made that there are better clubs than Pools to support but do we take notice of that argument???? A BIG NAH.
Carry on doing what you want to do is the answer.

I subscribe to St Dunstans, a charity for blinded service personnel and the Dogs Trust because they never put a healthy dog down,…..I sponsor a dog called Stitch a collie who can’t be rehomed so he lives at the Trust kennels.

Amazing how we were discussing HS2 and now moved on to charities ?

possibly its to show what good all charities could do with the money wasted on HS2 if they had received it. once money has gone you cannot get it back for something else.

Most posts on the Bunker start to change after the 4th comment. By the time its the 8th comment its about something completely else.
Craft = cant remember a flipping thing

Maybe because it's funded by the biggest charity we all contribute to, namely HMRC.

HS2 trains are now not expected to run into Euston until 2041-43, bloody hell surely no one will be travelling by train then. Now it looks like the Manchester leg could be cancelled, what are we left with, a bit in the middle costing billions.