Strange comment given that the subsidy to the railways has gone up since privatisation.”

Yes, because a Labour government renationalized maintenance by putting Railtrack in to administration.

We need to remember that all the government invest in is the infrastructure; the services are still run by private companies who make profits off of passengers. That needs to change; we need to renationalize.
“But on the Tories plans. What is this fixation with Heathrow? Don’t they understand that the more stops you have on a high speed network there are the less high speed it is?”

Tim, it’s a question of balance.

It’s no use to some communities that the trains can go from London to Birmingham in XXX minutes if they can’t access the service.

The Tories are worried about Heathrow because they think, sensibly for once, that having High Speed go through Heathrow would eliminate the need for the Third Runway.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by leftfootfwd: Tory high-speed rail attack backfires: http://cli.gs/4A93H...

Strange comment given that the subsidy to the railways has gone up since privatisation.

But on hte Tories plans. What is this fixation with Heathrow? Don’t they understand that the more stops you have on a high speed network there are the less high speed it is?

They effectively scuppered plans for the Midland Metro extension through Birmingham at the 2004 local elections by promising instead to build an underground from the city centre out to the west.

All that came of it was a consultants bill for many £100K that said an underground was impractical which commonsense foretold. This put back the Metro development by years.

The Tories have little good to add to the transport debate.