Why are people opposed to HS2? (And other HS2 discussion)

[Meerkat]

Well, small schemes can't go billions over budget because they don't cost billions.

Exactly! If a small scheme goes totally belly up you are not talking about nationally significant amounts of money.
Start building HS2 and we could be on the hook for tens of billions of unbudgeted spending. That and the resulting cancellation of later stages would mean a ridiculous waste of money on a shocking business case and a public spending issue.

 

[w1bbl3]

Also no one is asking the question whether we should satisfy the increases in travel demand (particularly when taxpayers are paying). Does that extra travel improve the economy enough to justify the spending and considerable environmental damage?

I'm curious over the environmental damage vs say the construction of the motorway network (or the current rail network), indeed it appears that part of the extreme cost is because HS2 have been tasked with minimising the damage and visual impact by quite frankly the excessive amount of tunnelling in rural areas. 40km of tunneling on a 225km route for phase 1 is an awful lot in comparison to other high speed networks.

If HS2 phase 1 isn't built what is the alternative for London > Birmingham traffic widen the WCML to six tracks? widen the M40 / M1 to five lanes? increase airport capacity? HS2 phase 1 is really about providing the capacity for phase 2a/b where additional services can not be fitted onto WCML south currently. Maybe it would have been better politically to start with the second phase then build the london leg second.

 

[The Ham]

Exactly! If a small scheme goes totally belly up you are not talking about nationally significant amounts of money.
Start building HS2 and we could be on the hook for tens of billions of unbudgeted spending. That and the resulting cancellation of later stages would mean a ridiculous waste of money on a shocking business case and a public spending issue.

OK, what do we do instead which gains a 50% increase in capacity (broadly that which is achieved by replacing the 11 coach 390's with a HS2 train with 1,100 seats)?

Any small project is never going to get anywhere like that sort of improvement, so you'd need bigger projects.

Now what happens if you need 3 projects and the second two require something from the first one and the first one is binned because it is too costly?

Regardless of what the schemes are, you'd need to build extra platforms (which are a significant cost) and extra lines (there's just not enough junctions left to improve).

One final point, HS2 has spent about £4 billion to £5 billion to date. Yes that true.

What had NR spent on enhancements in the last year that there's numbers for? £4bn.

As such NR has spent more in the last year than HS2 has spent to date.

If you take the NR spend on enhancements since 2009 (the year HS2 was announced) it's spent £25bn. That nearly half of HS2's total budget of £56bn and probably enough to build phase 1.

Does the NR enhancements budget look like it's shrinking as HS2 starts to be built? Well, not so far, this last year's figure is the largest since 2009 (the first year in the latest NR accounts, rather than it fell massively between 2008 and 2009) and it has broadly growing year on year.

Could the NR spend be spent better? Probably. Could there be more schemes which get you more bing for your buck? Probably. Is there a viable alternative to HS2? Not that anyone has suggested to date.

 

[pt_mad]

Exactly! If a small scheme goes totally belly up you are not talking about nationally significant amounts of money.
Start building HS2 and we could be on the hook for tens of billions of unbudgeted spending. That and the resulting cancellation of later stages would mean a ridiculous waste of money on a shocking business case and a public spending issue.

But small projects don't solve what to do about the very nearly at capacity West Coast Mainline. Many people have forgotten the pain of the West Coast Route Modernisation from the mid 2000s. Months of weekend closures in places, passengers disheartened and fed up, downgrading of the plans, over budget, no chance of the 140mph running.

Would anyone really advocate something like that again just to resignal the route to get the frequency of trains down by a minute? Or viably wanting to add an extra 2 tracks?

It's total assumption but I could imagine any plan to add an extra 2 tracks to the WCML between say Euston and Rugby would be just as expensive as building a new line, and more disruptive to local communities, with years of disruption to the existing service.

If we think of HS2 phase one of basically an extra two tracks to Birmingham, but in a way that doesn't disrupt the existing railway, whilst tunnelling and trying to avoid knocking down homes as much as possible. It does very much make sense. And speeds will be far superior to that which would be enjoyed by two extra tracks on the existing WCML.

Even if future phases don't happen within the first decade, you've basically added two tracks to Birmingham and two tracks for the WCML as far as Rugeley. Which I feel will be needed within 15 years.

And all this leads to additional benefits such as more paths for freight on the WCML, taking more lorries off the road, something which is needed if we're serious about climate change. Plus, the fact the WCML won't have to serve the primary purpose of being a super fast skip stop express to London railway will mean more trains can stop at more places more often on the old WCML. Something which can't happen as things stand as the fast lines can't be held up for any length of time due to pressures on journey times for long distance travel.

 

[pt_mad]

I'm curious over the environmental damage vs say the construction of the motorway network (or the current rail network), indeed it appears that part of the extreme cost is because HS2 have been tasked with minimising the damage and visual impact by quite frankly the excessive amount of tunnelling in rural areas. 40km of tunneling on a 225km route for phase 1 is an awful lot in comparison to other high speed networks.

If HS2 phase 1 isn't built what is the alternative for London > Birmingham traffic widen the WCML to six tracks? widen the M40 / M1 to five lanes? increase airport capacity? HS2 phase 1 is really about providing the capacity for phase 2a/b where additional services can not be fitted onto WCML south currently. Maybe it would have been better politically to start with the second phase then build the london leg second.

Very well put.

Thing is, they are already widening the motorways and installing smart motorways, and to be fair they're still really really congested. It's not really a viable alternative to solving the WCML problem, and it's no good turning freight away from the railway and it ends up on the road.

People seem to accept motorway projects,maybe because so many people drove that we can all imagine ourselves gaining some personal improvement from better motorways? Although I should imagine local communities have their own objections to long term road works and noise etc.

OK, what do we do instead which gains a 50% increase in capacity (broadly that which is achieved by replacing the 11 coach 390's with a HS2 train with 1,100 seats)?

Any small project is never going to get anywhere like that sort of improvement, so you'd need bigger projects.

Now what happens if you need 3 projects and the second two require something from the first one and the first one is binned because it is too costly?

Regardless of what the schemes are, you'd need to build extra platforms (which are a significant cost) and extra lines (there's just not enough junctions left to improve).

One final point, HS2 has spent about £4 billion to £5 billion to date. Yes that true.

What had NR spent on enhancements in the last year that there's numbers for? £4bn.

As such NR has spent more in the last year than HS2 has spent to date.

If you take the NR spend on enhancements since 2009 (the year HS2 was announced) it's spent £25bn. That nearly half of HS2's total budget of £56bn and probably enough to build phase 1.

Does the NR enhancements budget look like it's shrinking as HS2 starts to be built? Well, not so far, this last year's figure is the largest since 2009 (the first year in the latest NR accounts, rather than it fell massively between 2008 and 2009) and it has broadly growing year on year.

Could the NR spend be spent better? Probably. Could there be more schemes which get you more bing for your buck? Probably. Is there a viable alternative to HS2? Not that anyone has suggested to date.

Precisely. What do we do? Do we still envisage one train an hour between London and Liverpool in 2040 on the existing WCML? (Excluding the new Via Birmingham service of course).

A long term future of franchise bidders being told the existing frequency has to remain as you can't get anymore trains out of Euston? It's not really a growth strategy is it?
What else could they do? Remodel Colwich Junction with closures or install European in cab signalling? It'd still be the classic Victorian railway and subject to the same issues it endures today.

The new railway would be ultra modern in its entirety. So in theory it shouldn't suffer from some of the historic failures that the classic lines can suffer from due to innovations in technology, and it'd be high speed and in cab signalled by its nature.

The West Coast mainline then wouldn't need to be as rushed and pushed, and communities which some feel won't benefit from HS2, could enjoy more regional links and perhaps more fast line trains stopping there.

 

[tbtc]

Exactly! If a small scheme goes totally belly up you are not talking about nationally significant amounts of money.
Start building HS2 and we could be on the hook for tens of billions of unbudgeted spending. That and the resulting cancellation of later stages would mean a ridiculous waste of money on a shocking business case and a public spending issue.

...but most of the suggestions on here are to spend the equivalent amounts of money on other rail projects (the kind of "I'd just upgrade existing lines" argument so popular on here).

Doesn't matte if you are spending £100bn on one project (HS2) or across several projects (unspecified regional ones which would apparently have the same benefits as HS2 but with smarter signals and without cutting down any trees and without benefitting London, apparently ) - other than it might be a lot easier to build the brand new alignment of HS2 (without disrupting existing lines) whilst upgrading several routes means you could disrupt many services causing lots of compensation payments etc.

Look at how the GWML electrification project was disrupted by nobody knowing where the signalling cables were, because of bad record keeping on existing lines - building HS2 from scratch would avoid those kind of "legacy" problems - you have a fresh sheet of paper.

(not a personal dig, but the way that people complain about HS2 going over budget whilst wanting equivalent sums spent on upgrading existing lines and ignoring the fact that almost every upgrade to an existing line has gone horrifically over budget in recent years... people say that the experiences in Edinburgh mean we should't build new tram lines and the experiences in Cambridgeshire mean we shouldn't build new guided busways but conveniently ignore things like the Chase electrification...)

 

[thenorthern]

One person who spoke claimed that the station in Birmingham wasn't actually going to be in Birmingham and that passengers would need to catch another train to get to the HS2 station .Which the audience looked like they believed. Nobody mentioned that digging has already started either?

I noticed that as well, I think they confused Birmingham Curzon Street with Birmingham Interchange.

 

[kylemore]

Remind me what problem are we trying to solve?

Capacity?

In this specific case the amount of seats winging their way from the London urban area to the West Midlands urban area - or have I completely missed the point?

 

[kylemore]

1. How would these be accommodated at Marylebone. (Only 6 platforms, awkward layout, double track tunnel within a quarter mile of the throat)
2. Five (presumably fast) trains through High Wycombe and P Risborough mixed with stoppers and Oxford trains ... can't see that working
3. From Aynho Junction you're fitting these 5 with 2 XC Voyagers and a significant freight flow from Southampton
4. And then we pick up the locals from Leamington and the like.
5. How does this help Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield or Leeds?

By tweaking compared to HS2 I meant considerable expenditure, however still modest by HS2 standards.

As for point 5, yes probably not very much - perhaps releasing capacity on the WCML for a couple of extra hourly services to Lancashire. As for Sheffield and Leeds - wouldn't they be better served by improving their traditional links via the MML and ECML rather than taking them round the grumpy Chiltern houses?

 

[Clip]

As for Sheffield and Leeds - wouldn't they be better served by improving their traditional links via the MML and ECML rather than taking them round the grumpy Chiltern houses?

Is there room to do these improvements and if so where and how?

If you take the Leeds & Sheffield passengers off those long distance services then you get more passengers who can get a seat using the MML and ECML to places elsewhere

 

[6Gman]

I don't know whether HS2 will be built, in whole or in part. I'm not hugely fussed either way. If it is built the extra hour in London on a day trip would be nice - my biggest personal gain would probably be getting to Birmingham without having to put up with jogging between Wolverhampton and New Street.

If it is built I will make the following predictions:

1. It will be late.
2. It will be over budget.
3. The opening will see problems with both infrastructure and rolling stock.
4. There will be photographs of empty trains.
5. Some poor souls will get stuck in a tunnel for 4-6 hours before being rescued.

And within ten years we will be wondering how we ever did without it ...

 

[6Gman]

By tweaking compared to HS2 I meant considerable expenditure, however still modest by HS2 standards.

As for point 5, yes probably not very much - perhaps releasing capacity on the WCML for a couple of extra hourly services to Lancashire. As for Sheffield and Leeds - wouldn't they be better served by improving their traditional links via the MML and ECML rather than taking them round the grumpy Chiltern houses?

But what if the "tweaking" ends up costing as much, but for less benefit?

 

[kylemore]

But what if the "tweaking" ends up costing as much, but for less benefit?

Well competently carried out I can't imagine how electrification, sorting out a few junctions, extending a few platforms and maybe an extra one or two platforms, perhaps a few miles of third tracking where it might be feasible etc etc could possibly cost as much as HS2 but hey'ho you might be right, as far as railways are concerned we do live in crazy times!

 

[158756]

Good point.

People on here state that a service from a smaller town to a bigger city benefits the smaller town (e.g. Galashiels benefits from its railway to Edinburgh just as, say, Tavistock would benefit from a railway to Plymouth or Colne from a railway to Leeds).

People on here state that a service from a medium sized place to London will benefit the medium sized place (e.g. Huddersfield should have a through train to London, we shouldn't be talking about reducing the existing London service from other provincial places).

But when the planned service is a *High Speed* service, all of this logic is turned upside down. Whilst Colne is big enough to avoid becoming a dormitory town of Leeds, apparently we are meant to believe that having slightly faster services to London would make Birmingham/ Leeds etc dormitory towns for London, all life would be sucked out of places like Birmingham).

Normally I try to understand the opposite viewpoint but I'm struggling with the idea that having a fast train from Sheffield to London will benefit the people of London but won't benefit the people of Sheffield...

There's nothing in Galashiels or Colne - a future as a dormitory town is better than any alternative on offer. It will be disastrous for whole regions if the city centres of Birmingham or Manchester follow that route. Even with HS2 only so many people will be able to commute to London. City centre office jobs are highly mobile - as HS2 contributes to further increasing London's advantages over everywhere else, and makes it easy to just pop out of the office to the North or Midlands, why would anyone (not on the brink of bankruptcy) choose to locate their business anywhere other than London? Some of the improved connectivity benefits also apply to other cities on HS2, but they're never going to win in a straight choice with London. House prices will dictate that the commuter flow on HS2 will only ever go one way.

 

[kidman123]

Instead of spending 100 billions of pounds on HS2 let's face it is North of Manchester won't see benifet of hs2. Why don't they update the technology and tracks on wcml and ecml to get the train run to full potential.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Instead of spending 100 billions of pounds on HS2 let's face it is North of Manchester won't see benifet of hs2. Why don't they update the technology and tracks on wcml and ecml to get the train run to full potential.

You saw how well that went last time, right?

 

[MarkyT]

Look at how the GWML electrification project was disrupted by nobody knowing where the signalling cables were, because of bad record keeping on existing lines - building HS2 from scratch would avoid those kind of "legacy" problems - you have a fresh sheet of paper. conveniently ignore things like the Chase electrification...)

Not really a case of "not knowing". More a case of the electrification project "not listening" to S&T engineers who knew very well there were significant numbers of trunk communication cables buried exactly where the new fat piles were going to be placed. The correct way of doing things would have been to renew all of these and the signalling before starting excavations for the stanchions and this is practically what they have been forced to do. It was standard practise to bury main communications cables, carrying railway telephone and data circuits for all kinds of administrative and operational purposes, and remote control telemetry between large panel signal boxes and remote relay interlockings. The cables were usually manually buried or ploughed in just under the cess walkway or nearby in schemes dating from the 1960s. Later schemes put them in more visible concrete troughing instead. Your point about major construction work on new alignments being much easier and less disruptive than alongside existing routes is still valid though!

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Instead of spending 100 billions of pounds on HS2 let's face it is North of Manchester won't see benifet of hs2. Why don't they update the technology and tracks on wcml and ecml to get the train run to full potential.

NR spent more than a decade recently on the WCML doing just that to provide the current level of service.
It gave us many years of disruption and very poor service - just as it did in the 1960s when the line was first electrified.
Something similar is just starting on the ECML, which will be resignalled with ETCS and with extra tracks at key places.
The GWML is coming to the end of a huge upgrade which will greatly expand services, but it was hard work along the way and way over cost and time.
But there is a limit to the capacity you can wring out of Victorian infrastructure running a mixed traffic railway (fast, regional and freight).
HS2 is an attempt to segregate the fast traffic away from the WCML so that you get more capacity all round.
The SoS (I can't remember whether it was Alistair Darling or Andrew Adonis) stated that "never again" would they go for a major route upgrade like the WCML, because of the decade of disruption along the way.
That was when HS1 had been completed to cost and time, and it also tunnelled under London to reach the terminal at St Pancras, with little disruption to existing services.
That's the template for HS2.

All WCML destinations will benefit from HS2, and NPR will use parts of it to add extra capacity around Liverpool/Manchester/Leeds/Sheffield.

 

[EM2]

City centre office jobs are highly mobile - as HS2 contributes to further increasing London's advantages over everywhere else, and makes it easy to just pop out of the office to the North or Midlands, why would anyone (not on the brink of bankruptcy) choose to locate their business anywhere other than London?

Because it makes it easy to just pop out of the office to the North or Midlands? If you're a company in London, and you need a supplier, you can choose one knowing that it's going to a be lot quicker to see them. If you're a company in the North or Midlands, you can expand your customer base to include London, because you can get there much quicker than before.

 

[MarkyT]

Instead of spending 100 billions of pounds on HS2 let's face it is North of Manchester won't see benifet of hs2. Why don't they update the technology and tracks on wcml and ecml to get the train run to full potential.

On the WCML, you can't go any faster on existing infrastructure due to curvature, especially south of Rugby where tilt squeezes the maximum already, and even a theoretically possible increase from 125mph to 140 in certain very limited locations would have a tiny effect on journey times as well as reducing capacity by opening up a bigger margin between pendolinos and other non tilting traffic on the fasts. The very high frequency timetable exploits current capacity to the full.

 

[pt_mad]

I don't know whether HS2 will be built, in whole or in part. I'm not hugely fussed either way. If it is built the extra hour in London on a day trip would be nice - my biggest personal gain would probably be getting to Birmingham without having to put up with jogging between Wolverhampton and New Street.

If it is built I will make the following predictions:

1. It will be late.
2. It will be over budget.
3. The opening will see problems with both infrastructure and rolling stock.
4. There will be photographs of empty trains.
5. Some poor souls will get stuck in a tunnel for 4-6 hours before being rescued.

And within ten years we will be wondering how we ever did without it ...

Phase one at the present time is being built. I doubt any government could face off canceling it now, unless the opposition got into power, and even then it may continue to be built. Much land has been acquired and businesses have moved out of the way. Part of West Euston has been purchased or is about to be completed. Curzon Street is being levelled as we speak.

I'm sure there will be photos of empty trains after its opened. But sometimes we have to be a big more long sighted. So there may be empty coaches in 2027, but will there be in 2040? This railway should in theory last at least as the WCML has. Circa 150 years and counting?

Well competently carried out I can't imagine how electrification, sorting out a few junctions, extending a few platforms and maybe an extra one or two platforms, perhaps a few miles of third tracking where it might be feasible etc etc could possibly cost as much as HS2 but hey'ho you might be right, as far as railways are concerned we do live in crazy times!

But there isn't much more you can drastically improve on the West Coast Mainline. The route is curved by nature which has its limits, some of the infrastructure still dates back to the 60s. I seem to remember a poster saying some time back that for what could be done with Colwich Junction, the cost would bring very little benefit. Rugby has been improved drastically already. What's left of you can't add more tracks? In cab signalling? The current signalling is mostly under 15 years old. People would complain about resignalling again, if it was agreed and the media caught wind it was last done 15 years ago.

Instead of spending 100 billions of pounds on HS2 let's face it is North of Manchester won't see benifet of hs2. Why don't they update the technology and tracks on wcml and ecml to get the train run to full potential.

Update to what though? European rail traffic management system? (Including automatically operated trains)? There would likely be many years of disruption on the old route, again, while it was resignaled, again. I don't think communities around the WCML would stomach it politically. And the media might end up reporting that the last upgrade was a farce as it's got to be done again.
New trains would likely be needed prematurely on the old lines if they were resignaled for ERTMS/ATO. I'm sure that would be pulled apart with the Pendolino fleet only being half-life.

North of Manchester may well see the benefit because anyone wanting to get between London and Manchester will have a wide choice of high speed service, scope for expansion in the future, and quite possibly more travel options into the Midlands when fast line trains on the old lines begin stopping at stations which are currently not served that well by the current high speed operation.

Plus, more freight paths on the old lines (nearly full today) means less lorries on the motorways everywhere, including the north which has busy motorways. If the freight operators had to turn down any business in the future then it would most likely end up on the roads. Pollution.

 

[AndrewE]

I'm sure there will be photos of empty trains after its opened.

I very much doubt this, especially if they don't do something stupid like transferring all the Liverpool, Manchester and Scottish expresses on to it and massively increasing the fares

But sometimes we have to be a big more long sighted. So there may be empty coaches in 2027, but will there be in 2040?

May not be even in 2027 if it is run to optimise the use we get out of our infrastructure. Hopefully by then we will have a government that has recognised the benefits of using rail instead of roads and takes its decarbonisation and pollution control commitments seriously.

 

[6Gman]

I'm sure there will be photos of empty trains after its opened. But sometimes we have to be a big more long sighted. So there may be empty coaches in 2027, but will there be in 2040? This railway should in theory last at least as the WCML has. Circa 150 years and counting?

That was the point I was making.

 

[Charlie Smythe]

If not HS2 then what?
Improvements we can afford. Do much less is the normal response in life when we find out our ideal solution is hugely expensive with an unconstrained budget heading toward monstrously expensive.
Those improvements might be disruptive , but that doesn’t normally bother people advocating rail capital projects. And smaller projects do not go tens of billions over budget. When budgets get this big absolute values start to matter more than percentages

Also no one is asking the question whether we should satisfy the increases in travel demand (particularly when taxpayers are paying). Does that extra travel improve the economy enough to justify the spending and considerable environmental damage?

Well said. The bigger the project the bigger the overspend even if the percentage is identical. Many on here seem to think that a cost of 100bn is acceptable for a project like this when in reality it is most certainly not.

 

[The Ham]

Because it makes it easy to just pop out of the office to the North or Midlands? If you're a company in London, and you need a supplier, you can choose one knowing that it's going to a be lot quicker to see them. If you're a company in the North or Midlands, you can expand your customer base to include London, because you can get there much quicker than before.

I've worked for some companies, none of whom are based in London however they were within an hour of London for meetings.

It gives them cheaper rent and staff costs whilst still being able to get to London for 9am meetings without too much difficulty.

They are not unique as there's lots of other companies doing a similar thing.

 

[SC43090]

Reason for been against HS2 are as follows

(1) Waste of public Money

(2) The time it gets into Yorkshire ( if it gets that far) i will be in my mid sixties so why would i want to use it

(3) The money its going to cost to build HS2 it could go to renewing the whole of the railway system & probably renew all rolling stock as well....

(4) The money could also be spent on local transport planning up & down the UK before our towns & cities grind to a halt... Bring back modern trams or modern trolleybuses rather than motor buses which could also help cut pollution.....


SC 43090

 

[6Gman]

Reason for been against HS2 are as follows

(1) Waste of public Money

(2) The time it gets into Yorkshire ( if it gets that far) i will be in my mid sixties so why would i want to use it

(3) The money its going to cost to build HS2 it could go to renewing the whole of the railway system & probably renew all rolling stock as well....

(4) The money could also be spent on local transport planning up & down the UK before our towns & cities grind to a halt... Bring back modern trams or modern trolleybuses rather than motor buses which could also help cut pollution.....


SC 43090

1) In what way is it a waste if it shows a positive BCR?
2) Life doesn't end at 60! I'm in my 60s and relish every opportunity to travel.
3) How much of the railway system would it "renew" and in what way?
4) So it's not going on 3 in its entirety? And how does this address the looming capacity issues on the WCML, MML and ECML?

 

[6Gman]

I've worked for some companies, none of whom are based in London however they were within an hour of London for meetings.

It gives them cheaper rent and staff costs whilst still being able to get to London for 9am meetings without too much difficulty.

They are not unique as there's lots of other companies doing a similar thing.

Cheshire East Council has ambitions (we wait to see how realistic they are) for extensive office development in Crewe. To be sold - presumably - on low rental costs, low Non-Domestic Rates, inexpensive housing (a 2bed flat in London will buy a 4bed detached house in a village round here), relaxed lifestyle and easy access to London (and Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester).

 

[EM2]

Reason for been against HS2 are as follows

(1) Waste of public Money

Opinion.

(2) The time it gets into Yorkshire ( if it gets that far) i will be in my mid sixties so why would i want to use it

Because you want to get somewhere by train?

(3) The money its going to cost to build HS2 it could go to renewing the whole of the railway system & probably renew all rolling stock as well....

If we accept the oft-quoted figure of £100bn...
Signalling costs roughly £1.4m per km of single line. £100bn is 100,000m. So that buys you roughly 71,000 track km of resignalling. There are roughly 15,800 track km in the UK, ranging from single tracks up to six or eight. Let's average it out at three tracks. So that's 15,800 x 3 = 47,400, so that's two-thirds of the money spent.
And you reckon you can replace all the track, stations, electrification and stock with the rest?
Even assuming that you could, how long is it going to take?

(4) The money could also be spent on local transport planning up & down the UK before our towns & cities grind to a halt... Bring back modern trams or modern trolleybuses rather than motor buses which could also help cut pollution.....

You've just spent all the money renewing everything!

 

[Ianno87]

(2) The time it gets into Yorkshire ( if it gets that far) i will be in my mid sixties so why would i want to use it

Newsflash: There are lots of people who aren't you who will want to use it, and businesses (who you may directly or indirectly use) that will benefit from it

(I happily pay for the NHS which, most of the time, I don't use but other people do)