#HS2: The Billion-Pound Pipe Dream Bankrupting Britain's Future.
While our high-speed rail gathers dust, our vital public services are left to crumble. Was this really the best use of £80 billion, so far?
Well, today I have absolutely no idea where to begin, with so much to comment on and my thoughts beyond full to capacity it'll take an entire weekend to clear. Unlike the boat people Messrs Starmer and Macron have been debating this week. I'll tell you what, fellahs. Just appoint Bonnie Blue as the new Minister for Migration to oversee your fantastical new 'one in, one out' policy, and 3000 will be dealt with by the end of this weekend. Anyway, while I'm on the subject of monumental cock ups, I woke up in the wee, small hours of this morning, and don't ask me why, pondering this HS2 debacle. More specifically, in fact, how financially better off this country would be if money wasn't continually being poured down this cataclysmic, and entirely unnecessary sink hole (sorry, Bonnie….not you this time), by successive governments.
Let's talk HS2, shall we? What began in 2009 as a modest £37.5 billion proposal has since blossomed into a financial black hole that would make your eyes water. We're currently sitting on £30.1 billion spent, mostly on the London-Birmingham stretch, with the final bill for just that initial phase now projected to hit anywhere from £45 billion to a truly astounding £80 billion once inflation's factored in. It's almost impressive how quickly a budget can multiply when no one's really watching the purse strings, isn't it? Meanwhile, countries like China have built vast, world-leading high-speed networks, often for a third of European costs per kilometre, completing thousands of kilometres in the time it takes us to argue over a single, ever-shrinking phase.
The promised benefits? Oh, they were grand: whisking business types between cities faster than a speeding bullet, unlocking economic nirvana in the Midlands and North, and even saving the planet one high-speed journey at a time. Never mind that the North's high-speed dreams have been unceremoniously binned, leaving us with a rather expensive, half-baked solution. While Japan's Shinkansen has been operating efficiently since 1964 and France's TGV network has expanded consistently since the 80s, proving that modern rail infrastructure can be delivered on time and within a semblance of a budget, our project seems content to redefine "snail's pace" in infrastructure delivery, and the piss up in a brewery adage springs to mind.
So, what we're left with is a monument to escalating costs and questionable returns, particularly when contrasted with the global high-speed rail successes. Critics rightly point out the "very poor value for money" and the staggering £592 million already wasted on cancelled northern sections. It seems the only thing faster than HS2 trains (if they ever fully materialise) is the rate at which its budget grows, proving that sometimes, the most colossal cock-ups are built one spiralling cost estimate at a time, while the rest of the world just quietly gets on with building actual, extensive, and relatively affordable high-speed networks.
But here’s the real kicker, the insult to injury: the £80 billion+ (and still counting!) poured into HS2 represents an astronomical opportunity cost. Imagine if that colossal sum, rather than being buried in a prestige project, had been directed towards the actual failing infrastructure of our society. We’re talking about an NHS buckling under a nearly £14 billion maintenance backlog for crumbling buildings and clapped-out equipment, where crucial physical and mental health services are perpetually under-resourced. We could have given our children the education they deserve, fixing the literally crumbling schools (with a repair bill estimated to exceed £13.8 billion) and finally providing adequate, desperate funding for Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) support that’s currently leaving families in crisis.
This isn't merely about transport. It's about a government seemingly intent on transplanting a shiny, expensive organ (that might not even fit properly) while the rest of the body politic – our vital public services – festers with untreated wounds. The billions siphoned into this rail pipe dream could have stemmed the brain drain of our brightest minds fleeing for better opportunities abroad, significantly improved the dire wages and precarious nature of the gig economy, or actually invested in the other vital infrastructure like affordable housing and sustainable energy. The population, it seems, keeps voting for pipe dreamers who aren’t able to complete what they started. And for that, we'll all pay the price, whether we ever set foot on a high-speed train or not. Just like an out of date pie, somewhere up in the sky.
