HS2 just another gravy train

Blue smoke reality - Mallard

Blue sky rhetoric - HS2

The last two days had me observing how London coped with the aftermath of the overnight St Jude storm. Despite the weather warnings conditions had not seemed too severe, certainly not compared to some of the storms we have endured in Scotland over the past three winters. True there were a few trees down along the roads but by 9am the Council workmen were chainsawing and removing the storm damage. Buses and tubes were running normally and the only impact as we caught a tube into London at 9:30am was that the peak hour commuters had delayed their journeys.

The journey home by train the next day was more difficult with two days' passengers squeezing into the trains following the cancellation of all trains on Monday. East Coast managed it well, they honoured all tickets and provided some compensation for those unable to find seats. I wish that Scotrail could have done the same but the passengers with reserved seats for their onward journey from Edinburgh were told that they would have to buy new tickets. Shame on Scotrail and other operators who scammed the travelling public; the disgrace of rail ticketing is a perpetual reminder of the inequities of rail privatisation. East Coast is a state operator brought in to run the East Coast mainline after the collapse of two private operators. It is the best-performing rail operator in recent passenger surveys, which perhaps explains why the coalition wants to sell it off. We can't have publicly owned companies providing efficient services, fairer prices and showing the private companies how things should be done!

When I arrived home the debate about HS2 was ignited again. The government had reconsidered its analysis of the economic case after much critical comment. They accepted that people did work on trains and that the economic benefits were not as great as the consultants KPMG had originally suggested. The increase in costs to £50bn, including rolling stock, would enable phase 1 to be completed from London to Birmingham by 2026. Against this cost, the economic benefits have been estimated at £15bn. but this still includes some highly dubious assumptions.

The understandable criticism of the escalating cost of HS2 by environmentalists and knowledgeable rail managers has now been joined by many of the travelling public and the more discerning MPs. Starting the project from London just reinforces the primacy of London as the economic epicentre of the UK. Even if things go well and Phase 2 at an additional cost yet to be estimated gets the go-ahead as far as Manchester and Leeds it will be 2033.  All places north of here including Scotland will have to wait even further into the future. The South West, Wales and East Anglia are simply calculated to lose out if HS2 proceeds.

The minister was despatched to Sheffield to bang the drum about how the north would benefit from HS2. What a joke. I made some calculations from my recent trip to London. It had taken 5 hours and 20 minutes for the 428 miles from Scotland. But what a difference between the time taken to get from London to York and that from York to Scotland. The average speed from London to York is 97mph, and the average speed from York to Scotland is a mere 71mph, a significant 38 minutes longer than it would have taken if the same speed had been maintained. This includes three stops so the gain could be more like half an hour.

So why start HS2 at the London end? If we want shorter travel times and the associated economic growth surely it should start on the tracks less speedy; that would make all the difference. The rail links between the former great 'industrial cities' of Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh are notoriously slow. Make rail investment on these lines and the benefits could be huge, taking up to 25% off existing times. Instead of shaving the odd few minutes off the London to Birmingham line through HS2, it would be far more effective to invest in new motive power, more comfortable rolling stock, quadrupling tracks at pinch points to increase capacity and improving the signalling and maintenance of the existing lines.

The games played by the HS2 lobbyists are a reprise of what we witnessed with all the new financial products a decade ago. It was a ploy to divert people's savings and pensions into the pockets of rogue financial and property service advisers. Similarly promises for faster trains in twenty years will reap rich rewards in the meantime for the financiers and construction cartels promoting HS2. The landowners of the Home Counties and Cheshire will benefit too unless the government cave in to the campaigns for tunnelling through the Chiltern chalk lands. Gullible government ministers have been briefed into believing that they are the true visionaries. The disappointment will be reserved for the potential customers who will pick up the tab through taxation to pay for the folly of HS2 which, even if on time, will not make much impact north of Birmingham until 2033 at the earliest.

The missing question in all of this is why are we not seeking to create a more decentralised United Kingdom instead of pandering to the obsession of the London establishment to feather their own nest. It was no surprise today to read that spending on the arts is £69 per head in London compared to just £4.60 per head for the rest of England. Even this ratio of 15:1 in favour of London sounds generous to the rest of the country compared to the effect of HS2.

International research shows that countries with a high primacy of the largest city such as London, Paris, Mexico City and Bangkok create far greater inequalities than in countries like Germany where there is a more polycentric and decentralised distribution of population. Cities in Germany are far more equal in size and the cities of Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Dusseldorf and Koln are all growing faster than Berlin. This has helped produce a far better performance in the growth of its economy than the standstill that we have endured in the rest of the UK whilst London has been hell-bent on becoming a world city and soaking up resources that could be more effectively spent in the regions.

We could and should be investing to improve the rail network, the rolling stock and timetabling of trains.  If the proposed HS2 investment were switched to the other regions the dividends might even occur in the lifetime of present customers. No doubt our MPs will be whipped into line to perpetuate the obsessive focus on the primacy of London. As a white elephant, HS2 will provide years of work and bonuses for the bankers and construction companies, lots more work for the consultancies and marketing professions and maybe a few Board seats for ministers and MPs. They are all travelling first class on the HS2 gravy train whilst the public is being sold a white elephant. 

HS2 is the lovechild of Capitalism and Capitolism

 

Dumfries House

Dumfries House

In April we visited the impressive Mount Stuart house, home of the Marquess of Bute, on the Isle of Bute. Whilst there we heard about the sale of Dumfries House near Cumnock in East Ayrshire and its restoration by the Dumfries House Trust. As well as the John Adam designed House and bridge over the river Lugar there is an estate with 2000 acres of landscaped grounds which butts onto the town of Cumnock. It also had been owned by the Marquess of Bute until 2007 when it was sold to the Trust headed by the Prince of Wales. He made available £20m of the £47m purchase price for the unseen purchase of Dumfries House with its collection of Chippendale furniture which otherwise would have been sold by Sotherby's to a buyer in the United States . It is a long time since I studied Chippendale for my Woodwork 'O' level but I have always had a notion to see the original pieces.

Chippendale Rosewood sideboard

By a curious coincidence I was asked in August by a group of Northern Ireland councils to organise a study tour of Ayrshire to see the fruits of Community Planning in Scotland. In discussions with the East Ayrshire Council we decided to include Dumfries House into the two day itinerary as an example of combining heritage tourism with skill training schemes for the young unemployed. The House and its extensive grounds have undergone a remarkable transformation over the past six years. Last week the group from Northern Ireland were given an enthralling three hour tour of the grounds including a superb lunch served by trainees at the hospitality project.

I was bowled over by the place. We spent a couple of hours visiting the many projects on the estate that had been resuscitated by the restoration of former buildings and structures. These included the bridge designed by Adam and a walled garden. Thirty six young unemployed from the locality had been recruited and given high quality vocational training in hospitality, woodland skills and traditional construction. There was a high level of success in gaining full time employment for the youngsters at the end of their training. The entire project had a vibrancy which augers well for the future of heritage based tourism. We even managed to squeeze a quick tour of the House at the end of the day. The visit allowed us to see the Chippendale collection although one or two of the female visitors were maybe hoping it to be more muscular!

Throughout the grounds every effort had been made to provide high quality education facilities including the hospitality centre and the accommodation for youth groups in the centre. A partnership has also been established with Morrisons, the supermarket group, to farm 1000 acres by sustainable farming methods and establish a research facility with the Scottish Agricultural College. Together with the walled garden they provide fresh vegetables and meat for the Dumfries House cafes and restaurants.

Even more ambitious is the plan to build a sustainable village of 700 houses at Knockroon within the grounds of Dumfries House adjacent to Cumnock. It is contained at the eastern edge of the estate, which has free public access and the character of a royal park. The first thirty or so houses are now complete and a few remain available for sale. I was told by the estate manager that there has been a recent agreement to build another tranche of houses so that there is a critical mass of development. East Ayrshire Council as well as approving these developments have agreed to renovate the Town Hall as part of the wider regeneration of the area. It is an upbeat decision and it was good to see that one of the new walkways in Knockroon has been named after Jimmy Boyd, a recently deceased local Councillor whom I worked with in the 1980's.

The Prince of Wales has not only acted as philanthropist but also has driven the project with meticulous attention to every detail and secured sponsorship for many of the restored developments on the estate. It is a spectacular exemplar of heritage tourism and rural regeneration and will become a great attraction in this largely forgotten corner of Ayrshire.

Restored Bothy cottage by the walled garden

High quality furnishings in the education centre

Wall paintings

Restored walled garden

Hello little weed

Outdoor Centre available for youth groups

Cookhouse

China Syndrome

Fuelling Capitalism with Communism

There are few more unlikely scenarios than the captains of UK capitalism, Osborne and Johnson, going cap in hand to Communist China to plead that they invest capital in the UK's crumbling infrastructure and industries. The fact that this includes our future nuclear power plants suggests that it is a topsy-turvy world. The nexus of power and influence has shifted inexorably from the west and the future wealth of the UK will be determined not by the British government but on distant shores. And all this on the day that the country, formerly known as the richest and most powerful on earth, the USA, narrowly avoided bringing down its own economy and that of much of the west by its failure to agree on securing more borrowing from China and other sovereign wealth funds to shore up its own dysfunctional economy.

Yet it is a little over twenty years since we were being told that the cold war was over and that capitalism had seen off communism. Looking at the rates of growth and trade balances over recent years suggests the opposite. Laos, China, Vietnam and Cuba are the four remaining communist regimes and all have a growth rate that far exceeds that of the USA and Europe. Could it just be possible that capitalism has been suffocated by its own gambling tendencies and instinctive greed that have grown at an exponential rate in these days of dubious financial practices? Meanwhile, it would seem that state-led long term planning, investment and control of key industries coupled with the discrete encouragement of global companies are delivering more sustainable growth as well as providing a platform for creative starter businesses. It will take more than Jane Fonda to report the outcome of this China Syndrome.

Glen Etive Munros

Panorama - Bidean to the Buchailles

Saturday, 12 October 2013

Ascent:        1625 metres

Distance:     19 kilometres

Time:           7 hours 15 minutes

m    Glas Bheinn Mhor                 997m     2hrs 15mins

m    Stob Coir' an Albannaich    1044m     3hrs  30mins

m    Meall nan Eun                       928m     4hrs  20mins

A phone call late on Friday prompted a late trip to Glasgow to collect Gregor. The forecast out west was for exceptional visibility and it had been 6 weeks since he had been in the hills. The problem was that he needed to be in Glasgow by 6pm the next day which meant we had to find a 5-6 hour walk with less than a one and half hour drive.  He had climbed all the munros south of Fort William apart from three of the Glen Etive munros and, he thought, Sgurr na h Ulaidh during his second round. I still needed to do this and one of the Etive munros, we had climbed Ben Starav a couple of years ago and I had climbed Meall nan Eun and Stob Coir' an Albannaich 4 years ago with a friend who was about to finish his round. We decided that Glen Etive was probably too long an outing and to climb Sgurr na-Ulaidh which would take less than 5 hours and left home at 8:30am.

As we were driving over Rannoch Moor down to the Buchaille, which looked resplendent in the crystal clear morning light, I remembered that we had done Sgurr na h-Ulaidh about 8 years ago along with Bidean and Stob Coire Sgreamhach so we decided at the last minute to head down Glen Etive and see if we could charge round the three remaining Glen Etive munros. It was well after 10am before we began the walk and as always we spent the first half hour wading through the dreadful bogs beyond Coileitir. We climbed fences, crossed ravines and fought our way through long grass and boulders before we reached the path which ascends the Allt Mheuran. We passed some others on the way and then decided to cut up through the corrie below Glas Bheinn Mhor before reaching the bealach. The stags were bellowing and behind us was the perfect amphitheatre of Glencoe peaks with Ben Nevis poking its way into the panorama. It was one of those rare and precious days when the views just knock you out.

We were on Glas Bheinn Mhor by 12:30pm and spent 15 minutes having some lunch and feasting ourselves on the views in all directions. Mull and Rhum were visible and to the south and east Ben Cruachan, Ben Lui, Ben More and Stobbinnein loomed large. We returned to the bealach and then made the steep climb up the zig zags until we reached the upper slopes of Stob Coir' an Albannaich. The slopes from here are gentler and we wasted no time reaching the summit where we met a couple from Stirling whom we had joked with earlier in the day. We teased Gregor about his wet feet in trainers (non Goretex) and he made a number of ageist comments about his father. We finished our coffee and then began the descent to the east. After half a kilometre a small cairn marks where a path descends northwards down a gulley and  provides the route over to Meall nan Eun via the intermediate hill of Meall Tarsuinn.

Gregor was anxious to get back as quickly as possible and because I had already climbed Meall nan Eun, we decided that he should climb the final 125 metres to the summit and I would make a descent from the bealach down the burn and meet him on the path further down the glen. I lingered for a while believing that I had 25 minutes to spare before I set off and then negotiated several rock bands before reaching a faint but boggy path. Further down I started looking for Gregor who should have been making a more direct descent. Once on the path I stopped on a couple of occasions but he still did not appear. I continued down the treacherous path thinking that he would catch me shortly. By the time I reached the end of the glen and the track back to the footbridge over the river Etive, I decided to wait and after he did not appear after 15 minutes I started walking back up the track thinking that something must have happened.

I met a walker whom he had been behind on the ascent of Meall nan Eun, she did not remember seeing him until I mentioned he was wearing trainers. "Oh yes there was someone who arrived at the summit just after me and he turned straight round and started running down." That's my boy. So either he had turned an ankle on the descent or had somehow got in front of me. She had a telescope and I was able to view the  7 or 8 people who were still coming down the path, none of them looked to be moving fast. So I began to think he must be down. I turned the telescope down the glen as he appeared coming back up the track assuming that I must have turned an ankle or kicked the bucket.

We charged off down the path, me embarassed about the search I was about to make and the four people whom I had involved in my quest to find him and Gregor simply wanting to get home asap. It was 5:30pm by the time we were down and we began a fast journey home. We had lost about an hour and a quarter looking for each other. I reflected afterwards that it had been a perfect day for walking and although the ground was boggy and difficult there were no real obstacles on his descent. In fact it was probably a faster route than I had taken given the rock bands that I had threaded through. I should have charged down the hill instead of pottering along like a pensioner.

Looking back to River Etive on initial ascent

Bidean to Ben Nevis from  Glas Bheinn Mhor

Bidean and Ben Nevis behind north spur of Albannaich

Final ascent of Glas Bheinn Mhor from east

Ben Starav from Glas Bheinn Mhor

Stob Coir' an Albannaich - Summit ridge 

Stob Coir' an Allbannaich summit

Looking east from Stob Coir' an Albannaich

Meall Tarsuinn traverse, Bidean behind

Beinn Beithir to Bidean from Meall Tarsuinn

Glen Celtein 

Glen Celtein towards Meall nana Eun on far right

Cairnsmore of Carsphairn

Start of the walk at Bridge end

Rowan delight

View up the Water of Deugh to Cairnsmore and Black Shoulder

Shadowlands

The final part of the ascent

Looking south west to Black Shoulder,  Dunool and Merrick and co.

View of the turbines to the north east 

Cairsmore Summit

Arran

Loch Doon and Ailsa Craig

Thursday, 11 October 2013
Ascent:       670 metres
Distance:    11 kilometres
Time:          2 hours 28 minutes

c   Cairnsmore of Carsphairn   797 metres   1hr 19mins

I had been working with a group of visitors at Dumfries House near Cumnock and they left for the ferry to Belfast at 4:30pm. I gazed at the blue skies and hills of Galloway. I had a rucksack in the boot of the car with my waterproofs and some running shoes. I thought that it would be remiss not climb one of the corbetts in Galloway. The nearest was Cairnsmore of Carsphairn although it took me 40 minutes to drive across to Dalmellington and then on the A715 to Bridge End just before Carsphairn. There was parking for three or four cars. I changed quickly and began the walk through a gate and alongside the beautiful Water of Deugh. It was a perfect evening for walking with cloudless skies and the fairly cool northerly wind meant that a brisk pace was needed to stay warm.

There is an excellent track for about three kilometres meandering alongside the river, overlooked by some fine copses of trees and then through some gates and cattle grazings. It eventually narrows down to a path, turns right and becomes boggy before crossing a footbridge and ascending steeply alongside a wall which goes directly up to the summit, a climb of  370metres. I was racing the sunset to the summit and managed to get there with some time to spare. The summit was busy with cairns and to the north east there was a large area of hillside covererd by wind turbines. The grassy summit was a rise on a broad plateau with a scattering of granite blocks.

I was well into my descent when the sun finally sank over the westerly Galloway hills. The Ailsa Craig was visible and Arran provided its familiar profile of serrated peaks to the north west. It is always a treat to be at the summit of  a hill at sunset and Cairnsmore was a far more attractive hill than I had been led to believe by the guidebooks. I descended by the longer route over the subsidiary peaks of Black Shoulder and Dunool and then ran back down to the track by the Nick of Disgee. The light was just about holding and I managed to negotiate the gates and arrive back at the car before 7:30pm. I needed some light from the car to change my shoes before the drive home. This short excursion had been a bonus that I not expected. The conditions could not have been more favourable and by seizing the evening I had confirmed my belief that walking late in the day is one of ther best times to enjoy mountain landscapes and the thought of rooting around the rucksack for a head torch is always conducive to making a faster pace.

Grand Panjandrums should not be Trusted

Grand Panjandrum 1

When Lord Mandelson criticises Ed Miliband for proposing a freeze on energy bills you know that the old nexus of control freakery condoned by Blair and Brown is still bubbling beneath the surface of labour politics. The subservience to media management and business lobbying that allowed the financial sector to hold the population to ransom and took no action as our largest companies were bought by foreign sovereign wealth funds and hedge funds should be a lesson in how not to govern. It allowed many public sector activities to be sold cheaply and then stripped of their assets. It introduced a choking regulation regime of the public sector whilst encouraging a helium-light touch with the financial sector.  It turned a blind eye to the tax evasion of large corporates and held a misguided belief in the efficiency and effectiveness of free markets. The UK's emergence as a virtual tax haven and country ravaged by economic and social injustice has run in parallel with Lord Mandelson's career as the Grand Panjandrum. Someone the BBC even called the "real Prime Minister."

Mandelson's charge that the energy companies would no longer invest in modernising the industry is risible. They have increased prices well above inflation or supply costs and have taken huge profits whilst showing that they have little to learn from the banks when it comes to minimising their tax payments. The investment in new energy sources that they claim will be lost has been heavily subsidised by the government whether this is for proposed nuclear power stations or the investment in sustainable energy like wind, solar, and wave power.

As I recall Lord Mandelson was an apologist for the financial sector during the last government urging that they be allowed to operate freely in the world economy and develop the various tools that helped strip the UK of its assets and allowed legalised gambling and double and triple charging for the investment of our savings and pensions. He was a strong advocate of grand gestures like the Millennium Dome,  Brown's use of PFI to build hospitals, and schools and transport projects like the London underground. But for the revolt of MPs, he would have privatised the Royal Mail four years ago. He saw the creation of academies as the future of education and nurtured an irritating charisma that has since been latched onto by Michael Gove.

The issue as always is one of trust. The government needs to invest in new infrastructure and ensure that essential services are available and affordable for all. They can do this through democratically controlled bodies or agencies or by purchasing these from the private sector. Neither can do it all and both sectors have distinctive advantages and disadvantages. Until 1980 there was a consensus about this from all sides. It was Harold MacMillan's conservative government that built 400,000 new houses a year largely by building what we now call social housing. Just as it was Harold Wilson's Labour government that ramped up investment in the Universities. In both cases, the private construction companies tendered and carried out the construction work but it was the public sector that managed the facilities and provided the services. There was a collaboration between the public and private sectors that benefited both and minimised the name-calling that has become the norm since the Thatcher years when the public sector was first declared toxic by the press barons.

As Britain languishes on the cusp of re-emerging from the longest-ever recession and the corporate sector gears itself up for another episode of financial trickery, the general population face stagnant incomes, longer working life and the prospect of diminishing pensions. Ed Miliband is right to draw a line in the sand. It is a great pity that the grand panjandrum of the Blair and Brown years still sees it as his right to reprise his damaging interventions of yesteryear. But Lord Mandelson is no longer in his pomp, he is in terminal decline as the Labour Party seems to be shedding its love affair with the moguls and corporates and seeking to redress the balance between public and private sectors.

Coming up on the rails is his natural successor, the Tories' own grand panjandrum - Michael Gove. Someone who should be exiled to the panel programme 'Just a Minute', for he can speak with feigned enthusiasm without repeating himself or making any real sense for as long as air time exists. His interventions over the last few days have been to defend the Daily Mail over its treatment of the Milliband family and to continue his campaign against local state schools. There is a long essay waiting to be written on his baleful influence on these matters but for now, we can only hope that his influence over the PM does not have the damaging impact that his predecessor as the government's Grand Panjandrum achieved with Blair and Brown.

Grand Panjandrum 2