Ignore the HS2 doomsayers
As THE intense work begins on Chancellor sajid Javid’s first budget, briefing against the Hs2 highspeed rail project becomes ever more intense.
The reported soaring cost to £106bn is the main weapon used against the line, with tales of extravagant use of consultants and a cover-up of overspending.
Even supporters cannot but be frustrated by complacent management and weak oversight on the way taxpayers’ money is spent. But one cannot help think that the very same negative voices were heard when it came to digging the Channel Tunnel and building the badly delayed high-speed rail link to st Pancras. Now, travellers to the Continent might question how the nation ever managed without.
My first thoughts on this often go back to Maplin, an early version of Boris Johnson’s Thames Estuary airport vision. Ted Heath’s government sank the piles in the early 1970s, only to cancel it on affordability grounds. Five decades on, Heathrow operates at such a full capacity that all it requires to bring it to a halt is a computer glitch.
Meanwhile, Frankfurt luxuriates with four operational runways against Heathrow’s two. Recurrent themes of noise and air pollution, and the costs of a third runway at Heathrow, keep an essential component of Britain’s global future at bay.
If anyone really thinks Hs2 is a waste of money they should talk to two of the most powerful elected mayors outside London. Labour’s Andy Burnham in Manchester and the Tory mayor of the West Midlands, Andy street, are enthusiasts.
street and communities in industrial centres along the route testify to the difference it is making to redevelopment.
We may still be waiting for delayed Crossrail but the refurbishment of real estate along the length of the line and around the stations is remarkable.
The projected Hs2 cost is uncomfortably large. But in the context of other big spends it is not outrageous. Renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons is costing £205bn with no long- term economic payback except notional strategic safety.
Hs2 promises so much more, will be very green and the cost, spread over more than a decade, is manageable. The payback comes in productivity and providing the North and regions with the very best of connectivity. Hs2 is not an alternative to Northern Powerhouse rail routes but an adjunct.
Leaks of damaging Hs2 numbers, coverups and other mishaps have all the elements of a concerted Treasury campaign to cap infrastructure costs and kill ambition. It would be nice to think that the Government has the ambition to see it through.
save us from a 21st century Maplin.
Rounding error
WE ALL make mistakes. But when you are an electronics retailer, with all the latest gear, it is as well to get the numbers right.
What began as a day when Dixons Carphone smashed forecasts with a 2pc rise in revenues, reversed itself by early afternoon when it became a 2pc fall.
Actually, anyone following what has been going on since Alex Baldock took the helm in April 2018 might have smelled the rat straight away.
The mobile phones have been off-signal for some time. Badly negotiated contracts with the big suppliers, which are being run down, have hit revenues and profits.
Life has not been made any easier by the tendency of consumers to change sim cards rather than devices. The main operators have swamped shopping areas with ownbranded stores. The result is that over the peak end-of-year period there was a calamitous 11pc fall in sales.
Offsetting the mobile murk there was encouraging data from UK electrical goods, boosted by demand for 65in TV monitors and a willingness to fork out £299.99 on the Dyson hairdryer. Overseas operations in the Nordics and Greece have been going great guns.
After a big share price dip, when the reporting blunder was notified, Dixons stock came roaring back.
Another peak season survived.
World-beater
FORTUNE magazine is not shying away from Donald Trump’s America First rhetoric.
Its annual survey of the world’s ten mostadmired companies, compiled to coincide with the Davos love- ourselves fest, is allAmerican, with Apple at the pinnacle, and includes starbucks and JP Morgan.
No room for a samsung, drinks giant Diageo or Zara owner Inditex.
Funny that!