‘Large and costly White Elephant’

IN THE letter headlined ‘Stupid for train to travel at 250mph’ (Sentinel, December 1) Trevor Fisher denounces – flourishing statistics and probabilities – the HS2 scheme.

Similar letters have appeared in other local papers. One paper, indeed, published three in one issue.

The whole scheme should be stopped. It is an ill-conceived vanity project designed to dazzle and without real benefits to offset the now rapidly escalating costs.

No government has had the nerve to abandon it. Its outlines and scope fluctuate with pressures on the Treasury.

What sections of it already being built have run beyond budget? Is it necessary? Has it ever been?

Its advocates claim that the indefinite expansion of ‘business’ in its present form makes the project necessary and desirable.

Face-to-face meetings at short notice are vital to commercial agreements.

This clashes head-on with the environmentalist groups’ commendable determination to reduce consumption and preserve the countryside, some of the most beautiful areas of which are in Staffordshire.

The Government cannot have it all ways. It seems to want to buy short-term gains in terms of jobs, with by-elections in the offing, at the price of long-term loss in every way.

Even apart from anything else, who will be able to afford the fares? The trains might go as fast as Japanese bullet trains, but the seats will be empty. That is, if they run.

This scheme should go the way of the Garden Bridge and the Scotland-ireland Tunnel. It is a large and expensive white elephant.

Its failings will become more apparent and costly.

The Red/blue Wall MPS complaining that the shrinkage of HS2 is a betrayal of their constituents would do better to bury it quietly.

MARGARET BROWN BURSLEM