An enterprise corridor

✒ THERE is a question if the vast sums estimated (£106 billion) to build HS2 are worth cutting up the countryside, and destroying ancient woodlands, for.

That amount of money could do a great deal of good. Just imagine how many hospitals could be built and staffed with that amount of money.

The chances are that HS2 will never get as far as the north. It is to be hoped that it does not. In France and Spain, where such high speed lines already exist, wealth has been sucked out of the regions to Paris and Madrid. If those behind HS2 truly believe that HS2 will benefit the north, let the work start at the Newcastle; not at the London end.

£106 billion would transform local rail within the provinces. That would be a better way to spend such a vast amount of money.

The north and the south, outside of London and the south east, need west to east connections; not the hugely expensive HS2 connection to London.

Saxland would benefit from fast rail connections from Bristol to East Anglia, via Oxford and Cambridge, creating an enterprise corridor, and from Bristol to Kent.

Decentralised ‘bottom-up’ Germany manages these things better than ‘top-down’ France, Spain and Britain. In Germany, power lies with the laender/provinces and not with Berlin.

How wonderful it would be if Westminster had to listen to an English parliament in Leeds and a Saxish parliament in Bristol.

HS2 was Lord Adonis’s vanity project which was forced through the Westminster parliament on a three line whip by Tony Blair’s New Labour party.

Mr Johnson! you’re in a hole with HS2: stop digging.

Robert Craig Home Rule for Saxland