The political parties are spending the day arguing about a pipe-dream: the development of a 250mph railway from London to Birmingham (in 30-50 minutes) and one day beyond.
I love trains, and wish this project would happen (once, as Ben points out, the rest of the railway network is fixed), but it just won't. It would make internal flights obsolete immediately.
1. This country is bust.
2. It will only begin once Crossrail (the east-west London line) is built: that hasn't started, and probably won't.
3. Neither party will commit to the nationalisation of the railway network that is the only way to manage a project like this.
4. The line goes through a lot of rich, pretty countryside areas: Tory constituencies - an incoming Tory government will never allow this to happen.
It's a cynical piece of electioneering, a prestige project to whet our whistles which will never happen: the UK hasn't even electrified all the existing lines yet, something war-ravaged France, Germany and Italy managed in the 1950s! They may as well promise us this and this.
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