Track Two... A Departure to 2026.

Confirmation that the HS2 rail link between London and Birmingham would go ahead earlier this month was met with little applause.

Many people have slammed the government project due to the routes cutting through “areas of outstanding national beauty” and the plans had to be adjusted last minute in a ditch effort to get the plans past parliament.

Indeed, the majority of disgruntled peoples who object to the scheme fall under that umbrella acronym of NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard), being persons who would normally encourage the development of such a (rail) infrastructure and yet refuse to show support as it may disrupt their lives ever so slightly.

My issue is to the contrary. The HS2 link does not go far enough.

Rail travel within Britain, where the mode was first pioneered, has become slow and unreliable. The passengers who depend on the rail links are subject to overcrowded carriages, infrequent trains and expensive costs. Most of the UK system still runs on lines that were introduced in the late Victorian era, and this is not suitable for a 21^st century country.

High speed rail has been expanding across the EU since the 1980s and has had significant investment in France, Germany and Spain, amongst others. Routes available on high speed service across mainland Western Europe is unrivalled on this continent; yet even within Germany before full roll-out, there are plans and schemes for Maglev-esque vehicles, increasing speed, efficiency and lowering costs by reducing friction.

Europe Railways in 2011, highlighting major high-speed investment in France, Spain and Germany.

Yet Britain appears completely unconcerned with the benefits that a modern rail system provides.

The small scale expansion into High Speed rail was introduced by the channel tunnel as recently as 2007 – seemingly forced by Europe as trains on the French side of the channel were capable of performing at speeds almost double the London-Folkestone average. For no real reason other than lack of investment.

Promise of the first major expansion to Birmingham is not to be operational until 2026. Any further links, preliminarily to Manchester and Leeds, will not open until 2034 at the earliest. The chances of this type of rail reaching Scotland before the 2040s? Remote to non-existent. There is a real lax approach as to the implementation of the scheme as a whole.

It is confounding how a line that promises a 50 minute reduction between London and Manchester and an hour reduction between London and Leeds is not being capitalised upon sooner.

Already, the Birmingham link alone is projected to generate some £43.7billion of wider economic benefits and generate £27billion in rail fares on these lines alone. Not to mention that the need for a wide spread introduction of the links, in every aspect from administration, to HR, to contracting, could create countless jobs at a time of severe economic crisis.

Longterm, the service would offer job migration. A person living in Manchester could work in London. A person living in Glasgow could work in Manchester. It opens up an entirely new field of connections and job prospects in areas of the country that were once reserved for those within a certain radius. Let’s face it, if Scotland becomes independent, Edinburgh will need a high speed link to London and from there to Europe. Current travel time between London and Edinburgh sits at an unappealing 4.5-5hours. With HS2, that could become 2.5 hours.

Moreover, the lack of enthusiasm for quick installation is unnerving. Firstly, the current proposals do not integrate the line into the National Rail system completely, having the Birmingham terminus exist in its own self-contained unit instead of arriving into Birmingham New Street, the central transit hub of the West Midland city.

Further, as previously mentioned, other European countries are already abandoning this train of thought in favour of other more advantageous railway systems: notably, the greener, more efficient and more cost effective Mag-lev, which is becoming the norm in Japan and a sensation in China.

Where might this innovative infrastructure have been tested then I hear you ask? None other than Birmingham, UK.

By the time the High Speed Line in its current incarnation is implemented to anywhere near the capacity required of the British public, it will already be defunct and an obsolete antique before introduction. The entire system need be bypassed in favour of more cutting edge and innovative means of transport.

If sufficient hands were contracted, lines connecting London to Glasgow, via Birmingham and Manchester, and London to Edinburgh, via York and Newcastle are not out of the question before 2025-2030. Yet the government is unwilling to invest in its own country, whilst the British railway, jewel of Victorian invention, is set to innovate countless people’s lives across the world before the decade is out.

With many lines already operating at over 80% of capacity at morning peak, High Speed is the only way to ensure the country keeps moving.

Britain Burning: Cause and Consequence

With a certain apprehension, I write from just outside Manchester City Centre as the riots that have spread widely across the country are mounting for a fourth night of action: today, the first in which my city has been involved.

London and the rest of the UK are now under siege from within. Personal vendettas and localised looting is dominating cities nationwide with subsequent apparent anarchy. What began as an isolated incident in a London suburb on Saturday night (6/08/2011), has quickly and ferociously developed into the most diabolical scenes of rioting witnessed in this country in some decades. 

Trouble in Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool has been labelled ‘copycat’ behaviour, following the unparalleled waves of violence seen in London boroughs. The catalyst for this widespread outpouring of feeling was the shooting of one Mark Duggan. Whether one describes the actions as disaffected or a fuelled release of pent up frustration, there can be no apologies for the violence which has been directed at innocent members of the public, small business owners, and other people doing their daily business who now are incapacitated in some form.

Peaceful protests provide persons with an ample forum in which to highlight and showcase their grief and issues with public administrations. In general, they help in not only quelling dramatic attacks, but reflect nationwide sentiments that can be taken into account. Therefore, the march in Tottenham on Saturday afternoon was an event with justified merit that was later tarnished by mere opportunists and vandals. 

However, we need closer analyse underlying unrest that has plagued both the capital and certain national suburbs over the immediate period prior to these disasters. In Tottenham, the original focus of the violence, residents were becoming increasingly begrudging of police stop and search actions that are reported to have been widely unjustified and yielded few results for public safety. With the mounting power abuse that the police actioned in the surrounding areas, there became a unilateral belief that the scaremongering tactics were introduced to reduce crime and yet had intruded on lives to such an extent that police were subject of ridicule.

Of course, continual mistreatment and suspicion of youths in the past has led to a mounting air of mistrust that has featured predominantly as the violence has spread. In blaming a great deal of social problems as rising solely from those of young adult status, the support of those under-25 is understandable, even if not condonable. 

Moreover, Tottenham is an area that suffers rife unemployment. Together with later targeted Lewisham and Peckham (which were featured in a recent newspaper editorial as amongst the top 25 areas in the country for people out of work), onlookers are able to establish that the dissatisfaction is also fed off both lack of job prospects and the subsequent idle and sedentary lifestyle that comes hand in hand. Sparking of other social injustice only provided a platform for this plethora of misfortunes to manifest in physical outbursts.

In addition, spending and budget cuts amidst global recession, Eurozone crises and worldwide credit down-gradings only adds to the country’s financial woes. The widespread effects are that as well as unemployment, local facilities and amenities shut down so there are further disruptions and lack of distractions in daily life. Ironically, for all the attacks, no one has launched a mounted assault on big businesses at Canary Wharf. 

More to the point, the number of destroyed independent businesses is completely inexcusable: almost as if vengeance for those few in the area who were struggling with small enterprise pressures already. Two teenage girls speaking to a BBC reporter this morning said that “This is to show the rich that we can do what we want.” However, there appears no distinction between the rich and those who have private, small businesses that do not make the mega-buck revenue of which the girls naively spoke. 

Reverse dichotomy: this is certainly not the image of the Big Society that Cameron had in mind.

Although the public are being heard, this is no way to reverse any standing belief of disenfranchisement: but rather provides reason that tighter measures need be in force to govern the public. 

Army drafting, water cannons, tear gas, Tasers. Over the past 72 hours, there has been a great deal of social debate as to how the country’s management should proceed in order to restore order and maintain livelihoods for the majority. Options are many and certainly diverse.

However, it is not so much dealing with the immediate onslaught as the subsequent aftermath. Perhaps one of the poignant comments after pictures from London fires have been circulated was that “it looks as though London has been bombed, in a war”. Irrevocable damage has been incurred and the mounting costs are certainly a serious issue and concern for all involved. 

Already a country dealing with daily money misery, the cost of the cleanup will cause national taxes to be increased. The unprecedented need for extra dependence on the emergency services will rise the amount of money needed to be paid to the state. Stockbrokers will invest less as millions is wiped off those businesses who are unable to deal with the continued clashes, whilst insurance prices will rise in supposedly troubled cities, such as those aforementioned.

In an already struggling economy, the sense of any such riots is lost (if, for that matter, it existed in the first place). Despite this entry having acceded money issues as facilitating events while they were first brought before the public, there is only a continual problem in our nationals thus wasting their own money in the long run: ergo constructing a continuum of debt generation.

Taking a different slant, government officials convening emergency Cobra meetings and recalling parliament will for a long time yet have an image of an unruly mob in their mind when putting forward any changes to country legislation. While some may argue that it is government action which has caused unrest, these scenes have only served to further widen the divide in trust between those in Westminster and their citizens: tougher rule would appear a more democratic action in the interests of the majority.

Information released just today details that the bullet found wedged into a police officer’s radio, at the scene where Duggan was shot on Thursday, was in fact police issue. The most recent statement at this time is that there is no evidence of the victim having shot at the met. Since violence had pre-empted such a finding, there is no sense how this may yet effect the public feel towards the riots. Yet, this is also a crucial piece of information regarding how police will be viewed within their constituencies: little trust being honoured with unjustified action.

But more than these monetary and bureau escapades, the real consequence will be a loss of public sentiment and compassion, especially toward youths (as earlier mentioned, blanket punished). Living with the shells of buildings and lost businesses haunting high streets across the country will always conjur images of a week where citizens, in “a moment of madness” according to lawyers convening in courts today, simply took to wanton destruction to prove a public power without direction or motive. 

What began as a moving and socially meaningful demonstration, now a marred public effigy to anarchy.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2011/aug/09/uk-riots-incident-map

The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win and their participants know it. Hence, rioting is not revolutionary but reactionary because it invites defeat. It involves an emotional catharsis, but it must be followed by a sense of futility.
Martin Luther King, Jr.