We're Officially a Third World Country...

The scrapping of the Northern leg HS2 now proves without doubt that the UK cannot complete large scale engineering projects. 

We really are a third world country. Actually this might be defined as a new term, because at least third world countries have the ability to become prosperous and move to first world status.

We are actually in a state of managed decline. We cannot complete the engineering projects befitting first world status. Instead we have crested the wave of technological progress and are on the downslope.

The next question is what now becomes of the London-Birmingham portion of HS2? It doesn't make financial sense to continue working on it, because what's the use is a high-speed rail link to Birmingham that would only save minutes off the time taken by existing rail links between London and Birmingham?

HS2 only made sense if it was completed as envisioned, to make the longer journeys further North shorter and to provide a cross-Pennine high speed rail link. 

Now you might as well accept we're crap at completing engineering projects on time and in-budget and cancel the lot. Why continue to sink money into a project that makes no sense monetarily and socially?

In fact, why was HS2 approved in the first place? How did costs spiral out of control so massively? Why were initial tenders so poorly priced? Just what were the reasons? Was it bad management? Was it numerous changes of plan? Were compulsory purchase settlements to buy land and buildings under-rated? Was the legal cost of planning opposition to blame?

Was it just a vanity project to prove we could do what they were doing on the continent? Were we told to do it by the EU? Why was it started without sound costings?

The lack of transparency from the government needs to be addressed. The costs and the reasons for those costs increasing needs to be out in the open in real-time. It shouldn't require a journalist to go digging through various sources to come up with the reasons.

Yes, Covid may have played a part, but had management been sensible about the requirements of working through the pandemic, it shouldn't have amounted to more than employing security staff to be on site while everyone else stays at home. If the works are mothballed in a decent state there should be no increased costs from re-starting work. So unless the whole shebang is managed by muppets, the costs shouldn't have escalated as far as they have.

I know material costs have increased substantially, but HS2 caused that by being the biggest building site in Europe. The costs of plywood and basic stuff like concrete and steel jumped as soon as HS2 construction started and it sucked in ALL the building supplies. That should have been envisioned and budgeted for as part of the costings. 

I'd hate to say we need another enquiry because that would increase costs even further. 

It's just sad that we can't seem to manage fuck all any more. Yes the country is more densely populated, yes, property prices are more expensive, but France and Germany can lay high speed tracks for a fraction of the cost we can.

We need to find out why. And fix it.