Not a chance.

Plan 'A' is driven by pure ideology and will be followed through until his final Autumn statement, when he will announce a return of the 10p tax rate and hope that plus the referendum (maybe) will be enough to fool the voters once more. The country could go to hell in a handbasket before then and he still will not change tack

I agree wholeheartedly with your comment about the real reasons for plan A... but plan A (as many of us predicted) is patently failing, even the tories are beginning to see that.
I reckon he will (too late) try and produce some cost-neutral infrastructure apparent growth-boost from his straw boater.

HS2, jam tomorrow?

Tomorrow?

I'll be pushing up daisies long before any HS2 train hits a northern city

This may sound strange to a government minister looking for a good news day on something that isn't going to exist until he is long since cold and dead in the earth, but I don't want to travel from Leeds to Birmingham 50 minutes faster than I can now (who would want to get to Birmingham faster ?).

The service as operated right now is fine, its far quicker than the car, costs about the same and is just about as convenient.

All I want is for more room on the bloody thing.

HS2 is just another grand headline grabbing plan that our inept, egotistical politicians of all parties are so fond of. It will do little to help the economy at a critical time and will no doubt drag the most indebted nation since Weimar Germany over the edge some time down the lime (as it were).

If they were serious about boosting the economy they'd put a modest part of the £32 billion into building quality council housing in the here and now. Within a year the economy would be picking up and within a couple booming. But ideology will prevent that (as it would for the modern Labour party).

With all that fish you eat, you might yet live to see it.

But not in Sheffield, as the route misses the city centre by 5 miles.
Apparently, it would cost too much and slow the train down too much if it actually went into the city.

When I heard that on the news, I thought I must have misheard.

But the Sheffield Tap is at Sheffield station, not Meadowhall.

"Sheffield Tap"?

checked, it's a pub....not sure how it's relevant to the route of HS2 though.....

This is the public transport infrastructure equivalent of spending £10,000 souping up an old Ford Fiesta so it goes 5mph faster.

It's not needed, it's not wanted and it's entirely too expensive for the benefit it provides.

As for the supposed boost to the "regions" now all these Londoners will be able to commute up here to work so much more quickly, has the government not realised that what will happen is the exact opposite?

Londoners will continue to work in London, they'll just buy a house somewhere in the Peak District to commute from instead of a flat in Hammersmith. Property prices in the areas served by HS2 will go through the roof, forcing more an more people out of the property market.

It's the only reason for going to Sheffield.