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will happily spout right wing NIMBY talking points in opposition to HS2.
What are the specifically "right wing" NIMBY talking points? As far as I can see the main arguments against, other than spiralling costs, are environmental damage and the counterproductiveness of linking northern cities ever more closely to London in terms of stimulating growth specifically in the North.
ffm-
Maybe ‘populist’ would be more accurate than ‘right wing’, on reflection.
But basically, the argument that it’s ‘just a commuter train to London’ feeds into the whole ‘London elites in cahoots with the banksters’ trope and completely overlooks the intention of the project to free up capacity elsewhere on the network:
https://www.midlandsconnect.uk/publications/hs2-released-capacity/
Which means capacity to do all those local services that people are arguing the money should be spent on instead, without the massive disruption over many years that would be required to increase that capacity without HS2.
h2o
I’m in favour of adding high speed capacity to complement the existing rail network, given that’s running at capacity. Is HS2 as well-thought as it could be? Maybe not. But the benefits of big infrastructure projects like this are always hard to model. And I’m forever bemused by the fact that people who would happily back things like a Green New Deal - basically massive infrastructure investment which will create jobs and activity and have significant non-financial benefits that a simple fiscal analysis won’t reflect - will happily spout
right wingpopulist NIMBY talking points in opposition to HS2.