12-01-2012, 13:28
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#125
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Trollsplatter
Cable Forum Team
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: North of Watford
Services: Humane elimination of all common Internet pests
Posts: 38,582
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Re: New high speed rail link ...is it worth it ?
A very interesting piece here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance...uction-of-hs2/
Quote:
One of my tasks way back when as a still relatively young financial journalist was to follow the tragicomedy of Eurotunnel ... It was always a complete mystery to me as to how private investors and bankers were so easily persuaded to part with their money, but no doubt a large part of the explanation was the brute determination, and frequently bullying tactics of the then chief executive, Sir Alastair Morton.
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During one of the interminable refinancings, I wrote a piece saying investors would be mad to throw any more of their money into the tunnel. The numbers simply did not stack up.
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I duly received a call ... inviting me to lunch to "talk me through" the numerous "errors" I had made in my analysis. Since it was obvious I was being summoned for a ticking off, I only agreed to go on condition that Sir Alastair wouldn't be there, as I knew what a monster he could be ... The lunch preceded in good spirit, and I duly took my correction. Then, as the coffee was being served, Sir Alastair suddenly appeared, as if from under the table, and proceeded, as I feared he would, to give me an almighty *******ing.
Listen, he said, we all know that the prospectus is a complete fiction ... but the important thing was to get the tunnel built, in the national interest. He knew, he told me, that I believed in the project as much as he did.
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In the fullness of time, it wouldn't matter how much private investors lost on it all, the important thing was to get it built. The wider economic dividend would be immeasurable. He concluded by telling me it was my duty, as a British citizen, to support whatever needed to be done to ensure its completion. If Japanese bankers were being hoodwinked, so be it. I exaggerate only a little. This really was the gist of what he said ... by the way, sadly, Sir Alastair is now deceased, so I can write this recollection without fear of being sued.
With HS2, the criticism is not so much that it will cause untold misery for those that live in its path, or indeed that it will spoil great tracts of the English countryside, but rather that it is a white elephant in the making. The money could be much better spent elsewhere. I can't agree. At every stage in its construction, it will be castigated as a complete waste of money, and no doubt it will run hugely over budget – though interestingly, the high speed rail line linking the tunnel with inner London did not.
Yet once it's up and running, we'll wonder what all the fuss was about, and indeed how we ever managed without it. The UK needs a first world infrastructure to survive ... it also needs the jobs in construction and engineering that projects like this create. Would that Sir Alastair was still around to get it built.
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