Having read the report, it's conclusions seem sound, although I'm disappointed they didn't suggest an intermodal terminal at Stranraer with a rail link to Dumfries as well as improving the A75.
Agreed. A year to say 'something must be done'- and another year yet to get round to setting up another talking shop.
80 pages of few words; indeed many with no words but an 'interesting' and barely related photo (was that the Knaresborough- Northern Ireland link?) and some big 'figures' in the sense of Fig."6 rather than '£456M'!
Did someone get paid for putting this together; and of course the separate document required to kill the Vanity Fixed Link.
I think that's unfair.
It's expressly called a "review" - not a Union Connectivity Plan.
And as for the Vanity Fixed Link, again it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a UK government should consider and look at such a link. Having been told for two years by the usual naysayers that it isn't physically possible, we now have confirmation that it is indeed possible and the cost and timeframe involved. We'd never have anything if before something can even be looked into, we need everyone on all political sides to agree in advance it's worth doing. We'd have no Channel Tunnel, no HS1 let alone HS2. In fact with that attitude I suspect most railways would long since have been closed down and converted to cycle tracks or single carriageway distributor roads by now.
However the report now advocates working with the devolved governments where Johnson seemed to prefer bullying them.
As I said in the other thread, on what planet do you think the elected government of a country wouldn't have an interest in strategic transport networks for that country? It's not "bullying" nor "working with" - it's doing the job of governing the country.
In fact, I don't know of any. If someone can correct me if I'm wrong, please do.
The nearest situation to one in which roads are wholly the domain of a subsidiary government is in Australia and the US. But those nations are legally federal governments, where the sovereignty lies purely with the local entity (i.e. the state), and some of that sovereignty is shared to the central level (a bottom-up system). And even there, the Federal governments make use of funding powers to ensure they have the final say on major highways (i.e. do what we want or we'll cut your money off). And none of the states in either of those countries has a nationalist or nationalist leaning government, so there isn't much conflict anyway.
In Canada, federal highways are a joint responsibility between the central government and the provincial governments (even though it is a bottom-up system, albeit not as strict as in other Federal states).
In Germany, federal highways are a federal responsibility, period. The states (Lander) only have responsibility over their own roads.
But even if that wasn't the case, the UK is
not a federal country. It is not a bottom-up system, it's a top-down system, whereby the central body (Westminster) gives authorisation to devolved governments to act in their own right, based on the power and authority of the Westminster. They can change it whenever they want to. It would be politically difficult to do so, but legally the Scotland Act 1998 can be overridden simply by passing a new act. (Contrast that with the USA, for example, whereby Congress couldn't legally pass a "California (Repeal and Merger with Arizona) Act")
If we take the "how dare the UK government poke its nose into Scotland's or Wales' affairs" line to its logical conclusion, we should let Hampshire County Council close the Portsmouth main line if it's elected representatives want it, due to noise pollution concerns, or let Eden District Council in Cumbria dig up the M6 as it isn't relevant to their area.
www.gov.uk
