"Wales ‘getting absolutely screwed’ by UK Government over transport spending"

[Bletchleyite]

Somewhere had to be the trial and the Cambrian happened to fit at the time.

Possibly yes, however it has caused nothing but trouble and brought no advantages to the line that couldn't have been achieved without it so suggesting Wales should have funded it is ridiculous. Yes, the other work needed doing but didn't require ETCS as such.

It would have been more reasonable for Wales to be compensated for putting up with it.

 

[gallafent]

didn't Wales vote quite strongly for Leave?

I looked and apparently it was 52:48 (well known to be an overwhelming and decisive margin in such matters). There's an interesting subtlety to the voting patterns, too …

English people living in Wales tilted it towards Brexit, research finds

Areas of Wales with big English communities had larger leave vote in 2016, according to study

www.theguardian.com

The question of why Wales voted to leave the EU can in large part be answered by the number of English retired people who have moved across the border, research has found.

Despite being one of the biggest beneficiaries of EU funding, Wales voted leave by a majority of 52% to 48% in the 2016 referendum – a result that took some analysts by surprise. However, work by Danny Dorling, a professor of geography at Oxford, found that the result could in part be attributed to the influence of English voters.

“If you look at the more genuinely Welsh areas, especially the Welsh-speaking ones, they did not want to leave the EU,” Dorling told the Sunday Times. “Wales was made to look like a Brexit-supporting nation by its English settlers.”

About 21% (650,000) of people living in Wales were born in England, with nearly a quarter aged over 65. The country voted for Brexit by a majority of just 82,000.

Border towns and areas of central Wales with large English communities, such as Wrexham and Powys, recorded a higher proportion of leave votes, whereas Welsh-speaking areas such as Gwynedd and Ceredigion had high remain votes.

Dorling’s research, which was presented at the British Science Association’s annual meeting at Warwick University, also suggested that most of the UK’s leave votes did come not from the north of England but the south, with the highest numbers in areas populated with affluent older people, such as Hampshire, Cornwall and Devon.

“The Welsh did not want to quit the EU, but that is one of many false beliefs about Brexit. The biggest is that the pro-leave vote was due to northerners,” he said. “It’s true some northern areas were strongly pro-Brexit, but the population there is too small to swing the vote.

“The real support for Brexit, in terms of numbers of votes, was in places like Cornwall, which was 57% for leave, Hampshire with 54%, Essex with 62% and Norfolk with 57%. It is those southern English voters that are dragging Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland unwillingly out of Europe.

“Everyone blames Wigan and Stoke for Brexit but we should really be blaming Cornwall and Devon.”

That last point is interesting too — people looked at the percentages of votes in different areas and thus attributed the result to some strong percentage wins in the North, rather than the absolute totals, the latter dominated by the more heavily populated South …

Sorry , a little late to this lively discussion. But it isn't the English tax payer paying it is all UK tax payers paying. So let's be clear

Far more of the money does come from England, of course, given the combination of much higher population (56M vs 3M)[1] and much higher tax take per head of population (Wales is 26% below the UK average (including Wales!))[2] …

[1] http://www.ukpopulation.org/england-population/ / http://www.ukpopulation.org/wales-population/
[2] https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6881

(Not quoting whole article here since it's big.)

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) yesterday published estimates of the revenue raised by different HMRC taxes in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These taxes cover 80% of total revenue, since they do not include revenue not collected by HMRC, such as council tax, business rates and vehicle excise duty. The results for 2012–13 are summarised in the figure below. This is the first time that most sources of revenue have been broken down to show the amount raised in Wales and Northern Ireland separately and what is particularly striking about these estimates is how much lower taxes per person in these areas are than in England or Scotland.


Government revenue per person across the UK, 2012-13

Note: ‘Capital taxes’ are capital gains tax, inheritance tax and stamp duties on shares and property. The HMRC estimates run from 1999–00 to 2012–13, although for all the main taxes the 2012–13 (and often 2011–12) ‘estimates’ simply assume that the share of revenue is the same as in previous years.
Source: Authors’ calculations using HMRC statistics and 2012 population totals from the Office for National Statistics.





Wales and Northern Ireland


HMRC tax revenue per person in 2012-13, excluding revenue from North Sea oil and gas, is 26% lower in Wales (at £5,400) and 23% lower in Northern Ireland (£5,700) than in UK as a whole (£7,300). This largely arises because Wales and Northern Ireland have less income and wealth than the rest of the UK and correspondingly raise less revenue per person from all the main taxes on earnings, savings and profits: income tax, National Insurance contributions (NICs), corporation tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax and stamp duties all yield at least 25% less revenue per person in both Wales and Northern Ireland than in the UK as a whole.




Wales also brings in significantly less VAT revenue per person than the UK average. But in Northern Ireland VAT revenues are only slightly lower than in the UK as a whole – because Northern Irish households (or non-household actors that cannot reclaim VAT on their purchases such as VAT-exempt traders and some public sector bodies) spend more of their income on goods and services subject to VAT. And Northern Ireland actually provides 18% (£76 per year) more revenue from fuel duties per person than UK as a whole and a remarkable 79% (£120 per year) more tobacco duty.

 

[bb21]

Can we park the discussion about Brexit results in this thread please? It inevitably will end up in a massive argument.

This thread is a perfect illustration of "be careful what you wish for", and a reminder why using provocative language is a bad starting point for a discussion.

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Maybe HS2 shall be completed under a labour regime too
..
A federation might be good, seems to work in Germany. What might England look like without metal and slate supplied by Cymru back then?

Coal surely ? (57 million tons in the height of production in 1913 , much of which was exported)

In passing - that industry drove much of the Valley line network - driver 2 was port access to Holyhead and Pembroke / Neyland / later Fishguard , driver 3 was "connectivity" in the more rural areas.

You need to look at the history to understand much of the traffic patters Example being poor demand and service north - south.

 

[anthony263]

We really need to complete the gwml electrification including to Oxford Bristol and Swansea

 

[Bletchleyite]

We really need to complete the gwml electrification including to Oxford Bristol and Swansea

Completely agreed. Though that doesn't really have much of an impact on Wales

 

[bb21]

Completely agreed. Though that doesn't really have much of an impact on Wales

Cardiff - Swansea

(Though that won't please people who want a different route to the latter.)

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Completely agreed. Though that doesn't really have much of an impact on Wales

Only on the most populated section of the M4 corridor , especially if done with a series of journey time improvements on the stretch (and by extension towards West Wales - Llanelli perhaps) ,and of course with a sensible re-cast of services giving South Wales to Bristol electric when the rest of the GW Bristol / Oxford section etc is done.

Fairly challenging , but not impossible. Necessary IMHO.

A bit more worthwhile than muttering about Carmarthen - Aberystwyth.

 

[peters]

That’s exactly it. Anywhere from Llandudno across to the border feels more like being in Merseyside than Wales.

I think there was an indirect admission of that by Mark Drakeford last month when he, quite rightly, admitted it was a bit stupid for the Welsh government to be saying anyone who has returned from a weekend in Italy to self-isolate for 14 days while people returning from a weekend in Liverpool (with a much higher infection rate) didn't have to self-isolate. There were plenty of places in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland with a higher infection rate than Italy but he knew Liverpool was a place many people from Wales travel to.

 

[deltic]

Someone told me Sugar Loaf station has live passenger information displays. Some stations in England with 100 times more passengers still need those fitting.

Wasnt that due to a commitment made by Prism when they won the first franchise to provide PIS at every station and didnt have the data or knowledge of patronage to realise what the implication was

 

[ChiefPlanner]

Wasnt that due to a commitment made by Prism when they won the first franchise to provide PIS at every station and didnt have the data or knowledge of patronage to realise what the implication was

"Project Infrom" - and of course an early use of solar power !. Basic , but innonovative.

 

[Spartacus]

If Wales is 'getting absolutely screwed' where does that leave Northern Ireland, the South West, Yorkshire and the East Mids who all get less funding per head? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134495/transport-spending-per-head-in-the-uk/

 

[Llanigraham]

Possibly yes, however it has caused nothing but trouble and brought no advantages to the line that couldn't have been achieved without it so suggesting Wales should have funded it is ridiculous. Yes, the other work needed doing but didn't require ETCS as such.

It would have been more reasonable for Wales to be compensated for putting up with it.

Funny, but I know plenty of people who work the line, both NR and TfW, and I don't think any of them would agree with the first part of that. Yes at first there were problems, and those would have occurred wherever the system was introduced, but since the Cambrian was self-contained it was the best route to try it out on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And I have to wonder why there is such a vehement anti-Welsh attitude amongst some members of this forum. The population of Wales is just as much a tax payer as the rest of the UK, and according to figures I have seen the South East of England gets more "pay-outs" per head of population that Wales, or even Devon & Cornwall.

 

[8H]

I'm English. I don't want the union to break apart.

But I see the sort of sneering nonsense that's on this thread and similar all the time aimed by English people at Welsh and Scottish people and the democratic decisions of their limited devolved institutions. And it makes me think if was Welsh or Scottish I'd want to stick 2 fingers up at the little Englanders and end the union.

Spot on, condescension and arrogance in abundance, it is plain that narrow Tory party political interest is driving public investment, as we already know that the Towns Fund dumped money overwhelmingly into often prosperous Tory marginal seats that came nowhere in ranking of normal deprivation and need indices traditionally used by government

 

[37424]

If Wales is 'getting absolutely screwed' where does that leave Northern Ireland, the South West, Yorkshire and the East Mids who all get less funding per head? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134495/transport-spending-per-head-in-the-uk/

Well quite the devolved Countries like to moan about this that and the other but the population of Yorkshire and Humberside alone is nearly as big as Scotland and far larger than Wales, whilst the population of Northern England is nearly 3 times that of Scotland but yet the North had the biggest collection of Railbuses and overall with a few exceptions a fairly crap transport system, which is only now really somewhat belatedly being addressed.

Unfortunately since devolution our political structure is now totally unbalenced but I guess thats another topic.

 

[peters]

If Wales is 'getting absolutely screwed' where does that leave Northern Ireland, the South West, Yorkshire and the East Mids who all get less funding per head? https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134495/transport-spending-per-head-in-the-uk/

Are there not some figures which shows that Scotland and Wales get more funding for the railways per passenger mile than any of the English franchises?

 

[The Planner]

Possibly yes, however it has caused nothing but trouble and brought no advantages to the line that couldn't have been achieved without it so suggesting Wales should have funded it is ridiculous. Yes, the other work needed doing but didn't require ETCS as such.

It would have been more reasonable for Wales to be compensated for putting up with it.

Not sure how you can pass on the move with RETB, old or new? You would still have to stop at Fron to get the token, whereas you are at line speed now.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Not sure how you can pass on the move with RETB, old or new? You would still have to stop at Fron to get the token, whereas you are at line speed now.

You can't, but that could have been timetabled around.

 

[83A]

Im sitting here with my popcorn watching this one play out

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Are there not some figures which shows that Scotland and Wales get more funding for the railways per passenger mile than any of the English franchises?

That's true in terms of franchise subsidy, which don't have London levels of commuting or inter-city traffic to prop up the figures.
What the current argument is about is money for investment and improvements, where Wales/Scotland don't have Crossrail or HS2 projects to gobble up the budget.
Nor does Wales get any serious spending on airport rail links.
It does quite well for electricity and oil/gas infrastructure though, because of the location of nuclear power stations, wind farms and deep water ports.

 

[Irascible]

Someone like to enlighten me of the benefits of HS2 to the westcountry? we're quite happy about getting castoffs from the North... maybe time to push for full regional devolution, eh.

 

[The Planner]

You can't, but that could have been timetabled around.

I doubt it. It would likely mess it all up at Talerddig.

 

[peters]

Nor does Wales get any serious spending on airport rail links.

Pretty sure Wales has train services to Manchester and Birmingham Airports. Quick Google shows Cardiff airport gets 1 passenger for every 2 passengers Leeds-Bradford airport gets. I think a train to Leeds-Bradford is more of an aspiration then an actual proposal, so it's not surprising rail links to airports in Wales can't be justified at the current time.

Someone like to enlighten me of the benefits of HS2 to the westcountry? we're quite happy about getting castoffs from the North... maybe time to push for full regional devolution, eh.

To be honest I thought we had your cast-offs. Northern had trains running around in First Great Western colours as recently as last year and aren't the 'new Intercity trains' which the Midland Mainline are getting your old trains?

 

[Llanigraham]

You can't, but that could have been timetabled around.

How?

Under RETB the "tablet" exchange would have to have been at Welshpool Station, as that is the nearest loop, and then it would have made a mess of trains passing through Talerddig Loop, and that would have affected the timetable for the whole line.

One of the biggest problems on the Cambrian Main Line is that the loops are not in quite the right places, even with ERTMS, but to move them is economically, socially and geographically not possible. However they can be made to work even with the up-coming hourly service. (Post-Covid)

I do wonder how much you have spoken to the people that actually work the line and aren't basing your opinions on just being a passenger.

 

[Grecian 1998]

It does seem worthwhile to point out that Cardiff wasn't the capital of Wales until 1955, and as I understand wasn't noticeably larger than any other Welsh towns or cities until the late 19th century. During the main railway building era there wasn't any particular reason to focus on links to it over Swansea... which of course takes even longer to get to by trainfrom North or Mid-Wales. A bit different to England where London has been the largest city for at least a millennium and probably longer, so most major English rail lines lead to London.

As far as I know Wales's primary rail links have always been west-east rather than north-south. This is partly due to geography and partly due to politics, although this is admittedly due to Westminster trying to Anglicise Wales for several centuries ('the Welsh Not' being an obvious and unedifying example). I'm not an expert on 19th century Welsh history so feel free to correct me

Ultimately though the lack of fast connections between Cardiff and North Wales doesn't mean there should be faster connections unless there are clearly lots of people wanting faster connections who are put off by current times. There doesn't seem much evidence for this hypothesis to date.

To be honest I thought we had your cast-offs. Northern had trains running around in First Great Western colours as recently as last year and aren't the 'new Intercity trains' which the Midland Mainline are getting your old trains?

At the risk of going OT and this turning into the Four Yorkshire skit (29 hours a day down t'mill and I had t'pay for pleasure) , GWR still has Pacers so far as I know. I certainly travelled on one as recently as 17th October. In comparison they've been retired in the north for at least 7 hours at the time of posting. Certainly Wales, the Westcountry and Northern England have all had Pacers for decades, unlike those flashy East Midlanders with their shiny new (i.e. late 1980s) 153s and 156s.

 

[WatcherZero]

I dont think people sometimes realise how small proportionally Wales is to England. The population of the entire nation of 3m is one third of London and barely above the English counties of West Midlands (2.9m) and Greater Manchester (2.8m). The GVA (GDP after removing subsidy and commuters) of Wales is £55.7bn, that is smaller than the GVA of Greater Manchester at £59.6bn.

 

[LSWR Cavalier]

Wales produces more food than London, mind
What does London produce?

 

[peters]

risk of going OT and this turning into the Four Yorkshire skit (29 hours a day down t'mill and I had t'pay for pleasure) , GWR still has Pacers so far as I know. I certainly travelled on one as recently as 17th October. In comparison they've been retired in the north for at least 7 hours at the time of posting. Certainly Wales, the Westcountry and Northern England have all had Pacers for decades, unlike those flashy East Midlanders with their shiny new (i.e. late 1980s) 153s and 156s.

The Northern 142s have only being retired this week because they can't continue in service without work being undertaken on them and apparently that's not economically viable. At least one of the diagrams that's lost it's Pacer now has an 'off-peak' service which is overcrowded even with current Nov 2020 loadings and based on the usual definition of overcrowded, not based on the COVID definition of overcrowded.

I'm not sure the age difference between Pacers and Sprinters is the issue. I think the issue is the Pacers are small, low quality carriages.

Also, to try it bring this back on topic South Wales, like the North West had a significant number of Pacers being used compared to the total number of trains and they appeared almost everywhere including on some longer services. The South West only had a very small number of Pacers limited to a couple of routes and according to Wikipedia the ones which were originally built for Cornwall ended up in the North of England, while Cornwall got Sprinters instead!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Wales produces more food than London, mind
What does London produce?

There is lots of manufacturing in London, and of course it "produces" money.

 

[Tomos y Tanc]

I'm coming a bit late to this argument but hopefully bringing more light than heat!

The basic argument by Welsh Ministers here is that Wales receives less than its population share of invetment in rail. Were rail fully devolved, Wales would receive a "Barnett consequential" payment equivelent to around 5% of the annual investment in England. Instead circa 1% of Netwrok Rail's capital spend is in Wales.

The counter argument is that the number of rail journeys in Wales represent circa 1% of the England & Wales total and that the investment reflects that.

Personally, I think both those propositions are arguable and I suspect which one you supprt depends on where you live.

What I do find bizarre though is that Wales gets next to no Barnett consequential for HS2 which will have a severe adverse effect on the economy of south Wales and be of marginal benefit to north Wales while Scotland, which will ultimately benefit from the high speed line, gets a full consequential.