A Wonderful Journey

Daveybloke, the Cuddly Conservative, is doing his greeny thing this week, announcing to the party which privatised the railways that, under the forthcoming Daveybloke administration, New New Labour's plans for a third runway at Heathrow would be scrapped in favour of a high-speed rail link between London and a few places Boris Johnson may vaguely have heard about. The line will cost fifteen thousand, six hundred million pounds of taxpayers' money and, assuming it gets finished at all, will presumably be run at the usual swingeing profits by the usual highly competent contractors, with journey times being slashed at least some of the time during off-peak hours except when difficulties arise due to unanticipated conditions such as unauthorised autumnal foliage gravitation. Then again, given the squeals of horror from the efficient folk at British Airways, perhaps it is more likely that the new terminal will turn out to be a beneficiary of "altered circumstances since the pledge was made".