Sunday 13 March 2011

The Times must think most of its readers are stupid...

Exhibit One

Their wildlife correspondent wails on about the proposed HS2 route 'affecting 160 wildlife sites' and provides the map below. Now, it may be that the last remaining 160 wildlife sites in the Great Britain happen to be exactly along the route, but is it not more likely that the whole of the Great Britain is dotted fairly evenly with wildlife sites, even in towns and cities?

The total surface area of the HS2 route is only about two square miles, out of a total surface area of 88,749 sq miles, so it strikes me that a more accurate headline is "HS2 route will affect 0.002% of wildlife sites in Great Britain".
Exhibit Two

The Home-Owner-Ists have to maintain the illusion that houses are really worth what they say they are, i.e. that prices rest on fundamentals or 'pent up demand' and were not merely inflated by reckless lending, and they have produced the handy chart below which gives you the impression that the demand is there, even though gross mortgage lending fell by over sixty per cent between 2007 and 2010*. The sub text is: "Hey first time buyers! Jump on the housing ladder quick or else we'll just buy up all the houses anyway!" or something.

They are of course not comparing like-with-like, between 2005 and 2007, quarterly sales were around 400,000 of which about 22% were cash sales (= 90,000 per quarter). In 2010, quarterly sales were 200,000 of which 35% were cash buyers (= 70,000 per quarter).

So if anything, while the number of cash buyers jumped significantly between 2004 and 2005, it has been fairly stable/drifting downwards ever since). * Gross mortgage lending in 2007 was £362 billion and in 2010 it was £136 billion. Net mortgage lending has fallen to plus/minus nothing, of course.

15 comments:

Span Ows said...

Exhibit 1: clearly the train route planners are evil personified and have chosen the route to intentionally disect those wildlife sites...there is no other explantion, none!

Anonymous said...

They are using the image of an innocent butterfly to promote their political causes, no different than citing "for the children", except butterflies have wings and can fly over the tracks from one side to the other, so not quite sure what the problem is. Is it because the butterflies will be inconvenienced, having to fly instead of walk from one side to the other?

Mark Wadsworth said...

SO, it's worse than that. The previous Labour government chose a route between London and Birmingham which goes exclusively through Tory constituencies.

Anon, there is no way that butterflies, squirrels and other cuddly creatures can fly above the trains or time their crossings in the fifteen minute gap between trains.

Bayard said...

Does it say what constitutes a "wildlife site"? Is it a piece of land with some wildlife on it? in which case pretty well anywhere in the countryside is a wildlife site and the article, as you point out, is meaningless.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B: "Is it a piece of land with some wildlife on it?"

Yes.

But it's not just countryside that has wildlife - towns and cities have bees, foxes, rats, pigeons, butterflies etc.

Tim Almond said...

Some facts:

1) There are 4000 SSSIs in England covering 7% of the land.

2) The black hairstreak is a rare butterfly, only recently discovered in the UK, and has been found along a clay ridge between Oxford and Peterborough. They're also common in Europe and Japan.

Soooo....

1) You'd probably struggle to build a 100 mile rail line without going through 10 SSSIs.

2) very little of the population of that butterfly is likely to be affected.

I don't think it was just that Brunel was brilliant which meant he came up with staggering achievements like Box Tunnel. It's also that he didn't have to deal with eco-nihilists and NIMBYs.

James Higham said...

Exhibit 1 - clearly you need to write to them immediately.

Anonymous said...

Who wants to get to Birmingham 25 minutes earlier than at present?
I'd pay extra to by-pass the bloody place.

Woodsy42 said...

"Who wants to get to Birmingham 25 minutes earlie"

They can also get away to a safe distance 25 mins quicker.

the whole thing is a useless vanity project anyhow. Uk planners are incapable of thinking up what is really needed (like a route direct from middle England to the continent) so just try and improve (at enormous cost) on something that already exists and works.

DBC Reed said...

@Woodsy
When the original plans were mooted
there was one route down the east of the country nowhere near this one.Agree there should be one going to Continent but down East side of England,linking up Yorkshire towns and by-passing London,to cross Thames estuary on the Boris airport island and then link up with the existing high speed track to the Chunnel.The island should incorporate a barrage and have a container port on the seaward side.The present plans are so weedy.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JT, ta for research. Brunel wouldn't stand a chance today. None of the great Victorian engineers would. In London they want to upgrade the sewers a bit and want to build a new pumping station and all the NIMBYs are up in arms about it. They'd rather have the Thames full of sewage than allow the station to be built.

JH, sure, but they won't print it.

W42, DBC, the whole thing may not be the best use of taxpayers' money, but it is probably a break even.

Plus you are changing the topic while missing the point - do you imagine for one second that any of the routes you suggest wouldn't also be violently opposed by NIMBYs citing butterflies?

DBC Reed said...

@MW
Certainly,but there must be some
counterpoint to the argument for inertia.
People of my senior years can remember a time when there was a sense of progress with new towns being built all over the place with firms bribed to provide the work and new houses were for rent.If there were any problems everybody urged money to be chucked at them.And full employment was de rigeur.

The new houses are not going to be built while the Stingies are in charge who don't want to spend any money not even ,as now, when Lord Young's never-had-it-so-good homeowners refuse to spend the free money they've been given as reductions on their mortgage payments.
A through railway to Paris > Milan
without stopping in London might raise the Stingies' eyes from the one bar of the electric fire they allow themselves or all the stuff they download off the Internet for nothing totally short-circuiting market economics.

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, yes it is all very depressing, that's all down to Home-Owner-Ism.

As to not building council housing, The Stingies are so dishonest that they have to pretend that the government can't make good money by building more social housing and letting it out at market rents (it's like LVT by the back door).

Bayard said...

" do you imagine for one second that any of the routes you suggest wouldn't also be violently opposed by NIMBYs citing butterflies? "

I'm sure some people would hop up and down, even if an existing railway line was being upgraded, but such people are easier to ignore. One thing the UK has plenty of is rail routes.

"Who wants to get to Birmingham 25 minutes earlier"

Hardly anyone, but that's not the point, it's not about getting to Birmingham quicker, it's about having a faster train than the French, or the Germans.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, look, I never said that HS2 was the BEST way to spend £17 billion, but I am firmly convinced that it is still revenue positive overall. And as I said, if the NIMBYs are agin, then I am in favour.