You said it much better than I did bud. But that's effectively what I was referring to. The timings are a red herring and the capacity needed was urgent at the turn of the millennium.
It absolutely should be extending as far north as possible and trying to solve the west/east issues in the north too
Haha, I didn't even read much of the other posts before I posted, the article just ***ed me off and as I glanced down to hit reply I could see a few of the usual HS2 replies already.
You're 100% right in what you wrote, especially about the bad marketing of it. I expect that was done as people struggle to understand capacity, so they use "but it's faster", to sell it to those looking at it on a more basic level.
They didn't really need to sell it to me, no additional infrastructure schemes need much selling, they all pay themselves back with a lot more certainty than fiddling or upgrading what we already have. I suppose they all keep the construction sector ticking over too, a lot of what gets spent, comes right back in other ways, almost immediately, if we source as much as possible from the UK.
The more I think about it, the article does look a bit planted, if you have no good news, but need something, then chuck in some bad, so your mates can then rebute it, with ease, so "the flow" has gone from bad to good, for nothing. It's like the guy who has £10, he's not happy with his £10, so you take the £10 off him, ends up less happy still, but then you give him that back and his mood picks up, probably higher than where it was originally (in reality he's gained zero, and been worse off for a time). The Tories will try the same thing in 24-25, when the economy comes out of recession, they will be pointing at "the signs of growth" and the brexit crowd will lap it up, yet not mentioning the massive hole we dived in since the brexit vote.
The West to East thing and a full electrified link to Teesside (and up to Edinburgh) needs sorting for us more than the HS2 leg to Leeds mind. The NW link going as far as possible is more important/ cost efficient than the Leeds leg too.