The Budget 2025

They probably costed that. I imagine the Euston extension was easily the cheapest bit to make it reach one end at least
I've heard that Euston bit is an absolute nightmare, quite a few companies had looked at it and deemed it impossible in a practical sense, there was talk of scrapping the whole of HS2 just due to this, or as a big reason to scrap it.

If they're throwing money at it now though someone must have found a way, but my bet is it won't be cheap, it never is when there is only one option as everyone holds the job to ransom, as is par for the course with UK construction.

Either way though it's necessary (HS2, and going to Euston), but I hope they've left the door open so it can be extended to the North East one day or at least the leg to Leeds.

York to Manchester getting confirmed is good though, that should help the North.
 
York to Manchester getting confirmed is good though, that should help the North.
In the most scaled down version possible.

The original plan was for a completely new high-speed line from Liverpool via Warrington and the HS2 tunnel into Piccadilly and then on via mostly new routeing to a new station in Bradford and onto the HS2 link into Leeds. Only the last bit to York was basically just an upgrade.

What labour has confirmed they will now fund is a few bits of signalling and track upgrade on the existing transPennine route. It’s better than it might have been, and it is desperately needed, but it is a pale shadow of the original proposal.
 
Crying a river for large estates now that might have to sell. Maybe the tenants could then buy their farms? Or would the new buyer keep them on? What else would they do with the land?

Farming UK isn’t an impartial source though so I have taken the article with a pinch of salt.
It will always be farmland, until it gets sold for housing, someone else would just buy it and be glad to have that opportunity and pay tax on it as it passes down once every 40 years or something. A once in every 40 years tax is not bad, not when the land price increase probably beats inflation considerably.

Farmers (who own their land) are always applying for planning, and with the will to build more houses, solar farms, wind farms etc loads of them will now get it, and be selling farmland off for development land prices, they will be fine. If they don't like it they can sell, and they won't struggle to sell for a good price I imagine.

I like farmers in some ways, they graft their nuts off all hours, all round the year, in a game which seemingly can be extremely up and down, but their version of "skint" is not the same as the rest of the UK's version of skint. I really don't like the way farmers get abused by supermarkets though, the government need to step in on that one.

I don't really get this claim to 100% family farm inheritance though, especially of land as large as farms etc, most of that will have been accrued extremely cheaply or free over a long history timeline, so not sure how 2020 is relatable to 1600-1900 etc. I don't really agree with a few people having all the land basically. It should have been divvied into smaller pieces a long time before now, and let people build their own homes more freely.

They could always divvy up the land and assets and pass some down to their family when they actually need it, not when they're 50 and the old man dies etc.

People complaining about being asset rich and cash poor need to come back to reality.
 
In the most scaled down version possible.

The original plan was for a completely new high-speed line from Liverpool via Warrington and the HS2 tunnel into Piccadilly and then on via mostly new routeing to a new station in Bradford and onto the HS2 link into Leeds. Only the last bit to York was basically just an upgrade.

What labour has confirmed they will now fund is a few bits of signalling and track upgrade on the existing transPennine route. It’s better than it might have been, and it is desperately needed, but it is a pale shadow of the original proposal.
Oh yes, for sure, but what the original thing was basically HS3, and that's not going to happen until we get the full version of HS2. The fully electrified route and signalling all the way from York to Manchester will still be good, as that route can be quite unreliable and it's 3x worse by car.

We will need that full version of HS2/ HS3 eventually, unless something else comes out in the future and negates the need for it. Not sure where the money comes for it though, not in the next decade at least.

We need to get a grip on rail, and UK construction in general, as I've said a few times on here we could do so much more with the money we have to spend, but ludicrous red tape and pandering to nimby's needs to stop. Our productivity and cost per mile of anything is beyond a joke, pretty much the worst in the developed world, I can half understand why we don't invest in more whilst we have those problems.
 
Here is a more balanced report on the budget and farmers from Dan Neidle. It has facts not just melodramatic comments from the NFU.


So despite the Tories lying about this today the reality is over 90% of farms won’t be affected. We are looking at a figure of around 200 and of those 200 most will be able to cover the tax due to the value of the saleable / mortgageable assets, taking out life insurance or even giving the farm to their kids 7 years or more before they croak it.

Yet again, the RW media and the Tories are whipping the country (and farmers) up and spreading fake news and fear. They are a lovely bunch.

When you read Dan’s recent twitter posts it seems an entirely reasonable policy.
 
Won’t somebody think of the poor souls with 60 BTL properties 😳🙄

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Oh no he had to sell his boat 😱 My heart bleeds, but did he actually HAVE to sell it? 🤔

Imagine writing to the Torygraph to try and whinge about this situation 😆

Say 60 properties in Colchester, average price what 320k, and say you need what 25% down for a deposit on a BTL mortgage, so 60 x 80k = £4.8m equity!

You could literally draw down ~4% of that every year = £192k, and the cash held would still go up and beat inflation.

192k per year, works out ~96k each, and that would easily put them in the 97th percentile for earnings.....and they're not even working. Their unavoidable fixed costs % will not be what a typical person in the 97th percentile would be, as most of those are still paying for a house (I assume theirs is massive and paid off, which seems a fair assumption).

If they didn't want cash left behind then they could draw that 96k each, and even if they both lived to 90 they could probably easily still easily draw another 100k a year between them, and still wouldn't run out of money. 166k per year, each. She's been getting a state pension triple locked for about 10 years and he gets his soon, plus private pensions and other investments which they no doubt have.

Chances are one of them will go sooner, so whoever is left is going to be even more loaded.

I find it nuts that this was even used in the same page as the winter fuel allowance cut, especially when the state pension went up more than that, and more than inflation, as it always does because of the triple lock.

As we all should know, inflation, especially the type we have now, hurts people more the lower down the earnings percentiles you go, and I bet 100% of those people renting their houses are in a far worse position and will never see anything like what these two have.

They were not "forced" to go back into work, or to just work in general, of all the people who don't have to work these are just about the best example you will find, certainly top 10% of those "not needing to work"
 
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Oh no he had to sell his boat 😱 My heart bleeds, but did he actually HAVE to sell it? 🤔

Imagine writing to the Torygraph to try and whinge about this situation 😆

Say 60 properties in Colchester, average price what 320k, and say you need what 25% down for a deposit on a BTL mortgage, so 60 x 80k = £4.8m equity!

You could literally draw down ~4% of that every year = £192k, and the cash held would still go up and beat inflation.

192k per year, works out ~96k each, and that would easily put them in the 97th percentile for earnings.....and they're not even working. Their unavoidable fixed costs % will not be what a typical person in the 97th percentile would be, as most of those are still paying for a house (I assume theirs is massive and paid off, which seems a fair assumption).

If they didn't want cash left behind then they could draw that 96k each, and even if they both lived to 90 they could probably easily still easily draw another 100k a year between them, and still wouldn't run out of money. 166k per year, each. She's been getting a state pension triple locked for about 10 years and he gets his soon, plus private pensions and other investments which they no doubt have.

Chances are one of them will go sooner, so whoever is left is going to be even more loaded.

I find it nuts that this was even used in the same page as the winter fuel allowance cut, especially when the state pension went up more than that, and more than inflation, as it always does because of the triple lock.

As we all should know, inflation, especially the type we have now, hurts people more the lower down the earnings percentiles you go, and I bet 100% of those people renting their houses are in a far worse position and will never see anything like what these two have.

They were not "forced" to go back into work, or to just work in general, of all the people who don't have to work these are just about the best example you will find, certainly top 10% of those "not needing to work"
Or to put it another way......they are probably loaded and the story was bollox.
 
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