HSS1 - High Speed Scotland 1

Am Fri, 5 Sep 2008 22:13:49 UTC, schrieb Michael Bell
<michael@beaverbell.co.uk> auf uk.railway :

> am interested in your statistic that the PLM
> serves 40% of the French population.

Anything involving Paris touches already one sixth of the country's
population.


Cheers,
L.W.

On 6 Sep, 15:50, i.g.bat...@batten.eu.org wrote:

Agree with you re HSL to Scotland. However, at some point, the
existing lines from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds will
reach capacity (WCML probably will when the new timetable comes in at
the end of the year). If new capacity is added, I believe it would
make sense to allow high speed running on it. London-Birmingham-
Manchester-Leeds (not necessarily linear) would probably be
justified. Any further north and it gets difficult to justify.

> The Lib-Dems in England liked the idea of a local income tax. There
> are various possible versions of it, one of which would be that local
> portion would be set by the local council for residents of that area.
> I would like to see that.

So, an employer would need to know the tax code for the local
authorities of each of its employees. That's not going to be a
regulatory burden at all, is it? Or are you planning to implement
this through major changes to the national tax code based around home
address? That's not going to be an IT disaster, is it? Staff who
weekend commute: where are they resident for the purpose of income
tax, where they sleep on work nights or where they sleep on non-work
nights? And this is a replacement for property tax? How's it going
to work in deprived neighbourhoods?

ian

"Michael Bell" <michael@beaverbell.co.uk> wrote
>
> I think the Scots wants any HSL to link their two chief cities,
> Glasgow and Edinburgh, rather than have two SEPARATE routes from those
> two cities to England. Economical use of resources.

I don't think Glasgow will be content if their HSL to London goes via
Edinburgh, with a 20 minute or slow longer Glasgow - London journey time
over Edinburgh to London. And I don't think either city will see an
advantage in going via Middlesbrough.

Peter

On Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:48:46 +0100, Michael Bell
<michael@beaverbell.co.uk> wrote:

>In message <uls7c4pkesep6rpi04qm8cvv3p7gt6t65u@>
> mcp@nildram.co.uk wrote:

>> On Sun, 07 Sep 2008 15:39:16 +0100, Michael Bell
>> <michael@beaverbell.co.uk> wrote:

>>>In message <VbSdnR7JlpCYfF7VnZ2dnUVZ8jWdnZ2d@bt.com>
>>> "Peter Masson" <peter.masson1@> wrote:

>>>> I don't think Glasgow will be content if their HSL to London goes via
>>>> Edinburgh, with a 20 minute or slow longer Glasgow - London journey time
>>>> over Edinburgh to London. And I don't think either city will see an
>>>> advantage in going via Middlesbrough.

>>>And they would rather go via Carlisle? They may be petty, but not that
>>>petty.

>> It's not petty to want the shortest & quickest route to where you want
>> to go. Going via Carlisle to Manchester is shorter than via Newcastle
>> (or Middlesbrough). There is also the avantage that a Carlisle route
>> could ease the capacity problems on the dual track section of the WCML
>> from Preston.

>The unstated assumption is that the other end of these journeys is
>London.

Yes, although it would be petty to avoid Manchester on the way.

>Put it to a vote of Glaswegians. Put to a choice, how many of them
>would vote for a faster route to Edinburgh and how many would vote for
>a faster route to London?

It's not an either/or. Unless you go for an expensive CTRL style
tunnel from the outskirts to the city centre the last sections are
likely to be along an existing transport corridor. A southern route
from Glasgow to Edinburgh would allow a Y shaped junction for the
faster route to London (or a Y shaped London to Glasgow/Edinburgh
route would allow a faster Glasgow to Edinburgh route depending on how
you want to sell it).

>There are 4 trains/hour going Glasgow -> Edinburgh
+ more via Carstairs, Shotts and soon Airdrie.

>There is one train/hour going Glasgow -> London direct and
>One train train/hour going Glagow (change Edinburgh) -> London.
Usually you don't have to change at Edinburgh, some of the ECML trains
run straight through to Glasgow. There are hourly Glasgow or
Edinburgh to Birmingham trains and a number of Glasgow or Edinburgh to
Manchester trains. There are also about 5 planes an hour from Glasgow
& Edinburgh to London and it's these passengers you want to attract on
to the HSL unless you want to pay for it by increased fares or out of
general taxation.

On Mon, 8 Sep 2008 09:20:09 +0100, "Peter Masson"
<peter.masson1@> wrote:

>
>"Roland Perry" <roland@perry.co.uk> wrote
>>
>> The only thing that needs to be declared for Council Tax is where the
>> house is - which is easy to check. Who pays is relatively irrelevant -
>> anyone owning the property (wherever they actually live) is the prime
>> candidate.
>
>The primary liability is on the people living in the house.
>
Not so simple, the plural only applies in certain cases. The first
person liable (in England and Wales) is the resident freeholder (if
any), followed in turn by resident leaseholder, tenant, licensee and
then a mere "resident" before defaulting to the owner if there are no
residents.

>For example, if
>they are students and so exempt there is no liability on anyone. If the
>people living in the house don't pay the liability does not revert to the
>owner. The owner, if he doesn't live there, only becomes liable if no-one
>lives there and any exemption for empty property has expired.
>
The owner is also liable if the building is one of various types of
home or hostel, religious residence or houses asylum seekers.

On 8 Sep, 09:02, Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk> wrote:
> In message <380c1bdb4f.michaelb...@michael.beaverbell.co.uk >, at
> 14:46:32 on Sun, 7 Sep 2008, Michael Bell <mich...@beaverbell.co.uk>
> remarked:
>
> >There will have to be a check that you have correctly
> >declared where you live, but that's a problem with Council Tax too.
>
> The only thing that needs to be declared for Council Tax is where the
> house is - which is easy to check.

And how many people live there. And whether or not they are all
students. And whether it's a second home. Or empty.

Ian

In message
<64eb6dd1-240a-4190-ad1a-7d1896e066c9@2g2000hsn..com>, at
12:07:35 on Mon, 8 Sep 2008, The Real Doctor <ian.groups@>
remarked:
>> >There will have to be a check that you have correctly
>> >declared where you live, but that's a problem with Council Tax too.
>>
>> The only thing that needs to be declared for Council Tax is where the
>> house is - which is easy to check.
>
>And how many people live there. And whether or not they are all
>students. And whether it's a second home. Or empty.

Those things only determine exemptions, not the underlying bill.
--
Roland Perry

Am Tue, 9 Sep 2008 10:32:12 UTC, schrieb i.g.batten@batten.eu.org
auf uk.railway :

> I'm no geologist, so I can't debate with you about Birmingham, though
> > I do have to note that New Street is well below ground.
>
> Not ``well'' below ground: platform level is about twenty feet below
> street level as seen from Navigation Street or Smallbrook Queensway,
> but rather more below New Street:

but from Station Street it is rather above street level, if my
memory does not fail me completely.

Cheers,
L.W.