Isle of Wight also demands compensation for HS2

The Plaid Cymru election manifesto argues that Wales should get £4bn compensation for HS2. This is despite the fact that no houses in Wales have been knocked down, no tunnels built, and no sheep disturbed. But Plaid Cymru clearly feel that they have a case.

This has emboldened the Isle of Wight Independence Party to argue along similar lines and make rail improvements part of its platform.

Colin Card, 63, says that there is an ‘obvious’ case for investment in the railway line that runs between Ryde Pier Head and Shanklin. Colin says that a feasibility study, conducted by Norman from the model railway club, shows that the current 28 minute journey time could easily be cut to 23 minutes. The economic benefits are therefore huge, because a massive amount of productive time will be released. 'HS2 only cut 10 minutes off the journey from London to Birmingham,' says Colin, 'so our plans knock that into a cocked hat.'

Colin also says that there is also a good economic case for integrating services between Smallbrook Junction and Wootton, currently served by a heritage railway. And there is also a strong case (Norman again) for extending the existing railway from Shanklin to Ventnor, as travellers to Ventnor must currently complete their journey from Shanklin station by bus. In their wilder moments, Colin and Norman dream of a circular railway line running round the whole island. And some trains, obviously.

The islanders will be tracking the Plaid Cymru case very closely. If Wales is successful, then there should be no barrier to funding for the Isle of Wight. £4bn would be just the ticket.

Image: Bucarama-TLM - Pixabay

Chaos as engineer forgets to switch off HS2 tunnel digger

.

Imaginary numbers: the strange mathematics of UK infrastructure projects

An eminent mathematician writes, "We all remember Bertrand Russell trying to prove an entire logical system of mathematics from first principles in his Principia Mathematica. And then of course Kurt Gödel came along with his Incompleteness Theorems and said, 'That's nearly all bollocks, Bert'. But no-one, until the present Tory party, has ever invented from scratch a whole new method of arithmetic with no founding principles at all.

"Traditionally, arithmetic requires that a solution proved true today must also hold true tomorrow. Otherwise it's clearly not true. So, 'two plus two equals four' has to be valid on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Bank Holiday Mondays. But what if it weren't? What if the answer to 'two plus two' could be whatever you want on any day you choose? This is the important breakthrough in public financing of major infrastructure projects in the UK.

"Take, for example, the deceptively simple space-time inequality formula HS2 = 2 x Hinckley.C

The two variables are both continuously variable, independently. And although they appear linked by the 'equals' sign, that is a special Governmental operator which means, in layman's terms, 'they're both incredible value for money regardless of how much money is applied or how much of the project is completed'.

"HS2 is one of the most important concepts in modern Government mathematics, like zero or infinity. This is because it has no fixed value whatsoever. And the use of hexadecimal fractions in Hinckley.C, .D, .E etc acts as what we call a 'containment number' to shield the population from undesirable, and potentially dangerous, understanding.

"If asked to summarise the result of this breakthrough in number theory, and its application to the real world, I'd have to rely on the old dictum, 'The first 90% of any project accounts for the first 90% of the expense, and the remaining 10% of the project accounts for the next 90% of the expense." 

Image: Pixabay/Elchinator