The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[chrisp65]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I do too (though building new aeroplanes, rather than building railways). But there's a lot of read across, whether it's computer systems for ATC or the NHS, or whether it's railways or whether it's actual buildings or power stations or... The same things tend to impact big programmes.

I don't agree they don't have a clue. I would agree they don't know the precise to the penny ultimate cost, but they know damned well the ballpark. As @sidcowposted a bit ago, there's all kinds of factors at play, and one of the biggest ones is short-sighted bean counting - by that I mean there will be an initial cost estimate and timescale estimate, then usually what happens is some aspect or other will turn out to be more expensive - maybe they have to do more tunneling than they costed for, once they get to a particular area, or maybe the stealthy intake duct is proving a lot more challenging...or...

So then what happens is instead of it costing 100 money units and taking 10 years, the Treasury says "we can extend the length of the programme to 11 years, and the extra 10 money units still works out at 10 units per year..." but then what do you do with all the people you've contracted on various bases at a fixed rate?...

And there will be requirement changes which either add cost, or reduce quality or affect some other aspect. There's a huge number of variables, some of them unforeseeable, some of them entirely foreseeable. The cost of labour going up is a foreseeable factor, and Brexit is part of the cause of that. Covid and Ukraine weren't.

But anyway, the same arguments raged about the Channel tunnel and now no-one can even remember the details, we just have a route to the far off and scary Yurpeen continent that doesn't involve Brittany Ferrys. Same with that London tube-line. As soon as they come into usage, people marvel at them and forget all about the cost, because of all the benefits they bring and will keep bringing for the next hundred years, or however long.

It’s pure guess work. But the National Audit Office have previously warned that even the current government estimates of costs are still 50% based on estimates by  parties that have been repeatedly proven to be wrong. They quote that several years ago when the govt estimate was £77billion, independent estimates had the figure at over £100 / £110 billion, and that was at 2019 prices.

From the Institute of Government website:

Quote

The National Audit Office note that 50% of the costs for Phase 1 of the line are still based on HS2 Ltd estimates, consultant designs, or benchmarking information rather than costs agreed with industry, so these could rise again.

The Audit Office warning the current estimate is still based to a large extent on optimistic guess work (they literally list optimism bias as a cause of error on HS2) suggests they don’t have a grip on this.

The current cost also has built in presumptions of ‘savings’ of £3billion with no explanation of what these savings might be.

[OutByEaster?]

9 hours ago, Genie said:

Will those bridges over the M42 become statues then? I assume they are north of where it will stop. 

They're South of Birmingham, part of phase 1.

 

[blandy]

Just now, chrisp65 said:

The Audit Office warning the current estimate is still based to a large extent on optimistic guess work (they literally list optimism bias as a cause of error on HS2) suggests they don’t have a grip on this.

The current cost also has built in presumptions of ‘savings’ of £3billion with no explanation of what these savings might be.

Yeah, absolutely. Yet when you have "independent estimates had the figure at over £100 / £110 billion, and that was at 2019 prices" that have accounted for what's been agreed with industry, you're rather less clueless than people might think. It's almost deliberate - the "official" estimates being rather lower than the "real" costs and independent estimates. It's part of the kind of systematic (being kind) optimism typical of big projects. And the independent folks who are not trying to win a contract, or convince the treasury are more realistic. It's all a kind of game. 

[DCJonah]

Luxury beliefs. Who the **** buys into that?

Cost of living crisis and she's throwing out terms like luxury beliefs. 

[Hobsons Choice]

23 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

It just speaks volumes about who they're trying to appeal to these days. 

It really does seem like we're witnessing the end of this party as we know it. 

I guess it depends on how they react to losing the GE. Do they try to become a normal party or lurch even further to the right lunatics. 

They know they are losing, so the veneer of pretending to pander to the centre is falling. They are going mega right. Braverman will be party leader after the next election and they will go full anti-intellectual denier mode.

[bobzy]

So…

…we’re blaming the migrants and the LGBTQ+ communities then?

[DCJonah]

1 minute ago, HKP90 said:

They know they are losing, so the veneer of pretending to pander to the centre is falling. They are going mega right. Braverman will be party leader after the next election and they will go full anti-intellectual denier mode.

Wonder if the usual right wing media follow. 

 

[ml1dch]

29 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

I guess it depends on how they react to losing the GE. Do they try to become a normal party or lurch even further to the right lunatics. 

It's not even really a question for debate. It's definitely the second one.

As has previously been discussed though, a lot will depend on who still has a seat and how much support they have in a smaller PCP.

[Hobsons Choice]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

So…

…we’re blaming the migrants and the LGBTQ+ communities then?

How can it be migrants? Brexit's been done. The bus said.

Onto the next weak minority they can leverage hate against.

[sidcow]

14 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

Onto the next weak minority they can leverage hate against.

Wouldn't want to be a strawberry blonde right now. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by sidcow

[Davkaus]

It's hard to take much pleasure from the tories going this far off the rails really. I don't think Britain is open to the tories taking too much of the electorate with them, but they'll take plenty further down the anti-woke, anti-5G, "jews are coming to lock you in your neighborhoods" GBNews conspiracy hole, and there will be no getting some of those people back out.

 

[ml1dch]

Apparently loads of people leaving Tory conference in Manchester tonight as there are no trains tomorrow.

Therefore missing the Prime Minister big conference announcement that he's cancelling the upgrade to Manchester's train system.

They're basically doing improv. Yes, Minister now.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

It's hard to take much pleasure from the tories going this far off the rails really. I don't think Britain is open to the tories taking too much of the electorate with them, but they'll take plenty further down the anti-woke, anti-5G, "jews are coming to lock you in your neighborhoods" GBNews conspiracy hole, and there will be no getting some of those people back out.

 

People will think 1 inch to the left of ‘hurricane of illegal immigrants’ and ‘meat tax with shopping restrictions’ is the middle ground.

[Genie]

12 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

Apparently loads of people leaving Tory conference in Manchester tonight as there are no trains tomorrow.

Therefore missing the Prime Minister big conference announcement that he's cancelling the upgrade to Manchester's train system.

They're basically doing improv. Yes, Minister now.

The main crew will probably go back to London via private jet

[sidcow]

I was just reading a post elsewhere by a guy who works in the bean counting department of HS2. he was talking about why costs increase for many reasons you can imagine. 

But he said one thing which really struck a chord with me. 

He said there was a huge cost from The Government trying to de risk all areas of the construction. 

I insure a lot of major building contractors. Sometimes their employers do the same thing and instead of sticking to the standard well designed, fair to all standard building contracts, they try to push all liability back onto the contractor, you're often talking to insurers asking them to cover impossible situations and take on massively unfair risks. If the contractor is big enough insurers will often concede but ask for a really big premium for the additional risk. 

And then you get a lot of employers asking for stupidly high limits of indemnity, way higher than makes any kind of sense, ten times higher than a prudent  contractor would usually carry for their other work.  Again this gets expensive. 

You try and tell them how silly and unnecessary it is but they just want to give the employer what they want and not argue the costs.  I've seen individual contracts cost way more to insure than the whole of the rest of the contractors annual work put together because of stupid requirements. 

It's often solicitors who don't actually understand what they're asking for trying to push away all risk. 

And then the main contractor has to push a lot of this down the line to their subbies who also have to add more cost in. 

I can well imagine if The Government wanted to de risk everything you can see this kind of behaviour all through the supply chain just adding enormous costs in every area you can imagine. 

So decisions to play things safe and avoid unknown potential costs end up adding far bigger guaranteed costs than you were ever likely to realistically incur regardless of what goes wrong. 

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by sidcow

[ml1dch]

Probably few things more on brand than Braverman obliviously chatting away while standing on a guide dog.

[sidcow]

15 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

Probably few things more on brand than Braverman obliviously chatting away while standing on a guide dog.

Some might think it was accidental. 

[chrisp65]

BBC and Sky both calling it as official that HS2 to Manchester is indeed cancelled.

[sidcow]

38 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

BBC and Sky both calling it as official that HS2 to Manchester is indeed cancelled.

But also saying continuing to Euston. 

Watch out for HS3 coming to a future administration near you. (or not near you chrisp) 

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, sidcow said:

But also saying continuing to Euston. 

Watch out for HS3 coming to a future administration near you. (or not near you chrisp) 

 

Well look on the bright side, at least the London bit will get built, so thank heavens for that.

Ever got the feeling you’ve been had?