Britain is building one of the world’s most expensive railways

I think this article recycles a lot of the arguments that have happened over this and as usual doesn't make the correct case for why it's being done.

[NB to get passenger services off other lines because they dramatically reduce freight capacity]

As for the costs...well, some people in the UK don't want power lines, don't want wind turbines, don't want nuclear power plants, don't want anything in fact except the freedom to continue living their comfortable ruralish lives while the rest of us starve and die out and preferably just go away. They do, however, want Waitrose and possibly Sainsburys to keep on functioning and possibly their electric lights.

If there's a price to be paid - they're not going to pay any of it. So everything is a battle, and it's not an autocracy so a government that wants to be elected again has to think twice before taking on enemies.

On the other hand there's a big part of the UK that doesn't want to work or support itself and does want to confiscate other peoples money in order to continue to sit in social housing with social wellfare and a plethora of other social services.

We can have a libertarian country.

Or we can have a social democratic one.

We can't have both.

If we're a country at all we have to make joint efforts. That requires tax. We'll never agree about how much.

Lucky we don't currently have to fight a world war or endure any other serious kind of suffering.

I say again, we can either have a social democracy where we decide what the rule of law is with a plebiscite or we can have a libertarian rights based society where whoever has capital can decide what happens and no one can stop them.

If we run things based on voting then part of that is accepting that other people don't agree with you about what is and isn't a priority. They like their quiet lives and there are enough of them to influence elections.

Nobody has to accept anything. We get to debate about it and try to convince each other. We don't vote for things but for governments and there's always more than one issue to consider so government decisions are always going to be a compromise. In the end they get kicked out if the whole thing ends up not working but if it does then the majority give them another go.

Actually there aren't. Take all the votes from people who live in the cities and they overrule the country folk. The Americans had to invent the electoral college because otherwise New York and California would run the nation.