• WHEN it comes to our hard-earned money, you have to hand it to the Tories.

And, by gosh, how we do. And how they love to spend it by the billion on schemes of interest to capital investors, big business, and banks if the depressing debacle of HS2 (“High Spend Too”) is any guide.

With a perfectly good rail infrastructure in place which seems to need a fraction of the money spent on this costly enterprise to bring it up to speed (literally) – with some left over for improved links further north – the decision to proceed with the plan to despoil and disfigure miles of irreplaceable countryside, homes and lives along the way seems to measure up to something of a pay-back for the recent votes obtained in response to the plea to “Get Brexit done”.

In an age when contact has never been so easy and widespread, quite why half-an-hour or so off a train journey time is thought to be worth so much cost and destruction is beyond rational thinking.

But since when does that come into the equation when political posturing is performed and profit (the “progress” being arguable) is being pursued? Future elections, national and local, should prove interesting across those swathes of England affected by “High Spend Too”.

MC NEWBERRY
Harcourt Street, W1