This may sound strange to a government minister looking for a good news day on something that isn't going to exist until he is long since cold and dead in the earth, but I don't want to travel from Leeds to Birmingham 50 minutes faster than I can now (who would want to get to Birmingham faster ?).

The service as operated right now is fine, its far quicker than the car, costs about the same and is just about as convenient.

All I want is for more room on the bloody thing.

HS2 is just another grand headline grabbing plan that our inept, egotistical politicians of all parties are so fond of. It will do little to help the economy at a critical time and will no doubt drag the most indebted nation since Weimar Germany over the edge some time down the lime (as it were).

If they were serious about boosting the economy they'd put a modest part of the £32 billion into building quality council housing in the here and now. Within a year the economy would be picking up and within a couple booming. But ideology will prevent that (as it would for the modern Labour party).

With all that fish you eat, you might yet live to see it.

But not in Sheffield, as the route misses the city centre by 5 miles.
Apparently, it would cost too much and slow the train down too much if it actually went into the city.

When I heard that on the news, I thought I must have misheard.

They could build the station and then relocate the city

Is it not going to Meadowhall, which is linked to the city by tram, right on the M1 and much better to serve the population than having to get into Sheffield City Centre?

It's not going into Nottingham either, both sensible decisions given the rush hour traffic problems experienced, surely?

Using that existing line from Birmingham to Leeds there are often short delays entering both Derby and Sheffield and if you were looking to introduce another service onto that line and you could bypass Sheffield for Meadowhall then it would be a fair call if you didn't have the budget to lay a new track and build another platform just for your service.

But they're talking about possibly 30 years from now.

Jesus wept, we'll all be wearing hovver boots and flying our cars to Birmingham by then.

But the Sheffield Tap is at Sheffield station, not Meadowhall.

"Sheffield Tap"?

checked, it's a pub....not sure how it's relevant to the route of HS2 though.....

This is the public transport infrastructure equivalent of spending £10,000 souping up an old Ford Fiesta so it goes 5mph faster.

It's not needed, it's not wanted and it's entirely too expensive for the benefit it provides.

As for the supposed boost to the "regions" now all these Londoners will be able to commute up here to work so much more quickly, has the government not realised that what will happen is the exact opposite?

Londoners will continue to work in London, they'll just buy a house somewhere in the Peak District to commute from instead of a flat in Hammersmith. Property prices in the areas served by HS2 will go through the roof, forcing more an more people out of the property market.

It's the only reason for going to Sheffield.