Jonathan Lis has hit out at the latest delay in plans for Britain's high-speed railway, branding HS2 a "profound embarrassment".Speaking to GB News, the political commentator questioned "how it is possible" for one of the "richest countries in the world" to encounter so many delays in building a new railway.FULL STORY HERE.
00:00I think it is an embarrassment. And one of the people I was listening to earlier this week was Lord Berkeley, who was saying, right from the get-go, this wasn't going to work.
00:08And I tried to do a little bit of research to get some insight into the background.
00:12And I think the problem here is that when you do these very, very big projects, which are non-governmental in the commercial or corporate sector, they run a certain way.
00:20And I don't think that civil servants or politicians have the necessary skills to run them tightly or to budget.
00:27And so I think it doesn't matter what the project is, they will always attract the same type of person.
00:33So just very briefly, if you do stuff in the corporate sector like I do sometimes now for comms training, they use biometric training.
00:41They find out what type of person suits the role.
00:45Are you a high D, highly determined character, like an entrepreneur, like a business builder?
00:50Are you a high C, like a compliance person? Have you got a mind for detail?
00:53And the problem is, no one does any of that stuff in government that I'm aware of.
00:58So you end up in these very, very big projects where they overspend and they overrun.
01:03And they always, I used to think about Crossrail, very, very late, very, very late.
01:07But this one is a shocker, £36 billion and they've hardly gone anywhere with it.
01:11What should they do with it now, Jonathan?
01:13Look, we've come so far, I think it would be even more of a national embarrassment and humiliation to pull the plug on it now.
01:20Well, I think there should be an inquiry, actually.
01:22I know we're talking about inquiry.
01:24Oh, my.
01:25I think that one thing we can all agree on is that it's profoundly embarrassing that one of the richest countries in the world cannot build a basic railway between its two biggest cities.
01:39When you go to our neighbours, you know, Britain's certainly the home of the railway.
01:44You go to France, Italy, Spain, and they have high-speed rail across the entire countries.
01:50And the countries are much bigger than Britain as well.
01:52And how is it possible?
01:53I think I was reading on Twitter, I'm not sure if it's true, but the International Space Station is cheaper than HS2.
01:59And that's in space.
02:01And then you've got to look at the bullet train in Japan.
02:03Exactly.
02:04It's a rail network that has been running really, really successfully for decades.
02:10Arab countries are literally building cities out of the desert with water that gets sent from the sea 400 kilometres in pipes.
02:20And we can't get a train up and running.
02:23I think part of it is that you just look at the basic projects that we have now.
02:28There's a railway in Bristol that's been planned for years now.
02:33And I think it's taken eight years or something to plan it.
02:37It's kind of like an entire encyclopedia's worth of documents in preparation.
02:42The same thing with the new tunnel that's planned in London.
02:44You just have millions and millions of words.
02:46Now, obviously, we need regulation.
02:48We need building codes.
02:49We need standards.
02:50And we really need a back tunnel.
02:52But we don't.
02:52We've costed tens of millions of pounds.
02:54Of course.
02:55But the thing is that we have to find the balance between regulating, making sure that these projects are safe and that they are sustainable.
03:04But at the same time, not being so ludicrous that you said millions of unnecessary words and pounds are spent on these projects.
03:10I just want to read your letter in the telegraph.
