Wherein I am boggled by the stupidity of the DUP

[andrewducker]

My lovely friend Dr Cross passed me this article about Boris Johnson wanting to build a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Now, that in itself is a bloody stupid idea. As detailed here it would cost £15-20Bn, be miles away from anywhere anyone actually lives, and go over a trench in which over a million tonnes of explosives were dumped at the end of WWII.

But it's not the stupidest idea in the article. The stupidest idea is that the DUP "believes a bridge could break the Brexit impasse by removing the need for a border in the Irish Sea."

Which is just so completely out of touch with reality that I'm not even sure where to begin!

The "border" in the Irish Sea isn't being proposed because Northern Ireland is entirely separate from the rest of the UK - but because it's entirely attached to the rest of Ireland! The problem is the Northern Ireland/Republic border. Building a bridge connecting Northern Ireland to Scotland doesn't change that border at all! You still have to deal with the two countries having a border!

I am at a loss. Is there something I am missing that makes their statement make any sense? Or would mean that anyone would take it even slightly seriously? Is there some kind of masterplan going on in the background? Or is Boris Johnson just trying to make people's heads explode as a distraction tactic?

Comments

[jack]

I realise this is obvious, but I think they're just SAYING that removing a border between NI and UK would be brexit-ly advantageous because that's the outcome they want, I don't think they have a creditable rationale for why it would be true.

Now I've suddenly remembered DUP have a specific agenda and don't just exist to enable a Con PM out of malice, I don't know where we'll end up. I guess the difficulty of the PM proposing any sort of deal with either a NI-only backstop or a UK wide backstop is just as much as it ever was, but if Bojo isn't going to even try, I guess that doesn't matter as much. I guess if accepting the deal is the only way to avoid cliff edge, parliament might do it, even MPs who oppose brexit, in which case the government's support wouldn't matter. But it makes it a little harder (and hence the chance of no deal and no brexit a bit higher?)

[redbird]

Since this has apparently been lying around for a couple of months, we'd have to try to figure out what Bloody Stupid Johnson and/or the DUP were trying to distract everyone from back in July.

[skington]

I have been following Brexit more closely than most people I know, and I still don't know what the DUP's position is. When push comes to shove, do they favour Brexit over the Union, or the Union over Brexit? Every time I think I understand which one it is, someone from the DUP says something contradictory. Labour at least are visibly torn; the DUP appear to be rolling dice every time they talk.

I can only assume that the reason they're not called out on it more is that (a) the Tory party is more important, so they get the scrutiny, and/or (b) everyone assumes the DUP are basically corrupt and evil anyway.

[skington]

You buried the lede, incidentally: not only is this a huge infrastructure project (which Boris Johnson loves; witness Boris Island and the proposed Channel Bridge), but it's backed by Chris Grayling. What could go wrong?

Having said that, building this ridiculous bridge would stymie at least one argument of Scottish Nationalists, which is that the UK doesn't spend much money on Scotland: Crossrail and HS2 get funding from Westminster, but Scotland had to build the Death Star with its own money.

[danieldwilliam]

The DUP? I don't know.

I love the idea of that bridge but there is a long list of infrastructure I'd spend the money on first.

[andrewducker]

I'm really not sure what the point of the bridge would be.

The feasible locations really are in the middle of nowhere.

[danieldwilliam]

Gravity theory of trade.

The closer places are to each the more they trade, the more more valuable the trade.

If you put in a bridge from Portpatrick (say) to Bangor (say) and upgrade the A77 to a motorway all the way and upgrade the railway in a similar fashion then Glasgow is about as far from Belfast as it is from Aberdeen and Newcastle. This would be a good thing.

Stranraer would be closer to Belfast than Derry.

You'd get a bunch of development along the line of the motorway / railway with people now able to commute in to Glasgow or Belfast.

Now, the idea is still bonkers. People are guessing at the budget because something like this has never been done.

Things people haven't added in to the costs are the roughly billion pounds you would need to spend clearing the unexploded ordinance plus the £50m a year keeping it clear.

In preference to spending, what £25bn I'd rather spend Scotland's share, about £20bn, on

Complete electrification of Scotland's railways - £2bn

Extension and dualing of the Waverley Border's line to Carslisle plus three additional railway re-openings £2bn

(not sure which three I'd pick and you might get more than 3 if they are short spurs.)

(I'd have a personal preference for the Reston - Duns - Galashiels Borders route)

Dualing of the A9 to Inverness, the A1 to Newcastle and other routes north and west £1bn

Edinburgh Trams route 2, 3 and 4 £3bn

High speed rail line to Newcastle £5bn

Glasgow Air Rail LInk & Edinburgh Air Rail Link £2bn

HS line between west of Glasgow and east of Edinburgh £5bn

[nojay]

Dualing of [clip] the A1 to Newcastle £1bn

I'd prefer to see a new two-lane motorway running more directly through the borders to Edinburgh from the Newcastle area rather than spending a lot of cash dualling the road between Newcastle and Berwick which is, admittedly a nice enough town but it's a lot smaller than Edinburgh. The A1's route is a bit wandery at best.

Edinburgh Trams route 2, 3 and 4 £3bn

Only three billion? What a bargain! Really if the capital was to get that sort of an investment in public transport I'd go for an Underground link through and around the city centre rather than clogging up the existing surface routes with more traffic (never mind the decade or more of disruptions to existing traffic).

Glasgow Air Rail LInk & Edinburgh Air Rail Link £2bn

GARL was supposed to happen as part of the Crossrail offset but Edinburgh trams happened instead, blagging all the cash. EARL already exists effectively now that the Edinburgh Gateway is in place on the tram line.

[danieldwilliam]

There's a lot to be said for the more direct motorway route through the Borders to Newcastle, along the route of the A68.

My reason for picking the A1 is that I think the most under used part of the Edinburgh economic basin is along the route of the A1 out towards Eyemouth and Berwick-upon-Tweed but the road and rail capacity is a real constraining factor. It's not just about getting to Newcastle quicker.

On the trams - yeah, I reckon a billion a route. Perhaps a bit less as most of the proposed original Line 2 was included in the actual built bit. For a billion I'd hope to push it out a bit further west. Line 3 out to the South East from Waverley to Fort Kinnaird. Not sure where I'd run Line 4. Perhaps from Currie, through South Morningside, Blackford and joining Line 3 near Cameron Toll or Newington. Or perhaps out to the North West - Haymarket, Silverknowles, Queensferry and perhaps across the bridge. The suburban lines ought to be cheaper than the city centre line as a significant driver of the cost was that nobody knew where the Victorian and Edwardian infrastructure was in the city centre.

I'm honestly not sure if the geology of Edinburgh suits an underground railway or a large underground road tunnel. We could certainly do with something running under the city centre. I was very taken with Boston's Big Dig when I visited Boston. I wonder if we could build a tunnel from St Mary Street to Shandwick Place straight under the Castle.

There are some interesting proposals by some private venture to use cheap tunnelling machines to build underground services beneath medium-sized cities that are well off for "free" and make all the money on renting shop space.

I do not consider Edinburgh Gateway to be an effective rail interchange for the airport. To get to the airport from Glasgow or Aberdeen you need to change, with your bags, at Edinburgh Gateway and then get a tram - back on yourself - adding two bag lifts, £5 and about 20 mintues to your journey. Unless the train actually stops within a five minute laden walk of the check-in desks I don't consider it a rail-air link.

I might accept a train station to the west of the airport, interchanging with the tram and one-price through ticketing but only reluctantly.

People are a bit lazy and dislike complex interchanges especially when they are in a strange and foreign country where they don't speak the language.

[andrewducker]

How about a tram line out to Portobello along London Road, and then curving back around to Fort Kinnaird?

[danieldwilliam]

I've kind of assumed that something out to Portobello is included in longer term plan for Line 1 but I might have dreamt that.

Anyhow - that would be a good route, particularly as it links with Line 3.

[coth]

Is the theory that if they build it people will come? I don't think that works for roads to nowhere.

[danieldwilliam]

I don't think it's a road to nowhere exactly - it would make the road distance between Glasgow (pop 1m) and Belfast (pop 0.3m) about 120 miles. The mid-point is about Ayr (pop 50k) and that would be within commuting distance of Glasgow and Belfast - just about.

I mean the idea is bonkers because the bridge is almost impossible to build and there are better uses for the tens of billions of infrastructure spending but the bridge would have a beneficial effect on the economy of Ayrshire.

[autopope]

More to the point, it'd make the road distance between Glasgow (greater GLA area pop 1.2m) and Dublin (pop. 1.9m) about the same as the distance between Glasgow and Manchester (pop. 1-1.5m). With Belfast as a road town about a third of the way along it.

Which would be kinda sensible if you're Bloody Stupid Boris and think the Irish will welcome an offer of reunification under the Crown and Brexit with open arms, in which case Dublin is just another British satellite capital.

(Spoiler: the Irish don't lean that way at all.)

BoJo is of a generation (my generation, alas) who got taught a horribly distorted view of history in which the British Empire was painted as a Good Thing. He's a vain, shallow, superficial person who doesn't question received wisdom but goes for grandiose gestures. To his mind, why would anyone not want to be part of the Glorious Empire, presided over by BoJo the Churchillian?

I'm convinced it really is that simple.

[danieldwilliam]

I'm sure the Republic would not welcome an offer of re-unification.

On the other hand, if Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland were all going to end up in the same Single Market then having a good road and rail connections between Dublin and Glasgow and then on to Edinburgh and Edinburgh's ferry terminal would be a good thing. Good, in the context that tens of billions of pounds and an impossible bridge is a bit of a challenging starting point.

I think you are right about Johnson.

[redbird]

I'm sitting here in the United States, and my immediate reaction is "has he entirely forgotten the last few centuries of Irish history?"

I'm sitting here in the United States, and this isn't the history I studied on purpose--I shouldn't know more about it than the British prime minister.

[moniqueleigh]

Right? I am regularly befuddled at British government types who know less about their own history than I do, and I only barely touched on it whilst studying other things (mostly literature and a mild obsession with Tudor/Elizabethan clothing). Then again, I'm also regularly befuddled at Mississippi & US gov types who don't even know *that* much about their own history....

[redbird]

That may be it: the same incentive (if only in terms of self-regard) that has white Americans actively turning away from knowing about the history of slavery and racism here is keeping English people from knowing anything relevant about Ireland.

I don't expect most people (especially outside Ireland) to know why, for example, a lot of demographic records for Ireland literally don't exist -- that's a factoid about the Easter Rising I came across when reading about something else -- but I would have thought that "Easter Rising" itself would be somewhere in the memory of someone in England who cared enough about politics to try to make a career of it. And "cares about politics" seems to go with "President of the Oxford Union."

[moniqueleigh]

One would think.... Then again, I've met my share of types who care about politics juuuust long enough to get into them and then it's all about personal gain. /sigh/ Those are the sorts that generally make me seriously consider the need for dragons who think politicians are tasty.

[lilysea]

Apart from the cost of the bridge, it's an excellent way to get non-native species to invade and cause environmental havoc...

[jducoeur]

In BoJack Horseman (a satirical animated series on Netflix), a couple of politicians trying to one-up each other results in a bridge from California to Hawaii.

So it seems to me that BoJo is stealing ideas in an attempt to convince the world that Britain is secretly just an absurdist satire, and should therefore be allowed to go on its own merry way...