Hmmmmm, you can't ride a bike on the M1? You can't drive a car, a lorry or a conventional bus on the existing rail tracks either never mind on the HS2 rail tracks.

Glad to see you agree that is a total non-argument

Like I said, we should be encouraging business locally, even discouraging commuting long distances. One of the daftest examples of long distance business was harvesting produce in Norfolk, transporting it to Lancashire for processing/packing and transporting it all the way back to Norfolk for sale. Fresh eh?

A perfectly valid argument IF all produce was returned to Norfolk for sale - which of course it isn't - you could just as easily argue using your logic that the veg etc should have been grown in Lancashire.

Apart from people, what else can the HS network carry?

As I understand it not a lot - no more than a bus can carry much else than people - of course what it will do is relieve capacity on the rest of the rail network which can carry other 'things'

Surely if you're travelling from Birmingham and need to go to Gatwick, you might as well fly there directly then change planes and fly on to wherever you're going?

Indeed but it is London and the South East that is running short of runway capacity whereas Birmingham has a surplus - HS2 would enable some of this demand to be transferred Northwards.

There's far too many other things needing to be built to make the thing work and if it isn't all ready at once, the early bits will be be in need of updating to catch up with what's built later.

That depends on what you call "other things" - stations certainly and probably additional road links, what else?

Adding up the few minutes saved and making out they're "man-hours" isn't a saving in man-hours at all. It would be if they were all travelling individually but they're all travelling in the same cattle waggons so the saving is still only a few minutes.

So if a hundred people each save half an hour there isn't a saving of 50 'man hours' ?????

The end of the Rainbow isn't in London and if people think that's so, they're sadly mistaken.

Indeed that is why any high speed rail plans should, (and actually do), take into account further expansion of the network.

You said there are real benefits in the system? List them?

1) Cater for the existing demand for rail travel as well as projected future demand allowing more freight to be carried on the existing network

2) Job creation in both building and running the network

3) KPMG project that HS2 would ndirectly create 22,000 permanent jobs in the West Midland Area -

http://www.centro.org.uk/nmsruntime/saveasdialog.aspx?lID=12734&sID=4272

4) The new trains would be 'greener' than the existing ones

Thirty years ago when I used to go into London to watch a show or for business I would invariably drive in - now I wouldn't dream of going any other way than by rail.  Granted it is because it now takes much longer by car than it used to but the principle is the same - it is much quicker and less stressful by rail.

I travel up to Manchester quite regularly and on the occasions I have travelled by rail at short notice it is a total nightmare - the whole network is so overcrowded I'd much rather go by car than end up standing for two hours!  Air travel used to be a viable alternative but the additional security, the need to check-in at least an hour beforehand and the cost of parking prohibits this mode of travel. 

So in the same way that I now travel to London by rail because it is faster and more comfortable than by car if there was a rail service offering similar benefits on long distance travel then that is the method of travel I would choose over the car or plane.