HS2 viable if Birmingham moved to Lake District

HS2 will deliver cost-effective journey time reductions if Birmingham is moved to Cumbria, experts have confirmed.

The Institute for Studies found that spending £50bn reducing the Birmingham-London journey time by 20 minutes was obviously stupid, but reducing the time by an hour and half was a bit less stupid.

Professor Henry Brubaker said: “I drove up the M6, past Penrith and found myself in this vast emptiness. I realised I was now quite far from London, as opposed to being quite near, like Birmingham.

“And as I looked across this huge, undeveloped landscape I thought, ‘put Birmingham here’.”

Professor Brubaker claimed the cost of relocating Birmingham and then connecting it to London with high speed rail would be offset by turning the Lake District into an ‘economic powerhouse’.

He added: “The Lake District is a gigantic cliche filled with sentimental tourists. Let’s make it Birmingham instead.”

Professor Brubaker said the space vacated by Birmingham could be turned into a holiday camp for unfortunate children.

 

What’s what in David Cameron’s fancy kitchen

1. Smeg Ultra-Wave cooker. Grows a chicken from a free range egg, kills it, plucks it, cooks it and then turns the bones into organic stock cubes.

2. Moulinex Kwang-O-Matic. If you overcook your chicken in the Ultra-Wave you just push the big black button and it reverses linear time.

3. Ikea World War Two communist helmet.

4. Ikea ShrinkRay.

5. Lumps of putrefying giraffe meat that he feeds to Ian Duncan Smith through the slot in his wooden crate.

6. Moulinex James Landale-O-Matic. Everyone in SW1, the Cotswolds and Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town has at least three.

7. Every night he uses the Ikea ShrinkRay to reduce Michael Gove to the size of a Lego man and then puts him in this tiny, stainless steel dungeon.

8. Posh, tattooed wife. Everyone in SW1, the Cotswolds and Edinburgh’s fashionable New Town has at least two.