Vince Samios

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Not the actual High Speed 2 Train AFAIK.

The new proposed "High Speed 2" UK High Speed Train Network will cost an estimated £89.5 Million per mile of new track - with a total of 335 miles in the completed High Speed 2 rail network. Another way to visualise the cost is as approx £55,000 per meter so a rail link from your front door to the road could cost as much as half a million pounds. Jaw dropping!

Some Vital Statistics:

• Up to 250mph (400km/h)
• 119 Miles of track (Phase 1), 335 Miles total
• London to Birmingham - 2026 (Phase 1)
• Birmingham to Leads & Manchester - 2035 (Phase 2)
• Costs Up to £17.4 Billion Phase 1
• Additional £12.6 Billion for Phase 2
• Capacity of up to 18 trains/hour
• 1100 Passengers capacity on each train
• 30,000 Passengers per day at approx 10% capacity

Travel time savings from High Speed 2 are estimated as follows:

The High Speed 2 Route

The predecessor to High Speed 2 was the High Speed 1 rail network which hits a maximum of 186mph between the channel tunnel and London, in comparison High Speed 2 has a maximum speed for 250mph (likely to be closer to 220mph) and in that respect High Speed 2 stacks up nicely.

The cost of High Speed 2 has been a point of dispute, but the entire cost over the next 24 years is less than 0.05% of the UK’s total GDP, not a significant amount, and arguably the link from London to Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds will increase that GDP by more than 5 hundredths of a percent.

The speed of the High Speed 2 network puts trains in a position to compete with flying between major cities as the fastest method of transport. Including checking in, dropping off luggage, waiting around the boarding lounge, waiting for takeoff, landing, taxiing to the air bridge, collecting your baggage and making your way back onto a decent travel network (ever flown to luton?) the journey by train from Manchester to London is likely to take half as much time as flying.

At this rate tickets will be more expensive than flying, in fact the current "low speed" network generally costs more than flying. The cost of tickets is a major problem with the current rail network, and I look forward to some announcement of High Speed 2 ticket prices. But I don’t hold much hope, and I don’t think its appropriate to postulate about prices of a rail ticket in fifteen years.

In my personal opinion, High Speed 2 is an essential move for the UK, just as Australia has made an essential move into a high speed broadband roll-out which leaves most countries to shame. The fact is if a country doesn’t keep pace with development, the country as a whole will stagnate and suffer.

The cost of the network seems entirely absurd - £556 per centimeter of track… that means it would cost me £23,630 to lay a High Speed 2 rail network from one corner of my laptop screen, to the farther corner… a mere 42.5cm

But who am I to say the logistics of laying a high speed rail network such as the one proposed for High Speed 2 should cost any less - all the infrastructure, the costs of the trains, the costs of buying people off their land, the costs of digging great whopping tunnels through mountains.

At this stage my personal view is - yes, its a good move, even in this economy.

The most unfortunate thing about SEO is that it is unpredictable, fickle and frustrating as hell…

First time around not everyone will have a good experience. Their taste for SEO will bitter and, understandably, they swear off SEO forever.

SEO can also take one heck of a long time, with noticeable changes being sporadic and unpredictable. I was about to start telling you about a client who, after 4 months, was getting frustrated with a lack of improvements. As luck would have it, a quick rank check showed that all of a sudden rankings have improved drastically across the board.

I guess good news tells the story just as well as bad news, the point being that things can appear to be entirely stagnant, and all of a sudden something will change….

If somebody bails from SEO before the sudden, seemingly random positive results, they may never see those improvements. The reason being, if you stop SEO at any point, there is a generally slow but definite negative trend in rankings and traffic.

In other cases on a relatively new SEO campaign (less than 18 months old) stopping SEO can cause your rankings and traffic to absolutely plummet. This depends somewhat on the SEO techniques employed, but the only difference this will have is the rate of decline. Often the fastest methods for being ranked, are also the methods which fall the hardest if discontinued.

A prime example is that of self proclaimed "SEO Expert" Mark Attwood and the story behind his apparent success (which ended in administration to the tune of over -£1mil) who’s company "TopSkips", a brokerage model business run on 50% SEO traffic, 50% PPC traffic (unprofitably) used to be #1 in the UK for the popular term "Skip Hire" - when I left the company, the rankings of "TopSkips" and associated companies slowly fell. The volume and quality of the SEO on Mark’s companies decreased so drastically that is was no longer sufficient to keep up with the competition and positions were lost, including the #1 for "Skip Hire".

The number of indexed pages on "TopSkips" fell to 10% (from approx 100,000 to about 10,000) within a few months and an absurdly large number of SEO rankings have been lost.

I’ve seen it too often where a company invests in SEO for a short period of time (less than 18 months) and decides (prematurely) not to continue. Instead of continual improvement the initial SEO is lost to the wind within a few months.

Possibly the single biggest key to SEO success is continual improvement, both of a website, and of the backlink profile to the website. If instead of improving you are regressing, this will be reflected in the search rankings, traffic and profitability.

SEO is a long hard road, stick with it and don’t give up.

There is a youtube channel I think you should know about - its called "Walk Off The Earth" and I have to say they have entertaining with music down. Its a small group of young and talented Canadians with guitars, bongo’s, maracas etc.

I was introduced to "walk off the earth" with this video of five people playing one guitar… and it actually sounds good. Its a nice chilled out song, but unfortunately not an original.

The next video I wanted to show you is a cover of Radiohead’s "Karma Police" which features loop pedals and the throwing of guitars, possibly most importantly it features a ukulele… and I’ve just bought a ukulele so I have a little fondness for anything which features a nice use of ukulele. If that isn’t enough to entertain you…. puppets… yes puppets!

The final video is a Walk Off The Earth original track which is right down my alley. Fun, upbeat, bongos…

I’m a little dependent on music in my life, it helps me work, it helps me relax, it helps aid my concentration on long drives… Walk Off The Earth have share a bit of vibe with my all time favourite band, The Cat Empire, and Walk Off The Earth is a treasure I think you need to know about

Check out some of their other videos for other entertaining tricks (such as switching positions on a piano seamlessly.)

Walk Off The Earth…. check them out!