Portillo In The Baltic States

[Khandro]

I saw last night Portillo in Latvia and Estonia travelling on a state of the art high speed rail network with first class stations and infrastructure.
Britain has been paying 8 billion more into the EU p.a. than it has been taken out to pay for this sort of thing and doesn't have a high speed rail network to compare.
Another excellent reason for getting out of this madness?

[Khandro]

KARL; Wow! If you expect the worst, as you appear to, you'll never be disappointed.
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Winston S. Churchill

Is your favourite song, 'Always look on the bright side of life' ?

[Hypognosis]

@Khandro

iirc, France's TGV is *heavily* subsidised so it has been criticised as a flagship/vanity/feel-good project.

As net contributors to EU, we should get free tickets!
;-)

[KARL]

Kandro, for 30plus years the UK has been a troublesome member of the EU, wanting to be more equal than the rest. For 30plus years the UK has blamed the EU for most/all of its problems. I suspect that Brexit will have two beneficial outcomes: With the UK gone the EU will be rid of one problem and therefore able to better address any others. Eventually, say a decade or two after actually leaving, the UK will (mostly) cease blaming the EU and hopefully have to face reality. Is this pessimism ? There may in fact be excessive optimism in the latter vision, as I have described it.

[jno]

Talbot: because I wanted to know what Khandro - the OP, after all - had in mind.

[DTCwordfan]

I lived in China in the 90s as it was opening up.

Given the finance is available - read between the lines, as to the LLE peninsula, EU money and wherever as part of modernising them, and bringing them through politically, and therein you have the answer. Whatever technology is in discussion/project, yu do not upgrade to the next level, you go for best in class, be it phones, railways, airport, broadband or roads or whatever....and forget the missing technology generations between.

That is what Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia has done, as has the PRC and, to some extent, India and others....the question being who is providing the dosh to finance the quantum leap forward.