Monthly Archives: October 2016

Too busy writing for a living…

26 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in RAIL magazine, Transport, Work

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Apologies for the lack of blogs recently but I’ve been to busy writing for a living rather than pleasure! Earlier today I finished writing the final article in my trilogy for RAIL magazine. It was good timing as part 2 of the series hit newsagents shelves today.

Every two years RAIL commission me to travel around the UKs railways for a week. I get to see the good the bad and the ugly – then write all about it. As this is the seventh year I’ve been doing the trips (I started in 2004) we made it a little different. Instead of out and back, circular trips I started in Penzance and finished in Wick. It was great as it gave me the opportunity to include lines I’d not travelled on before. Here’s a preview of today’s piece, published in RAIL No 812:

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RAIL 812 is on sale from today until the next edition (and final part of my article) appears on Wednesday 9th December

Now this has been done and the nights are drawing in I should be working from home more, I’m hoping that will leave me a bit more time for blogging. That said, I’ve still got tens of thousands of slides to scan!

Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week: No 19.

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week, Hs2, StopHs2

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I haven’t highlighted any individual campaigners for some months now as the whole StopHs2 campaign’s crazy nowadays but I couldn’t resist this outstanding example. So, step forward Nicholas Ward – who’s standing as a Stophs2 candidate in tomorrow’s Witney by-election!

Witney is an ultra-safe Tory seat that was the constituency of David Cameron, the former Prime Minster, who held it with a majority of 25,155. Ward, who lives in Greatworth near Banbury has decided that this is the ideal place for him to persuade voters that Hs2 is such a major issue (even though it’ll go nowhere near the place) they’ll reject their Tory tendencies to elect him as their MP instead. There’s a grand total of 14 candidates standing in Witney which means Ward has to fight for votes against parties with far more credibility, like The Monster Raving Loony party, or bus pass Elvis!

Ward’s website claims that “there is little to be gained from voting for one of the main parties in this by-election” as if Brexit and the economy are somehow a side-show in Witney compared to Hs2. He goes on to claim that he’s “always worked on the basis that, no matter how difficult the odds, one had to go on trying to achieve one’s objective for as long as there was any chance of success. This attitude has motivated his decision to stand in the Witney by-election.”
How Ward expects to be able to do anything about Hs2 (even if by some incredible miracle he was elected) is a mystery as the project has solid cross-party support and the Hs2 bill sailed through Parliament with a massive 411 majority. Like many other Hs2 antis Ward doesn’t understand that the general public don’t share his obsession with the project. It’s an attitude that’s bedevilled the anti hs2 campaign from the beginning, leading to them making serious tactical errors by assuming ordinary voters will ‘rally round’ – as Ward is doing. It’s a tactic that’s backfired time and time again as all it’s done is expose how little support they really have. Ward is doomed to repeat this failure when the by-election result is declared on Thursday night/Friday morning. If this isn’t crazy, then…

POST-RESULT UPDATE.

Mr Ward managed to get all of 92 votes. This beat his previous total of 63 votes from when he stood in Westminster North at the General election. It equates to 0.2% of all votes cast in Witney.

 

Why Hs2 antis should finally give up on petitions.

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Railways, StopHs2, Yorkshire

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I’ve often said that the Stop hs2 campaign never learns from its mistakes. I’ve been provided with another great example of this today when one of the campaigns long-standing Walter Mittys’ (the fantasist Nicholas Batty) tweeted a link to yet another daft petition on the Government’s website.

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Here’s a link to the actual petition.

Needless to say I went to have a look. The petition was started by a Stephen Simcox from Rotherham on the 26th July 2016 & closes on the 21st January 2017 (all petitions are set to close automatically after 6 months) It’s gathered a grand total of 467 signatures since. It hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of success but what I found really interesting was that someone in the Civil Service has been expanding the data these petitions carry. Not only do they tell you the number of signatures from each of the 650 Parliamentary constituencies, now they also tell you what percentage of registered voters have signed. This is extremely useful as it tells you how much people in that constituency care (or rather, don’t care) about an issue. However, for the Stop Hs2 campaigners it’s a disaster, as it allows you to define just how little support they have!

Here’s a screengrab of the constituency map.

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This shows that the greatest number of signatures (a ‘whopping’ 121) come from the Rother Valley constituency on phase 2 of Hs2. 2nd is 62 signatures from the Doncaster North constituency. Now this can be put into context thanks to the new feature.

Rother Valley has 94,959 constituents and a *cough* massive 0.13% of them have signed the petition! In Doncaster North that’s 0.06%. Somehow, I don’t think any MPs are going to be losing sleep over this.

Phase 2 StopHs2 campaigners are running a carbon-copy of the campaign that failed to stop Hs2 on phase 1 in the South. It’s crazy as they don’t have the money or support that their Southern counterparts had. Not only that but the two surviving umbrella groups (Hs2aa and StopHs2) are both based in the South. Neither of them are likely to survive beyond Phase 1 receiving Royal Assent – which will leave phase 2 protestors without any logistical or technical support. The Yorkshire stophs2 campaign is isolated anyway as it doesn’t even have the support of its local MPs (for example, Doncaster North’s Ed Milliband is a firm supporter of Hs2). They’re also up against Yorkshire business groups who’re strong supporters of the project. There’s also the problem of a lack of unity between old and new groups in Yorkshire as some are campaigning for the Hs2 route to be moved back to Meadowhall!

In short, the Yorkshire Stophs2 campaign’s over before it’s even started.

The sad thing about all this is that the people who are genuinely affected by Hs2 are being led up the garden path by the likes of Joe Rukin from Stop Hs2. Instead of campaigning for  the best route possible, maximum mitigation and benefits to their communities from new facilities funded by Hs2 Ltd, they’ve been conned into wasting their time fighting a battle they can’t possibly win by trying to stop Hs2 altogether.

UPDATE.

Since this blog was written (6 days ago) signatures have gone up by 253, from 464 to 720 – or 42.1 a day. The problem is, a petition like this needs an average of 556 signatures per day to stand any chance of getting past the magic 100,000, and each day it fails, that number increases…

StopHs2 rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic…

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2 Bow Group, Hs2aa, StopHs2

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These days, observing British politics is a surreal and scary experience. The Tory party conference especially so. I actually thought I’d switched on a repeat of an old UKIP one by mistake when I heard the anti foreigner rhetoric and the plans to make companies ‘register’ all their foreign workers. and ‘name and shame’ them if they don’t employ British workers. After all, the idea is crass enough, xenophobic enough and stupid enough to have come from UKIP, but no. It really is the party of Government who have suggested it.

However there was another surreal event at conference, which was to do with the StopHs2 campaign and it was more comical and farcical than anything.

Campaign group StopHs2 ‘launched’ a new ‘briefing paper’ at a fringe meeting yesterday. Laughably they tried to pretend it was bigger than just them by roping in other old names, namely Hs2aa and AGAHST, which is rather amusing as AGAHST bit the dust some years ago, as you can see from their abandoned website   Nothing’s been heard from them for years but their former Communications Director, Deanne DuKhan did attend for appearance’s sake. Poor Deanne never did get much right during her time at AGAHST, as this missive she penned in April 2012 shows. A search of the internet doesn’t reveal any trace of her in relation to Hs2 and AGAHST since 2013, which is rather odd as she’s the sole remaining Director!

The ‘briefing paper’ that was launched by StopHs2 can be found here.

It’s essentially a 16 page rambling rehash of anything and everything (and anyone) that they can find that’s ever been critical of Hs2. It also contains some outright lies which (despite them having been exposed) they’re still trotting out – like this one:

lie

I exposed that one way back in February 2015 (see here)

StopHs2 say “The paper will be circulated to all MPs and Lords following party conferences”. Talk about a waste of time! There’s not a cat in hell’s chance of anyone stopping the phase 1 Hybrid Bill this late in the day. MPs won’t be debating it again and the Lords can’t stop Hs2 at 3rd reading, which is expected in November-early December. Plus, if this regurgitation of old arguments couldn’t stop Phase 1, there’s no chance of it stopping phase 2 (even if anyone remembers it by then).

Even everyday anti Hs2 protestors seem to have twigged this, as this comment on the StopHs2 Facebook page reveals.

kinch

Which rather says it all. Today Teresa May closed the Tory party conference with a clear commitment to build not just phase 1 but also phase 2 of HS2. “We will press ahead with plans for HS2” she said, echoing the earlier statement to conference from of her Transport Minister, Chis Grayling.

Stophs2 might as well have saved their money and chucked their ‘briefing paper’ straight into the recycling bin. All they’re doing is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic…