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I’ve not blogged about the anti Hs2 campaign for some time, mainly because their campaign’s collapsed. There’s nothing going on nationally, just a dwindling number of folk moaning about Hs2 on Twitter. Locally, a few campaign groups on Phase 2 continue to make a noise, but their numbers are small and there’s little in the way of co-ordination.
However, last Thursday, Joe Rukin of the sole surviving ‘national’ group (Stop Hs2) decided to start yet another anti Hs2 petition using the Governments template. What a bad idea! I’ve always said that (like social media), these petitions are a double-edged sword. They’re just as likely to show a campaign’s weaknesses as much as its strengths – as is the case here. Regular readers will know I love this petition format as it provided some very interesting numbers to crunch. Signatories are identified by constituency and a total is given as a percentage of resident constituents. So, this morning I crunched the numbers. The petition will run until March 2018, which means Stophs2 have 6 months of embarrassment to come (if they last that long).
Here’s a link to the petition itself.
The map that comes with the petition’s the really useful resource as it highlights the constituents with the largest number of signs using different colours. The darker the colour, the more who’ve signed. Now, spot where Hs2 goes!
Straight away the map explodes the myth that the Stop Hs2 campaign’s national. It’s clear that it’s anything but. Folk signing the petition are mostly living on the route, with the greatest concentration on Phase 1 around the Chilterns!
Here’s the number crunching, firstly for constituencies on Hs2 Phase 1 – which is a done deal now.
The first figure is the number of constituents, the second is the number who’ve signed the petition and the final one is the percentage of constituents. The first fact that leaps out is how tiny the percentages are, the largest is just over half 1%! The second fact is that phase 1 signatories make up a third of the grand total of 6229. The other fact is that other constituencies on the phase 1 route aren’t on the spreadsheet as the numbers of signatories are so small.
Now let’s have a look at Phase 2. I’ve divided them between the two legs of Hs2, Manchester and Leeds. Lets look at the Manchester route first.
What’s fascinating about this is that so few constituencies Hs2 passes through feature. This proves what I’ve been saying for some time, the stop Hs2 campaign’s always been weak here (there’s never been a single anti Hs2 group in Manchester for example) but now it looks like it’s pretty much collapsed. Despite the presence of a small but noisy Mid-Cheshire ‘action’ group, Congleton constituency only has 25 signs. Stafford has 31.
Now let’s look at the Leeds leg.
The numbers show that all the noise that’s come from one or two groups in Yorkshire and elsewhere hasn’t translated into signatures and the percentages for the constituencies are well below what we see on phase 1, which suggests there’s far less outrage about Hs2 here.
It’s worth remembering that these petitions get the greatest number of signs in the first few days. Once the activists have signed, numbers drop off rapidly. To reach it’s target the petition needs over 555 signs every single day for the duration. There’s no chance of that happening. This petition’s utterly pointless. The only thing it’s doing is allowing people to monitor the pulse of the stophs2 ‘campaign’. Judging by these numbers, it won’t be long before someone turns off its life-support machine. I’ll report back monthly, just to monitor what happens.
Mr. Bigland’s comments are all about knocking the opposition, and certainly dismissing any counter arguments. He is one of the obsessives about HS2, not sure why!
No-one really knows whether HS2 would be a good idea or not. Certainly Chris Grayling has his doubts as in the paper HS2 Ltd. prepared to justify its construction, on his instruction any relevant information on costs, building timescale and others have been redacted in their entirety. So any justified concerns are brushed aside in a sense of “nanny knows best”. In view of the feared cost numbers – it is said that the Treasury is working on a £80bn. costs estimate – this is not acceptable. His repeated statement that there will be 300,000 passengers per day of which nearly half will be tourists is risible, and yet another example of figures simply being made up. At a time of a trend of business travel reduction of all kinds, where do his figures come from? I know he says, we’ll just hide the basis, and claim business confidentiality.
There has yet to be any independent support for HS2, surely it would be sensible to undertake a national transport strategy, HS2 might be part of the answer, like many others I would be very doubtful.
“It is said” is always code for Hs2 antis just making stuff up. You’ve no idea what’s really going on, just as you’ve never been able to stop Hs2. The fact is – Hs2 is happening.