Some people never learn. In this case it’s the dwindling bunch of Nimbys who still oppose HS2 and think that their sense of entitlement somehow trumps the transport infrastructure needs of the UK, especially in this time of climate change, where we really do need the rail capacity to get folks out of planes and cars and onto carbon-neutral trains.

Despite everything that’s happened in the past few months, what with the Conservatives gaining a solid Parliamentary majority and half the MPs who previously opposed HS2 losing their seats since 2014 – the tiny band who fly the flag of ‘StopHs2’ haven’t learned a thing in a decade.

Short of any real plan, far less a cunning one, they’ve fallen back on the same failed tactics that have never stood them in good stead – even when there was lots more of them!

They’ve started another petition…

Because petitions have worked so well for them in the past, obviously!

Here’s a link to the latest one, which has got off to a less than stratospheric start (as I scribble this it has 867 signatures after 3 days). It’s been started by one Elizabeth Williams, whom I’m assuming is the same ‘Lizzie’ Williams who started StopHs2 until she had to hand over the reins of the groups as her behaviour was in danger of imploding it.

Why they still bother with these petitions is a total mystery as all they ever do is three things – get less and less signatures each time, prove the fact that the vast majority of folk signing them live in the 63 constituencies Hs2 passes through – and that the majority of those signing live on Phase 1! Here’s the petition map from today which (as ever) shows that – by total co-incidence – the most signatures are from constituencies on Phase 1. You can imagine my surprise….

This petition will do exactly the same as all the others. It’s doomed to failure from the start. It also shows that – despite have run several of these pointless exercises in the past – they’ve never actually twigged their limitations. Just say for the sake of argument they get 100,oo signatures (hell will freeze over first). What happens then? How will that stop HS2? It won’t. Here’s what it says on the front page of each petition.

“Considered for debate”. Debate, not vote. There is no vote. The petition is toothless. Mind you, even if there was a vote HS2 would win it hands down with a huge majority as the project has cross-party support! It’s an utterly pointless exercise.

Still, it does do one thing. It gives me a few numbers to crunch and empirical evidence of the weakness of the StopHs2 campaign. So, it will be interesting to compare it with the results of 2019, 2018 or even some of their earlier efforts.

Meanwhile, in the real world, construction of HS2 ramps up…

Don’t expect many updates on the progress (or rather lack of) of this petition. I may pop in once a month just to see how badly it’s doing, but it’s really not worth wasting more time on than that.