Hs2 ‘rebellion’ and the other anti rail protesters are set to have yet another bad week, partly due to their own incompetence and habit of lying. Never was the Extinction Rebellion slogan ‘tell the truth’ more warped than when its used by the XR people who’re opposing HS2.
In the early hours of this morning bailiffs and HS2 staff moved in on the Denham ‘protection’ camp, a squalid site occupied by a handful of protesters on the edge of North-West London near Ruislip. The protesters had gone to a lot of effort to build a couple of towers out of old pallets and scrap timber, claiming these structures would resist being evicted. As usual, it was a hollow boast. Time and time again we’ve seen these structures thrown up at protest camps and not one of them lasts more than a day or two because there’s so few people to occupy them and the bailiffs and contractors have sophisticated equipment and the tactics to negate them. Still, I suppose we should be grateful that the protesters still use the same unimaginative and failed tactics time and time again.
The two towers at Denham didn’t survive beyond lunchtime. The first was evicted and demolished before breakfast and the second was emptied of the two people inside it before one o’ clock. All that remains at the time of writing is an unknown number of people in at least one tree. I wouldn’t expect them to last the day if the bailiffs decide to take them down. The whole event has been yet another sorry waste of people’s time and money – and I include in that the mugs who’ve coughed up money to finance the protest camps via numerous appeals and crowdfunders. ‘Stop’ HS2? How, when these people can’t even stop themselves being evicted? Of course, regular readers may well remember Denham as being the site of another of the protesters towering failures! It was here that they put the famous (but useless) ‘Swampy’ up in a bamboo tower to stop National Grid from building a bridge across a stream. That one didn’t last more than a day either! No doubt by the end of the week HS2Rebellion will be spinning like tops to present this latest debacle as a ‘heroic resistance’ and some kind of victory when the reality is that they’re rapidly facing the extinction of their camp network as there’s simply too few of them anywhere to prevent an eviction. Another sign that people are losing interest in their futile campaign is just how few people watch or respond to their livestreams and social media posts now compared to a year ago.
Not that sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ on Facebook (Or Twitter, Instagram, etc) was ever going to do any good. I’ll be interested to see how the funding tap fares over the next few weeks. Will the mugs who give them money start to realise all they’re doing is throwing it away?
Unsurprisingly, the protesters videos of the eviction featured the same handful of faces. Refugees from numerous other evictions. Some of them have now been evicted at least 3-4 times! These peripatetic protesters are doomed to drift from camp to camp, but their options are shrinking rapidly, which is why so many have given up the fight and drifted away, either by going home or heading off to other non-HS2 events like the Stonehenge road protest. Other have had their wings clipped by bail conditions after being arrested for futile actions like climbing onto contractors lorries or blocking entrances to worksites.
As ‘direct action’ has failed, HS2Rebellion are left with their equally useless social media campaign. Quite how a few people with no influence spouting untruths on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram are meant to stop the largest construction project in Europe is a mystery, but then they’ve spent so much time lying about the project they’ve clearly fallen for their own propaganda. Here’s an example of their latest blatant lies.
As Pete Johnson has pointed out, the photographs are of the East-West rail project which is reinstating the old railway from Oxford to Cambridge – the old ‘Varsity Line’. Ignoring the breathtaking hypocrisy of people who’re always whining that reopening old railways is a viable alternative to HS2 whining about reopening an old railway – this is a good example of the depths HS2Rebellion will sink to as they obviously know these are not photographs of HS2. It’s also a good example of how UK ‘environmentalists’ have completely lost the plot nowadays and are actively opposing the expansion of the rail network and the greenest form of travel. Mad, utterly mad…
In other news another serial failure was back in the Courts last week, but not for long! Joe Rukin, StopHs2’s ‘Campaign Manager’ had yet another application for a Judicial Review thrown out. The Judge ruled that Rukin had nothing new to say and was essentially trying to re-run celebrity environmentalist Chris Packham’s failed legal action. With no prospect of success and with no other avenues open to them, you really have to wonder what’s the point of Rukin and ‘StopHs2’ now?
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The only conclusion you can reach is a very sad one. It seems those at the top of the environmental lobby have been so infiltrated and brainwashed by the road lobby and petro-chemical interests as to completely kill the cause.
We need a responsible, independent environmental lobby, but we simply don’t have one in the UK.
Whilst it makes a good conspiracy theory, I doubt the oil lobby need to bother going to such lengths. They have found themselves a bunch of already self radicalised “useful idiots” who they only need gently applaud from the sidelines and (anonymously via crowdfunder et al) bung a few quid here and there.
I think it’s more likely what we have is a some “tree fundamentalists” who think we should all live as subsistence farmers, growing our own food in the back garden, etc.and the extreme left who have unilaterally decided that western democratic society and rule of law isn’t working for them and wish to ferment insurrection to try and over-throw it all and install their own particularly nasty versions of autocratic communism (with them in charge of course.)
All of the above (any may more causes, political parties and campaigns besides) are “greenwashing” themselves to try and gain some credibility for their positions and politics as more and more of a mostly dis-interested general public have at least “heard” of “this environment thing” even if they aren’t doing much about it themselves.
Anyhoo – this is Paul’s blog not my soapbox, so i really should not try and hijack it.
Mo problem gents. Discussion here is good. ‘Greenwashing’ is evident amongst the Nimbys on the route who’ve jumped on the environmental bandwagon as a fig-leaf to try and disguise the fact that – really – they’re just Nimbys. We can see this in action around Calvert where they’re now opposing East-West rail as well as HS2.
If everyone, in fact if even half the population, went back to living on the land there wouldn’t be a single tree left in no time at all as wood disappeared into stoves to keep people warm and fed.
And war’s rise up and people kill other people from the need to monopolise resources.
By the way, is there even a need to remove the Denham Camp?? If not then the fact HS2 have men to spare to do it tells us something.
The protesters claim the towers were blocking HS2 from carrying out work, but I’ve no confirmation of that. By 4pm today they’d disappeared completely and a bulldozer was clearing the site.
Strange, as the site is as far as I aware not even on the line of route of Hs2, the works were National Grid moving a tower out of HS2’s way. All a bit like Euston, holding up works not even on a HS2 worksite. Oh well we shall see.
Most of these people are just “professional” protesters and the youth they’ve inspired. I doubt they care much about HS2 given how little knowledge on it they display, but if there’s a reason to stick it to the man they’ll be there.
Whilst they all cluster around the London end HS2 can actually get on unhindered from Birmingham to Calvert.