It’s several months seen I’ve done one of these, mainly because there’s so few people left protesting against HS2 now that their campaign’s collapsed. Finally, the tiny bunch of squatters at the risibly named Wendover ‘active resistance’ camp have remembered what their camp’s named and decided they better do something other than sit around bumming money via the internet whilst waiting to be evicted.

Come the hour cometh the man! Step forward ‘Drew Robson’ (not his real name, just the one he uses on Facebook), who, along with another person, decided to repeat their old tactic of blocking the entrance to the nearby HS2 work compound by fastening themselves to a ‘lock-on’ (a barrel filled with concrete that’s meant to make it hard for them to be moved).

There was only one tiny problem. Drew’s useless at this. He once glued his hands together through a gate in another ‘cunning plan’ that was an abject failure as the gate he chose wasn’t actually being used by anyone. Clearly, learning from his mistakes isn’t his forte? Why? Well, the comments to this post on the HS2 Rebellion Facebook page rather give the game away…

When HS2rebellion tried to defend this stunt as bringing attention that a ‘fight’ against HS2 was still happening, Aron went on to explain further..

Yep, ‘Drew’ has got it wrong again! What the protesters fail to explain to their gullible audience is that HS2 compounds usually have far more than one gate and the ‘main’ gates are always staffed 24/7, making these stunts rather difficult.

So, Drew (and his friend) have achieved the sum total of sod-all. Again. Their sole achievement has been to block some poor person’s driveway!

‘Drew’ will possibly get arrested again, but as he’s already got a recent conviction for aggravated trespass and criminal damage at another HS2 site I can’t imagine the Magistrates will be terribly impressed with him reappearing. What a waste of everyone’s time. To put this silly stunt in perspective, there’s currently over 300 active worksites on phase 1 of HS2. Many have several entrances/exits. Blocking one (unused) entrance for a couple of hours is just pis*ing in the wind.

UPDATE.

By early afternoon the whole silly stunt was at an end. Despite the best efforts of HS2rebellion to ‘big up’ the farce more knowledgeable locals kept bursting their bubble.

I had to laugh when ‘Drew’ posted this on his Facebook page earlier.

‘Disruption’? What disruption – unless you count the poor person who’s driveway was blocked! If today’s farce was a ‘complete success’ I hate to think what failure looks like!

UPDATE.

The farce just gets better. After persistent pointing out from locals HS2 ‘rebellion’ finally admit that they were lying when they claimed this was the ‘main entrance’ and all they’ve done is inconvenience a local old lady! Still, it must be reassuring for her to knew that she ‘wasn’t the point’. Answers on a postcard please as to what the point really was…

2023 Update.

After Wendover was evicted ‘Drew’ pitched up at the ‘bluebell’ camp in Staffordshire where he continued with the same daft publicity stunts that achieved the sum total of naff all, other than gull a few people who continued to donate to crowdfunders under the mistaken belief muppets like ‘Drew’ were actually stopping HS2. The truth was these ‘cupid stunts’ failed to achieve anything other than waste time and money. The ‘rebellion’ collapsed completely in 2022 and now Drew (like all the other professional protesters) has drifted off to other causes. He’s currently achieving nothing in the Manchester area where he’s attached himself to the pro-Palestinian cause. HS2rebellion now exist in name only. A few kids still have access to the social media accounts and publish whatever make-believe or newspaper articles they can find that are critical of HS2, but that’s all they’re doing.

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