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I see that HS2rebellion have finally updated their map of protest camps along the route. Well, sort of! It’s no more truthful than their last one, but at least they’ve tacitly admitted their efforts to stop HS2 have been a complete waste of time. Their camp map has gone from this (with my annotations) which listed 10 camps…

to this, which lists just four.

As usual, there’s just one teeny problem. This is ‘map’ is as exaggerated as their last one, because two of these camps no longer exist! The Wormwood Scrubs squatter camp was demolished and the people living in it moved on last month. The Jones’ Hill woods camp is also deserted. Having stopped nothing and serving no useful purpose because the trees they were supposedly ‘protecting’ have been felled, the occupants (like serial pork pie teller Mark Keir) have scattered to the four winds. Most have simply given up and gone home.

This leaves just two, sparsely occupied camps. The sole remaining camp left on HS2 phase 1 – the risibly named Wendover ‘active resistance’ camp (whose only stunt in weeks was to block an old woman’s driveway) – and the utterly pointless Bluebell wood camp which is on the phase 2a route to Crewe where the main civils work won’t start until 2024, leaving the few occupants twiddling their thumbs for the next couple of years (or until they get bored and go home, which is more likely). Of course, the Wendover camp is living on borrowed time. It will be evicted any time now, bringing an end to the hopeless ‘rebellion’ which is going to survive in name only. Just like its predecessors including ‘StopHs2’ it’s a become little more than a couple of social media accounts that recycle any media articles critical of HS2 as a way of pretending they’re actually doing something other than still begging for money from gullible people via Crowdfunders.

This lack of action from the remaining squatter camps hasn’t gone unnoticed – even from their supporters, as this rather waspish comment that was posted on the Bluebell camps Facebook page shows!

Feel the burn!

I predict that the end of HS2 ‘rebellion’ is nigh. They’ve had a lousy summer, a time at which they could be expected to be at their busiest. Instead they’ve been anything but. Now Autumn’s upon us and all too soon winter will arrive. The ‘glamour’ of living in woodlands when it’s clear you’re wasting your time soon wanes – especially when the donations that funded you have dried up. Cold, hunger and the realisation that you’ve been useless really isn’t good for morale. Add to that the fact the work to build HS2 has ramped up and proved to be unstoppable and you have to think, what’s the point?

Stop HS2 is dead. It’s all over bar the bluster now…

I’ve a favour to ask…
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