Author Archives: Paul Bigland

It’s the final countdown…

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2 petitions, Hs2aa, StopHs2

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Well, of 2015 anyway – although I doubt I’ll be crunching the anti Hs2 campaign’s numbers for too much of 2016 as they’re so awful!

So, without further ado, here’s the ‘scores on the doors’ – 11 months data on the antis social media campaign.

anti Hs2 stats Dec 2015

The statistics carry the standard caveat: Not everyone following is a supporter, many are there just to keep an eye on them. Also, the increases have to be seen in the context of coming from a very low base to start with. To put StopHs2’s 4547 Twitter followers in context – In December 2014 there were 45,325,078 registered voters in the UK! The anti Hs2 groups penetration is tiny & their following minute.

Another interesting fact is that, despite StopHs2 trying to bolster their numbers in recent months (this blog has obviously stung them) – their numbers are starting to fall back again & the others are doing just as bad.

Their social media campaign’s doing little other than exposing their weaknesses now more & more people are giving up on it. What it’s highlighting is their campaign is increasingly relying on their fruitcake elements to keep it alive. Here’s some examples from first Twitter, then Facebook:

sensible

jones 1

out of tweet

fb2

Does any of this sound like people who’re going to achieve the one thing they need – political backing? Of course not, which is why their campaign’s dying.

Two of their organisations (AGAHST and 51M) are already history and the  remaining two,  StopHs2 and Hs2aa are looking increasing desperate and rocky. Hs2aa have had a lousy few months. They’re running out of money to fund themselves so, as a consequence they’re reining in their minimal activities even more. Their Twitter campaign is nothing better than a desultory retweeting service that hasn’t seen any activity since December 7th. Neither has their website – other then regularly being taken down by hackers. To make matters worse, positive news on their last legal action that was due to be heard this week seems to be rather thin on the ground…

In truth Hs2aa only seem to have one aim now – and that’s to fight a rearguard action at the petitioning committee to try & secure a full length tunnel under their heartland – the Chilterns. It’s a forlorn hope.

Meanwhile, StopHs2 are doing – nothing! Joe Rukin has had a couple of turns booked at the petitioning Committee in January and that’s it. Talking of the petitioning Committee – they’ve really gone into overdrive with the intent of having everything wound up early in the new year. Just have a look at their programme for January.

There’s a few things of interest here. One is the number of locus standi challenges, the other is the number of petitioners who fail to turn up to the have their petitions heard. Clearly, many of the frivolous ones have  realised the game is up. This is good for two reasons. It’s speeding up the process and it’s freeing time for those who have a genuine grievance.

All of this means the anti Hs2 campaign’s living on borrowed time. There’s no earthly way they can achieve their aim without political support, which they’ve failed to gain. Meanwhile, the Hs2 project continues to gather momentum and support.

The only question now is which will be the next group to collapse. Hs2aa or Stophs2?

Another fact-free rant from Simon Heffer

20 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Simon Heffer, Uncategorized

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It’s not hard to see why members of the fourth estate are often held in low esteem when you read unmitigated fact-free nonsense from the likes of Simon Heffer. The man has long opposed Hs2 & uses his Telegraph column to try & rubbish the project as a way of attacking his bete noir, Rime Minister David Cameron. Like another of the projects opponents (Simon Jenkins in the Guardian) he never lets the facts get in the way of his diatribes.

Take yesterday’s Telegraph article as an example.

Amongst the ridiculous claims is this gem about Hs2; ” It has no connections to the existing network; no connections to a possibly expanded Heathrow”

This will come as news to the people of places like Crewe, which is getting a new Hs2 station precisely because of those connections! Or the fact that the East Midlands station will be at Toton because of the connectivity it will be able to offer. London-centric Heffer has even managed to ignore the fact there will be a major interchange at Old Oak Common which will allow folks to easily reach Heathrow.

Oh, and what about the fleet of classic compatible trains that will run off the new Hs2 line to directly serve stations across the network such as York, Newcastle, Wigan, Warringon, Preston, Carlisle and Glasgow? These will start running as soon as phase 1 opens in 2026.

Heffer then thunders that building Hs2 is “undemocratic” as the legislation hasn’t yet been passed. He studiously ignores the fact that the Hs2 Preparation Bill (allowing, as its name suggests, preparation work to begin) gained Royal Assent as far back as November 2013. He also refuses to acknowledge that the Hs2 Hybrid Bill’s 2nd reading had a stonking majority of 411, is going through the democratic process now – and still has the support of all the major political parties! It will receive Royal Assent next year and there’s no way a dying number of anti Hs2 protesters or dyspeptic right-wing newspaper columnists can stop it.

Sheffield upsets the anti Hs2 mob…

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Sheffield, Uncategorized

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For years the anti Hs2 campaign has peddled the lie that no-one wants Hs2. To reinforce the claim they search out & share any newspaper clickbait poll they can find so they that can rig it to give a result in their favour. They then parade these as ‘evidence’ that the UK universally rejects Hs2.

So, you can imagine their consternation when the Sheffield Star (with the backing of the City Council) not only supports Hs2 but also starts a campaign to get the station moved from Meadowhall into the city centre! You can find it here.

Such heresy couldn’t go unchallenged, so the Hs2 antis jumped in with both feet. In this case the feet belonged to Stop Hs2 Campaign Manager Joe Rukin & the unpleasant and libelous Camden Nimby, Peter Jones. Here’s a selection of their tweets.

DD Sheff 1

Rukin Sheff1

 

Bonkers, isn’t it? Why Warwickshire based Rukin or Camden Nimby Jones think the good burghers and residents of Sheffield will be swayed by their ranting is beyond rational thought, but then the anti Hs2 campaign and common sense have always been strangers. Their campaign is as mad as a box of frogs nowadays as any sensible people deserted it a long time ago.

Meanwhile, the rest of the anti Hs2 campaign continues to unravel. The Hs2 Hybrid Bill committee have gone into overdrive with the intention of seeing off the remaining petitions early in the new year. Hs2aa have gone strangely quiet, considering their final legal action should have been heard over the past couple of days. Nothing has been heard from them for 10 days now and to add to their woes their website has been hacked again!

hs2aa

One can only wonder how far into 2016 the increasingly shambolic anti Hs2 campaign organisations will limp along.

Getting into the Xmas spirit

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Great Western Railway, Modern Railways, Uncategorized

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Many years ago, when I first turned freelance & ditched my job in housing I had a cartoon over my desk at home. It was of a chap wearing a paper hat, clutching a glass of wine and standing in front of a mirror. He was talking to himself, saying “the only problem with working from home is the office Xmas party is crap”. It really tickled me as it summed up the situation many freelances find themselves in this time of year.

I’m reminded of this because I’m currently on my way to an office party with a difference. Modern Railways magazine Editor Jim Abbott has invited me to join himself and other regular contributors to the magazine on their Xmas bash aboard a Great Western Railways train from London to Bristol. Our little gathering has very kindly been arranged by GWR MD Mark Hopwood & his staff, who are hosting us for the second year running.

I’ll be back in London again tomorrow to join both railway and media colleagues at the annual Railway Carol Service at St Mary’s Somers Town, Eversholt St  (which in aid of the Transport Benevolent Fund). It starts at 12:30, should any of you want to join us.

Maybe the Xmas party season isn’t so bad after all…

 

Heathrow shows the anti Hs2 campaign’s toothless

11 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Heathrow 3rd runway, Hs2, Hs2aa, StopHs2

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Today’s announcement that a decision on a 3rd runway at Heathrow has been postponed should leave anti Hs2 campaigners with their heads in their hands. Why? Because it highlights just how inconsequential they are and how ineffective they’ve been.

The Heathrow postponement is widely seen as a political maneuver to avoid the Tories being embarrassed during the London mayoral elections in May as their candidate, Zac Goldsmith, is an implacable opponent of Heathrow expansion.

In contrast, the Tories (and all the other parties for that matter) have shown no real concern that Hs2 would have politically adverse affects. This is a huge blow for the the anti Hs2 mob as for years they’ve  pretended the high speed line is a political hot potato. What’s interesting is that Heathrow is essentially a local London/South-East issue whilst Hs2 affects much more of the UK and far more constituencies.

As Hs2 isn’t seen as a negative political issue one can only wonder how much longer the anti Hs2 campaign can stagger on for. They’ve been on the back-foot ever since the Hybrid Bill passed with such a stonking majority, the general election result compounded their woes and they’ve had no good news for years. There’s none in the offing.

I wonder how much longer their remaining groups (StopHs2 and Hs2aa)  will last into 2016? Joe Rukin’s laughable claim that there were ‘reasons to be cheerful‘ looks increasingly likely to be his epithet.

 

Trump trumps the anti Hs2 mob.

09 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Bigotry, Hs2, Mid Cheshire against Hs2

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Nowadays the anti Hs2 campaign provides more comedy gold than it does a credible threat that can stophs2. The past 24 hours have provided yet another  example of that, as well as a lesson in how not to use social media.

Since May 2014 there’s been an anti Hs2 Tweetbot in town with the laughable moniker of ‘Hs2Facts’. It’s laughable because facts are in short supply – although there’s unintentional humour in abundance. This particular tweetbot started a poll, asking folk to register their Yes/No votes on Hs2. Like much of the anti’s social media campaign – all it’s done is shoot them in the foot. After 18 months the result is? A grand total of 220 no votes. To make it even more delicious the twitter names are displayed – so straight away you can see it’s all the usual suspects.

tweetbot

Meanwhile, in the real world, real people have got rather upset about American Presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s tirades and his call to ban Muslims from the USA. So much so that yesterday, one person decided to set up a petition on the Governments website, calling for him to be banned from th UK. 24 hours later, this was the result:

trump.PNG

It puts the anti Hs2 mob claims of support into perspective, doesn’t it? Remember, these same nutters once claimed that their protest was bigger than the one against the poll tax!

The anti hs2 mobs social media campaign is the gift that keeps on giving…

UPDATE:

It’s Thursday morning and the Trump petition has now passed the 402,000 mark with little sign of it slowing. If you want to add your name, here’s a link

Meanwhile, the anti Hs2 mob are still stuck on 220…

More crap journalism from the Independent

06 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in High Speed UK, Hs2

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Once again the Independent shows that critical journalism is a dying art by publishing an article on a supposed “alternative” to Hs2 called High Speed UK. The article written by Dean Kirby is nothing better than one long advert for HSUK that looks like it’s been cobbled together from press releases ahead of Saturday’s talk in Birmingham that was sponsored by the Fabians.

Note that no-one other than HSUK has any input and the author hasn’t even bothered to corroborate any of HSUK’s dubious assertions – like the one that their plans are “fully costed” (they’re not) or that HSUK will be £20bn “cheaper” than HS2. Kirby goes on the write that “The scheme has the backing of campaign group re:think HS2. Other supporters include Greg Mulholland, Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West.”

So, who are re:thinkHs2? It’s a website & Twitter account with no registered address. The names associated with it are Neale Upstone (a former Lib-Dem candidate in Wolverhampton) and Stephen Stretton who appears to be an unknown. They have 240 Twitter followers. This is largely made up of the usual rag-bag of anti Hs2 mob accounts, a few fellow Lib-Dems and one or two folks there to keep an eye on them. Not exactly what you’d call an influential group.

As for their “other supporters” there’s only the Leeds Liberal Democrat MP Greg Mulholland and – err, that’s it. Oh, apart from arch anti Hs2 writer Christian Wolmar. Hardly a force to be reckoned with, although the recurring link to the Lib Dems is interesting.

The reality is that HSUK is a table-top operation that’s the brainchild of two people, Civil engineers Colin Elliff and Quentin Macdonald (interestingly, another Lib-Dem & ex-York Cllr) and – that’s your lot, really. There’s no organisation behind them. They’ve no backing from rail passenger of freight companies, industry bodies, financiers, Network Rail – or any of the political parties. All they have is a coterie of people who all appear to be Lib-Dems. Their idea isn’t even new. Elliff has been touting it around in different incarnations for years without any takers. See how many of their HSUK maps are copyright 2005! Those who have been around the transport debate will remember “High Speed North” – Elliff’s previous scheme which has been re-badged as HSUK.

This kitchen table plan is meant to force a rethink on Hs2? I don’t think so. Even Hyperloop has a better chance!

I can only assume it was a slow news day at the Independent.

Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week. No 16

01 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week, Hs2

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Although the week has only just begun I think it’s going to be hard to beat this lunacy from the Twitter account of the Mid Cheshire anti Hs2 group.

Admittedly, they have a lot of form for spouting complete nonsense. After all, it was one of their members who claimed that the anti Hs2 campaign was bigger than the 1990s poll tax demonstrations (stop sniggering at the back!). I doubted they’d be able to top that but I have to say the anti Hs2 mob always seem to be able to exceed my expectations. Take a look at this..

Mid ches

So, there you have it. Don’t build the rail capacity we need to get modal shift from road/air to rail to tackle climate change, don’t build a catalyst for massive regeneration in our major cities. Don’t create tens of thousands of jobs that will up-skill the workforce (who will then pay tax back to the government) – simply bung every ‘poor’ person in the UK £20,000 of taxpayers money, gratis – job done.

Quite what they’d been ingesting or smoking when they came up with this stunning idea is open to conjecture.

For some reason only a couple of other antis latched on to the idea, presumably because anyone with half a brain stopped and thought – “what the actual f***!”

With this level of intellect, grasp of economics and understanding of politics powering the anti Hs2 campaign, what could possibly go wrong?

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A terrible time for the anti Hs2 campaign.

28 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, StopHs2, Uncategorized

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It’s that regular time of month when I take a snapshot of the state of the anti Hs2 campaign and (for them) the news just gets worse. Let’s kick off with the usual analysis of their performance across social media – which they’ve become increasingly reliant upon as their activist base declines.

anti scores

There’s now 9 months of data to analyse and what it shows is that, despite evidence that they’ve been stung into trying to improve the numbers – they’re still getting nowhere fast.

First, remember the usual caveat, not all followers are supporters, many are simply there to keep an eye on what they’re up to. Also, many of their Twitter followers are fake accounts or sock puppets so Twitter is a very poor gauge of real support. Plus, a group of people all ranting to each other don’t really have an impact outside of their own small circle. Facebook is even more insular. It’s good for getting your message out to people who like your pages, but that means you’re only really preaching to the converted. It’s also a double-edged sword as the Stophs2 Facebook page shows. On it you can see a small group of hopelessly confused people who really can’t understand why no-one is actually listening to them, although anyone looking in can easily see why. Here’s a few recent examples;

fb1

fb2

Crunching the numbers shows their Facebook campaign is moribund with only a 5.33% increase for Stophs2 and a mere 0.74% for Hs2aa. What’s even worse is the increases are from a tiny base! As for 51M – they’ve gone backwards, but as their FB page was last updated in June 2011 & they’ve effectively ceased to exist it’s moot.

Over on Twitter things aren’t much better. The two surviving groups (stophs2 & Hs2aa) are still under 5,000 followers apiece so a 10% increase in 9 months means little. Of course, many of these followers will be the same people, which limits their spread even more. The great irony in the figures is the only person with a decent increase is the former Communications Director of another defunct group (AGAHST) who’s achieved her popularity by tweeting about anything other than Hs2! Their Twitter campaign is increasingly farcical. It’s mostly in the hands of isolated individual who try to to keep it going. The ludicrous stuff they tweet is mostly outright bonkers or offensive, it certainly won’t convert the people they need to stop Hs2 – which makes it all the more counterproductive. This is starting to tell as the numbers of retweets their nonsense gets is steadily declining.

Another sign of the anti Hs2 campaign’s decline is that the Hs2aa website is STILL blocked by virus protection software some three and a half weeks after I first blogged about it.

Meanwhile, in the real world,things are even worse. Their campaign’s had a truly awful month…

The stophs2 campaign held a secret gathering of countrywide groups that was nothing short of an embarrassment. You can read about it here. All it achieved was to show how much the strength of their campaign has declined in the past couple of years. Their woes were compounded when the Chancellor, George Osborne presented his budget review. Not only did this expose their claims that hs2 would divert money from improvements to the existing rail network, it also skewered their ridiculous claims for how much Hs2 will cost as the budget was updated to 2015 prices. You can read about that here.

Budget day also exposed a growing schism between the two remaining anti Hs2 groups. Whilst Stophs2 have been trying to spin the costs of Hs2 as “spiralling” Hs2aa members were distinctly off-message at the Hybrid Bill petitions! Hs2aa’s Hilary Wharf was part of a group that was arguing the Chilterns could have a fully bored tunnel as tunnelling costs often turned out to be lower than official estimates!  You can see their evidence to the Committee here.

So, where does this leave their campaign? Up shit creek really…

They’ve utterly failed to make any political breakthrough. Their activist base is steadily declining and their stability of the two remaining groups in looking increasingly rocky. Meanwhile, the Government and Hs2 Ltd are  pressing ahead with the project whilst the Hybrid Bill Committee are steaming ahead with the petitioning process – all of which eats further into the Stophs2 activist base.

Somehow I don’t think there’s going to be much cheer at the Stophs2 Christmas party, which is going to be their last….

Decamping to Derby…

26 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by in Rail Investment, Uncategorized

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I’m currently en-route to Derby and ‘enjoying’ kicking my heels in a very gloomy Manchester in between trains. Even my camera is squinting in this light..

That said, I’m looking to an interesting and entertaining evening at the Rail Forum East Midlands dinner which is a precursor to tomorrows annual conference which is held at Derby cricket ground.

Needless to say, there will be lots to talk about after yesterdays spending review and release of the Hendy report into Network Rails investment plans. The doom and gloom that some were predicting for the rail industry has failed to materialise. Instead, the future is looking rather rosy…

No doubt I’ll have time to do a bit of tweeting in between taking the pictures tomorrow, so feel free to follow proceedings at @PaulBigland1