There’s a double-bill of these coming shortly. This shouldn’t have been the first, but no matter as it was posted on social media today. Step forward serial liar Mark Keir! Keir is well-known to readers of this blog as I’ve highlighted his habit of telling the most enormous whoppers several times. One such occasion when he pants were so ablaze it would have taken most of the London Fire Brigade to put ’em out was when he claimed he was watching HS2 workers cutting down the actual tree Roald Dahl visited and wrote about in his story ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’. It was an outrageous lie of course. That tree was in a completely different wood – and it blew down years ago – as I documented in this blog. I’ve plenty of other examples of him making stuff up, this is just two examples.
Keir’s a serial fantasist who’s hung around anti HS2 camps for years, having infested various ones, starting with the Harvil Rd camp. For some bizarre reason some people hang on his every word, despite his long (long) history of failure and humiliations – including in Court. After Harvil Rd Jones’ Hill woods was another of his last stands. It’s a place he still hangs around, apparantly, but not enough to help remove the useless tip of an abandoned protest camp in Jones’ Hill woods which ‘eco-warriors’ like him have left to rot and pollute the wood. Their presence has pretty much destroyed the woodland floor leaving it barren – unlike the nearby woodlands.
This make’s Keir’s tweet even more hypocritical. Here’s what he posted.
All dead after 2 years? Really? No. It’s a bare-faced lie. How do I know? Simple. I visited this site on the 1st April and the only fool here is Keir.
In contrast to the aerial shot Keir’s deliberately used as it shows no detail I took dozens of pictures of the trees growing on the site. If any have died (and some will have), they’ve been replanted. They’re still small, so you can’t see much of them outside their protestive cardboard sheaths, but there’s plenty that you *can* see with the naked eye from the perimeter fence. This is why Keir lying like this is so dumb. Anyone passing can see he’s not telling the truth. But – as usual – his adoring (but gullible) audience fall for it.
You can find all my pictures from Jones’ Hill woods in this gallery – they’re all clearly labelled. Here’s a sample. These young trees are by the boundary fence, so hardly invisible to the naked eye! Give it another couple of months and this area will be a riot of colour.
It’s about time those opposed to HS2 woke up and smelled the coffee to realise that people like Keir have been lying to them for years. Did it stop HS2? Of course not…
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It’s back after a break over over a year – the crazy anti HS2 campaigner of the week! To be honest, at this stage in the game it would be fair to say that those left pretending they can somehow stop HS2 all fall into this category, so whilst the talent pool is more of a puddle, they all stand a chance of being featured. But this one is so deliciously bonkers as well as being a great illustration of how that’ll say anything it’s hard to beat. It’s actually Pythonesque! You’ll see why later…
A small new group has sprung up called ‘Greens against HS2’. It’s a panicked response to the success and growing influence of ‘Greens for HS2‘ who’ve done a very credible job influencing green party members by presenting them with reasoned and logical arguments. The difference between the two groups couldn’t be more marked. Those for HS2 stick to the facts and science around railways and climate change, reference their arguments and contain many experts in their fields. Those against rehash the same tired and trite disinformation and seem to be little more than individual party members with no experience or expertise in either climate science or transport or in some cases, reality!
The panic is due to the fact the Green Party is having its annual conference next week and (yet again) there’s a motion being put forward that the party ditches its hypocritical stance of supporting a new North-South high speed line ‘in principle’ but opposes it practice. That’s clearly crazy, but that’s not why I’m writing this blog. There’s something far more batshit and it’s dug up former Stop Hs2 organiser Joe Rukin to spin like a decaying top once more.
Take a look at this!
As usual, Rukin just can’t stop lying! A ‘chemical process’? What chemical process – unless you call mixing mud with water a chemical process as the slurry concerned is just that.
The leak at Ruislip was caused as a tunnel boring machine was tunnelling beneath an old borehole. Someone had forgotten to cap the borehole and a small amount of slurry foam escaped. The TBM was halted for a couple of hours whilst checks were made, then continued on its way. The borehole was sealed from the inside when the next ring of tunnel lining segments were put into place. It was a minor (if slightly embarrassing) moment. Note that the slurry escaped upwards to the surface, not outwards. The idea that this will pollute the aquifer and poison London’s drinking water is hysterical nonsense.
Here’s a link to the emergency motion, calling for “all HS2 operations around the Chiltern Aquifer to be paused”
‘StopHS2’ even tweeted out this handy little diagram pointing out where the incident allegedly occurred.
There’s one big problem they’ve neglected to mention. Guess which way these two TBMs are heading? Eastwards – away from the aquifer towards South Ruislip!In fact, by now they’re almost certain to be outside that blue coloured area! They’ve never been a credible threat to the aquifer, and now they’re even less of one! The emergency motion will be redundant before it’s even debated! Oops…!
Problem number two is that this ’emergency motion’ is nothing more than posturing. Even if the Green party accept it and even agree it, it’s nothing more than hot air. It’s as meaningful as Monty Pythons spoof ‘Popular Front for the liberation of Judea’ resolutions!
Let’s talk realpolitik for a minute. Truth be told, no-one really cares what the Green Party’s stance is on HS2 as the Green Party will never, ever hold the reins of power. They can pass as many resolutions as they like, but as long as they have no way of making them reality is it’s a waste of everyone’s time. The party has 1 MP and will never have any more. Opinion polls give them a rating of 5% nationally but that doesn’t reflect the reality of our First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system which means they don’t stand a chance of beating anyone in any other seat. Sure, they may get a few more local Councillors in the May elections, but this is way above their political pay-grade.
If the Green party do finally change their hypocritical posture on HS2 the only thing it will do is give them back some of the credibility they’ve lost (especially with transport professionals) with their mad policy – and may attract back some of the members who’ve abandoned them in frustration over it. No-one’s stopping HS2 – construction of phase 1 is well advanced and no-one’s ever abandoned a project of this magnitude at this stage of the game, so why have a policy saying you’ll stop the unstoppable when all it does is make you look incredibly stupid. The ‘green’ party is in great danger of becoming known as the anti rail party as it’s allowed its headbanging wing to morph opposition to HS2 into opposition to Northern Powerhouse Rail also (see some of the nonsense put out by greens against HS2 for evidence of that).
Meanwhile, two other HS2 TBMs are now well over half their way through boring the 10 mile long Chiltern tunnels without any serious incident and with no pollution to any aquifers in the nearly 2 years they’ve been tunnelling. The other scare story HS2 antis trotted out was that sinking the piles for the Colne Valley viaduct ‘could’ have polluted an aquifer. There’s one problem there. That work’s been completed with all piles successfully sunk – without any problems. No Londoners have keeled over through drinking ‘poisoned’ water and no lakes and streams have been polluted. Soon the various Nimbys and faux ‘greens’ are going to have to cast around for new things to scaremonger about.
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This feature makes its first appearance in 2022. Mainly because there’s so few anti HS2 people left out there and the ones that are are nearly all crazy! However, this one is such a classic self-own I couldn’t resist.
Meet Iolo Williams, a minor celebrity in the Chris Packham mould. Like Packham he never lets facts get in the way of his occasional rants about HS2. This time with hilarious consequences! Here’s his tweet from yesterday when Williams channelled his inner Jeremy Corbyn to have himself photographed sitting in the vestibule of a train.
Ignoring the fact he managed to link in a spoof Avanti West Coast Twitter account, not the real one (attention to detail, much?) there’s several problems with his tweet which is just a cut and past job of anti HS2 soundbites. Let’s start with the fact that the new HS2 railway IS “investment in the current network” as it will be part of it, not separate to it. And most delicious irony? HS2 will relieve the very line that Williams is travelling on and complaining about having to sit on the floor! Without HS2 Williams would be doomed to sit on floors forever (as he seems incapable of reserving a seat) because there’s no extra capacity to be squeezed out of the West Coast Main Line. Of course, Williams also seems ignorant of the fact we spent £9bn upgrading that line just 15 years ago, which caused massive disruption for years that led to the service hemorrhaging passengers as it was closed nearly every weekend to allow the upgrades to happen. Those people transferred to far more polluting road transport.
This isn’t the first example of cognitive dissonance and complete absence of knowledge or fact we’ve seen from Williams. I’ve blogged about him before this time last year here when I had to look him up because I’d never heard of him. That’s when I found out he shares other traits with Chris Packham. Both of them fly people around the world on expensive wildlife trips to exotic locations and charge people for their company.
So, we have a ‘conservationist’ who objects to us building low-carbon mass transport that is vital to cutting our biggest source of Co2 emissions (transport) but who’s happy to generate God knows how many tonnes of Co2 flying people around the world. Here’s a list of destinations advertised on his website. Hypocritical, much? Even his Spanish trips advertise flights although it’s perfectly possible to get there by very low carbon transport (rail).
The Costa Rica trip alone involves a round trip flight of just under 11,000 miles!
This is why you should ignore the pronouncements of ‘conservationists’ when it come to the environment. They’re often part of the problem, not part of the solution. Here’s the science these people ignore. What Williams is opposing is on the bottom of this chart. What he’s based a business around is the opposite…
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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.
No doubt their Facebook friends and other ‘keyboard warriors will swallow the ‘main gate’ nonsense hook, line and sinker, but more enquiring minds might look at another of the pictures posted on the Rebellion Facebook page and say “that is a *main* gate? Really, at that width? You’re not going to get any wide loads through there, and where’s the site office?”
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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With the collapse of the anti HS2 ‘protection’ camps and protest on the ground, the shambolic remnants of their campaign (and I use that word loosely) spend more and more of the little time they have trying to shore-up their social media efforts to oppose HS2. Like the folks on the ground, this has mostly evaporated as the young people recruited via Extinction Rebellion who made up the bulk of it have (like many young people) short attention-spans. Most have already moved on to whatever lost cause is the latest ‘thing’. What’s left are retreating into an increasingly out of touch world which makes me wonder what some of them have been smoking/ingesting. Here’s an absolute classic of that genre!
Step forward ‘Tellheed Green’, yet another anonymous person supposedly based in London who’s just churned out this rebranded poster and posted it on the Facebook page of the Bluebell woods ‘protection’ camp. I’ve no idea who did the original artwork or where it’s been pinched from, but ‘Green’ has stuck a ‘stop HS2’ logo on it to turn it into something that’s truly ‘through the looking glass’!
Oil companies want HS2? HS2 is a carbon-neutral, electrically powered railway that will get people out of planes and cars to provide a real alternative to fossil fuel use and allow us to wean ourselves off them. Oil companies hate it! It’s the antithesis of everything Shell, Exxon and the others want! This is so bonkers it’s beyond words, yet it’s lapped up by some stophs2 supporters who’ve shared it dozens of times, or left comments like this:
Of course, the fossil fuel companies and their supporters like the Taxpayers Alliance and others must be absolutely p*ssing themselves laughing at this weapons-grade stupidity. The UK ‘green’ movement has swallowed their propaganda hook, line and sinker in order to oppose a carbon-neutral, green railway. The irony? Not one of these supposed ‘environmentalists’ has stopped, looked at this, engaged a brain cell and spoke up to say “Hey, guys? Just stop and think about this for a minute”? Their campaign is so intellectually bereft and bankrupt this stuff gets shared without any thought or question. You genuinely couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, unless you’re the likes of @hs2rebellion and it’s supporters, obviously.
And you wonder why I argue that the UK ‘green’ movement’s completely unfit for purpose? I wonder what madness they’ll come up with next?
UPDATE.
Thanks to a tip-off from Pete Johnson (@pedrojuk) on Twitter I now have the source of the original artwork which was stolen for this. Needless to say the original by Namaya Productions carried a very different message.
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There’s so few people still actively trying to stop HS2 nowadays that there’s been thin gruel for this feature in recent months but today a particular piece of idiocy and hypocrisy caught my eye that I thought was worth sharing. This weeks award goes not to an individual but the whole of useless campaign group @hs2rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, the supposed ‘environmentalists’ who use green issues to drag people into their brand of far-left, ‘bring down capitalism’ politics.
Here’s what I spotted. ‘Environmentalists’ telling motorists to stop the building of HS2, a green railway designed to get modal shift from road to rail to cut transport Co2 emissions to tackle climate change!
Hs2Rebellion’s latest wheeze now that they’ve failed to stop Hs2 being built in the South is to roll out the same old failed tactics in the North. In this instance by trying to get people to join them on the laughably-named ‘Truth Trail’, otherwise known as a 100 mile group walk.
The obvious question that forms here is that – whilst they’re wearing out their (presumably) non-leather shoes walking 100 miles, who’s meant to be actively stopping HS2, because their ‘protection’ camps on phase 1 are almost deserted!
I have to laugh at the final sentence in this blather. “Based as closely as possible around public transport”. That would be the same public transport you’ve stuck banners up on bridges over roads encouraging motorists to stop us building then?
I can’t wait to see how many people actually turn up to waste their time on this walk. I’ve lost count of the number of times individuals or groups used the same publicity stunt on phase 1 of HS2. There were literally dozens over the years. From Lizzie, the original founder of Stop Hs2 through Joe Rukin, various artists and photographers to @hs2rebellion. They achieved the sum total of bugger all! What will this one achieve? Nothing. Hs2 Phase 2a to Crewe already has Royal Assent and work has stated on construction whilst Phase 2b to Manchester and Leeds have massive support from MPs of all parties as well as regional politicians. There’s no political appetite to stop hS2 being built, exactly the opposite.
What these publicity stunts seem to be designed for nowadays is to get mugs to cough up more money through Crowdfunders. Money that no-one knows what happens to because no accounts are ever published. I’m always amazed how willing some people are to donate money to these causes when they’ve absolutely no idea where it goes.
The funds would be better spent on clearing up the mess left in woods across the phase 1 route, where abandoned ‘protection’ camps are left to rot, rather than building more in the North. Like this example at Poors Piece. I called in there earlier this week. It was empty apart from some chickens. The last few ‘protesters’ had buggered off to Stonehenge.
“At one” with their environment? I think not! This pile of junk choking a tree is actually a tower and tree house on the edge of the woods facing the East-West railway line. I’d love to know what their Environmental Impact Assessment was for these structures. How many wasted hours were spent building these things? How were these meant to ‘stophs2’ when the nearest they are to Hs2 is 400 metres from the most Eastern edge of what will be the Calvert Infrastructure Maintenenace Depot (IMD) and over 1.5km from the main HS2 works site and trace? Did they stop part of the camp that was blocking work on the E-W railway from being evicted? Did they heck as like! Here’s some perspective. Looking along the edge of the site from the footpath.
You can see the abandoned single line of East-West rail off to the left. Trees nearest the old railway have been felled to make way for the new railway and create space for drainage and future electrification. These are the trees the protesters have supposedly been ‘protecting’. The edge of Poors Piece wood is just out of shot to the right. So, as you can see, the protesters aren’t protesting about HS2, but East-West rail rebuilding and restoring an old railway – exactly the sort of thing they tout as an ‘alternative’ to HS2! Talk about hypocrisy!
Laughably, the camp at Poors Piece is branded a ‘conservation’ camp (here’s their Facebook page, which shows how little has been going on). The only ‘conservation’ going on here seems to be the hoarding of piles of scap metal, plastic sheeting, UPVC doors and other old rubbish that would be better off being taken to a local authority recycling centre.
Some of that timber looks like it’s been taken from vandalised fencing along the public footpath adjacent to the site, as you can see in this picture. These posts should have a triple row of crosspieces between them that have mysteriously disappeared…
Vandalism and desecration of the environment these people are supposedly ‘protecting’ has been a common thread throughout the camps that’s caused friction with local people who often end up paying for the mess the protesters create to be cleared up by their local Councils.
Earlier this week, HS2 Chief Executive Mark Thurston said this to the Public Accounts Committee in relation to these protests ““We’ve spent somewhere in the region now of £75 million worth of public money in dealing with the implications of this action.” £75 million. Think of what that could have been spent on in the way of environmental mitigation and tree planting instead of being squandered on the alter of far-left politics, another irony of which is the left here are doing the right-wing and road lobby’s job for it by opposing building green public transport.
Whilst donating money to these protests may make some people feel all warm because think they’re ‘saving’ the environment, they really need to take a cold hard look at what’s really happening on the ground. The protests are futile. All they’re achieving is to damage (not save) woodland and waste enormous amounts of time and money. Money that could be far better spent on genuine environmental improvements. So, next time you hear someone tell you they’re tempted to give money to these people, tell them to give it to a genuine environmental charity, not to a bunch of self-indulgent anarchists driving up and down the country leaving abandoned and unsafe messes like this in their wake.
UPDATE:
When I began writing this blog earlier today the ‘truth trail’ hadn’t even started. Now, at the end of day 1 it already seems to be going a bit ‘Pete Tong’ for @hs2rebellion. They kicked off in Lichfield with some motivational speech from err, Larch Maxey and Carolyne Culver. Who, you may ask? Larch Maxey is a long term protester in the pay of Extinction Rebellion who has a track record of failure going back to the mid-1990s when he didn’t stop a motorway extension in Lancashire. More recently, he was flummoxed by a pair of automatic doors he failed to glue himself to. Even more recently he’s been a jailbird in Pentonville prison in London after vandalising the HQ of HS2Ltd at Euston. Only it wasn’t. Their HQ is in Birmingham and the offices Maxey vandalised were those of Network Rail (HS2 have a small satellite office in a nearby building).
Culver was Green Party Candidate in the recent Amersham and Chesham by-election who’s Nimby campaign was entirely based on opposing HS2. So much so that she never even mentioned climate change. She lost the Green party’s deposit as she halved the vote they received in the 2019 general election. With ‘inspirations’ like this, who needs failures. Oh, there’s more. Look at this screengrab!
The gardener Culver is referring to is Mark Keir, another awful failure for the Green Party who stood as a candidate in Uxbridge in the 2019 election. This is through the looking glass stuff. Far from ‘winning’ in court he suffered a humiliating defeat – as I detailed in this blog. Honestly, talk about detached from reality!
Still, I’m sure the HS2Rebellion Facebook page is full of banner-waving people joyously marching North from Lichfield, isn’t it? Err, no. All it contains is a couple of video’s from a trio of people who say they’ve ‘detoured’ from the main march (which we never see) to drive (wait a minute, drive?) to a couple of woods on the route they claim will be ‘destroyed’ by HS2.
This is ‘Comical Ali’ levels of denial and misinformation, and this is only day 1 of their laughably named ‘truth trail’. In some ways it’s rather appropriate they’re ending up in Wigan as their levels of dishonesty and misinformation rival George Orwells ‘Ministry of Truth’ from his novel 1984. I wonder if they’re going to hold their final rally on Wigan Pier? As this painful farce is meant to last for eight days I’m sure there will be plenty of other embarrassing moments en-route. That is, if the whole thing doesn’t collapse in ignominy and indifference before they even get to Wigan!
2023 update.
Dis this nonsense stop HS2? No. the travesty of truth trail’ eventually reached Wigan but the whole thing was a flop. It attracted hardly any media attention or local support (or money). Instead it just diverted attention and resources from the protest camps, although they were on their last legs anyway. Now the HS2 Phase 2b Hybrid bill is at the Committee stage in Parliament with petitions being heard, so despite Government delays in beginning construction to phase 2a the legislation will be in place to build the line to Manchester.
I’ve a small favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
I’ve always been amused by how little the ‘conservationists’ who’re opposed to HS2 actually know about the environment they’re supposedly so concerned about saving. In many cases this is because they’re using ‘green’ issues as a figleaf for the fact that really, they’re just Nimbys. Even the serial protesters of Extinction Rebellion (the ones who wander from cause to cause) seem to know bugger all about the natural world they’re allegedly trying to save. I had to chuckle at the fun and games at Denham, when the protesters claimed they were trying to save an ‘ancient’ Alder tree. A tree whose age kept increasing as the stories got wilder. First it was 400 years old, then 600. People who know anything about trees will know why I was giggling at the claims.
An even better one happened a couple of years ago after one of the local Buckinghamshire rags reported the moans of a local farmer who was complaining about Ragwort growing on land owned by HS2 as the plant could spread to his fields and ‘pollute’ his land, threatening his livestock who get upset tummies if Ragwort gets into their feed. Suitably outraged, some of the local Nimbys tried to get a group together via one of their Facebook pages with the intention of going out to pull up the ragwort! It took a real environmentalist to point out that would be illegal as Ragwort is a valuable native plant that’s a source of food for insects and butterflies!
It seems these people never learn, hence this weeks award. Step forward Caroline Thompson-Smith, the determined self-publicist and serial spreader of exaggerated nonsense who can normally be found at Calvert, near where she lives. Well, unless she’s breaking the Covid lockdown to travel to other protest camps, such as her spot of gratuitous self-publicity and filming at Euston the other month.
Caroline has produced another long video diatribe which has appeared on the HS2Rebellion Facebook page and features the latest failure of the protesters at the Poors Piece eviction near Calvert (but nowhere near HS2!). Here’s a screengrab.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story eh, Caroline?
Her garbled story starts unravelling at 1’23” when she makes the claim that behind her contractors are felling Black Alder trees and that the Woodland Trust say the ‘Black Alder’ is one of the rarest trees in the UK with just 600 remaining, so HS2 contractors are felling 1% of the entire UK population! Wow – some claim! And a claim that rapidly unravels by 5’50” when Caroline forgets her original fairy story. Now it’s the Wildlife (not Woodland) Trust who claim the ‘Black Alder’ is rare. So rare the number has shrunk from 600 to 6 in the space of 4 minutes!
So, what’s the truth here? As usual, just a few minutes searching on Google and Caroline’s claims are in tatters. Here’s what the Woodland Trust REALLY say about the Black Alder. Yep, you’ve guessed it – the ‘black’ Alder is just another name for the Alder tree – and it’s also called the Common Alder – because it’s not rare at all! Nor is it a particularly long-lived species, which is why I was giggling last year at the claims about ‘ancient’ Alders!
There’s more on the Alder here from Wikipedia which reveals that the Alder is on the ‘least threatened’ list.
Of course some viewers of Caroline’s nonsense clearly just lap this stuff up. Gullible isn’t the word here. You could literally sell them anything. Listening to people like Caroline you’d think it was Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes sweeping across the Chilterns, raping, pillaging and laying waste to the countryside in their wake – not a company building a railway who have to abide by legally-binding environmental protocols and laws and who are subject to strict oversight by a whole host of agencies.
Still, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?
2023 update.
The Poors Piece eviction wasn’t stopped by Caroline or anyone else. The trees that had grown up along the course of E-W rail (not HS2 as the wood’s nowhere near) were removed and the rest of the wood remains intact – although polluted by the remains of the abandoned protest camp which was left to rot by its occupants.
Caroline continues to rant about HS2 but on a much reduced basis as it’s painfully obvious to all but the most blinkered that construction of HS2, the maintenance depot and E-W rail is unstoppable with the work at a very advanced stage that expands as each day passes.
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My earlier blog about the Green Party and their lack of honesty about HS2 provoked an amusing backlash from one Green Party member and former Parliamentary candidate that rapidly escalated from a simple car-crash to a multiple vehicle pile-up of epic proportions.
Step forward one Brent Poland, the serially failed Green Party Candidate for Erewash, which lies on the route of HS2 Phase 2B. Poland believes that the Green Party is beyond reproach and that anyone highlighting the party’s dishonesty is part of a conspiracy. The fact that if they didn’t make public pronouncements on social media that are complete bollocks they wouldn’t get called out on them is beyond him.
Then Poland chose a rather odd line of attack.
All nonsense of course, but “selling dresses online”? Who? Me? Having strapped himself in the driving seat Poland jammed his foot down hard on the accelerator. Later, he apparently saw an advert on my website that advertised new HGV’s. Thinking he’d found a smoking gun he began a barrage of tweets like this.
Really? Here’s another in a long (long) line…
Stop sniggering in the back! Yes, I know most of you understand how ads on social media are targeted at people, many people on Twitter do too. Along with several others on Twitter a (former) Green Party member pointed out to Poland what he didn’t understand and resolutely refused to grasp…Here’s a simple explanation of how internet advertising works.
Did this stop Poland? Nope. Like the Duracell bunny he keeps on going. He must have borrowed some superglue off Extinction Rebellion activists as his foot’s firmly stuck down on the accelerator and there’s no going back. We’ve now gone from a motorway pile-up to the final scenes of the film ‘Thelma and Louise’ as Poland is about to drive off that cliff….
“Can do it all day”? Dear oh, dear…Well, he got one bit right. It’s certainly embarrassing – just not in the way he thinks! He was still at it several hours later…
This is a man who puts himself forward for election to Parliament as a Green Party candidate. Sensibly, the voters of Erewash have gracefully declined that offer. After all, we have enough duds masquerading as MPs as it is, without any more. You would have thought that, not having had the reaction he wanted and having had several people explain to him where he’d gone wrong – and with me laughing, Poland might just have stopped to think “what am I missing, why are they laughing?” – but no, so I have no hesitation in awarding Poland the award of this week’s ‘crazy anti HS2 campaigner’! There is an irony in this as Poland displays the same blindness and unwillingness to listen to facts that I highlighted in the blog he took exception to.
There is one last, final irony…
He’s a Schoolteacher.
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UPDATE.
It’s now 22:36 and I’m about ready for bed. Having checked social media I find that Poland is still at it – much to the amusement of the Twitterati… Here’s the latest example.
2023 update.
Poor Poland never learned. He tried this line of attack again and fell flat on his face as usual. His next farce was to invent and bang on about imaginary floodplain at Toton but that didn’t have any more success! He never had any success in getting elected as a local Erewash Councillor either but is standing again in 2023. He recently gave this statement to a local news site. It contains a list of undeliverable policies, some way above a Cllrs pay-grade. Interestingly, the environment is last on their list of priorities, which tells you all you need to know about these ‘watermelon greens’ (green on the outside, but red all the way through).
I predict that he won’t be elected…
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Normally I nominate a particular individual who’s displayed Darwin awards levels of stupidity, but this week’s award is a collective one that goes to all those involved with Hs2Rebellion and their latest stupid stunt at Euston, where they claim to have set up their 6th ‘protection’ camp. Here’s the nonsense posted by HS2 Rebellion on their Facebook page.
Anyone who knows anything about the Euston station area and the plans for HS2 will spot the rather obvious flaw in their plans…
This tiny bunch, which includes serial muppet Larch Maxey, whose record of failing to stop anything dates back to 1995 and the motorway around Burnley in Lancashire. But then this is the man who was flummoxed by a pair of electronic doors which he’s failed to superglue himself to, so it’s hardly surprising he’s made yet another hilarious gaffe.
Their problem? The trees they’ve climbed may be at Euston, but they’re on the South-Eastern side – which is outside the boundary and worksites of Hs2! They could sit up there until doomsday – it won’t affect HS2 in the slightest! Here’s a look at the area.
The gardens the HS2Rebellion protesters are in are the ones shown in green, opposite blue coloured Stage B2 of the Euston station redevelopment – which is entirely Network Rail’s responsibility. Only Stage A and B1 are part of the HS2 redevelopment, so whilst their tree-hugging might give them some interesting views of the work on HS2, it ain’t going to stop a thing! Note that the Hs2 stage nearest to them isn’t due to start until 2026 – which is an awfully long time to be sat up a tree, waiting…
You have to laugh as this isn’t the first time HS2rebellion have set up ‘protection’ camps that don’t protect anything that’s actually under threat. Poors Piece at Calvert is another example. It’s half a mile from HS2 work as it sits next to East-West rail.
These farcical events won’t stop Hs2 in the slightest, they merely illustrate how inept the remaining anti Hs2 protesters are. Many of the original protesters have had their wings clipped by injunctions or through bail conditions set after them being arrested for futile stunts.
Now the nesting season is coming to an end we can expect to see Hs2’s contractors begin to remove the final small areas of woodland that need to be cleared to begin construction of the railway. This will leave the protesters not up a tree – but certainly up shit creek! I don’t expect the protests to survive such a PR failure. Their rhetoric’s become increasingly shrill and out of touch with reality over the past few weeks as they’ve suffered failure after failure – whilst claiming they’re ‘winning’.
Watch the farce become even more pronounced before winter sets in…
2023 update.
The Euston protesters were evicted in a blaze of publicity in January 2021. Some huddled in a tunnel under the gardens with the last one giving up and coming out 31 days after the tunnel was discovered. They didn’t achieve anything, nor did they stop anything. After the eviction the gardens were secured as the site wasn’t going to be needed for a temporary taxi-rank until now – May 2023 over two years after the protesters were evicted! The protests actually backfired as the evictions were carried out at the height of the Covid pandemic when London was in lockdown. The protesters and their supporters ignored lockdown and put the safety of emergency services, police and HS2 workers at risk. Evidence of this helped HS2 Ltd secure the route-wide injunction granted in October 2022. But. by then the protests had already collapsed as all the squatter camps along the route had been evicted or abandoned. It was all one big waste of time and money. They never stopped a thing.
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Yes, it’s back! Despite the fact the campaign against Hs2 has been as pointless as giving away condoms in a convent and most of the old guard of Nimbys and other locals have bowed to the inevitable now its obvious HS2’s being built we’ve had members of Extinction Rebellion move in to provide some comedy gold.
Extinction Rebellion have left a very large hostage to fortune with their slogan ‘Tell the truth”. Here’s an example, with serial porkie teller Chris Packham (exposed in this blog for having pants on fire) holding up their slogan here.
Of course, such a slogan is hypocritical is the extreme as XR members have lied through their teeth about HS2 ever since they became involved. Here’s one classic example. Step forward ‘William’, a American in the UK who calls himself ‘Boots on the ground News’ on Twitter.
Rather laughably, William claims that “The truth always surfaces” as part of his bio. Well, yes. It often does. But not in the way he meant…
You see, the man is just another of those odd fantasists who’re often drawn to groups like Extinction Rebellion and the campaign against HS2. We’ve seen them in action for years and I’ve documented many of them and their tenuous relationship with reality (and facts) over the years.
Here’s just a few of his recent howlers.
Eh? I’m sure I’m not alone in reading this and thinking – ‘hang on, I remember the summer of 1976 and standpipes and water bowsers in the streets – I’ve not seen or heard a dicky-bird about any anywhere in 2020’? Of course, in my neck of the woods (West Yorkshire) I’ve also seen a lot of nearly full reservoirs over the weekend, and earlier in the year I remember the damage caused to my local town. Not by drought – but by floods!
Oh, the UK metrological office would care to differ too. Here’s a couple of quotes.
“This winter (December, January, February) has been the 5th wettest winter on record (data back to 1862) for the UK as a whole as well as the 5th mildest.”
And…
“Is this due to Climate Change?
Met Office records show there is a recent trend of increasing rainfall on seasonal and annual timescales. Since 1998, we have seen six of the ten wettest years on record. However, rainfall patterns in the UK have always shown a large range of natural variation, which makes it more difficult to unambiguously identify long term trends linked to climate change. However, wetter winters have been observed and is consistent with what we expect to happen in the future with continued climate change.” You can find the rest of what the Met Office has to say here. And Spring? The pictures far more mixed, and more complex.
And what of June? The Met office reports that “Rainfall was 144% of average”! I’m sure those people across the country who were caught up in June rainstorms and flash floods will be as surprised as me to know it never happened! So, the assertion that this is ‘greatest drought the UK has ever seen’? Utter bollocks. The man must have been been getting his weather advice from the Daily Express!
Then there’s these recent classics. It seems that teenage ‘tree protectors’ have the uncanny ability to travel through time and space, allowing them to be in two places simultaneously. Take a look.
On the 18th young ‘Windfall’ lives up a tree in Crackley woods eh? Hang on a minute, on the same day she’s supposedly up a tree in Cubbington woods!
Clearly, it was such a rush to get between the two sites (they are over 6 miles apart) she never had time to change her red top!
I could go on (and on) but as his twitter feed is so full of twaddle, lies and scaremongering I’d be here all night. The fact these people are now the backbone of the ‘campaign’ against HS2 should tell you all you need to know.
Sadly, the UK ‘green’ movement seems to be full of clowns like this. Whilst their European counterparts are helping to cut Co2 emissions by encouraging the modal shift from air/road to rail to tackle climate change, these muppets are trying to sabotage building the rail capacity we need to be able to follow their lead. The good thing is they’re so bloody useless they’ve not stopped a thing! My concerns are twofold. The damage they’re doing to the reputation to the wider green movement, and the facts they’re filling the heads of young people like these misguided but well-meaning protesters with lies. They deserve better.
“Tell the truth”? The immortal words of ‘Jim Royle’ spring to mind…
It would be good to see more people challenge the likes of @bearwitness2019 over the crap they fill impressionable young minds with. Feel free…
2023 update.
‘Windfall’, William and Packham have had it tough since those heady days of 2019. Packham’s done a good job of damaging his reputation over HS2 (amongst other things). ‘Windfall’ has gone with the wind and disappeared along with the other attention-seekers of HS2Rebellion whilst William still occasionally warbles on Twitter about the forthcoming ecological apocalypse, a scaremongering tactic that’s doing nothing to change things.
Meanwhile, HS2 gets built…
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Paul Bigland 