Category Archives: Mark Keir

HS2rebellion: The fat lady’s singing (day 14)…

23 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by in Hs2, HS2Rebellion, Mark Keir, Protest, Railways

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As we’re two weeks into the eviction of the final Hs2Rebellion shit-tip – sorry, ‘protection camp’ I thought I’d give you a brief update of what’s been going on as even the tunnelers supporters have got bored and stopped turning up on a regular basis.

Three days ago the bailiffs gained access to the single tunnel’s down shaft and continue with the preparations to remove the handful of occupants. There’s no rush, because the useless tunnelers aren’t in anyone’s way as the tunnel isn’t anywhere near an active HS2 worksite!

Despite all their bluster and braggadocio it seems pretty clear that the penny’s dropped with the muppets in the tunnel and they’ve twigged that protests against HS2 have been a complete waste of time. Now they try and make out that their protest is more about new Government legislation and well, ‘stuff’. It’s reminiscent of Marlon Brando in the film ‘The Wild One’ where Mildred asks his character (Johnny) “Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” and Johnny replies “Whaddya got?” These people are serial protesters who have a rag-bag of ’causes’ which they switch between without any intellectual coherence or real understanding of the issues. It’s one of the reasons they’ve always been so ineffective.

Talking of ineffective, our old fantasist friend Mark Keir finally turned up again to record an overlong diatribe (12 minutes of repetition, deviation and hesitation) from outside the camp. Keir’s latest obsession was the fact that piling work was to be carried out adjacent to the Chiltern railway running alongside the site of the squatters old camp. Keir couldn’t see any piling rig, so in a masterpiece of pointless speculation decided that the work must have been called off by HS2 Ltd due to the proximity of the tunnel and its occupants, but how dare they still keep the railway closed as this would inconvenience the locals! As usual, this has left Keir with enough egg all over his face to have fed the tunnelers all weekend!

Hmm, 46 shares. Not exactly setting the world of social media alight, are they?

Why? Because the piling rig was already parked up a few hundred metres away. Work’s begun on schedule and is progressing without any interruption, as one local resident’s pointed out. Poor Keir, he just can’t help himself! The rule of thumb now is that as soon as he asserts something you know the opposite will happen!

Meanwhile, HS2 contractors continue to clear up the mess these ‘eco-warriors’ have created (as highlighted by @bucksmart) although this will take some time as there’s tonnes of the stuff – as I illustrated in my last blog on the subject.

Bereft of anything positive to report and keep their bored followers entertained the protesters Facebook and other social media channels are being filled with as much crap as the Wendover camp was! Part of their problem is the tiny group in the tunnel (estimated at 4 in number) aren’t producing any content as they’re completely cut-off from any outside support so are running low on battery power and any other form of resupply. Instead, pre-recorded, garbled messages of justification are mixed with short snips of new footage of them trapped like rats (see above) or other stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with the HS2 protests at all, just adverts for other causes. At this rate GBNews (‘the gammon channel’) will have more viewers than HS2Rebellion!

So, the farce drags on. The fat lady’s gone for a fag and a wee between acts, but the finale can’t be long coming…

24th October UPDATE.

Bailiffs have been busy and broken into the protesters useless tunnel from a separate shaft, leaving the handful down there hopelessly compromised and with nowhere to go. The fat lady’s reaching for the throat-spray…

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Stophs2 think they can unseat Boris Johnson by Joe Rukin dressing up as a tree!

16 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in General election 2019, Hs2, Mark Keir, Politics, The Green Party

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No, seriously! That wasn’t a typo…

The Stophs2 campaign is going from farce to worse and yesterday has been an outstanding example. The ‘intellectual’ wing of the campaign collapsed several years ago when the folk involved in the ‘High Speed 2 Action Alliance’ (who were essentially a bunch of Chiltern Nimbys) gave up the ghost in 2016. The anti Hs2 ‘flame’ then passed to the sole surviving group known as Stophs2 who were always the ‘Mickey Mouse’ end of the campaign, as yesterday has proved in spades!

Stophs2 have been struggling to stay relevant for a long time now as their Chair, Penny Gaines has buggered off to Bournemouth whilst their Campaign Manager, Joe Rukin remains in Kenilworth. They get wheeled out as rent-a-quotes to various sections of the media who still have them in their contacts lists, but that has no reflection on their actual influence, which is zero. They weren’t even part of the HS2 phase 2a petitioning process.

But you can always rely on Joe Rukin to come up with a Cupid Stunt. Sorry, I meant to say a cunning plan! His latest brainwave was to dress up as a tree in the Uxbridge constituency of Prime Minister Boris Johnson along with some Extinction Rebellion protesters. Quite what Rukin was thinking this would achieve is unfathomable, but I’ll explore that more later. First, here’s a screenshot from the StopHs2 Facebook page that shows you this farce.

If you’re on Facebook and want to view this complete car-crash in all it’s glory, feel free! Here’s another snippet from their FB page.

Interestingly, some StopHs2 supporters were less than impressed by the spectacle, as the comments on Facebook show.

There’s also this little revelation that makes it clear the stophs2 grassroots really aren’t all that keen on getting involved in direct action. A stopHs2 sticker in the back of their 4×4 is one thing, joining a protest is another!

Despite the latter claim it’s clear that Rukin was in Uxbridge with Extinction Rebellion who were presumably hoping to entice people to vote for the Green party with this cringeworthy spectacle. Now, let’s get real for a moment and look at some facts.

In the 2016 EU referendum Uxbridge voted 57.19% to leave the EU. Boris Johnson held Uxbridge at the 2017 election with a 5034 majority.

The Green Party’s candidate, Mark Keir, who has been involved in various anti HS2 stunts, is not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer or obvious Parliamentary material who would be seen as attractive to ordinary voters (see this blog). He came last in 2017 and saw the green vote fall by 1.3% to 1.9%. The only person within spitting distance of Johnson was the Labour candidate, who increased their vote by a sizeable 13.6%. This year Labour have put up a different candidate but Keir is yet again standing for the Green party. So, who is StopHs2 backing? Keir! The one man who is guaranteed not to win and whom voting for will help keep Labour out and Boris Johnson in!

The StopHs2 campaign has been a tragi-comedy for some time. Informed sources tell me that Joe Rukin has been looking for a proper job for some time. Perhaps with his experience in ‘story-telling’ and dressing up, he should consider getting himself an Equity card, after all, he’s clearly got a talent for Pantomime and that season’s fast approaching!

Is it any wonder the Green party are bombing in the polls?

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Green Party, Hs2, Mark Keir, Politics

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I’ve just come across this load of nonsense about Hs2 from the Green Party’s Mark Kier in Hillingdon, North London. It’s been posted on YouTube by ‘Occupy News Network’, a ragbag of leftists and anarchists. It’s straight from the ‘make it up as you go along’ school of political commentary.

These are the people who’re backing the futile protest in Harvil Rd, which is hardly ‘Swampy’ or Twyford Down! Apart from occupying a stretch of pavement they appear to have been unable to even delay the HS2 preparation work in the area, never mind actually stop anything!

In his YouTube diatribe, Kier claims (amongst other things) that Hs2 costs £110bn (it doesn’t), it’s funded by Chinese loans (it isn’t) and that it’s “wiped out democracy” (that’ll be why Parliament passed the Hs2 bill by a vote of 452 MPS to 41 then!). He also trots out some tired old canards such as the ‘fact’ Hs2 will be wider than a motorway (it won’t) and that the time saving between London-Birmingham is 20 minutes (it isn’t).

The pointless Harvil Rd protest has attracted several Green Party leaders, who’ve trotted along to grandstand and have their photos taken in ‘solidarity’ with the protesters. They’ve all parroted similar nonsense to Kier, which shows that the problems with the party being both dishonest and ill-informed is systemic. It also suggest that the Green party has retreated back to its protest/pressure group roots rather than trying to maintain the fiction that it has any credibility as a serious political party.

None of this rubbish will stop Hs2 in the slightest of course, but it does help to show why the Green Party has slumped in the polls in recent years. I wouldn’t trust this lot to run a whelk stall, far less a Council or, God forbid – a country.