Over the past few days the media has been covering the story of the trial of seven HS2 ‘rebellion’ protesters who were arrested after being evicted from the tunnels they’d dug under Euston Square gardens earlier this year. After the eviction which lasted over a month the Metropolitan police charged the protesters with aggravated trespass.
Yesterday, at Highbury Magistrates court District judge Susan Williams dismissed the charges against the seven, leaving HS2 ‘Rebellion’ in boastful mood – as this post on their Facebook page demonstrates.
“Victory” for the tunnellers? Really? Why? What did they stop?…
So why did District judge Susan Williams dismiss the charges? Well, the answer’s rather embarrassing for HS2rebellion and the hopeless protesters. It’s because whatever they did in Euston Gardens they were never going to stop HS2 being built as the gardens weren’t an active HS2 worksite. Put simply, you can’t ‘stop’ what isn’t happening! This article in the Guardian newspaper sheds more light.
Laughably, Daniel Hooper (better known as ‘Swampy’) is quoted as saying. “Our plan is to stop HS2”, completely ignoring the fact he couldn’t possibly do so by digging a tunnel under Euston Gardens, which is why the Judge dismissed the case. Even Baldrick can come up with a better plan than this! But this is typical HS2Rebellion and their through the looking glass world. It’s very Orwellian,1984 truthspeak – ‘failure is victory’…
Ironically, I’d been highlighting the fact these protesters were useless as they were nowhere near an active HS2 worksite right from the start of the protest and in blogs like this one from February, before the farce came to an end.
Of course, HS2 Ltd were disappointed that the charges (brought by the Metropolitan Police) were thrown out of court as the whole fiasco is estimated to have cost £3.5m. After all, Just think how many trees that could have planted? I’d suggest that the police need to work more closely with lawyers in future to ensure that any charges levelled are appropriate and stand a chance of sticking in court. Even so, this was no ‘victory’ for the protesters Their raison d’être is to stop HS2, but yet again they’ve proved themselves to be abject failures – and now their day is done…
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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…
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Remember this list of Hs2rebellion (what ‘rebellion’? Ed) protection camps from last month? Well, you can scratch another one off the list. The barely functional and utterly pointless Wormwood Scrubs camp is no more!
Having been served with an eviction notice the squatters were ordered to demolish the mess of pallet towers and other structures they’d cluttered a corner of the scrubs with. As they didn’t have the numbers to put up any resistance they’ve meekly complied. Of course, they couldn’t have done this without the aid of the local authority who’re having to cart away the mess they’ve made at local taxpayers expense. Here’s a picture from their Facebook live feed today, which was filmed yesterday.
The remains of the Tower they’d spent ages building that was completely useless. I wonder what the Environmental Impact Assessment was for this pile of junk? Here’s how it looked when I visited the site at the end of August.
To say their camp was a complete waste of time is an understatement. They never stopped any of the work that HS2 contractors are undertaking to divert a sewer. You can see what’s actually happening on Wormwood Scrubs here. Here’s a map showing the extent of the area temporarily affected. The squatters camp was in the hatched area at the top right hand side of the map.
Now the new access road has been completed the temporary track matting is being removed, allowing the grassland to recover. The map also puts into perspective the ridiculous claims of the protesters that HS2 is ‘destroying’ Wormwood Scrubs! Only a tiny area is being hoarded off whilst the sewer’s diverted and once the work’s completed this will be returned to nature.
The removal of the Scrubs camp brings an end to the sorry tale of anti HS2 protests in London which have singularly failed to stop anything – just as they’ve failed everywhere else on the route. Now there’s just one (equally useless) camp left on the Phase 1 route, the laughably named ‘active resistance’ camp near Wendover. This has also been served with an eviction notice and the clearance of this final camp is expected anytime. I suspect that – despite the blustering name, there’ll be little resistance when the bailiffs move in! Sadly, local taxpayers will be left to pick up the bill once more for clearing up the mess left by these faux ‘environmentalists’. The one success Hs2Rebellion and the protesters have had is in wasting millions of pounds of other people’s money, both taxpayers and the mugs who’ve coughed up tens of thousands of pounds to support them through crowdfunding, none of which has never ever been accounted for…
It will be interesting to see how HS2Rebellion spin this latest failure in their fortnightly newsletter, which is due out today. I expect it’ll make ‘Comical Ali seem reasoned and objective!
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What a difference a year makes! The summer of 2020 was full of stories of the rag-bag of Anarchists, professional-protesters, Extinction Rebellion supporters and a few local Nimbys who’d rallied to the “HS2Rebellion” banner. So-called ‘protection’ camps were set up in or by woodland and battles ensued with HS2 Ltd staff and security as the protesters boasted of how they were going to stop HS2 ‘in its tracks’. They made grandiose claims about the levels of support they had, none of which ever materialised as most were ‘keyboard warriors’ who’d send ‘love and rage’ (one of their favourite slogans) over the internet as they watched yet another interminable livestream from the protests.
Move on a year and the picture’s very different. Having suffered failure after failure, a series of camp evictions and arrests of most of the hard-core of the protesters, their campaign’s collapsed. Now the surviving ‘protection camps’ are little more than squats, where people are holed-up but doing nothing of any consequence to affect work on HS2, much less stop it. Right now, many of the handful of folk from the remaining camps are pratting around with Extinction Rebellion in Central London, which means they’re nowhere near HS2! Here’s a look at the supposed camp network, taken from HS2Rebellion’s website today. I’ve marked the true situation with the camps on each one.
As you can see, the ‘high profile’ camps like Euston, Harvil Rd and Crackley were cleared some time ago. The only one remaining in London’s the squat at Wormwood Scrubs. This scruffy encampment partly burned down a couple of days ago, prompting the local Council to finally lose patience with the few squatters remaining (who’ve never stopped any HS2 work at the site) and serve them with a 24-hour eviction notice yesterday! The irony? No-one was at the camp at the time as the handful of occupants weren’t trying to stop HS2, they were too busy pratting around with their chums from XR in Central London.
The mess in Euston Gardens back in October 2020 before the protesters started erecting bigger structures to cover their abortive tunneling efforts.
The Wendover camp on the A413 hangs on for now. It too has been served with eviction papers and will be cleared anytime soon. Whether the occupants try and ‘put up a fight’ or go meekly is open to question but the final result isn’t. They’ve been a small thorn in the side of the project (and annoyance to the local population, who got fed up of the thefts and begging) so no-one will be sad to see them go.
Jones’ Hill woods was the last ‘hurrah’ of their campaign. Activists like the serially failed Mark Keir bluffed, blustered and lied about how they were stopping HS2 through strength of numbers and court cases, but Keir’s always written metaphorical cheques he couldn’t cash. The court cases failed and the few protesters on the ground never stood any serious hope of stopping work. Now the woods are deserted as the work HS2 needed to do felling some trees is almost complete. Like most of the original Harvil Rd protesters Keir himself has disappeared, despite having a court case against him from earlier protests dismissed.
The ‘New Poors Piece’ camp is also deserted. It was always an odd one as it’s not on the route of HS2 but on the edge of the E-W Rail line, it’s just that HS2 Ltd are carrying out the work their on behalf of the EW project. So, in fact, the protesters were protesting about the very thing they claimed to support – new E-W railways! Hypocritical, much? The camp was only set up because the land was owned by a sympathetic farmer! Like many of their other locations, the protesters have left the woods in a mess. Abandoned towers choke the trees and the place looks more like a dump than a woods. The hypocrisy of these faux ‘environmentalists was always weapons-grade.
Looking more like a ‘scrapheap challenge’ than an eco-camp, these are the structures the protesters have abandoned in Poors Piece woods – which wasn’t even on the route of HS2!
Lazily, HS2Rebellion show ‘Camp Isla’ as active. Situated on private land, the owners had the camp evicted in May! They went without a struggle and most have now disappeared.
The last on the list is Bluebell Woods, which is located in HS2 phase 2a to Crewe. As usual, the protesters have spent all their time building structures out of pallets and other tat. Not that they’ve got much else to do other than get splinters in their backsides – the main HS2 Civils work isn’t due to start in this area until 2024!
Threats of other camps on Phase 2a remain just that, threats. Mainly because there’s so few of the original activists left. Most have drifted off to other causes or gone back into mainstream education or society. Of course, there’s still many court cases pending which will cramp the ‘style’ of the remaining ‘hard core’ of protesters (most of whom are linked to Extinction Rebellion) but they’re powerless to do anything. Plus, the money tap’s been turned off. People who used to donate to keep the camps alive have finally got fed up of seeing their money wasted. Now, you mostly see ‘activists’ begging for personal funding via Crowdfunders or other means (so that you can’t see how much is actually donated). Here’s good illustration of what I’m talking about. Here’s ‘peaceful’ protester Ross Monaghan throwing in the towel and begging for money at the same time.
Ironically, Ross, who was convicted of two charges of assault and four charges of criminal damage last month was hilariously boasting about putting the ‘final nail’ in HS2’s coffin earlier in the month (whilst begging for money). Now it seems the nail that was driven was into his protest career! Some ‘building’ campaign…
Here’s an example of how the money’s started to dry up. This is a funding page for the soon to be evicted (and laughably named) ‘active’ resistance camp at Wendover. It never got near its target and there’s been one donation of just £5 in a month. Social media is littered with pages like this.
Now the bird-nesting season’s coming to an end and the few remaining trees that HS2 need to remove on Phase 1 will be felled. With no-one around to stop the work it won’t take long. A few locals might still film the work to ‘bare-witness’ as the protesters like to call it, but all their bluster about all the ‘wildlife crimes’ HS2 has allegedly committed hasn’t resulted in a single prosecution – never mind a conviction. It’s funny, despite the amount of camera-phone footage filmed by the protesters they never ever managed to catch any evidence for any of their claims that would actually stand up in court. I suspect all these grandiose but baseless claims are one of the reasons support has dropped away.
I’m sure the posturing around the protests will drag on for a while yet, but already Hs2rebellion seem to be losing interest. With nothing to report, their ‘news’ letter has gone fortnightly. Even then, it’s pretty thin gruel. Like Hs2aa and Stophs2 before them they’re reduced to being a recycling service, punting any critical article about HS2 they can to try and keep flagging interest going.
Stop Hs2 is dead.
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Whilst the HS2 Chiltern Tunnel Boring Machines continue their relentless progress North 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the contractors building the new railway continue to recruit more staff and expand work-sites up and down the route, the rump of the protest campaign against HS2 retreats more and more into the world of fantasy. It’s a bit like the historical occupant of a certain Berlin bunker moving around imaginary army divisions on a map. Reality isn’t allowed to intrude into their echo-chamber.
The latest example of this is the fact that Chris Packhams Parliamentary petition (which got stuck on a paltry 155,000 signatures) has been scheduled to be debated by the Petitions Committee on September 13th. Extinction Rebellion/HS2Rebellion have a grandiosely titled ‘Parliamentary Liaison Team’ (aka ‘one man and his dog’). Led by one Sebastian Sandys, a London based XR member. Now, you’d think that a good start for such a person would be to actually understand how Parliament works. But oh, no – this is the anti HS2 campaign! Here’s Sandy’s latest post on one of the campaign Facebook pages.
“Support repeal”? Really? This is an option? There’s going to be a debate in the chamber of the Commons at the end of which there will be a vote on whether to repeal the HS2 Hybrid Bill(s)?
No, it’s complete cobblers. It’s a fantasy, nothing more and it’s only going to end in tears as those opposed to HS2 are being led down the garden path by these ridiculous claims.
How so? Well, let’s have a look at the Petitioning Ctte itself and it’s rules and regulations. Here the ‘how petitions work’ page on their website, which says the following:
“7. At 100,000 signatures your petition on the UK Government and Parliament site will be considered for a debate in Parliament.”
All well and good, Packhams petition passed that hurdle. The vote’s on, isn’t it? MPs will soon be flooding in to the Commons to debate and repeal. Well, no – there’s more…
“Petitions can disagree with the Government and can ask for it to change its policies. Petitions can be critical of the UK Government or Parliament.”
Yeah, yeah – get on with it – and?
As usual, the devil’s in the detail – and the details can be found on this page entitled ‘actions on petitions’ which says…
“”The Committee can schedule debates on petitions in Westminster Hall on Mondays from 4.30pm (for up to 3 hours). Petition debates are general debates about the issues raised by the petition. This means that the debates cannot directly change the law or result in a vote to implement the request of the petition. If your petition is debated, it means that MPs can discuss your petition, ask questions about the Government’s position on the issue, or press the Government to take action. A Government Minister takes part in the debate and answers the points raised.”
Wait? What? The debate’s in Westminster Hall? That’s not the floor of the house of Commons! and what’s this about the debate can’t ‘change the law’ (the HS2 Hybrid bills are law) or result in a vote? There’s no vote?
No. HS2 antis have been completely conned. Here’s how Packham’s petition was worded.
Put simply, it was an impossible ask because (as usual) Packham hadn’t done his homework and understood what these petitions can and can’t do. So, on the 13th September there will be a nice little talking shop in Westminster Hall that will be attended by a handful of MPs enjoying tea and biscuits, debating HS2 for a few hours, and at the end of – absolutely nothing will have changed!
Sandys *should* know this. So, either he doesn’t know so is accidentally leading people up the garden path, or he does know this and is deliberately leading people up the garden path! Either way, there’s going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from HS2 protesters who’ve been misled into thinking there’s going to be a vote to repeal the HS2 Hybrid Bills on the 13th. All those people who’ve been persuaded to write to their MPs have wasted their time, but no change there then.
Did anyone seriously think any Government (of any political persuasion) would set up a system where laws passed by Parliament as part of Government policy could be repealed by a bunch of back-bench MPs in a Committee room on the back of the results of an e-petition? Talk about away with the fairies!
Order some popcorn, because I suspect there’s going to be some interesting comments posted on the various anti HS2 groups Facebook pages when folks realise the false hopes they’ve been fed by the likes of Sandys, XR and Hs2rebellion have been dashed – yet again…
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Every so often Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins bile duct overflows and he releases a torrent of vituperative and bombastic nonsense about the HS2 rail project. He’s been doing this on a regular basis for years now. The fact he’s always proved spectacularly wrong and fact-free never stops him as the man clearly believes his own myths and is unashamed by the fact his fictional tirades never age well.
Crewe based blogger Tim Fenton has punctured Jenkins hot air balloon several times in the past. Notably here in 2014 and here in 2015. Sadly, the fact nowadays he’s in the fairy story business rather than real Journalism hasn’t stopped the Guardian publishing him. I’m assuming their Editor no longer cares about trivial things like facts and the truth as clicks are more important. The rubbish Jenkins writes are good enough to generate those as his rants against HS2 are guaranteed to be shared by the projects opponents – even ones whom aren’t natural Guardian readers! It’s a win for the Grauniad and a loss for those who like decent, factual journalism, analysis – and the truth.
Let’s have a look at Jenkins latest fact-free farrago shall we? I’d suggest wearing a peg on your nose whilst doing it as the smell of bullshit is overpowering. It’s entitled “Depleted and unwanted, HS2 hurtles on as Johnson’s £100bn vanity project” – which is a good start as that’s three untruths in the headline and we haven’t even got to the article yet! The first paragraph is no better…
“Britain’s new high-speed railway will not – repeat: not – get to the north of England. It will go back and forth from London to the Midlands and its chief beneficiaries will be London commuters. All else is political spin”
Really? Jenkins seems unaware that contracts for building HS2 Phase 2a from Birmingham to Crewe have already been let. Contractors have already started on preparatory work as Phase 2a gained Royal Assent on the 11th February 2021 after flying through both Houses of Parliament with a huge majority – just as Phase 1 did. Now, what was that about “unwanted”? HS2 has always commanded huge-cross party political support. So much so that the handful of opponents in the Lords didn’t even bother calling for a vote on the Phase 2a bill as they knew they were completely outnumbered.
Oh, and “London Commuters”? Hs2 is a long-distance railway. Like all other long-distance railways that means the vast majority of passengers will be leisure travellers, NOT commuters. The HS2 business case is based on 70% of travellers doing so for leisure. How can that be predicted? Easy, because we know who uses the existing Long-Distance services.
Meanwhile, Jenkins continues to dig a hole…
“This became certain last week as the government’s internal major projects authority declared phase two of the HS2 project, to Manchester and Leeds, effectively dead. While the already-started London-to-Birmingham stretch is still marked at “amber/red” for “successful delivery in doubt”, anything north of Crewe has been designated “unachievable”.
This is complete cobblers of course and will come as real news to people on the leg from Crewe to Manchester (and HS2 Ltd themselves) as the Government announced the timetable for the Phase 2b leg in the Queens Speech at the state opening of Parliament. The bill will be deposited in Parliament next year.
As for this amber/red and ‘unachievable’ nonsense, this is Jenkins failing to understand what the ratings (given by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority) actually mean. For example, we have two ‘unachievable’ Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers floating around right now that the IPA rated red. Oh, and the new Intercity Express Programme (IEP) trains built by Hitachi that are ploughing up and down the East Coast and Great Western main lines? They were rated ‘unachievable’ as well.
What’s next? Oh yes,
“Since HS2 has always been politics-driven – no rail strategy ever gave it priority”
This is more complete bollocks. The origins of HS2 are in several studies looking at the needs for future rail capacity that were carried out by the likes of Network Rail. In fact, it was this study. “Meeting the capacity challenge: The case for new lines” which was published by NR in 2009 that was the basis for HS2. It was the rail industry who established the need for HS2, not politicians.
Next?
“The only way of conveying the scale of Johnson’s vanity in this vanity project is to convey its opportunity cost, a projected £106bn (and rising) over 20 years.”
More cobblers. The cost of HS2 is not a ‘projected’ £106bn. Yet again Jenkins resorts to fiction as he’s just too idle and sure of himself to fact check but he’s not alone in filching figures from others without checking so I’ll cut him some slack. This number has been bandied around an awful lot in the media. That’s because the media is so incestuous as well as lazy. Nicking other people’s copy is endemic. It’s like Chinese whispers and ‘send three and fourpence, the General’s going to a dance’, an error’s circulated, magnified and becomes a ‘fact’. It’s claimed the £106bn is an ‘official’ figure because it was in the Oakervee Review of HS2. There’s just one teeny problem – the actual figure (£106.6bn) was mentioned in the review so that Oakervee could specifically dismiss it! Here’s a link to the Oakervee review. Here’s what Oakervee actually said.
Here’s what Oakervee ‘really’ said about the costs (there’s a range, not a single figure).
So, £80.7 – 87-7bn. Not figures you’ll see the press using as it’s not a single number that’s scary enough!
Jenkins then goes into the standard economic illiteracy about what spending funds for HS2 could do for the NHS, neatly showing he doesn’t understand the fact there’s no pot of money sat in the Treasury labelled ‘For HS2’ that’s waiting to rebadged, that he doesn’t know the difference between operational expenditure and capital expenditure, and thirdly, that Hs2’s funded by borrowing, not taxation. I’ve covered all those points in this blog in the past.
Continuing with his nonsensical claims, Jenkins than says;
“This one train line will consume the equivalent of Britain’s entire projected railway investment budget during its two decades of construction. Even the initial phase to Birmingham, at roughly £70bn, is twice the £40bn cost of the “northern powerhouse” rail system”
Firstly, Phase 1 is budgeted at £40-43bn (see above) £70bn is a number Jenkins has invented. Secondly, No-one knows that the UKs projected rail budget is for the next 20 years as it’s not set that far in advance. Network Rail’s budget is set in 5 year periods, known as ‘Control Periods’. The current one (CP6) runs from 2019-2024. That was set at 47bn. Of course the line between maintenance and ‘investment’ is blurred. For example, is replacing life-expired signalling with an upgraded system maintenance or investment? Here’s a link to the Department of transport’s budget 2019-2020. It makes it clear that the amount spent on Hs2 is dwarfed by what’s spent on the existing national rail network.
Oh, and that doesn’t include what others (like the Welsh and Scottish Governments, or train builders) invest in the railways either. Jenkin’s claim is simply more spherical objects..
Jenkin’s diatribe of nonsense continues with this tosh.
“Meanwhile arguments continue over the trains themselves. They are not planned to tilt, which means that any time saved on a new track to Birmingham will be lost on winding track further north. A re-signalled King’s Cross line could even get to Scotland faster. HS2 is more a taxpayer-funded theme park ride”.
*Sigh*. Where to start on this rubbish? 1. HS2’s already being built North of Birmingham to Crewe. 2. The trains don’t need to tilt to keep time as the new Hitachi Class 802s operated by Transpennine Express have already proved, (technology has moved on) plus Network Rail are proposing some track upgrades on the route to Scotland anyway. 3. Re-signalling The East Coast won’t speed it up in any meaningful way as you’d need to close all the level and foot crossings which would cost a fortune and you still wouldn’t get HS2 speed – plus – you’d devastate capacity on the route by running faster trains! This crucial factor is missed by armchair experts like Jenkins. Speed up trains on the existing main lines which are already overflowing with services and you reduce capacity as slower trains have to be ditched from the timetable to leave room for the faster ones. It’s the raison d’être for HS2, by removing those non-stop high-speed services you free up large chunks of capacity on the existing network. Jenkins ignores that crucial point because it doesn’t fit his narrative. As for the final tosh about ‘taxpayer funded’ – we’ve been over this until we’re blue in the face. HS2 is funded by borrowing against future GDP increases, not taxation!
Jenkin’s continues with his ‘vanity project’ tosh with this statement;
“What is intriguing is how HS2 has mutated from from a transport project to political machismo – “infrastructure” that is good in itself.”
Trying to label HS2 as a ‘Johnson’ project simply won’t wash – because by the time HS2 opens Johnson (hopefully) will be long gone. HS2’s been in development for over 11 years. In that time we’ve had Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Teresa May and Boris Johnson premierships. The project was kicked off by a Labour Government, taken forward by a Coalition Government and now construction’s started under a Tory Government. It’s hard to think of many schemes as apolitical as HS2. By the time the whole project’s completed that will be nearer 25 years. Who know who’ll be the Prime Minister cutting the tape when the first phase opens in 2029!
Jenkin’s final canard is this, the old “Hs2 is stealing your investment money”
“(Andy Burnham) will now find Birmingham blessed with cash that might have renovated his dire northern powerhouse rail network three times over – money he may now never see”
Playing regional mayors off against each other I see. It won’t wash. That money comes from Whitehall anyway. They make the investment choices as funding powers and budgets haven’t been devolved by the Government – much to the North’s annoyance – and that’s not exclusively to do with Burnham either. The Government set up Transport for the North but didn’t give it control of its budget. This is a Government decision but it’s nothing to do with HS2 which has a separate funding stream. Still, facts eh? You’ll never get ’em from Jenkins!
No doubt Jenkins latest pile of cobblers will keep the Grauniad happy as it’s done it’s job creating clicks and comments. It won’t stop HS2 in the slightest of course, the only effect it will have in the long term is to continue the downwards trajectory of the reputation of English journalism. Next time you see a Jenkins article on HS2, save yourself some time and file it straight in the bin…
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, 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 to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Personally, I preferred the Eurhythmics version myself, but I have to admit the latest caterwauling from the opponents of HS2 in the form of the self-appointed ‘tree-protectors’ who’ve wasted so much time and money getting nowhere when it comes to stopping HS2 is actually quite revealing. This long thread (featuring all the usual suspects) has appeared on the ‘stopHs2’ Facebook page!
It seems that little old me has upset them again and the mask of them being ‘peaceful’ and non-violent’ has well and truly slipped!
I applied to join one of their groups to post a riposte to this abject load of nonsense I blogged about a couple of days ago. I didn’t hide who I was as I thought the reaction might be interesting. After all, they believe in ‘free speech’, don’t they? Obviously not – and a lot more besides. Go get some popcorn before you start reading…
My, what nice people! Oh, but wait, it gets better…For clarification, ‘Carl Woods’ is the pseudonym of one Caroline Thompson Smith, who’s from Steeple Claydon. I’ve blogged about her before, here and here aanndd… here! Caroline has appeared to have deleted her own Facebook account to use the fake one instead. Still, she sounds like a nice woman when she thinks she’s amongst friends and she’s not being all smarmy to HS2 staff in her livestreams, doesn’t she?
Brent Poland is the serially failed Green Party candidate whom I’ve blogged about here. The remarks from Mark Keir (another serially failed Green Party candidate) look curious. “Delete” me? What can he possibly mean? Take a look at this (expanded) explanation. “I want HIM deleted”.
My, that’s very peaceful and non-violent, isn’t it? Mark Keir is one of the leading lights (that’s not saying much: Ed) of the HS2 ‘rebellion’ who’s spent several years lying about HS2, most famously claiming he watched the tree that inspired Roald Dahl to write ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ actually being cut down by HS2 contractors in Jones’ Hill Woods. It was complete cobblers of course, as I revealed in this blog.
Keir has a habit of being very abusive to HS2 staff on camera, then acting all aggrieved if anyone ever answers back. Meanwhile, back at that thread it seems they also want to burn me…
And there’s more…
You have to laugh at them moaning about ‘shutting down opposition’ whilst they’re all saying the opposition to them (me) should be shut down (permanently, according to Keir)! Hypocritical, much? But that’s the protesters for you – free speech only applies to them, apparently…
What a nice bunch of people they sound! Remember that next time you hear someone wanting to donate money to this bunch of anarchists and fantasists, because all they’re doing is harm. Harm to the woods they’re supposedly protecting, and harm to the HS2 contactors who’re merely going about their jobs. They have a habit of stirring up hate wherever they go and this shows what’s beneath the mask they try and wear. Now that their campaign’s collapsed that mask gets dropped more and more often. Soon they’ll be scattered to the four winds – and good riddance…
UPDATE. 1st August.
Some more ‘nice’ people popped in to add their pennorth and support freedom of information and the right to free speech, or not…
They really don’t seem to able to put down that shovel. Here are the latest diatribes from these lovely people! With such erudition and ambition, how could they possibly have failed so dismally to stop HS2?
UPDATE: 2nd August.
Meanwhile, the fantasies and accusations get even more bizarre from these ‘freedom of speech’ loving people! I do chuckle at the ‘accusation’ – otherwise known as ‘let’s just make stuff up’! Plus, what an utterly bizarre accusation Keir’s dreamt up but then the poor chap’s always had a vivid imagination as well as a tenuous grasp on reality!
UPDATE. 7th August 2021.
Talking of ‘non-violent’. I see one of the ‘non-violent’ protesters from Jones’ Hill Woods has been up in court this week. The Bucks Free Press reported that Ross Monaghan, 38, assaulted two HS2 security guards and damaged fences at the ancient woodland site between November last year and February this year. Monaghan was found guilty of two counts of assault and four counts of criminal damage. He was ordered to pay £775 in costs and £50 to each of the guards he assaulted. I believe Monaghan still has other court cases pending…
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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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This is not exactly a two-pipe problem, it’s pretty easy to guess what’s causing this, although some people will do their damndest to pretend otherwise. It’s all about Covid, apparently…
Really? Well, Covid is a global pandemic that’s hit the entire planet, so surely, other countries must be suffering the same problem, no? Here’s a few shots I took at my local Tesco supermarket today. This is a Sunday morning. The shops had all night and until 10:00 to restock and replenish before opening its doors to the public. I took the pictures at 11:50 when the place had been open for less than two hours. One of the things I was shopping for was Strawberries. Here’s where they should be. These shelves have been empty for a couple of days. The surrounding soft fruit shelves aren’t much better.
Here’s where the Tomatoes are normally on display. Spot the gaps…
Salad veg stocks weren’t looking much better either…
Good job I wasn’t after any Satsumas…
It’s not just fruit and veg either. Here’s the meat isle. Notice the gaps and low stocks.
If you wanted to drown your sorrows you’d have to be a lot more selective…
This shot tells another tale. The top self is where reserve stocks are kept that allow the shelves below to be restocked during opening hours, so that the isles can be kept free of shelf-stacking trollies. These shelves would normally be refilled every night.
This isn’t an isolated phenomenon or restricted to any one supermarket chain. I’ve just spent a week down in Surrey where we had to shop between different supermarkets because the large Sainsbury’s in Farnham looked very much like Tesco in Halifax. I’ve seen this in other towns and Cities I’ve visited too.
We’re now in the 17th month since the Covid pandemic triggered the first lockdown. Yet, in that first year during the first lockdown the only empty shelves I remember seeing in supermarkets were due to people panic buying stuff like toilet roll, pasta and hand sanitizer. Everything else was well stocked throughout, with the occasional product gap. Those shortages were soon sorted as panic buying subsided and suppliers stepped up production. This begs the question, if Covid is the culprit here, why now and not then? Why did shops manage to maintain stocks at the height of the pandemic, but not now, when tomorrow we hit the Government’s much trumpeted ‘freedom day’ and many restrictions are binned? Will we suddenly see these problems evaporate? I’ll be keeping an eye out on supermarket selves to bring photographic evidence.
Another thing we’re being told is that part of the reason for the shortage is that the existing lorry driver shortage has been made worse by the fact potential new drivers are struggling to book tests. Really? So why has this become a problem now, after 17 months of restrictions? What else had changed this year that didn’t have an impact last year? This BBC article gives a clue…
“Based on a survey of its members, the Road Haulage Association estimates there is now a shortage of more than 100,000 drivers in the UK, out of a pre-pandemic total of about 600,000.
That number included tens of thousands of drivers from EU member states who were living and working in the UK.
Even before Covid, the estimated shortage was about 60,000 drivers”.
So, even if Covid hadn’t restricted driver training, there’d still be a shortage of HGV drivers because of – Brexit. The Road Haulage Association lists Covid 19 as No 6 on their list of reasons for the driver shortage. Brexit is No 2 after drivers retiring.
Oh, and don’t forget those drivers are now taking far longer to deliver produce from outside the UK because we’ve now declared customs sanctions on ourselves which means drivers spend far longer dealing with forms and other red tape. And I’m not even going to ask how much of the UK fresh produce is unavailable because the EU citizens who used to come to the UK in their 10s of 1000s to pluck and pack it are no longer here…
Now, what was it Brexiters like David Davis once said? Oh, yes…
They lied to you. They’re still lying to you. Remember that next time you go shopping and see empty shelves like this, because you won’t see them in any EU country – despite Covid.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been privileged to visit two of the major High Speed 2 railway construction sites. Firstly the one at Calvert, Buckinghamshire on the 23rd June where HS2 will cross the rebuilt East-West Railway, then the site at West Hyde in Hertfordshire on the 13th July where the Chiltern tunnels are being driven North whilst the Colne valley viaduct will be built Southwards. My article on the Calvert site will be appearing in a future edition of RAIL magazine but I’ll be blogging at length about my visit to West Hyde next week. Both visits demonstrate how construction of the new railway is ramping up massively now that contractors have finally been able to mobilise and begin the main civil engineering. This process will really more obvious next year when the Colne valley viaduct starts to span the lakes as you can’t see the tunneling and many cuttings that are being constructed are below peoples line of sight, so out of view – especially as they’re tucked away in the countryside. It’s the bridges and stations that are the most visible signs of progress. I’ve now got most of the pictures I’ve taken during my visits online. You can find them in this gallery on my Zenfolio website.
Over the the next few months I’ll be visiting other HS2 construction site to bring you views and in-depth news of what’s actually going on with the largest construction project in Europe. As well as the engineering I’ll be talking a look at some of the ecological and mitigation work that’s being carried out to make this the greenest project of its kind.
What you’ll be hearing less and less about is the protests against HS2, becuase they’ve collapsed.
Having reached their height last summer they’ve been gradually fizzling out ever since. The Euston Gardens tunnel eviction early this year was their most public failure, but there’s been many since. Now, even their umbrella group – HS2Rebellion – are tacitly admitting that the protests asre on the wane. Yesterday they announced that after 38 issues their weekly (no)newsletter is going from weekly to fortnightly!
Mind you, its appearence has beeb patchy for some months due to a lack of anything to report. Deserted ‘protection’ camps don’t produce anything so they’ve filled space by talking about other political campaigns. Here’s a look at their probel. These are the ‘protection’ camps they list on their website with my annotations to reflect the true picture that HS2Rebellion aren’t admitting.
Hardly what you’d call an active campaign, is it? The handful of people left at the camps are in no position to mount any coherent actions against HS2, most of their time seems to be spent getting splinters in their backsides whilst appealling for funds to keep them in food. Even their social media activity’s dropping away as the mostly young people involved lose interest and find other things to get outraged about. When you consider the summer is meant to be the height of the activist season it’s clear they’re a busted flush now.
Come the autumn when it’s clear they’ve failed to ‘protect’ anything, much less actually stop HS2 I’m expecting the last few camps on Phase 1 to pack up and the people involved either drift off to other campaigns or try to set up new camps on Phase 2a. But they have several problems. Their support up North is nowhere near as strong or well-established as it was in the Chilterns, the weather’s harsher in the winter and they’re going to be waiting until Spring 2024 before the main civils work starts on phase 2a. That’s three winters away. Care to take bets on how many people are willing or able to sit around for that length of time – even if they’re not evicted first? So, as you can see, this is going to be the final year of any organised (and I use that term very loosly) campaign against HS2, which leaves me free to write about other things. No doubt I’ll still keep a watchful eye on the rump of their campaign as it continues to sink but I’m looking forward to writing future blogs on the positive events going on with the HS2 project.
I’ve a favour to ask… If you enjoy reading this blog, 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 to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Paul Bigland 