Category Archives: Protest

The truth about Jones’ Hill woods and Roald Dahl that you won’t hear from anti HS2 protesters…

09 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in Hs2, Lazy journalism, Protest

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Mind you, you won’t hear the truth from much of the UK media either! Sadly, many journalists lazily recycle whatever the protesters tell them without once bothering to fact-check any of it – which is why this fairy story about a supposed connection between Dahl and Jones’ hill woods has managed to spread.

Who to trust? Was Jones’ Hill woods really the inspiration for Roald Dahl to write ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’?

Well, how about the Roald Dahl museum? If anyone should know about this they should, surely? This is what they say about the inspiration for Dahl’s story on their website.

“Roald Dahl lived with his family in Great Missenden, a village in Buckinghamshire, UK. Their house was surrounded by fields and woods. As a passionate lover of the countryside, there was one particular tree – known locally as “the witches tree” – that sat on the lane near the Dahl home and came to inspire one of Roald’s own favourite stories: Fantastic Mr Fox.

The “witches tree” was a large, 150-year-old beech. Sadly the tree is no longer standing but when his children were growing up Roald always used to tell them that it was where Mr Fox and his family lived, in a hole beneath the trunk, just as the Fox family do in the story.”

So, not only was it NOT Jones’ hill woods – it wasn’t even a woods but a single tree that no longer exists and hasn’t for donkey’s years (hardly surprising as Beech trees have a typical lifespan of 150–200 years). Yet again we find those opposed to HS2 just making stuff up for their own ends (just like the ‘children’s memorial’ and dozens of other ridiculous claims).

The story gets detailed even more in this report called “Finding Fantastic Mr Fox” by the BBC’s ‘Countryfile’ which claims that:

“Beloved children’s author Roald Dahl once lived and worked in rambling Gipsy House, on the edge of the sleepy Chilterns village of Great Missenden, and when stumped for inspiration he would walk in nearby Angling Spring and Hobshill woods. It was among these ancient beeches and carpets of bluebells that Dahl set some of his best-loved stories, including my favourite, the tale of Fantastic Mr Fox. Dahl had a favourite tree, an enormous gnarled specimen in the heart of the wood, which he called The Witches’ Tree“.

Note no mention of Jones’ Hill woods, even if this report slightly contradicts the Roald Dahl museum.

And there’s more! In 2016 the Independent newspaper carried a story called ‘on the trail of Roald Dahl in Great Missenden‘. In this piece it claims that;

“Angling Spring wood was the inspiration behind one of the writer’s most charismatic characters, Fantastic Mr Fox. The gnarled Witches Tree is said to be where the four-legged family lived.”

Yet again, no mention of Jones’ Hill woods. But there’s more..

The Bucks geology website has an illustrated guide to walks around Great Missenden published by the Chiltern’s Conservation Board (who also might be expected to know the truth) which contains this informative piece.

So that’s another vote for Angling Spring wood – but no mention of Jones’ Hill! Here’s some more perspective courtesy of the Ordnance Survey. I’ve marked the position of Jones’ Hill and Angling Spring woods in relation to Whitefield Lane in Great Missenden, where Dahl lived. As you can see from the map, it backs onto Angling Spring wood.
Distance wise, Jones’ Hill is over 3 miles walk from Great Missenden High St. In contrast, Angling Spring woods are right next to Dahl’s home! Now, if you’re going walking with young children, which woods would you chose to take them to – a local one near home or one that’s more than a six mile round trek where you have to walk past loads of other woodland just to get to it?

If I can fact-check this claim by spending just a few minutes on Google, why can’t the BBC or any other journo’s do the same? Because it’s just too easy to swallow whatever the protesters tell them as it makes a nice tear-jerking story and to hell with whatever the truth is! As the old adage goes, never let the facts get in the way of a good story…

Not letting the truth get in the way is exactly what HS2Rebellion and the protesters have done. Yesterday HS2rebellion reposted serially failed Green Party candidate Mark Keir claiming to be pointing out the actual ‘Mr Fox’ tree being felled in Jones’ Hill wood on their laughably entitled and thoroughly dishonest “Save Roald Dahl wood” Facebook page!

How you chop down a tree that fell down in a completely different wood in 2003 is a mystery known only the anti HS2 protesters.

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HS2 protesters go ‘beyond the fringe’…

07 Wednesday Apr 2021

Posted by in Hs2, HS2Rebellion, Protest

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Those of you of sufficiently advanced years or whom have a penchant for classic comedy may know of the 1960s satirical series ‘Beyond the fringe’ that starred Peter Cook, Jonathon Miller Alan Bennet and Dudley Moore. In one memorable sketch Peter Cook and Johnathon Miller spoofed the British in World War Two. The skit contained these (now famous) lines:

Peter Cook: “I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war. Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen, take a shufti, don’t come back. Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too.”

Parodies beget parodies – albeit sometimes unintentionally, and today – with their ‘war’ going so badly the anti HS2 protesters at Jones’ Hill wood provided their very own ‘futile gesture’!

This morning a handful of them attempted to block a road by the tried, tested (and serially failed) method of a ‘lock-on’. In this case an old oil drum containing concrete that a couple of protesters fastened their arms into. Some even boasted about the barrel used as it had been recovered from a previous camp and nicknamed ‘big boy’. The ‘cunning plan’ being this device would supposedly take ages to break into so they’d cause maximum disruption by preventing HS2 workers getting to work. Only a futile gesture it was…

The protesters and their ‘lock-on’ were in place before contractors arrived for work but they didn’t stop anyone getting there, they merely caused a traffic jam as vehicles were left nearby. The police soon arrived en-masse and shortly after midday the ‘lock-on’ had been cut up and rendered unusable and the pair of protesters taken away, presumably to be charged under S241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 for trying to prevent people going about their lawful employment. So, that’ll be two more of the tiny number of protesters left having their wings clipped by bail conditions then! It’s a kamikaze tactic that doesn’t stop a thing, but it gives the protesters something to stick on social media where they’ll get lots of ‘thoughts and prayers’ from useless keyboard warriors – as if that will stop HS2!

Here’s the Facebook post from serially failed Green Party candidate Mark Keir who’s one of the tiny number of regular protesters at Jones’ Hill wood.

The numbers for likes, shares and comments aren’t exactly what you’d call setting the world alight…

At this stage I don’t know if other arrests were made, but the fact there’s only a handful of protesters taking part tells you all you need to know. Meanwhile, what was happening inside Jones’ Hill wood? It was business as usual for HS2 ecologists, contractors and security staff – as this screen-shot of another of Keir’s video posts demonstrates!

So much for stopping people getting to work! In the video Keir hurls insults and expletives at the HS2 workers and security people as they go about their work unhindered.

It was also business as usual at all the other 300+ worksites on the HS2 route too as this was the only protest. Elsewhere there were a few people grumbling as they filmed work going on, but that’s hardly stopping HS2, is it?

I wonder how many more of these futile gestures the protesters can afford to mount before they run out of volunteers? The more the merrier in some ways as it has the effect of stripping the camps and making them easier to evict when the time comes – which will be soon for the remaining few camps. It’s soo tempting to resort to another WW2 parody about ‘for you, the war is over’ – but I’ll resist the temptation – honest!

Of course, the protesters like to claim that they have almost universal local support for their stupid stunts. The reality is rather different. Some residents don’t take very kindly to having these waste of time protests blocking roads – as this illustrates…

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It’s the end of the line for ‘StopHS2’

04 Sunday Apr 2021

Posted by in Hs2, Joe Rukin, Politics, Protest, StopHs2

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Funny how you never hear real news on the StopHs2 website – especially when it relates to yet another of their failures! Just as there was total radio silence about ‘Campaign Manager’ Joe Rukin’s embarrassing (and expensive) legal fiasco last October, there’s been no public announcement that the man’s finally admitted what the rest of us have known for years – he’s been wasting his time!

This fact has finally dawned on Rukin, who sent an email around to the groups supporters at the end of March – after yet another legal failure when his latest application for a Judicial Review was dismissed. Here’s part of what Rukin has said.

True to the end, Rukin’s not been honest with people. The truth is that he’s been looking for a proper job for several years now and the real reason he’s stayed is because he didn’t get one. Rukin’s retirement means that the only person left is Bournemouth based Penny Gaines, so effectively, it’s game over. I mean, seriously – ‘StopHs2’? based in Bournemouth? As a campaign group StopHS2 have been irrelevant for several years as they never managed to secure what they needed to stop HS2 – political support. The writing’s been on the wall since 2014 when the Phase 1 Hybrid Bill passed with such whopping majorities (both in the Commons and Lords). Cross-party support for HS2’s never wavered (despite some of the nonsense claimed by people like Rukin) and without the political numbers adding up in their favour – they were toast. The demise of StopHs2 puts the final nail in the coffin that already contains the remains of ‘AGAHST’ (Action Groups Against HS2), the High Speed 2 Action Alliance’ (HS2aa) and dozens of local ‘action’ groups up and down the HS2 routes.

Now, the only thing left is the dwindling number of protesters allied to Extinction Rebellion, Hs2Rebellion and the local Nimbys who support them. It’s only a matter of time before the bell tolls for them too. Despite their bombast and bluster they’ve not stopped a thing. Now they’re reduced to boasting of ‘delaying’ pockets of work on HS2 (conveniently ignoring the fact what’s caused the most delays to the project has been the Government shilly-shallying with reviews). The protesters ‘protection camp’ network has been shrinking ever since last summer, with many camps now being redundant as there’s nothing left to ‘protect’! Meanwhile, site clearances and construction on Phase 1 have ramped up massively, completely overwhelming the puddle of protesters. Now, Phase 2 has been given the go-ahead and a contract to create new woods and wetlands as part of early environmental works on the route between the West Midlands and Crewe was signed on April 1st.

The days of the final ‘protection camps’ that have any relevance to the route are numbered and we can expect to see their demise happen soon. No doubt there will still be isolated protests here and there and some people will be left in pointless camps on private land, out of harm’s way, but they’ll be posturing, nothing more.

The campaign to stop Hs2 never stood a chance. Now it’s spluttering to an ignominious end…

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Hs2rebellion’s ‘alternative laws’…

31 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Protest, Railways

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Sadly, we all live in a world where it seems that nowadays facts are what you make up. Nowhere summed this situation up more perfectly than America during the administration of the orange fool otherwise known as Donald Trump. Memorably, one of his spokespeople (U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway) once talked of being in possession of ‘alternative facts’ or – what’s known to the rest of us as – lies…

It seems HS2rebellion have been supping from the same teat, only this time we not only have alternative facts, we also have alternative laws!

Colluding in this parallel universe is someone I’ve introduced you to before as a ‘crazy anti HS2 campaigner of the week’. Caroline Thompson Smith – take another bow! After her last arboreal atrocity hairdresser Caroline has put on her legal wig to attempt to expound on the finer points of English law only to fail miserably as she just made stuff up. Ms Smith filmed a load of nonsense outside High Wycombe court earlier today when two anti HS2 protesters were found guilty of breaking Section 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 by trying (and failing) to blockade an HS2 worksite.

Caroline tries to claim the Judge totally ignored a defense that they weren’t trespassing (so weren’t breaking the law) despite the fact no such defense exists as S241 doesn’t even mention trespass – as is made clear, here…

Still unsure? OK. Contrast the legal ‘wisdom’ and assertions of a hairdresser with this from an independent (but left leaning) legal group. They say;

Yep, you guessed it – no mention of trespass (or tools) but exactly the description of what the anti HS2 protesters were doing! Think about who and why this law was brought about in the first place. The intention was to ban secondary picketing. Remember the ‘flying pickets’? No, not the band, the real ones feared and famed from the days of the 1984-85 miners strikes! Also known as ‘secondary picketing’, this is what the legislation was intended to curb, but it also applies to protesters who’re trying to prevent people from getting to work.

So, yet again the anti Hs2 demonstrators have been led down the garden path by Thompson-Smith and HS2 ‘rebellion’ have slavishly copied her nonsense – as they always do.

Thompson-Smith talking complete spheroids, as usual…

I (almost) feel sorry for the fools who’re falling for this. The one’s who’re not bothering fact checking but who’ll probably throw away their money on yet another online fundraiser to pay for a pointless appeal which has no chance of success. I’ve said for years that the only people who’re benefitting from the anti HS2 ‘campaign’ are the legal profession. This looks like it could be another classic example.

How will any of this stop HS2? It won’t of course. What it has shown is that more of the dwindling number of protesters are having their wings clipped by the courts.

So, how are the few remaining HS2 ‘rebellion’ protection camps getting on? Badly – as this little snippet reveals. Remember this time last year when Crackley was the biggest of the ‘protection’ camps and the occupants used to boast about how they were going to stop HS2? How things change in a year! Most of those people from the camp who were so active on social media have vanished. Only a few have reappeared at other camps. So who’se left at Crackley? Here’s the answer…

Because just two people are going to stop HS2…

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HS2 protesters ‘faulty towers’ strategy fails again!

22 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by in Hs2, Protest

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Hs2 ‘rebellion’ and the other anti rail protesters are set to have yet another bad week, partly due to their own incompetence and habit of lying. Never was the Extinction Rebellion slogan ‘tell the truth’ more warped than when its used by the XR people who’re opposing HS2.

In the early hours of this morning bailiffs and HS2 staff moved in on the Denham ‘protection’ camp, a squalid site occupied by a handful of protesters on the edge of North-West London near Ruislip. The protesters had gone to a lot of effort to build a couple of towers out of old pallets and scrap timber, claiming these structures would resist being evicted. As usual, it was a hollow boast. Time and time again we’ve seen these structures thrown up at protest camps and not one of them lasts more than a day or two because there’s so few people to occupy them and the bailiffs and contractors have sophisticated equipment and the tactics to negate them. Still, I suppose we should be grateful that the protesters still use the same unimaginative and failed tactics time and time again.

Protesters videoed the first tower being demolished by bailiffs from inside the second tower. As you can see, there’s a lot of damage to the area caused by this camp and its occupants and HS2 contractors will have to clear all this mess away.
Filmed several hours ago, this shows the Bailiffs demolishing the second tower using cherry-pickers. Later, two more bailiffs joined them, suspended from a crane. It didn’t take long to tear the flimsy structure apart. By the way, “Niqabi Hippie” is the pseudonym of the young girl who was the last person to be removed from the useless Euston protest tunnel last month.

The two towers at Denham didn’t survive beyond lunchtime. The first was evicted and demolished before breakfast and the second was emptied of the two people inside it before one o’ clock. All that remains at the time of writing is an unknown number of people in at least one tree. I wouldn’t expect them to last the day if the bailiffs decide to take them down. The whole event has been yet another sorry waste of people’s time and money – and I include in that the mugs who’ve coughed up money to finance the protest camps via numerous appeals and crowdfunders. ‘Stop’ HS2? How, when these people can’t even stop themselves being evicted? Of course, regular readers may well remember Denham as being the site of another of the protesters towering failures! It was here that they put the famous (but useless) ‘Swampy’ up in a bamboo tower to stop National Grid from building a bridge across a stream. That one didn’t last more than a day either! No doubt by the end of the week HS2Rebellion will be spinning like tops to present this latest debacle as a ‘heroic resistance’ and some kind of victory when the reality is that they’re rapidly facing the extinction of their camp network as there’s simply too few of them anywhere to prevent an eviction. Another sign that people are losing interest in their futile campaign is just how few people watch or respond to their livestreams and social media posts now compared to a year ago.

Just two people watching the livestream – and one of them is me!

Not that sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ on Facebook (Or Twitter, Instagram, etc) was ever going to do any good. I’ll be interested to see how the funding tap fares over the next few weeks. Will the mugs who give them money start to realise all they’re doing is throwing it away?

Unsurprisingly, the protesters videos of the eviction featured the same handful of faces. Refugees from numerous other evictions. Some of them have now been evicted at least 3-4 times! These peripatetic protesters are doomed to drift from camp to camp, but their options are shrinking rapidly, which is why so many have given up the fight and drifted away, either by going home or heading off to other non-HS2 events like the Stonehenge road protest. Other have had their wings clipped by bail conditions after being arrested for futile actions like climbing onto contractors lorries or blocking entrances to worksites.

As ‘direct action’ has failed, HS2Rebellion are left with their equally useless social media campaign. Quite how a few people with no influence spouting untruths on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram are meant to stop the largest construction project in Europe is a mystery, but then they’ve spent so much time lying about the project they’ve clearly fallen for their own propaganda. Here’s an example of their latest blatant lies.

As Pete Johnson has pointed out, the photographs are of the East-West rail project which is reinstating the old railway from Oxford to Cambridge – the old ‘Varsity Line’. Ignoring the breathtaking hypocrisy of people who’re always whining that reopening old railways is a viable alternative to HS2 whining about reopening an old railway – this is a good example of the depths HS2Rebellion will sink to as they obviously know these are not photographs of HS2. It’s also a good example of how UK ‘environmentalists’ have completely lost the plot nowadays and are actively opposing the expansion of the rail network and the greenest form of travel. Mad, utterly mad…

In other news another serial failure was back in the Courts last week, but not for long! Joe Rukin, StopHs2’s ‘Campaign Manager’ had yet another application for a Judicial Review thrown out. The Judge ruled that Rukin had nothing new to say and was essentially trying to re-run celebrity environmentalist Chris Packham’s failed legal action. With no prospect of success and with no other avenues open to them, you really have to wonder what’s the point of Rukin and ‘StopHs2’ now?

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Hs2’Rebellion’, the latest farce…

16 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Protest

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There’s an old philosophical question that’s really rather apt when it comes to the farcical ‘campaign’ against HS2. It’s “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” One could update it to the present day to ask “If an Hs2rebellion protest camp’s evicted and no-one was around to Livestream/video it, did it really happen”?

This question could have been posed today when an eviction took place today of the sole anti HS2 camp north of Warwickshire. Named ‘Camp Isla’ after someone’s canine friend, it really did seem to be a one man and his dog operation! Although it appears on Hs2Rebellion’s dwindling list of ‘protection’ camps, it hasn’t been any trouble for HS2 as nothing much has been happening – until today, when this appeared on the camp’s Facebook page.

This eviction must hold a special place in the annals as since this appeared, not a single video, livestream, photograph or any verifiable record of the event has appeared – despite the appeals for people to turn up to ‘protect’ the camp. This is all the more mysterious when one looks at some more claims made when the camp went from one man and his dog to group of people down a tunnel and folk festooning the trees! .

Needless to say, not of this has been supported by the slightest bit of evidence from anyone. I’ve little doubt an eviction has happened – but the rest strikes me as pure fantasy. Not one of them has a camera-phone? Well, that’s a first. Normally the internet is awash with long and boring livestreams recording every eviction.

Of course, the daft thing about all these Walter Mitty fantasies about tunnels etc, is they soon fall apart in the cold light of day. I suspect (and not for the first time) the ‘camp’ Facebook account will be kept alive to churn out messages of support, fictitious updates and claims of winning – but the reality will be very different. Mind you, the HS2Rebellion website is rather good at that too. Here’s the list of ‘protection’ camps they claim exist, with the reality added…

So, 8 camps. 3 of which no longer exist, 2 more which have been partly evicted and 2 more (Crackley and Denham) which are almost certainly redundant as there’s left to ‘protect’ anymore! Some ‘winning’! Two other camps have never made the list as one (Leather Lane near Jones’ Hill woods) didn’t last a fortnight whilst the other on Wormwood Scrubs has no permanent site and has less than 5 regular occupants! In fact, if you added up the regular occupants of all these camps together I doubt you’d find more than a few dozen people.

Pitch this against the largest construction site in Europe with 10s of 1000s of workers over 300 worksites on a 140 mile long route and you can start to see the futility of all this. Mind you, so can many of the protesters, which is why so many of them have wandered off back to other causes to fight yet more lost battles for Extinction Rebellion and other groups – hence some of the Euston tunnel refugees appearing in Lichfield to spray paint on a factory supposedly supplying military equipment to Israel! Obviously, political activism (just like being a SPAD to the PM) makes you immune to Covid or the need to follow lockdown rules! Whilst XR and it’s friends might not think those rules apply they might find the new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill which passed second reading by 359 to 263 votes rather harder to ignore as provisions in it will criminalise some of their activities. Despite my own personal reservations about the bill I will be interested to see how quickly it becomes law and how it’s used in practice against groups like Extinction Rebellion and HS2Rebellion.

Of course, today happened on the same day that HS2 Ltd announced the start of work on what will be one of the most visible civil engineering projects on phase 1 – the 3.5km long Colne viaduct on the edge of London. Unlike ‘Camp Isla’, this won’t be a one man and his dog operation! The world’s moved on even if the remaining protesters haven’t. Poor ‘Isla’ is left barking up the wrong tree – in more ways than one…

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Thank you!