Well, that was it folks, today was the Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year, and it’s all downhill from here when it comes to light evenings as (after a couple of days) the nights will begin to start to draw in even though this is also the first day of summer! Doesn’t really seem fair, does it?
Mind you, it feels like anything but summer up here today. The skies have been grey and the temperature anything but seasonal! Thankfully I’m heading South to warmer climes for the next few days as I’ll be based in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire whilst I visit the High-Speed 2 railway construction works. Despite what you hear in the media with the same tired and trite spin from certain quaters, the project is really cracking on at the moment. Some papers have been spinning about the ‘spiralling cost’ of HS2. The reality is far more mundane. Any large infrastructure project like this has a contingency built into its budget that’s to be used to cover eventalities like materials increases or unexpected costs (like Covid). Hs2 is no exception, except that the contingency runs to many £bns. So, the latest extra costs are easily absorbed by the existing budget – only the newspapers always forget to mention that bit…
I’ll be running rolling blogs for the next few days as I travel to/from and around Buckinghamshire, so expect quite a few pictures too. Plus, you can always follow my activities on Twitter @PaulMBigland
The rest of my day’s been kept busy editing the pictures from last weeks ‘Rail Live’ event. I’ve now got the majority of them on my Zenfolio website in this gallery should you wish to have a browse of what went on. It was an excellent event in glorious weather (especially on day 1). The atmosphere was brilliant too as everybody was so relieved to be able to return to some sort of normal as this was the first major trade event since the first lockdown in March 2020.
As I’ve an early start tomorrow there’s no long blog from me tonight, so I’ll leave you with a topical picture of the day – from ‘Rail Live’ Here’s the British Transport Police team that deals with working at height to remove protesters who cause disruption to the public transport network.
The irony? These protesters are nearly always the supposed ‘environmentalists’ of Extinction Rebellion or Hs2Rebellion. It’s why I’ve long held the view that the UK ‘green’ movement isn’t fit for purpose and this is a good example why. ‘Greens’ disrupting green public transport by climbing on or glueing themselves to trains? Madness, but this is a classic example of the cognitive dissonance these people display. Thankfully, their campaign against HS2 has collapsed, so the BTP team shouldn’t have as much to do in the future. Maybe one day the penny will drop with these ‘environmentalists and they’ll discover that the real threat to the environment is the Government’s road (not rail) building programme, but I won’t hold my breath…

By the way – don’t tell HS2rebellion, but there was some really interesting vegetation clearing/tree cutting kit on display from companies like Coombes Forestry, one of the companies working on HS2 that the protesters have tried to intimidate. That obviously worked well…
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