Category Archives: StopHs2

Hs2 and Twitter. Never a good mix. Add in Carillion and…

16 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Carillion, Hs2, StopHs2

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When major news stories break Twitter can be a very strange place. It can educate, amuse and frustrate all at the same time. It can also make you seriously wonder about the sanity of some of your fellow citizens – the one’s who never let the fact they know absolutely nothing about a subject and clearly have a tenuous grip on reality stop them sharing their ‘wisdom’.

The collapse of Carillion and the fact it had some contracts to build Hs2 is a classic example. If you believed some of the nonsense, Carillion was solely responsible for building the line which is now going to collapse as a result of them folding. Needless to say, those opposed to Hs2 have leapt on the story, grasping every straw they can find to claim that either this is the ‘end’ for Hs2, or that the Government should now cancel the scheme as a consequence. Here’s a superb example of the bat-shit crazy!

Lance-watkins. 16.1.18.PNG

Meanwhile, Joe Rukin of StopHs2 returned from semi-retirement (he’s not written anything since 22 Nov) to pen this on their website;

“Today, crisis-hit Carillion has gone into liquidation, less than six months after it was awarded the contract to design and build all the tunnels on Phase 1 of HS2.”

Carillion were designing and building all of the Hs2 tunnels? Really?

No. It’s Rukin lying through his teeth again. In fact, Carillion weren’t involved in any bored tunnels. Here’s are the details of the 3 construction contracts (that were divided into 7 lots) which were let to different Joint Ventures (JVs). The information comes from the official Government website.

HS JV contract details..PNG

Carillion were part of the CEK Joint venture, along with Eiffage Genie Civil and Kier Infrastructure and Overseas. They won lots C2 and C3 – neither of which involve boring tunnels. All the tunnelling sections were won by other JVs. The other members of the CEK JV have stated that they have contingency plans in place to deal with the collapse of Carillion, so it’s very likely they’ll continue without them whilst looking for a replacement.

Of course, none of this will stop the ill-informed frothing as people sound off, but eventually the penny will start to drop with some as it becomes obvious that Hs2 is continuing. One very public sign of this is all the work at Euston. The gardens at the front of the station closed yesterday. This led to a futile protest by three demonstrators who were quickly removed from the site before the fencing went up.

The other protest site further up the line at Harvil Rd isn’t exactly a hotbed of activity either. The protesters tweeted out this picture the other day. Four people corralled behind fencing, outnumbered by the people protecting them is more Watership Down than Twyford Down!

Harvil Rd 2.PNG

So, has the public furore over Carillion and the anti Hs2 protesters attempts to grab media attention by chaining a Vicar to a Euston tree helped their cause? Not in the slightest. Their petition on the Government website continues to underwhelm. By close of play yesterday it had garnered a grand total of 24,136 signatures since September 2017. The only problem is that to be in with a chance it needed 66,200 plus! The maths are inescapable. On average it needs over 1150 signatures per day until March 21st. Yesterday it managed 188. Today it has 10. Its average is dropping daily and currently stands just over the 200 mark. It’s toast.

Meanwhile, away from the doomed Stop Hs2 protests, I’m sure that some awkward questions will be asked about the failure of Carillion and the behaviour in the company’s boardroom. Once such question would be how is it that so many hedge funds had short positions on the companies shares, yet this wasn’t sounding alarm bells with others?

Welcome to 2018 and my first blog on an old subject – Hs2

01 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by in Hs2, Railways, StopHs2

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I’m kick-starting the new year with a bit of number-crunching and a look at the stophs2 campaign, which hasn’t had a great 2017 and which is set to have an even lousier 2018! their last remaining umbrella group (Stophs2) is hanging on by the skin of it’s teeth but if it survives the year in anything but name it’ll be a minor miracle. There’s really nothing going on.

The political campaign has skidded to a stop and apart from a few ineffectual protesters shuffling around the pavement at the Harvil Rd protest there’s very little happening on the ground. A few local action groups are trying to keep up local pressure, but as the number of signatures on the latest Stophs2 petition show, there’s not much support for them outside the small number of people directly affected by the Hs2 routes.

So, lets have a look at that petition. I’ve broken it down into phase 1 and the two legs to Manchester and Leeds. Here’s phase 1.

petition phase 1 1 Jan

The numbers that are most significant are the percentages of all constituents who’ve signed. As you can see, they’re tiny, even in the campaign’s ‘heartlands’. Only two constituencies have more than 1%. What’s also significant is the numbers who’ve signed in December. None are in triple figures.

Of course, this petitions pretty pointless on phase 1 anyway as Hs2’s a done-deal here and it’s being built. Now let’s have a look at The leg to Manchester.

petition phase 2 M'cr 1 Jan

The figures here are appalling. 7 constituencies had no-one signing in December and the one’s that did get them never got into double figures! What this betrays is the lack of organised stophs2 ‘action’ groups on this stretch of Hs2. Apart from on in Mid-Cheshire and another around Stone, there’s bugger-all going on. No groups exist in Manchester at all. As the phase 2a Hybrid Bill is due to start its passage through Parliament this month it will be interesting to see how the lack of any organised opposition affects its progress.

Next up – the route to Leeds.

Petition phase 2 Leeds. 1 jan

The numbers are little better here. Only 3 constituencies have got into double figures and the percentages are tiny. Only one stands out – Rother valley. But even here the percentage signing is still under 1.5% of constituents. Clearly, there are more ‘action’ groups here, but they’re not achieving much and they’re having no impact on a national scale.

Here’s some more number-crunching. This is the numbers of people signing the petition by month.

signs

As you can see, the monthly average is dropping like a stone. The petition’s clearly doomed. It’s already more than 35,500 behind target. Put simply, they’re running out of Nimbys or those folks allied to groups opposed to Hs2 like the Green party of right-wing organisations like the TPA, IEA or what’s left of UKIP. In other words, they’re stuffed as they have no political clout.

There’s another interesting number too. Stophs2 claim 5901 followers on Twitter, so how many of those followers have retweeted and spread the petition? Just 94 in 96 days. So much for their social media campaign!

stophs2 31 dec

Notice the hollow boast about the number of people signing? Today (96 days later) they’re on 22,882! The story of apathy and inaction is the same on their Facebook page and website. They’ve run out of steam and support everywhere.

I can’t see The Dept of Transport or Government  being too worried about their campaign nowadays as it’s pretty much ceased to exist. Rent-a-quote Joe Rukin, their ‘grandly titled ‘Campaign Manager’ has been looking for a proper job for some time. If and when he goes the game’s up as Stophs2 is pretty much a one man & his dog operation. The group’s Chair, Penny Gaines, decamped to the South-West some years ago. In November 2017 Stophs2 lost two out of its five Directors, including Roger Waller who’d allowed his home address in Dunsmore, Aylesbury to be used as the groups registered office. The registered address has now moved to Rukin’s in Caesar Rd, Kenilworth (although Rukin resigned as a Director as long ago as January 2011). The remaining Directors are Gaines, Rae Sloan and Richard Lloyd – although how long they’ll hang on is anyone’s guess.

Somehow, I doubt I’ll be spending much time blogging about Stophs2 in future.

 

 

I love a good petition, I love bad ones even more!

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Rail Investment, StopHs2

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I’ve been threatening to blog about the latest daft Stop Hs2 petition for ages now but I’ve never been able to find the time as it’s been busy year on a whole host of fronts. I’ve finally found a few moments and thought, it’s now or never…

First, a bit of history. Back in September the sole surviving ‘national’ Stop Hs2 umbrella group was foolish (and desperate) enough to start a new petition on the Government website. Regular readers will know how I love these petitions as they allow you to mine data. Each signature is allocated to the constituency it comes from so you can discover where the anti Hs2 campaign’s strength lies – and where its weaknesses are. Amongst other things the number of signatures helps show where there are active Stophs2 groups.

The results have been fascinating. Right from the start it was obvious the petition was never going to hit its target, but that didn’t prevent @stophs2 boasting that they’d harvested 10,000 signatures in their first week. It was a boast that was always going to come back and haunt them – as it’s proved…

I decided to drill down the data by analysing each constituency Hs2 passes through and update the results every two days. As the petition quickly faltered I decided to add the monthly scores, which have proved to be interesting – and also the last time anyone signed in each constituency. Predictably phase 1 of Hs2 provides the vast bulk of the signatures as that’s where the campaign was best organised & where all the ‘national’ anti Hs2 groups were based (Hs2aa, AGAHST, 51M and stophs2) but it’s pointless as the Phase 1 Hybrid Bill has Royal Assent and Phase 1’s under construction! Here’s today’s results. I’ve added the number of constituents for comparison.

blog 1

As you can see, the greatest ‘success’ is in Cheryl Gillans constituency, where a ‘massive’  1474 people have signed. But wait, what percentage of all constituents is that? It’s only 1.57% – and that’s in the one place that’s the ‘hotbed’ of Stophs2 with a prominent anti MP! Head North out of the Chilterns and the numbers drop dramatically, with lots of zeros appearing. Head into London and the pictures exactly the same. Even Camden (supposedly the most anti of London boroughs) only reaches 370 signatures (or 0.26%). This suggests to me that in many areas the ‘action group’ network’s collapsed. A search for their websites or perusal of their Facebook or Twitter accounts confirms that suspicion.

Now let’s move on to the next phase of Hs2 – phase 2a to Crewe and on to Manchester. The numbers here are very interesting…

blog 2

The best number here is a measly 324, or 0.38% in Stone, which still has a functioning stophs2 group (of sorts) and an anti MP – Bill Cash. After that the numbers are appalling. Look at the dates when someone last signed.  It’s clear there’s few functioning stophs2 groups on the rest of the route. Stafford’s a waste of time and even Tatton (which includes the dysfunctional Mid-Cheshire Stophs2 group) can’t muster more than 0.32%! head North into metropolitan Manchester and the numbers are laughable! This bodes badly for stophs2 when the phase 2a bill passes 2nd reading & begins its path through Parliament. Now lets have a look at Phase 2 to Leeds…

blog 3

Despite a handful of active stophs2 groups on this section and acres of bluff and bluster about ‘big’ protests, judicial reviews etc, it’s clear that there’s little going on in many constituencies. Rother Valley’s the noticeable exception, but even here the figures aren’t huge (unless you count 1.3% of all constituents as a major problem). Also, this area’s where groups are in direct conflict with MPs who may not be happy about details of the route, but who still support building Hs2.

Let’s look at the headline % figures for each of the 3 groups, which puts things into a different perspective. Phase 1 has 0.30% of all constituents signed up. Phase 2 to Manchester has just 0.10% and the Leeds leg only has 0.17%. In total that’s a tiny 0.34% of all the 6,567,433 constituents!

Here’s another perspective. The Government website contains lots of polls. The headline for Stophs2 is this.

petition. 22 dec. 17.14

Not exactly a million man march, is it? It gets worse. The Hs2 petition’s No 21 in the ratings. It’s beaten by petitions about banning fireworks (108,715) banning balloon & sky lantern releases (43,326) and the sale of animal fur (27,667) – amongst others!

What this crazy petitions revealed is how the anti hs2 campaign’s been a spectacular failure that’s continuing to fail. All the national groups bar one have folded. The one that remains (Stophs2) is toothless. It doesn’t have the money or political influence to keep the campaign going – especially now that spades are in the ground preparing for the construction of phase 1 whilst political attention shifts off their turf to Phase 2a and beyond.

2018 is going to be a very interesting year for Hs2 – but for the anti Hs2 campaign it’s ‘Good-night Vienna’

StopHs2. Hoist by their own petard!

14 Saturday Oct 2017

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You have to laugh! The anti Hs2 campaign’s in the doldrums after a terrible political party conference season, coupled with the fact that, well, they’re pretty much irrelevant nowadays. So, to try and fill space on their website and pretend that something’s happening that isn’t a disaster, Joe Rukin penned this…

Here’s a screengrab.rukin, stockport

Question Time vets its audience and invites them from a wide area. This is hardly representative of Stockport, but let’s just play along with Joe’s spin for a while. ‘Stockport agrees Hs2 is a monumental waste of money’. Really?

Let’s ignore the fact that there’s not a single StopHs2 (in)action group in the whole of Greater Manchester. The nearest one is the ineffectual Mid-Cheshire group, who’ve had to pretend to be from Manchester in the past (here they are in 2014). So, what’s the hard  evidence for such a claim? Well, why don’t we have a look at the new national petition that StopHs2 started last month? Surely, Stockport will register in that as an absolute hotbed of anti Hs2 feeling – as Rukin’s claimed. Oh, wait…

Here’s a screenshot of the petition results from Stockport, taken earlier today.

stockport

A grand total of 9 constituency residents, 0.01%…

As usual, Rukin’s bullshit and bombast falls just as soon as you start looking at the truth.

 

 

 

Stop Hs2 never learn…

25 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2 petitions, Politics, StopHs2

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I’ve not blogged about the anti Hs2 campaign for some time, mainly because their campaign’s collapsed. There’s nothing going on nationally, just a dwindling number of folk moaning about Hs2 on Twitter. Locally, a few campaign groups on Phase 2 continue to make a noise, but their numbers are small and there’s little in the way of co-ordination.

However, last Thursday, Joe Rukin of the sole surviving ‘national’ group (Stop Hs2) decided to start yet another anti Hs2 petition using the Governments template. What a bad idea! I’ve always said that (like social media), these petitions are a double-edged sword. They’re just as likely to show a campaign’s weaknesses as much as its strengths – as is the case here. Regular readers will know I love this petition format as it provided some very interesting numbers to crunch. Signatories are identified by constituency and a total is given as a percentage of resident constituents. So, this morning I crunched the numbers. The petition will run until March 2018, which means Stophs2 have 6 months of embarrassment to come (if they last that long).

Here’s a link to the petition itself. Hs2 petition.PNG

The map that comes with the petition’s the really useful resource as it highlights the constituents with the largest number of signs using different colours. The darker the colour, the more who’ve signed. Now, spot where Hs2 goes!

hs2 petition map

Straight away the map explodes the myth that the Stop Hs2 campaign’s national. It’s clear that it’s anything but. Folk signing the petition are mostly living on the route, with the greatest concentration on Phase 1 around the Chilterns!

Here’s the number crunching, firstly for constituencies on Hs2 Phase 1 – which is a done deal now.

hs2 numbers p1

The first figure is the number of constituents, the second is the number who’ve signed the petition and the final one is the percentage of constituents. The first fact that leaps out is how tiny the percentages are, the largest is just over half 1%! The second fact is that phase 1 signatories make up a third of the grand total of 6229. The other fact is that other constituencies on the phase 1 route aren’t on the spreadsheet as the numbers of signatories are so small.

Now let’s have a look at Phase 2. I’ve divided them between the two legs of Hs2, Manchester and Leeds. Lets look at the Manchester route first.

p2 M'cr

What’s fascinating about this is that so few constituencies Hs2 passes through feature. This proves what I’ve been saying for some time, the stop Hs2 campaign’s always been weak here (there’s never been a single anti Hs2 group in Manchester for example) but now it looks like it’s pretty much collapsed. Despite the presence of a small but noisy Mid-Cheshire ‘action’ group, Congleton constituency only has 25 signs. Stafford has 31.

Now let’s look at the Leeds leg.

hs2 leeds

The numbers show that all the noise that’s come from one or two groups in Yorkshire and elsewhere hasn’t translated into signatures and the percentages for the constituencies are well below what we see on phase 1, which suggests there’s far less outrage about Hs2 here.

It’s worth remembering that these petitions get the greatest number of signs in the first few days. Once the activists have signed, numbers drop off rapidly. To reach it’s target the petition needs over 555 signs every single day for the duration. There’s no chance of that happening. This petition’s utterly pointless. The only thing it’s doing is allowing people to monitor the pulse of the stophs2 ‘campaign’. Judging by these numbers, it won’t be long before someone turns off its life-support machine. I’ll report back monthly, just to monitor what happens.

 

 

A busy week for Hs2.

20 Thursday Jul 2017

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I’m on a train to London, so I’ve got some time to finally catch up with a bit of blogging. As anyone who’s been following the news will have seen it’s been a busy week for Hs2. Firstly, £6.6bn of Civils contracts were awarded. Balfour Beatty’s joint venture with French firm Vinci won two contracts worth £2.5bn. They’ll design and build the Long Itchington Wood Green tunnel to the Delta Junction/Birmingham Spur plus the section from the Delta Junction to the west coast main line near Lichfield in Staffordshire. Vinci has previously been involved in the high-speed Tours-Bordeaux rail project in France.

Contracts worth nearly 2bn to build Euston Tunnels and Approaches and the Northolt tunnel were won by a joint venture between Sweden-based Skanska, Austria’s Strabag and UK firm Costain, which has worked on Crossrail and the Channel tunnel.

Two more packages, worth a combined total of £1.34bn for the North Portal Chiltern Tunnels to Brackley and Brackley to South Portal of Long Itchington Wood Green Tunnel went to a Carillion / Eiffage / Kier joint venture. Carillion have been in the news, recently, so this attracted media attention.

Other companies to have won HS2 work are the joint venture between French construction group Bouygues and UK firms Sir Robert McAlpine and VolkerFitzpatrick. They claimed a £965m contract for the Colne Viaduct and Chiltern tunnels package.

A story planted in the press the day before as a spoiler, claiming Hs2 would cost £111bn caused a predictable furore from the usual suspects, so it’s worth bearing in mind that in the tender, the estimated range for these contracts was from £7.1-11.8bn. Of course, what will happen now is a year of detailed design work before the contract target cost is set.

Later in the day the Government announced that the phase 2a Hybrid Bill had been deposited in Parliament. This bill will begin its passage through the Houses, with the intention of Royal Assent in 2019, allowing construction to beginning 2020.

It’s worth remembering that – despite the claims from antis that Hs2 is ‘late’, this section has been brought forward several years, from 2033 to 2027!

The Phase 2b Hybrid Bill is expected to be with Parliament in 2019, with Royal Assent being granted in 2022. To this end, Monday afternoon saw Transport Minister Chris Grayling announced his decision on the final route choice (link). Unsurprisingly, it confirmed that Meadowhall had been dropped in favour of a more Easterly route and that Sheffield would be served by a loop, with trains running through Chesterfield. The change appears to be for several reasons. The Hs2 design panel had already expressed concerns over the viability of Meadhowhall on space, cost and technical difficulty. What appears to have tipped the balance was the growing influence of Transport for the North (TfN) who have developed ambitious plans to ensure the North’s major cities (including Sheffield) would be within 30m journey time of Manchester Airport. The route change will allow greater integration and connectivity with the future Northern Powerhouse rail (aka HS3). Of course, the fact the change will save an estimated £1bn will have made the idea attractive too!

A minor change to the route in Leicestershire around Measham has seen a third option adopted with a minor deviation off the 2013 route. This should render MAPA, the local StopHs2 ‘action’ group redundant, although to be honest, they were doing very little post-consultation anyway!

The reaction from those opposed to Hs2 showed just how ineffective they are nowadays. Hs2aa haven’t made a sound. In fact, if you look at their website, you wouldn’t know anything’s happened since April! StopHs2 trotted out Joe Rukin to do the usual round of splenetic ‘rent a quote’ interviews, but it’s all rather pointless. What’s been very telling is how few of Stophs2 followers are engaged with them nowadays. Despite having several thousand ‘followers’ on social media, only a handful are passing on the message though retweets and shares. Here’s an example…

stophs2. 20 jul 17

Predictably, Twitter was full of people jumping on the bandwagon to offer their opinions about Hs2 for a couple of days. These ranged from the ignorant to the batshit crazy, along with Hyperloop supporters and the folk to whom the NHS is everything. None of it will make the slightest bit of difference of course as they’re simply individuals sounding off about something, they’re not a campaign. As for an ‘organised’ Stophs2 campaign, that’s essentially history. Stophs2 is two people, the most prominent of which is Joe Rukin. Local sources tell me that Joe’s been looking for a (real) job for some time now. Chair Penny Gaines lives in the SouthWest nowadays and does very little. When Joe goes – that’s it…

All this activity means that Hs2 will be featuring in the news a lot from now on several fronts. There’s the construction of phase 1, the Parliamentary process of phase 2a and the consultations and environmental assessments of phase 2b.

Talking of phase 2b. The pictures not looking too rosy for those trying to Stophs2 on that section of the route. With the collapse of the national groups they’re on their own and (in typical Yorkshire style) they seem to spend as much time arguing between themselves as they do trying to stop Hs2! The supposed merger between the Trowell and Erewash groups appears to have hit the rocks as people backpedal. The announcement of the final route will see others breathe a sigh of relief and step away, leaving them even thinner on the ground. Hopefully, the residents who’re genuinely affected by Hs2 will ditch the rabble rousers and political opportunists and start trying to get what they can out of Hs2 Ltd in the form of mitigation and compensation for their communities. Whilst their MPs support building Hs2, there’s no doubt they also want to get the best for the communities they serve. I wish them well in doing it.

Hs2 antis have been Mogged!

07 Friday Jul 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Jacob Rees Mogg, StopHs2

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It’s been hilarious to watch the remaining Hs2 antis fawning over Jacob Rees-Mogg MP. today. How did he become their latest poster boy? Well, Hs2 antis have been swooning over him since he appeared on BBC’s ‘Question Time’ last night. When questioned about public sector pay and where the money for increases could come from he said “HS2 would not be my priority for spending”

Antis immediately took to Twitter to praise him, suggesting that he would scrap Hs2.  Poor Penny Gaines from StopHs2 must have been in a paroxysm of delight. She watches the programme religiously, ready to tweet at any critical mention of HS2. She’s had thin gruel for some time now, so she was off like a rocket! Here’s some of the comments.

gaines

densonread. 7.7.17

So, is Mogg a hardline anti Hs2 campaigner? No. He’s a backbench Tory who’ll say anything as he knows he’s never going to be in any position of influence or have to carry through what he says. He can just make stuff up to suit whatever his audience is at the time. What none of them bothered to do was check his voting record on Hs2, because if they did, they’d find he voted FOR not against building HS2 as this piece from the Evening Standard points out.

Mogg’s words are carefully chosen, but meaningless. It would not be ‘his priority’? Well, as it’s not his decision, who gives a stuff about his ‘priorities’? They no more matter than the ordinary man in the street. It’s not as if there’s going to be another vote on Hs2 phase 1 anyway, it’s a done deal and it’s being built. His constituency is NE Somerset, nowhere near Hs2. So the idea that a man who has a record for voting with his party 94% of the time is suddenly going to rebel when it comes to Phase 2 of Hs2 is about as likely as me winning the lottery.

Poor Hs2 antis, they’re desperate for any good news, but yet again, they’ve been had.

UPDATE: 5th February 2018.

My 2017 prediction that Mogg wouldn’t vote against his party (or Hs2) was proved to be correct. On January 30th the bill for building phase 2a of Hs2 got its second reading. Mogg voted for the bill, making fools out of both Hs2 antis and the Guido Fawkes blog, who published this rubbish last year.

 

A post-election look at the anti Hs2 ‘campaign’…

27 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, MAPA, StopHs2

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Sorry for the lack of blogging recently folks. I’ve been so busy with my travels and catching up on work stuff I’ve had little time for writing. Still, here’s one I’ve been hoping to write for some time – a look at the anti Hs2 campaign after the election.

To be honest, antis had an even worse election campaign than I thought they would. Mind you – so did the Conservatives! Apart from the non-story that Joe Rukin put around, claiming the Tories were going add cancelling Hs2 to their manifesto nothing was really heard about the anti Hs2 campaign. Apparently, Hs2aa raised their arse off their sofa long enough to find a few bob down the back of it and pay for an ad in The Spectator, and – well, that was it. Stop Hs2 did little better. It’s evident that Joe Rukin and Penny Gaines are just going through the motions now. The Stop Hs2 website and Facebook page had nothing of relevance added and their tweets were sporadic. There was no attempt to actually lead a campaign. Instead it drifted, rudderless. But then, what is there to lead anymore? If you look at their Facebook page it has a measly 7,488 followers but the number of people who ‘like’ a post have never got above 200 throughout the whole election campaign. The number who share or comment is even poorer than that. Here’s a screen- grab of one of the more popular. This was posted on the 21st June. The screen-grab was taken today (27th).

sths2

Twitter was no better. Stophs2 have a lousy 5,369 followers. So, how many retweeted this same comment?

sths2 tweet

A miserable 21! In an election campaign!

This is a great illustration of what I’ve always said. Social media is a double-edged sword. It exposes your weaknesses as well as strengths.

In past elections they’ve also run a ‘no votes for you with Hs2’ campaign, but it’s always been an abject failure – as the results on election night show. This year was no different.

The phase 1 campaign is a dead man walking. I’ve blogged about it plenty of times in the past so I’m not going over old ground, but what was interesting this time was to see how quickly the Phase 2 campaign groups have collapsed.

Remember that the Leeds branch of Hs2 has (supposedly) the most ‘active’ anti groups on it. A number of new ones were formed due to route changes in Leicestershire, Notts and Yorkshire. So, lets have a look at some case studies.

MAPA is a group that was formed in February this year. Here’s their website. As you can see if you can be bothered to browse it. There’s not a lot going on. The residents of the villages they claim to represent total some 8,700 souls. Their minutes claim 110 turned up to their first meeting, which is 1.26% of all residents. Not exactly a groundswell then! Things haven’t got any better. Despite their commitment to publish regular minutes of meetings, nothing has appeared since January. Instead, this was sent out by the group in mid May…

MAPA The only sign of life is the barrage of pointless tweets from one of the group, Stephen Leary (who I’ve blogged about before here). I can’t help wondering how long this groups can survive. It’s already moribund and if the local area consultation shows that more residents support the route change than oppose it, they’re toast.

Meanwhile, in Nottinghamshire, we have the Erewash ‘Action’ Group. Here’s their website and Facebook pages. Here’s their ridiculously ambitious aims (copied from their website).

Erewash. objectives

Stop Hs2 within 2 years and hold elected representatives to account? My! So, how’s that going then? Badly.

The local MP is Conservative Maggie Throup, who won the seat from Labour in 2015 with a 3,584 majority. Maggie is a supporter of Hs2 and she’s clearly no pushover as the Erewash antis have found out! Their agressive style and regular lack of honesty hasn’t gone down well with the MP who’s confronted them a number of times. Most recently here in response to this bit of bombast from the Erewash antis. Now, take note of this bit;

“In recent weeks, the STOP HS2 Erewash Campaign has gained huge momentum with an influx of new volunteers and supporters, as well as significant press coverage and public interest. The campaign is operated and staffed by concerned local residents, business owners and activists, who all feel strongly that HS2 should be stopped in its entirety.”

So, how did holding Maggie to ‘account’ go?

At the 2017 election she increased her majority from 3,584 to 4,534 on a swing of 0.84% from Labour! Oh dear…

Erewash antis went very quiet after their meeting with Maggie as it was clear it hadn’t gone their way (see their Facebook page for details). Well, quiet until today, when this was slipped out on Facebook:

erewash. 26.6.17

So much for stopping Hs2 in 2 years by a campaign that had “gained huge momentum with an influx of new volunteers and supporters”. They’re very coy about the merger, but it’s actually with the nearby group from Trowell (who aren’t so coy!)

Trowell hs2Trowell are another tiny group with a similar problem. They’ve no political clout either! The idea this creates a ‘unified nation campaign’ is the stuff of fantasy! Their MP is the feisty anti Brexit MP Anna Soubry (another Hs2 supporter). How a merged campaign across the constituency boundaries is supposed to Stop Hs2 is anyone’s guess, but then that’s the problem with these campaigns. They’re so out of their depth there’s only going to be one result. If they’d any sense they’d be working with their MPs to gain the greatest benefits for their areas from Hs2 instead of trying to throw around weight they don’t have, pretending they can Stop hs2.

So, that’s a snapshot of the state of play with StopHs2 after the election. It’s obviously on its last legs. Interestingly, the announcement in the Queens speech that the phase 2b Hybrid Bill will be put before Parliament hasn’t raised as much as a glimmer from any Staffs antis – although that’s hardly surprising. There’s not been a credible Hs2 ‘action’ groups in Staffs for years as they tended to be run by either ‘eccentrics’ or as a front for UKIP. Which brings me neatly onto the other fall-out from the election campaign.

Remember when UKIP said they’d Stop Hs2?

Farage Hs2

Instead, voters stopped UKIP! Now there’s only one party left in Parliament that still opposes Hs2. The Greens – and they’ve still only got 1 MP….

There’s deluded, then there’s Joe Rukin…

29 Saturday Apr 2017

Posted by in 2017 General election, Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Joe Rukin, StopHs2

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A few days ago, StopHs2 campaign manager Joe Rukin was frantically circulating this email to the scattered remnants of the Stop Hs2 campaign.

“An urgent message from Joe Rukin:
You will hopefully have seen the news since the weekend about the possibility of the Tories going soft on HS2 in some way in their manifesto, whether that is a pause, cancellation or review.

The first thing I want to make absolutely clear is that this is completely true.

In fact the situation is rather better than reported, as whilst Messrs Gillan & Bridgen along with other MPs went to see George Freeman about a list of issues including HS2, it turned out the team writing the manifesto had already picked up HS2 as an something they might change their minds on. I cannot stress enough that this is totally serious. Whilst it may have been dismissed by 3 Andys; Jones, Street & Percy, they aren’t the ones writing the manifesto. Personally I would doubt they would go as far as saying there would be a cancellation/pause/review in the manifesto, more likely they’d go for no mention at all which would them give the space for any of those three options. Then again, as they’ve already been willing to hint at tax rises, what do I know?

I covered this in todays article https://t.co/XgUiEIpMLN but have decided to leave it a bit more speculative in public, as whilst there is now work to do in terms of trying to influence this decision, I’d rather try and not let on that this is really up for grabs in public for as long as possible.

So that leaves a fortnight to try and influence the Tory manifesto, and indeed the Labour one. We’ve had a conference call today to get things going with other campaign groups and there will be meetings with Labour next week, but as Deanne has mentioned before, it continues to be ASLEF & TSSA which are heavily behind Momentum that are the problem with Labour.

For now please go to Conservative Home and fill in the survey below. When it comes to the rankings, please vote “Continuing with HS2” as zero, and try not to give anything else either a top or bottom score, as you’ll effectively be voting against yourself:

http://www.conservativehome.com/…/what-should-be-in-the-con…

Attached are some of the banners we used at the last election. We may still have some physical ones left.

I cannot stress strongly enough that it really is game on, but in reality it’s not six weeks we have at this point in time, it’s two. More will follow in the next few days. Any ideas welcome!

Joe Rukin,
Campaign Manager, Stop HS2.”

There was only one problem. Like most stuff that emanates from Rukin, it was complete bullshit – although it did fool one of two desperate antis. Hs2aa, who gave up campaigning against Hs2 last year (they abandoned social media in June and their website’s not been updated since November) were forced out of retirement to cobble a page of ridiculous claims for their website (see link). Even AGAHST, an organisation that hasn’t been heard of for years made an appearance in the form of it’s one time Campaign Director, Deanne Dukhan.

It was all a complete waste of time, as most antis realised. Rukin had tried to sell this pup via the StopHs2 Facebook page on April 23rd, when MP’s Gillan and Bridgen had managed to flog their dead horse to a couple of the national newspapers (see my previous blog here). The problem was the claim was met more with derision than expectation. You can see their replies here but I’ve added a selection for your delectation.

g1

g2

And my absolute favourite, which sums up the scepticism and derision this claim met with, is this one!

g3

It was only going to be a matter of time before Rukin’s house of cards came crashing down around his ears. That happened today when Teresa May gave an interview to the Yorkshire Post under the headline “THERESA MAY has slapped down Conservative backbenchers in the South with a commitment to deliver the HS2 rail line to Yorkshire”. So, there’s no room for any dissembling there! She went on to say –

may

May’s statement was soon picked up by the nationals, with the Guardian running it here.

So there you have it. As I predicted, you won’t be seeing any mention of cancelling Hs2 in the Tory manifesto. Rukin, who’s lied through his teeth so often, has ended up looking a complete fool yet again. His stock was never high with other anti Hs2 campaigners anyway (Hs2aa Director Hilary Wharf was overheard being particularly scathing about Rukin’s relationship with the truth a few years ago). Now it must be at rock-bottom.

I wonder how long it’ll take before any of this is mentioned on the StopHs2 website, or will this load of bollocks written by Joe disappear first? I’m not going to be holding my breath…

Will Hs2 feature in the general election? Will it heck…

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by in 2017 General election, Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, StopHs2, Uncategorized, YorkshireStopHs2

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As all the parties start getting over their surprise that a general election’s been called and begin to muster their troops I thought it worth looking at the stophs2 campaign and their hope that Hs2 will be an election issue. Of course, the answer is – will it hell.

Since Hs2 appeared on the scene we’ve had two general elections (in 2010 and 2015) and numerous local elections. None of them have seen any serious swing or influence brought about by Hs2 or the people who oppose it.

StopHs2’s ‘Campaign Manager’, Joe Rukin even went as far as to stand for MP in Kenilworth in 2010. He later admitted to the Hs2 petitioning Ctte that it was a con to get a free Stophs2 mailshot out to voters, but even that didn’t do any good. He got all of 327 votes or 0.7% and this was meant to be an anti Hs2 ‘stronghold’! Nowadays Rukin has pretty much given up and spends most of his time ranting about football on Twitter rather than Hs2. (see @JoeRukin). The other umbrella group (Hs2aa) threw in the towel last year, so don’t expect any anti hs2 publicity in local or national media in the run-up to the election as the anti hs2 campaign’s skint.

Another oddball that’s tried to stand on a StopHs2 ticket is Nicholas Ward whom I blogged about here. He stood in Westminster North in 2015 and got 63 votes, then again in David Cameron’s old constituency of Witney in 2016 when he got 92 votes (0.2%)! It’s unknown if he’s going to throw away another deposit by standing again in this election.

Apart from solo players the only political parties that oppose Hs2 on the national stage are the Green Party and UKIP. The Greens claim to support the ‘principle’ of high-speed rail but then wrung their hands and bottled out of it when it actually came to doing so. Mind you, their rail and Hs2 policy is a dishonest mess. I dissected it previously in this blog. The Greens are currently standing at 3-4% in the polls. They have 1 MP and aren’t likely to achieve anything in June.

That leaves UKIP, who’re in such a political and financial mess nowadays it’s unlikely they’ll be fielding many candidates. Their new leader, Paul Nuttall, is such a Walter Mitty character he’d fit right in with the remaining anti Hs2 Nimbys. Despite proposing not one but THREE high-speed rail lines in their bonkers 2010 manifesto, UKIP flipped when they fell for Stophs2 campaign claims that there were plenty of votes to be had in areas like the Chilterns if they opposed Hs2. The problem was – it was a lie. I crunched the numbers in this blog. UKIP famously blustered they’d stop Hs2 with stuff like this:

UKIP Chilterns

UKIP managed to get 2nd place in Aylesbury Vale in the 2015 general election (partly on the back of Hs2) but came nowhere near beating the Tories, who had a majority of 17158, or 31% compared to UKIP’s 19.7%. Since then it’s all been downhill. A by-election was held this month following the resignation of UKIP District Councillor for Elmhurst, Andrew Hetherington. UKIP lost the seat to the Lib-Dems, which suggests Brexit’s more important than Hs2 nowadays. UKIP have lost their solitary MP and the party is in such a mess it’s not going to have any impact on Hs2.

What all these votes have demonstrated is that hs2 is only ever a Nimby issue. The only time it’s had any impact on elections is actually on the route of the line. Even then, it’s never been enough to upset the applecart. Of course, since 2015 things have moved on. Hs2 phase 1 has gained Royal Assent and the ‘national’ Stophs2 campaign’s fallen apart – as well as the Phase 1 campaign.

Now the focus has shifted to Phase 2, where the StopHs2 campaign is hopelessly disorganised, skint and without a coherent strategy. All it does is re-run the failed tactics used by Phase 1 Nimbys. To make matters worse, it has negligible political support. Only 2 out of Yorkshires 51 MPs opposed Hs2 and that figure hasn’t changed. If Labour do badly in the North and lose seats to the Tories, it’ll change nothing as Teresa May has made it plain she’ll build Hs2 (as have the Lib-Dems).

Could a change of Labour leadership after a June bloodbath change anything? No. Because the heartlands labour are likely to be reduced to (the metropolitan areas, like London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield) are exactly the cities that Hs2 will serve! They’ll be pushing for Hs2, not to Stop Hs2.

If the remaining Hs2 antis think the general election will somehow stop Hs2, they’re in for a yet another disappointment. Just like they were in 2010, and 2015.