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Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Zealand day 18. Christchurch.

16 Wednesday Jan 2019

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(This blog is under construction. More later)…

We’ve spent the day exploring Christchurch, which is quite a surreal experience in many ways.  I’ve never been to a city that’s been so dramatically changed by a natural disaster before.

We started our day by walking into town and trying to piece together a picture of the city. It’s difficult. Not just because so many building have been demolished’ leaving entire blocks bare, but also because some condemned building are still waiting to be torn down and replaced, like this one on the Corner of Worcester Boulevard and Cambridge Terrace. In the corner window you can see a picture of the new building that will replace it.

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Not far from here was a statue of Scott of the Antarctic. Christchurch is a nexus for many of the countries that have bases there, with ships sailing from the city to the Antarctic on a regular basis. In the UK’s current political climate I could see Scott as a metaphor for Brexit…

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After wandering the city we visited Quake City, the museum dedicated to the 2011 earthquake and its aftermath. It’s a sobering experience as it brings home the power of earthquakes and also their aftermath. As well as physical remains and pictures of the earthquake there’s a series of very moving interviews with survivors of the day. These bring it home to you just what people went through. Afterwards we headed back into town to catch one of the vintage trams that operate a circular, hop-on, hop-off service around the centre of town. En-route we passed the remains of what had been the tallest building in Christchurch before the earthquake. This is what it looks like today. The whole city block has been demolished and awaits redevelopment. The rest of it is car-parks.

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Before catching the tram we stopped for lunch in the beautifully restored New Regent St, a pedestrianised zone (OK, trams don’t count) that has a great selection of bars, restaurants and cafes. We were craving spicy food so chose a Thai café called The Nook. They had tables out in the street so we could enjoy the food whilst soaking up the sun and watching the world go by – not to mention the cheeky sparrows, who ate almost as much of our rice as we did! dg316341crop

The food was good, the prices reasonable and the wine wasn’t bad either. Suitably stuffed, we caught a tram to see more of the city. Christchurch’s trams are a mix of vintage vehicles from New Zealand and Australia. We were lucky to get 152, one of the original city trams. It has a royal pedigree as both the Queen and Prince Harry have toured the city on it. There’s even little brass plaques to tell you that you’re parked your bum on the same seat as royalty!

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To be continued…

 

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New Zealand day 14. Blenheim blogging.

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by in New Zealand, Railways, Transport, Travel, Uncategorized

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After yesterdays wine tasting we’ve had an easy day exploring the sights of Blenheim after a lazy start due to the indifferent weather. For once, instead of the scorching sun, the day started under heavy cloud and low temperatures which was a great excuse to catch up on social media and events elsewhere in the world whilst drinking lots of coffee. When we did venture forth we headed over to the Marlborough museum which deserves more visitors than it gets, but then the name doesn’t really do it justice. They have some very interesting information on the origins of the wine industry as well as local Maori history and memorabilia on the Victorian settlers – not to mention a fascinating display on some feisty women who were part of the New Zealand suffrage movement.

The museum site’s home to one of the terminal stations on the 2ft gauge Blenheim Riverside railway which runs 5.2km along a river valley to terminate under a viaduct carrying the main line from Picton to Christchurch in the centre of Blenheim. Here’s a few shots of the line.

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The railway passes through Riverside park in Blenheim.

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After our railway fix we headed out to amble along the Wairau Lagoons Walkway, a 3 hour round trip that takes you out through the wetlands of the Wairau estuary to the wreck of the ‘TSS Waverley’.

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Choices. Turn left and you can get to the wreck in 1hr15. Turn right and it takes you 1hr45. Guess which way we went?

Tomorrow we move on from Blenheim and head down the road to Kaikoura, where we’ve booked to go swimming with dolphins…

 

 

 

Crunching the StopHs2 social media stats: December 2018

01 Tuesday Jan 2019

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Happy New Year folks!

I’ve had a bit of time on holiday to crunch these numbers, so here’s the final series of the year (predictable as they are). Remember that the final few months of 2018 was meant to see the ‘relaunch’ of the anti Hs2 campaign? It never happened. Not only that, but their last ‘great white hope’ – a BBC Panorama programme that they’d worked themselves up into a frenzy about as it would provide the ‘killer evidence’ that would see Hs2 off once and for all turned out to be a damp squib. Aired on the evening of the 17th of December, it made barely a mention in the wider media – manly because there wasn’t a single new thing in it! You can read about it here.

After that, to quote Marvin the Paranoid android, they ‘went into a bit of decline’. It’s clear that the majority of politicians minds are elsewhere in the run up to 2019. Even Stophs2 gave up posting and tweeting before Xmas as it’s obvious they’re wasting their time.

Anyways, Here’s a look at their social media stats. First up is Facebook.

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As you can see the only real improvements are to their headline numbers due to people desperately trying to draw attention to the Panorama programme – although many comments on their Facebook page make it clear people were disappointed with it. They have managed to increase their Facebook followers by nearly 3% but as that’s from such a small starting number (after 10 years) it’s not something to boast about.

Meanwhile, over on Twitter, numbers remain flat.

stophs2 twitter

It’s becoming clear that Twitter’s a complete waste of time for them. The only thing it does is show how few of their followers actually bother with it. Remember that headlines behind these numbers. 6.5 MILLION people live on the route of HS2, so 6363 ‘followers’ (and how many of them are real I wonder?) are a tear in an ocean.

As with previous months a browse of their tweets/posts show that the majority are copies of media articles about HS2. Not a single one of them is news about the StopHS2 ‘campaign’ for the simple reason that – there is no news. They’re not actually doing anything! Sure, the media still trot out Rukin & Gaines for interviews, but they always have. There’s not even any news from (the increasingly scarce) local groups anymore. What both social media accounts show is that StopHs2 has little in the way of heavyweight support – and that’s putting it politely! In fact, both their accounts are refuges for the old ‘green ink’ brigade. who (in an earlier age before social media) would’ve had their ranting, batshit letters spiked by the newspapers they wrote to!

That said, there is one bit of news they’ve ignored reporting completely! Instead, it was slipped out by lawyers. Hs2aa, the ‘real’ brains behind the stophs2 campaign (StopHs2 were always strident, student politics types due to Rukin’s background) folded In 2017, but before they did they mounted a last gasp legal challenge under the Aarhus convention. Last month that was finally rejected, hammering the final nail into HS2aa’s coffin.

2019 is going to be a very bad year for StopH2, if they can be bothered to come back off their rather long Xmas hols…

 

Slowly but surely, the old slides are getting scanned…

20 Thursday Dec 2018

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It’s a painfully slow process, but I’m determined that 2019 will see the majority of my old railway back catalogue scanned and available on my Zenfolio website – although the travel pictures will have to wait a little longer! The past couple of months has seen me slog through a several hundred slides from 1996 onwards. Right now I’ve got as far as July, having uploaded or replaced another 40 images today. My plan is to continue my way chronologically through the years up the point I stopped taking slides and went digital, which was on the 20th February 2004, almost 15 years ago now! With the benefit of hindsight I’d wish I’d done it sooner – but hey ho!

These old pictures show just how much the railway scene has changed in the past 22 years. They’re all from the very early days of privatisation, when the railways had been ‘sectorised’ but not everything had been franchised. The first passenger service to be privatised was SouthWest trains in February 1996. This is adding another layer of complexity to scanning as the pictures are split up into different galleries on my website that are dedicated to each operator, so I’m having to do a lot of historical referencing as well. Here’s a few examples of today’s batch.

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A shot taken from a passing intercity service of the former Transrail depot at Wigan Springs Branch. Transrail was one of six companies the BR freight division had been broken up into as a way of introducing internal competition. In the end it, Loadhaul, Mainline Freight, Railfreight Distribution (RfD) and Rail Express Systems (RES) were bought by  American company Wisconsin freight which marketed them as English, Welsh and Scottish Railway (EWS). Many of the old BR locos you can see in the picture were actually stored.

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A Eurostar set led by 3202 snakes through Herne Hill in South London. These services would run for another 11 years, until High Speed 1 and St Pancras International opened in 2007.

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A pair of class 31s work an engineers train during track relaying work on the West Coast Main Line North of Wolverton. These old locomotives would sit idle during the week as they were kept purely to work these trains. That meant their reliability was poor, often leading to engineering work being disrupted. Note that the adjacent pair of tracks remains open. This would never be allowed today due to the risks it passes to track workers, who can be seen ahead of my Euston-bound Intercity service.

The picture pile gets smaller…

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

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After all my travels last week the first part of this week’s been spent at home trying to catch up on paperwork, picture editing and scanning more old slides in an effort to reduce the mountain I have to climb. If you’re interested in last week’s German rail pictures, you can find the full selection here and the travel shots here.

Meanwhile, I’ve made another dent (albeit a small one) in the railway slides. I’m currently scanning a couple of albums from 1996-97. Most of them have never been seen since I took them. A selected few had made it onto my Zenfolio website but now I’m being methodical and scanning complete albums. The beauty of this is that it creates a lot of space! The slide albums contain many duplicated shots because that’s what you did in film days – just in case an important picture was damaged or was out with a client and you needed a copy. I reckon I’m binning at least 30% of the slides I have because they’re redundant now once one’s been scanned. Here’s some of tonight’s batch.

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It’s a reflection on how technology’s changed over the past 22 years. The irony is that I remember working out that each of these cost me about 24p apiece when I added together the price of the film, developing and mounting – plus postage! In theory, I’m throwing away a lot of money!

Here’s a taster of what’s been scanned today.

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Here’s 37057 at the Ipswich Wagon repair depot open day on the 15th June 1996. EW&S had taken over the BR trainload freight companies (Mainline, Loudhaul and Translink) earlier in the year and this was the first public outing of the new livery. 37057, 60019 and the inspection saloon 999504 had been repainted and were on display. So much has changed since those early days of privatisation!

I’ll try and get some more done soon. Right now I’ve got other tasks in hand, including finalising our trip to New Zealand in December-January, plus, I’ve just found out I’ll be working in Birmingham on Thursday.

Rolling blog: another day, another adventure!

05 Wednesday Dec 2018

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I’m en-route to Manchester Airport as I’ll be spending the next couple of days around Dusseldorf in Germany. All that will be a separate blog, this one’s about today in the UK.

Thanks to my in-laws (who were visiting as Dawn had sorted out her mum with a new phone) I got a lift to Sowerby Bridge station. I wouldn’t have minded walking but the weather has been particularly wet today. I half expected to look down on the residents of Sowerby Bridge from our eeryie atop the valley side to see them building an Ark.

Now I’m heading for Manchester, and for once I’m early – but only because the preceding service was running late, so arrived first! That said, it’s a comfortable refurbished Class 156 and there’s plenty of seats as it’s a quiet train.

When I get to Manchester I have the delights of ‘bustitution’ to look forward to as it would seem the line to the Airports closed due to engineering work. I wonder if I can get a tram…

23:57.

I eschewed the idea of a tram to explore the reality for RAIL passengers – which is what I do. Right now I’m at Piccadilly, waiting for a rail replacement bus to the airport. It’s obviously been a wet day in Manchester, just as it has been at home, the pavements are sparkling due to the lights reflected in the rain, but it’s been a hard day for the homeless. The rise of homelessness is a national disgrace, before Brexit we were the 5th richest nation on earth, but a decade of politically imposed austerity has wreaked havoc. A problem that was on the wane under the last Labour Government has mushroomed under the new ideology. Here at Piccadilly most of the lasttrains have gone and the stations slowly shutting down. The biggest queues are for fast food, not trains – as you can see in this picture.

Here’s the last departure for Chester.

The concourse still holds a lot of people. Like me, many of them are waiting for the rail-replacement buses to the airport, or the last train train back to York, which seems to be very popular with young students – I can’t think why!

Whilst I’ve been sat here I’ve been fascinated to watch a retired, long-bearded Muslim man collecting discarded food bags and crisp packets. After a while I realised what he was doing. He was collecting the food to feed to the birds. I caught his eye as he crumbled some crisps he’d collected to feed to pigeons who obviously knew he’d be there!

23:57.

Airport bound…

It’s now 01:36 and I’m at Manchester airport. So, in the best Private Eye tradition, tho wiĺl be (cont page 94)…

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Rolling blog: A long and winding road…

03 Monday Dec 2018

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08:08.

Another day another dollar, I’m in Derby this morning ready to do a job for a company that’s getting a Ministerial visit. Once that’s done I’m heading back to Yorkshire to meet my wife as we’re off to help two of our local station friends groups (Mytholmroyd and Sowerby Bridge) with their annual ‘carols by train’ event. It’s another busy week as on Thursday I fly to Dusseldorf to have a look at Siemens new Mireo train. It’s a quick trip but I’ve decided to stay a night so that I can have some time to explore Dusseldorf before coming home. It might be the last chance I get before all the Brexit madness explodes.

Just as I left the hotel the rain started bucketing down! It’s a miserable morning here, as these two pictures show. At least the lights on Derby’s new island platform add a bit of brightness to the day!

In the waiting room on platforms 4-5 is an excellent information board that tells of the history of the station and the old locomotive works.

11:30.

Job done (which I’m not allowed to talk about as it’s embargoed) I’m back at Derby station with time to grab a few shots before (by the look of it) the heavens open again!

It’s actually been a fascinating morning as I’ve learned a lot about some very interesting technological innovations and also more about the damage being caused to our economy by the madness of Brexit. I heard from a company that’s having to move a sizeable chunk of its business to the European mainland because of the fact we’re hellbent on leaving and it needs to stay within the EU regulatory framework to continue trading. This isn’t ‘project fear’, this is project fact.

13:09.

On the way back I’ve stopped off for an hour or so to get photo’s of another transport innovation. Well, in the UK anyway. After a decade of talking and planning (and re-planning) tram-trains are finally running between Sheffield and Rotherham. I didn’t have time to take a spin on one (that will have to wait for another time), but I did manage to grab a few shots of them in service in Sheffield town centre. Here’s the first of the fleet, 399201.

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13:36.

I’m typing this on the 13:35 Sheffield-Huddersfield, which is late, so it’s still sat in platform 4a. The reason? Well 4a was already occupied by two other late running Northern services, with one trapped behind the other! First off was a late-running local to Leeds which was waiting for a driver. Trapped behind it was a Scarborough service, which got the road just as soon as it was clear. The inbound Huddersfield was stuck outside the station, waiting for the platform to clear.

It’s one of those situations ordinary passengers don’t quite understand when they say “Why don’t you just make trains longer”? The two late trains were both 2-cars, so they fitted in the bay. Double them in size and you can’t fit both of them. So where do you put the other one when platform space is at a premium?

My train’s a 3-car Pacer which is running 5 minutes late at the moment with little realistic chance of making up time on the Penistone line.

14:45.

We’re bouncing and screeching our way along the lovely Penistone line and all the while the weather’s been picking up.

16:39

Despite horrendous traffic (came from Huddersfield by road) we made it in time to meet up with the Mytholmroyd friends and Carol singers.

After singing at Mytholmroyd the merry band caught a train to Sowerby Bridge, where they met Santa in the Jubilee Refreshment Room.

Here’s the merry band at the end of the day before singing on the train back to Mytholmroyd.

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Rolling blog: it’s Showtime!

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

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06:45

I’m up early and waiting To grab a quick breakfast before heading off to the Institute of Mechanical Engineers with my colleagues from TALGO, ready for this morning’s press conference where the company has an exciting announcement to make…

07:25

Sunrise over Hounslow.

My fellow conspirators on the tube.

The District line may be busy, but at least the stock is full size – and air – conditioned!

08:50.

Ready to rock and roll…

09:43. The President of TALGO, Carlos de Palacio (right), discussing the future with The Scottish Transport Minister, Michael Matheson.

09:55.

It’s official: TALGO’s factory site is Longannet in Scotland, with an Innovation centre to be built in Chesterfield, England.

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11:43.

Job done, I’ve taken my leave of IMechE and popped over to Parliament to offer my support to the people opposing the madness of Brexit which is carrying on across the road right now.

Weather wise, it’s a beautiful day in London.

Politically, it’s an utter shambles. The area around Parliament’s swarming with camera crews eager to grab shots of the political circus. Will we still have a Government in a couple of weeks? Who knows?

14:56.

I left the political madness and headed to old haunts out East to see how the Great Eastern suburban service from Liverpool St to Shenfield’s changing now. Having been absorbed into the London Underground a few years ago there’s further changes now. The Class 315s which have been the backbone of the route since 1980 are being replaced by the Bombardier built Class 345s. Only a handful of the new trains were running today, but the writings on the wall for the 315s as several have already headed off to various scrapyards. Mind you, I’m not complaining. The new trains are a lot more comfortable! Here’s what the interior of the 345s looks like.

17:10

I’m now homeward bound on Grand Central’s 16:27 Kings Cross – Bradford Interchange – and it’s absolutely rammed! This 5-Car Class 180 has people camped out in the vestibules in Standard Class whilst there’s just a single seat spare in 1st Class. Not bad when you consider this service is non-stop as far as Doncaster! Gone are the early days of the West Riding service when having a couple of dozen on was an average load, now GC are incredibly successful. The problem now is how they cater for future growth as the 180s are fixed formation sets – and a small fleet to boot.

The 16:27 has been retimed recently, which appears to have contributed to it’s excellent loadings (this is a Peak service too). It used to leave London at 16:05. That extra time in London means business folk have more flexibility, making it more attractive. Here’s how it looks in Standard and 1st today.

Innotrans and Berlin

19 Wednesday Sep 2018

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It’s my fourth day here in Berlin and apart from the fact i’ve been having a hectic time I’m also having a fabulous one.

Sunday left me shattered after my negative experiences of Stansted airport. Whilst I’ve been here I chatted to other UK colleagues, who share the same view of the place and now refuse to use it. What was once one of the UK’s best airports is viewed as having been ruined by concentrating on wringing every last penny of of passengers. After spending a few hours exploring and getting pictures I headed out to my hotel and ended up falling asleep by 21:30!

In contrast, my experiences here in Germany have been extremely positive. After all the madness that’s going on back home because of Brexit and our mad politicians, it’s lovely to be in a confident and outward looking, stable country. Berlin’s also one of my favourite capital cities. It has a bohemian heart and it’s all the better for it. There’s also massive investment in Berlin’s railway infrastructure, like this view East from the rebuilt Ostkreuz station which shows the new flyover and dive under built for the S-Bahn.

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On Monday I took time off to explore a couple of the delightful old rural tramways that link country towns with the S-Bahn. They’re rather timeless. Here’s the route out from Rahnsdorf to Waltersdorf.

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This one is the route nearby, from Friedrichshagen to Rüdersdorf.

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Right now I’m commuting in from Ludwigsfelde, a town just to the South, which is where I’m staying. It takes 30 mins to get to the amazing Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Hotel prices go crazy when Innotrans is on, so unless you book months (or years) in advance you can pay silly prices.

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Commuting, Berlin style. This is my ODEG service out to Ludwigsfelde from the magnificent Birlin Hauptbahnhof.

I’m heading to day two of Innotrans, the world’s biggest rail trade fair. Around 160,000 people will visit over the four days, after which it’s opened to the public for another two days after that. I’m expecting another hectic day as one of the magazines I’m working for has a shortlist of stuff for me to get and today the British Transport Minister, Chris Grayling is touring the show. He’s tipped to be signing some contracts…

Oh, did I mention the weather? Innotrans is renowned for always getting the sun. Yesterday we baked in the heat, today’s expected to hit 26 degrees! I’m just glad us photojournalists are allowed to dress down!

Right now I’m in the Press centre, where I can grab a coffee, use the wifi and all the other facilities provided for Journalists before hitting the stands. It’s quiet at the moment, but here’s what the place looks like.

If you want to see pictures from the show, take a look at this gallery on my Zenfolio website as that’s where I’m putting them. I’ll flesh this blog out more when I have time.

18:51.

I’ve finally left the show and begun my journey home, but first there’s time to stop of at the Alkopole Bar at Alex, have a quiet beer and catch my thoughts. The day was busier than I thought for the simple reason that Chris Grayling visited a lot of trade stalls. We may fundamentally disagree over politics but I can’t fault him for keeping such a busy schedule. David Davis he ain’t!

I did manage to take up a certain train builders invitation to visit their version of platform 9 & 3/4, which was an mock English pub hidden on the back of one of their trains, but I’ll say no more.

The rest of my time was spent flitting between trade stands and the press centre with the occaisional foray to have a look at some new train interiors. The problem was that some of the ones I wanted to check out had a shore supply. This meant they were extremely popular as the air-conditioning worked – a real blessing in this heat!

I’m not sure what the temperature is now but it’s a lovely evening for sitting outside with a beer.

The ‘press pack’ has scattered to the four winds this evening due to a multitude of receptions and events to go to, which has spared my liver, so I’m not complaining. Besides, I have another 05:50 start in the morning…

Stop Hs2? I had to laugh!…

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

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This morning there was a Parliamentary debate on Hs2 which had been organised by Bill Cash, the MP for Stone (on the Hs2 route in Staffs). Cash is, how shall we say – not entirely connected with the real world. Not only is he an ardent Brexit supporter (and we all know just how well that’s going), he’s also been rather creative in the past with his expenses.

Still, the debate he secured this morning kicked off promptly. It was meant to help ‘revitalise’ the campaign against Hs2 as it followed on from another opinion poll commissioned by the Daily Express that showed a ‘majority’ of people oppose Hs2.

There was only one problem

The anti Hs2 ‘campaign’ (and I use that word loosely) is so short of political support that hardly any MPs turned up to the debate! I counted 5 that actually spoke to criticise Hs2. Cash delivered a long ramble which was nothing new, it was just Cash rehashed. You might as well have played one of his old speeches on a monitor and saved the old boy the bother. The usual suspects followed, the most prominent of which was the MP for Chesham and Amersham, Cheryl Gillan. Embarrassment followed embarrassment when it became clear that the anti MPs were matched and indeed surpassed by MPs who’d turned up to speak in Favour of HS2. These included Sir Robert Symes MP, the former Chair of the phase 1 Hybrid Bill Cttee, Graham Stringer MP (former leader of Manchester City Council), and of course the under secretary of state for transport, Nusrat Ghani MP, who wound up the whole sorry shambles by pointing out the political arithmetic by highlighting the overwhelming numbers of MPs and Lords who supported HS2 compared to those who opposed. In short, it was a humiliation.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the ‘packed’ meeting room. You’ll notice that the gallery outnumbers the MPs

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minister

So, what of the Daily Express poll? Well, it’s a gauge of the number of people who’ll grumble about Government spending, but apart from that it’s worthless. If you inserted a multiple choice question that said “OK, so what are you actually going to do about HS2” you know what the answer would be: nothing – as we’ve seen from hard evidence over the years in local and general elections (much to UKIP’s chagrin). It’s just not an issue that will make people change who they vote for.