01 Monday Feb 2016
Posted in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2 petitions, Uncategorized
Tags
More folks have signed the save a cross channel hovercraft petition in 3 days than the Stop Hs2 flood petition in 35!
Flood petition: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/117184
23 Saturday Jan 2016
Posted in Sri Lanka, Uncategorized
After a hectic few days exploring Colombo and the hill country, we’re kicking back on one of Sri Lanka’s lovely Southern beaches at the little town of Mirissa. It’s hard to believe we’ve already been here for two weeks as the time seems to flown by. Hopefully, now we’re on a beach it’ll slow down a bit!
I’ve not been back to Sri Lanka since 2004. Since then the bloody war between the Government and the Tamil Tigers has ended (not without controversy) and the country appears to be entering a new era of prosperity – mostly on the back of Chinese investment. Colombo is certainly changing. New multi-storey hotels are springing up all around the lagoon at the back of Galle Face Green in the area formerly known as Slave Island. It’s the same along the Galle Rd where new shopping centres and apartment blocks have replaced many of the low rise buildings. Colombo is growing in both stature – and height.
The changing face of Slave Island as Chinese money expands Colombo’s skyline & economy
Despite this, there’s a lot that’s still familiar and unaffected by the rush to modernity. Pettah still maintains its warren of backstreet bazaars & crush of humanity of all races and religions. Manning market adjacent to Fort station still sells fresh produce in the traditional way & hasn’t altered for donkey’s years. It’s a fascinating place to wander around, watch people and discover all manner of exotic fruit and veg that many Westerners have never even seen before – much less eaten.
Inside the old Manning Market, which hasn’t changed in donkeys years
One place that’s successfully made the transition from old to new is the former Dutch Hospital in the cities business district. Situated opposite the World Trade Centre, It’s a well-executed restoration of a single storey colonial building with red roof tiles that surrounds two courtyards this historic building has been transformed into a centre for several restaurants & bars. It’s home to the famous Ministry of Crab – a seafood restaurant with a reputation as one of the top restaurants in Asia (I’ll let you know if that title’s deserved before I leave as we’re booked in on our last night!).
The Ministry of Crab, inside the former Dutch hospital.
Food is certainly one of Sri Lanka’s highlights. Most mornings we’d start the day with string hoppers eaten at a local café near our hotel. Served with a lush coconut chutney, curry sauce and dahl, they’re both cheap and delicious (breakfast for the two of us would cost about £1.50). In the evenings we’d eat at one of the food stalls set up on Galle face Green. Here you can enjoy devilled squid for around £1.75 or seafood Kottu for £2. Vegetable rice will set you back £1. The Green’s also a great place to sit and people-watch – especially on a Sunday when it’s jam-packed with locals enjoying their day off. There’s families of all religions, canoodling teenagers glad to be away from watchful parental eyes, hawkers selling all manner of plastic toys and dozens of kids flying kites in the strong sea breeze. It’s an ideal place to people-watch & observe Colomban’s at play from the shade of one of the palms bordering the green.
The classic Sri Lankan breakfast. String hoppers with dahl & coconut chutney.
A group of Muslim women pose for a “selfie” on Galle Face Green
On our first night exploring Colombo we stumbled across a procession of priests and locals led by acrobats swirling fire wheels, accompanied by traditional drummers and dancers which disappeared into the World Trade Centre. After questioning an English speaking member of the group we discovered it was part of a ceremony to commemorate the 15 workers from the Centre who had died in a bomb attack by the Tamil Tigers back in 1997. Prayers were also said for all victims of terror around the world. We were invited to participate & sat in on the simple but moving ceremony which gave a fascinating insight into local life.
Drummers in the procession to the World Trade Centre ceremony
The modernity of the business district was a marked contrast to Slave Island, the area where we were staying. Here, the old rubs cheeks with the new, although a lot of the former colonial buildings have seen better days. They’re gradually retreating under the march of time & new Chinese money.
The changing face of Colombo. Old colonial buildings in Slave Island whilst a new Chinese funded tower dominates the skyline.
If you want to see more pictures from the trip, click on this link which will take you to the Sri Lanka gallery on my website.
I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
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Thank you!
07 Thursday Jan 2016
Posted in Travel, Uncategorized
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We’re taking our leave of soggy and gloomy Yorkshire aboard a Grand Central train to London. You can tell it’s January, not just by the weather but by how quiet the train is. GC services are normally very busy nowadays with some services full and standing, but on this one there’s enough room to park an elephant. The good thing about it is the staff have more time to chat, so I’ve had and interesting discussion with Zak (our Customer Service Assistant) about his home town in the Gujarat, India – which I had the pleasure of visiting a few years ago.
We’re heading for his part of the world now. Not India itself, but the island that lies at the top of it – Sri Lanka. I first went there in 1992 but I’ve not been back since 2004 so I’m looking forward to seeing how much it’s changed – and to soaking up some winter sunshine on one or two of those glorious beaches.
But first there’s an important stop to make at Searcy’s champagne bar in St Pancras station.
See you later folks…
04 Monday Jan 2016
The first award of 2016 goes to one Nicholas J Batty for this (just posted) supremely idiotic tweet where he forgot to check the calender before typing;
What happens when you click on the petition link?You get a petition that closed on the 7th August 2014 after gathering 124 signatures!
The appropriately named Mr Batty appears to be a classic Walter Mitty personality as anyone browsing his details will find. He has a long history of preposterous personal claims. The anti Hs2 campaign does seem to attract an awful lot of people like him. Still, a man who can claim the anti Hs2 campaign is both “relentless” and “expanding” whilst posting rubbish like this obviously lives in a special place the rest of us don’t.
Meanwhile, the active anti Hs2 flood petition has just passed the 1700 mark in 7 days. Anyone proficient in either maths or the way these polls work will know that means it doesn’t have a snowballs chance in hell of hitting the 100,000 in 6 months that it needs.
2023 update.
The petition died a death after 6 months having collected a paltry 8,116 signatures. Funnily enough, the overwhelming majority came from constituencies along the HS2 route with no history of flooding – what a co-incidence!
It took several more years before HS2 antis finally twigged that all these petitions did was expose their Nimbyism due to the fact the maps displayed with the petitions showed where the majority of people signing them lived – this neatly displaying the routes of HS2! They were always fun to number-crunch as the other drawback for antis was they also exposed how few of them there were. When their ‘strongholds’ couldn’t get more than 2% of constituents to sign you knew their claims of ‘overwhelming support’ where pure bluster.
The last petition they tried was in 2021. Started by celebrity conservationist (but clueless environmentalist) Chris Packham is got 155,000 signatures. Still a piss-poor amount but enough to take it over the 100,000 needed for a debate. That was when the fun started!
HS2 antis were cock-a-hoop. Now there’s be a vote in Parliament that would stop HS2! It was complete bollocks of course. I’d been pointing out the small print in these petitions for years but either they’d never read it or had deliberately ignored it. Here’s a classic example from Sebastian Sandys, the man who called himself their ‘Parliamentary liaison team’. Someone who should surely have known how these things worked, no? No – as I exposed in this blog.
When the petition was debated in a committee room (not in Parliament) by the handful of MPs who bothered to turn up and there was no vote at the end the penny finally dropped with some of the antis. It was a complete waste of time. I doubt we’ll see them trying futile stunts like this again. Their petitions are history, as is the ‘batty bricklayer’ who’s disappeared completely…
I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312
Thank you!
02 Saturday Jan 2016
Posted in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Uncategorized
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After 6 years of failure at everything they’ve tried and in the final year of their disastrous campaign you’d have thought the anti hs2 mob may have grown both older – and wiser. It wasn’t to be.
Instead we see the same failed tactics trotted out time and time again. The latest is yet another attempt at a petition. Like before, it’s a futile attempt to link flood spending with Hs2 and the tired and trite idea that (despite us being the 5th richest country on the planet) we can only afford one thing at a time so everything has to be either/or.
Here’s a link to the petition, which wants to divert hs2 funding to flood defences. I’ve blogged about the intellectual fallacy (and environmental disaster) that spending billions on turning our river defences into sterile flood drains would be here. Instead let’s have a look what the petition really tells us about the anti Hs2 mobs level of support
The beauty of the Government petitions website is that it allows you to see which constituencies the people signing it live in. This gives you both a geographical spread and the ability to identify clusters. In other words, it allows you to get an idea of the level of support for the anti Hs2 campaign in their supposed heartlands – and the news is not good! I’m not going to do a full analysis now as there’s only 632 signatures and the petition runs until June, but feel free to do your own. Take a look at the constituencies with the most votes, then compare them to a map of the ones Hs2 passes through…
Compare this petition to the huge success of recent petitions on keeping Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear and the massive petition that wanted to get Donald Trump banned from the UK. Each gathered huge numbers of signatures in a matter of days.
This is yet another lesson in how social media and the internet is such a double-edged sword for campaigners. It’s a lesson the anti Hs2 campaign resolutely refused to learn.
31 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in New Year, Uncategorized
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Which is to say one thing – Thanks for dropping by!
When I started blogging at the beginning of this year I really didn’t know what to expect. Would I be wasting my time? Would anyone bother reading it? It seems I needn’t have worried. As I type this 31,888 people have viewed 63,413 pages. On my travels I’ve met many folks (from politicians to railway staff) who’ve commented on my blog & said how much they’ve enjoyed it. That sort of feedback makes it all worthwhile. The focus has been very much on the Hs2 project in 2015 but I expect that to change in 2016 as the Stophs2 campaign finally collapses. Instead I’ll be adding more travel and transport pieces to keep you entertained.
So, here’s wishing you all a very happy New Year.
Paul
31 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, StopHs2, Uncategorized
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I can’t imagine it’s going to be the sound of party poppers & champagne corks we’ll be hearing from the anti Hs2 campaign offices today, because (let’s face it) they’ve had a bloody awful year and next year will only be worse. 2016 will see the end of their campaign as the phase 1 Hybrid Bill will complete its journey through Parliament and gain Royal Assent. After that, they have nowhere left to turn. All the major political parties remain solidly behind the project and by the time of the next general election in 2020 Hs2 will have been under construction for nearly 3 years.
The signs that the anti Hs2 campaign was collapsing have been evident for some time. They failed to bog down progress of the Hybrid Bill, then were dealt a huge blow by the result of the General Election – which laid bare the fact their political clout was negligible. In the latter part of the year Bucks Country Council Leader Martin Tett made it clear the anti Hs2 51M alliance of local council’s was redundant. Not that 51m will be missed. Their website hadn’t been updated since June 2011 and they only managed 16 Tweets through the whole of 2015!
This left just two main groups opposing Hs2 – Kenilworth based StopHs2 and the Highspeed 2 Action Alliance (Hs2aa) in the Chilterns. Many of the smaller ‘action’ groups that came under the Hs2aa banner had already faded away. Now it seems its HS2aa’s turn. Nothing has been seen or heard from them since December 7th – which suggests their legal case at the UN which was heard just before Xmas hasn’t gone well…
Having retreated to be almost a purely social media based campaign, things aren’t going well there either. Here’s the final “scores on the doors” for 2015. They show a campaign that’s not only stalled but has actually gone into reverse again in some cases.
I won’t bore you with the usual caveats as I’m sure you know them off by heart now. The only person who is doing well is AGAHST’s former Comm’s person Deanne Dukhan. The irony is, she’s done it by not tweeting about Hs2!
The only question now seems to be how long the remaining anti hs2 groups can hang on into 2016. Will StopHs2’s financier (Warks businessman Joe Elliott) finally pull the plug? After all, once the Parliamentary process is finished, what’s the point of the StopHs2 campaign?
30 Wednesday Dec 2015
Posted in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Uncategorized
Talk about the gift that keeps on giving…
The anti Hs2 mob are working themselves up into a right royal tizzy about flooding East of Leeds on the route that Hs2 will take into the city. Their common refrain is that this flooding proves the route is untenable. After all, who knew a flood plain would flood? Well, everybody but the anti Hs2 mob it seems. Here’s a selection of their tweets.
The last tweet with the drone view is the most interesting – and the most telling. What the anti Hs2 mob don’t say is that Hs2 will be passing through the flooded area on a 2335m long viaduct which will be between 11 and 4 metres above ground level. Plus, see that narrow (unflooded) strip of land to the right of Woodlesford lock? That’s where the new viaduct will go – off into the distance.
Once again, the anti Hs2 campaign have managed to shoot themselves in the foot – this time with both barrels.
Still, don’t take my word for it. Here’s the drawings from Hs2 Ltd!
If you want to examine the actual map in greater detail (which includes elevations etc) click on this link.
Unsurprisingly, the anti Hs2 mob refuse to answer a simple question. How would such a viaduct be “submerged under floods”?
24 Thursday Dec 2015
Jacques Cousteau would be proud of this weeks anti Hs2 mob winner. Like him, they’re not afraid to plumb new depths. This week the award goes to one John Mitchell of Culcheth who hides behind the wonderfully ironic Twitter name of “John Sensible”, for it is he who has come up with the ludicrous claim that it’s “unchristian” to want to build Hs2 – and I kid you not. Here’s some of his ludicrous tweets on the matter;
Such distasteful claims only go to show how desperate & divorced from reality the anti hs2 mob are as it becomes clear their campaign’s failed. But it also shows many of them have become indivisible from UKIP – who jumped on the anti Hs2 bandwagon after the 2010 election in the hope there’d be votes in it. Anti Hs2 campaigners have never been afraid to use homophobia, racism, threats or intimidation. Now they show they’re not afraid to play the religious card either.
Here’s another of today’s examples, from UKIP fan Trevor Forrester which also manages to combine religion and racism.
The sooner their whole distasteful campaign is put out of its misery the better. The good news is that – at the rate decent folks are turning their backs on it – that won’t be long…
2023 Update.
Moaning about Cameron was an abject failure, as was targetting the next FOUR Tory PMs (May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak) – or the leaders of HM Opposition for that matter. As for UKIP, they never got anywhere as a party. Forrester is still as bigoted as ever, and still posts the same xenophobic rubbish rehashed but he’s turned his attention to the new bigots in town, the Reform Party although he rarely tweets about HS2 now. His Twitter bio is a full-house in right-wing BS Bingo.
The ‘human oxymoron’ Jon Sensible is one of the few who still thinks him posting nonsense on Twitter will somehow stop HS2, which just goes to prove that some people never learn…
I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website – https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/
Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312
Thank you!
24 Thursday Dec 2015
Paul Bigland 