Tag Archives: Anti Hs2 mob

Petitions – a double edged sword…

11 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, Rail Investment, YorkshireStopHs2

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I’ve blogged about this before but I thought I’d revisit the subject after seeing that some folk who live on the Phase 1 route of Hs2 are still asking people to sign a petition to ‘review’ Hs2 – even though phase 1 has Royal Assent and construction work has started!

The e-petition in question was started by one of the two men who’ve been flogging (as in flogging a dead horse) their own ‘alternative’ to Hs2 called ‘High Speed UK’ (HSUK). They’ve never got anywhere, apart from up many people’s noses (see previous blogs like this). But, their petition IS useful – for all the wrong reasons! What I find interesting about the ones on the Governments petitioning website is the level of detail they contain on who signs them. For example, signatories are grouped together by constituency, which is very useful for MPs wanting to know the strength or weakness of feeling on a particular issue in their area. This is the double-edged sword for campaigners, because it often highlights weakness, not strength.

Let’s take a look at the HSUK petition. You can find it here.

First, the bare facts. It’s had 5,887 signatures since the 11th November 2016. It has 62 days left to run and find over 94,100 signatures. It doesn’t stand a chance of hitting the 10,000 that would get a response from Govt never mind the 100,000 to trigger a debate in the Commons. It’s just another example of how weak the stophs2 campaign is. For HSUK it’s a huge embarrassment because it reveals that most of the folk who’ve signed have done so because they live on the route of Hs2 – not because they support HSUK! Talk about an own goal…

Let’s have a look at the areas where the most signs have come from. Here’s the top 12 constituencies. Between them they account for 3107 signatures, or 52.77% of the total.

HSUK 2.PNG

As you can see, the clear winners are the Chiltern Nimbys in Cheryl Gillan’s constituency of Chesham and Amersham! In fact, phase 1 accounts for 5 of the top 6. Despite this not a single constituency managed to get 1% of the electorate to sign – even in the supposed StopHs2 Phase 1 ‘strongholds’!

What’s just as interesting is the way the figures reveal the weakness of the anti Hs2 campaign on other phases. Only one constituency on Phase 2a (Stone) features and there’s not a single one from the extension of Phase 2a to Manchester – which makes a mockery of the supposed strength of groups like ‘Mid-Cheshire against Hs2’!

The news isn’t much better for the Leicestershire antis or the Yorkshire area, which makes a lot of noise but clearly doesn’t have the influence it claims. Mind you, when you see the half-empty websites of groups like ‘Erewash against Hs2’ it’s not surprising. There’s a lot of bluster from Yorkshire but it’s not backed up by political clout or support.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the consultations on the phase 2 routes which closed on March 9th. I have a sneaky suspicion they’ll throw up even more problems for some of the new anti Hs2 groups like the one around Measham (Leics) or in Yorks. They’ve been set up to oppose route changes. But what happens if the majority of people support the changes? Watch this space…

Spend HS2 money on the NHS? Here’s why it’s economic illiteracy

08 Wednesday Mar 2017

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

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*blog revised with new data on the 17th June 2020*

Over the years the anti Hs2 campaign grasped straw after straw. One of the most common ones being binary choices. We could either have flood defences or HS2, or fix potholes in the roads or build Hs2, or – you name it. As the years went on the list got longer and more stupid. Now we have the latest manifestation and one of the most stupid of all. If we scrap the biggest construction project in Europe we’ll ‘save’ the economy from the effects of Covid-19!

But there was one they’ve always kept coming back to. Whatever figure they’d invented for the cost of Hs2 that week – it should be spent on the NHS instead. Because everyone (well, except UKIP, Brexiters and various Tories) love the NHS.

Such ‘logic’ is the epitome of intellectual bankruptcy because it fails to understand a fundamental financial fact. The different between capital expenditure (Capex) and operational expenditure (Opex). Let me explain.

Capital expenditure is an expense incurred to create future benefit, such as buying new assets for a business – like buildings, machinery or equipment. Doing so generates profits for the future over several tax years. Hs2 is simply a very large example of the principle. It will generate jobs (which generate tax revenue), kick-start regeneration in some of our major cities and make the UK a more attractive place for businesses (which generate corporation tax). Capital investment on decent infrastructure is well understood as bringing economic benefits. This BBC article sums up the situation. As capital expenditure will generate tax revenue year after year. It’s not just a one off. That income stream would enable the Treasury to spend money on many different things. Including the NHS if it chose to…

Operating expenditure covers the day to day functioning of a business, like wages, utilities, maintenance and repairs. It also covers depreciation. It’s money needed every year.

The cost of building Hs2 is currently around £88bn. For that we get all the benefits I mentioned. In contrast, planned expenditure for the NHS in 2016/17 is £120.611bn. That means if we diverted the supposed pot of money for Hs2 to the NHS it would run the NHS for less than 9 months. Then it would be gone, never to return. It wouldn’t solve any problems, because the NHS would need that money every year. Instead, you’d be left with rail gridlock (which would cost money, not save it) and you wouldn’t have a catalyst for regeneration in cities like Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham, so you’re not helping rebalance the economy either. Oh, and you wouldn’t have all the tax revenue from the jobs HS2’s created either.

This (in a nutshell) is why the stophs2 campaigns calls to divert money from HS2 to the NHS is both daft, and ignorant. Even Labour’s former Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell pointed this out in an interview with the Yorkshire Post.

Oh, there’s one other thing. There IS no pot of money sat in the Treasury labelled ‘HS2’ that’s just waiting for another sticker to be applied to it, so it can’t be diverted. HS2 isn’t paid for by the taxpayer either – despite all the rubbish you hear – it’s paid for by borrowing at a time when Governments can borrow at such historically low levels people will actually pay you to borrow!

gilts

So the money for HS2 is borrowed against future returns in the same way any government in any country invests in national transport infrastructure. Historically, the UK has always been poor at doing this, which is why so much of our infrastructure is old (just look at the existing West Coast Main line – it was built 190 years ago!). The OECD recommends that baseline infra investment is 5.5% of GDP annually for an economy with aspirations to growth. We’ve only spent this amount twice since WW2, so HS2 and  High Speed North is a minimum.

In fact, the cost of building HS2 is spread over very many years, at its peak it will be less than £5bn per year. It’s just another column in the Governments annual budget. But, cancelling HS2 doesn’t free up any money (there’s no pot, remember?). It just means the Government borrows less, or transport infrastructure continues to age and our competitors (the younger, more forward thinking countries) continue to outpace us.

This is why cancelling HS2 and pretending it frees up billions to be diverted anywhere is just economic illiteracy.

Hs2 gets Royal Assent

02 Thursday Mar 2017

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Mid Cheshire against Hs2, StopHs2, Transport

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This major milestone was attained on the 23rd February whilst I was away in Asia, so I’ve not had chance to blog about it until today. Royal Assent means that years of talking and arguing about Hs2 are finally over. Royal Assent is essentially granting planning permission for construction to start. There are no more legal or political hoops to jump through. Politicians have now moved on to other things, even if a few anti Hs2 campaigners haven’t. What RA also does is release some pots of money that had been held back. Here’s what the DfT release says about them:

“Two funds, worth £40 million, are now open for bids: the Community and Environment Fund (CEF) and the Business and Local Economy Fund (BLEF). The CEF will help enhance community facilities, improve access to the countryside and conserve the natural environment, while the BLEF will support local economies in areas where businesses may experience disruption from the construction of HS2.

The CEF and BLEF together make up £40 million and will be allocated at a regional level: £15 million for the central area (Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Buckinghamshire Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Hertfordshire), £7.5 million for Greater London and £7.5 million for the West Midlands (Birmingham, Solihull and Coventry). The remaining £10 million will fund cross-border or route wide projects”.

But there’s more…

“A further £30 million road safety fund will go towards local road safety schemes in areas not currently accustomed to construction traffic. This will help provide a legacy of improvements for areas adversely affected by Phase One traffic.”

That’s a total of £70m for projects along the phase 1 route that have been released by Royal Assent.

Of course, RA has had other impacts. It’s screwed down the lid on the StopHs2 campaign’s coffin. Their campaign’s dead – although some of them refuse to admit it and continue to witter on Twitter, as if it matters any more as spades will start going into the ground in a few short weeks time.

So, what’s next for the anti Hs2 campaign. Well, on phase 1 – it’s oblivion. There’s only one active group left in 2017 as Hs2aa haven’t been heard of since November last year. In fact, if you look at Hs2aa’s website you wouldn’t even know Hs2 has got Royal Assent!

That leaves Kenilworth based StopHs2 which is just two people. Joe Rukin (who lives locally) and Penny Gaines, who’s decamped to the South-West! In order to keep his non-job going poor Joe is trying to sell his services and ‘expertise’ to Phase 2 campaigners. Quite what Yorkshire would do with a bloke whose CV reveals 7 years of failure and dishonesty is an interesting question. StopHs2 are skint. How long they will survive now is an interesting question. I’d be surprised if they last beyond the summer.

That brings us onto the next phase of Hs2 – 2a from the W Midlands to Crewe. The consultation closed on 7th November 2016. Shortly afterwards the Govt confirmed the route. 2017 will see the Environmental Impact Assessment completed and the Hybrid Bill launched. The Govt are expecting phase 2a to get Royal Assent in 2019. This may seem optimistic when you look at the time it took on Phase 1, but for one thing. The anti Hs2 campaign on Phase 2a is almost non-existent!

Apart from an active group around Stone (Staffs), supported by the local MP, Bill Cash, there’s no organised opposition to Hs2. There was in the past (of a sort, anyway) but it was always riven by in-fighting and egos. Much of it was UKIP inspired, but as they’ve got their own problems nowadays don’t expect many fireworks.

That leaves the two arms of phase 2. Crewe to Manchester and the W Midlands to Leeds.

Of the two, the Manchester arm has the least Stophs2 activity. There’s a small group based in Mid-Cheshire that’s noisy but ineffective (it doesn’t even have the backing of the local MP) and there’s the remnants of a group around Warrington. Take a look at their website. It hasn’t been updated since 2015!  Their Facebook page isn’t much better.  The only other group worth mentioning is CADRAG (Culcheth And District Rail Action Group) but they’re just as moribund as the others. This comment on their Facebook page says it all.

cadrag

That leaves the Leeds leg, where the story is more complicated.

There’s one tiny group in Leics (which essentially seems to be a one man and his dog operation) around the village of Measham. Here’s their website. When you look through you find there’s very little in the way of action. Much of their website is empty and they’ve still not announced who their Committee members are 3 months on! Their main reason to exist seems to be to help people turn out carbon copy consultation responses (which worked so well on Phase 1 , not). Their social media presence is one man tweeting stuff that has no links with Measham at all, just random StopHs2 propaganda, oh, and a strange obsession with how many views his Tweets have had (so much so that he then tweets about it)! A telling statistic is that only 1% of the local population turned up to their inaugural meeting.

What makes this group interesting is that they’re like a few on the Yorkshire arm. They only exist because the route was changed after consultations. That means there’s opposition to their position as the changes were so that Hs2 affects less people. We may yet find the rug is pulled from under groups like this if the new consultations show a majority of local support FOR the changes!

It’s the same with a few small groups North of Sheffield. There’s an added problem for anti Hs2 campaigners here as they command very little political support. Whilst Yorkshire political culture is renowned for factionalism and squabbling between the different Councils, local Authorities and metropolitan areas the overwhelming majority of Yorkshire politicians see Hs2 as a good thing even if they can’t agree on the final course of the route. But then, neither can the protesters! There’s no coherent voice or anti Hs2 campaign across Yorkshire. The anti campaign is also hamstrung by the fact that – unlike the Chiltern Nimbys, they can’t use the excuse that there’s no stations and they don’t directly benefit.

What Yorkshire does have is a cadre of academics and vested interests centred around Leeds/Harrogate who are anti Hs2. In the case of High Speed UK (HSUK) that’s because they have their own pet scheme they want to make some money out of.

In conjunction with Wakefield Council (one of the political awkward squad, through its leader, Cllr Peter Box) a group grandly styling themselves “Yorkshire Against HS2” have organised a conference tomorrow. Titled “Hs2 Alternatives”. It contained the usual rag-bag of long term opponents and political dogmatists, from lobbyists like the Taxpayers Alliance to the Green party’s Natalie “brain fade” Bennett. Add to the mix HSUK (still punting their back of a fag packet ‘alternative’) and the superbly bonkers Paul Withrington, (who styles himself ‘Transport Watch’), StopHs2’s Joe Rukin and local self publicist Cllr Gibbons and you’ve got a real treat! I doubt Yorkshire’s seen a box of frogs this mad since the UKIP conference was last in the county. Quite wisely, two local MPs (Ed Miliband and Jon Tricket) are keeping their distance and (allegedly) leaving messages via a video link!

alternatives

Somehow, I can’t imagine Sir David Higgins losing any sleep over this one. If it’s raining in Wakefield tomorrow you might get a few through the doors, but if this is the Premier league of the remaining opposition to Hs2…

And that it! The phase 2 Hybrid Bill won’t be along for a couple of years yet, so expect a lot of what’s left of the opposition to drop away – just as it did on phase 1. In the meantime, construction will have started on phase 1 and the phase 2a Hybrid Bill will be attracting all the attention.

Now I’m looking forward to a few years spent blogging about progress on the construction of Hs2!

An unholy alliance (and unholy mess)

09 Thursday Feb 2017

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

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I’ve not bothered blogging about the anti Hs2 campaign much recently, mainly because there’s nothing worth blogging about. Having hit a metaphorical iceberg in the shape of the successful Hs2 Hybrid bill, their campaign’s been sinking slowly ever since. Most groups have already taken to the lifeboats, leaving StopHs2 and a few dozen bonkers (and mostly anonymous) tweeters frantically clinging to the stern as the icy water gets even closer.

Even so, I couldn’t resist mentioning this. On the day that the Lords gave the Hybrid Bill its 3rd reading (passing it by a stonking majority of 360 on a 386-26 vote), an unholy alliance of environmental groups (who should know better), right-wing lobbyists (the antithesis of the green movement) and vested interest groups placed full page adverts in the national media, calling on people to stop Hs2 by writing to their MPs. ‘Friends’ of the Earth even started a petition on their website (here)

FOE.PNG

By today, that petition has had a ‘whopping’ 1062 votes!

What’s so laughable about all this is that the whole thing has been a spectacular waste of time and money! Why? Because MPs don’t have another chance to vote on the principle of Hs2! There’s no stopping it now.

It’s true that as the Lords amended the Hs2 Hybrid Bill it will go back to the Commons – but this is only so that the amendments can be considered. MPs decided that Hs2 should be built at 2nd reading of the bill back in 2014. They don’t get a 2nd bite of the cherry, so people writing to their MPs is a complete waste of time. One can only wonder who advised the ‘unholy alliance’ on their tactics and decided that this was a cunning plan as – in reality – it’s both too late and entirely the wrong target.

As the Hs2 Hybrid Bill is due to receive Royal Assent later this month, it looks like the anti Hs2 campaign decided to throw away the last of their money on yet another useless gesture.

Stophs2: Telling porkies about people telling porkies…

03 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Yorkshire

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Yesterday the Yorkshire against Hs2 campaign launched a ‘report’ which claimed to have exposed Sir David Higgins and Hs2 Ltd of ‘telling lies’ to the Transport Minister in Sir David’s July 2016 report into altering the route through Yorkshire. Sadly, this report isn’t available anywhere on their website, or that of the groups they claim to be the umbrella for – or on the *cough* ‘national’ STOPHs2 website.

Here’s the Yorkshire against Hs2 website. The accusation is contained in the link to their blog page. It claims that; yorks-lie

“Entirely demolish” eh?

Here’s a link to Sir David Higgins report.  So, where did the report ‘admit’ they would demolish all 215 homes on the Shimmer estate? Nowhere. The nearest you get is this, on page 22;

hs2-report

Spot the difference between the antis unequivocal “entirely demolish” and the far more measured “an impact” from Hs2 Ltd.

Yorkshire antis seem to have forgotten another of their claims which they tried to plaster all over the media earlier. This was a claim that Hs2 Ltd had admitted in a FOI request that they had no idea how many homes were to demolished on the revised Yorkshire route (see link)! Oddly, this FOI request has never been published by the group who claim to have received it (Bramley) or by Yorkshire against Hs2. In fact, no FOI requests have been published. The irony of anti Hs2 groups not publishing Freedom of Information requests and replies but keeping them secret is obviously lost on them!

Someone is telling porkies here, and it ain’t Hs2…

 

 

The Yorkshire Hs2 antis battle each other

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

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I mentioned in an earlier blog that the Yorkshire Stophs2 campaign’s doomed to failure as they’re singing from different hymn sheets from the beginning. This is very evident from the plethora of petitions different groups have started – with different aims. For example, here’s one started by one Julie Pile, which says that:

mexborough-hs2-petition

Apart from the obvious nonsense about failures of “statutory duty” and the usual catastrophic language about “wrecking” the environment, it’s clear Julie doesn’t mind if this happens, as long as it happens elsewhere. This puts her on a collision course with other campaigners on the route, but also the City of Sheffield and other who campaigned long and hard to have the Hs2 route changed from Meadowhall in the first place. So far, the petition’s gathered 3343 signatures, 1643 of which (or 50.85%)are from the Hemsworth constituency of Jon Trickett MP. To put this in perspective, it’s just 1.73% of all his constituents. The only other people to have signed in any number are the 418 signatures from Ed Miliband’s neighbouring constituency, Doncaster North. What’s noticeable is the tiny number of supporting signatures from elsewhere, like Sheffield, or even Rother Valley, another constituency on the new Hs2 route.

There does seem to be an embarrassment of riches (well, petitions really) amongst people in Yorkshire as a John Haith, a Rother Valley resident from Bramley has started this one, which has 3,202 signatures (but little support from Hemsworth). Meanwhile, Stephen Simcox (also Rother Valley) has started a “spend Hs2 money on the NHS” petition which has a paltry 763 signatures.

In truth, none of them have a cat in hell’s chance of success, but they do show a very Yorkshire trait – a lack of agreement over anything! The fact that there are obvious tensions and different interests across the county (even amongst anti Hs2 groups) demonstrates why any campaign to try and Stop Hs2 is doomed from the start – especially as these small local groups are pitted against the metropolitan areas of Leeds, Sheffield and York (all very pro Hs2) as well as the majority of the wider Yorkshire business community. Plus, can anyone seriously think the good Burghers of Doncaster (home to one of the two National Colleges for High Speed Rail) will want to kiss goodbye to the thousands of skilled people who will be trained there? Or for that matter, the hundreds of skilled jobs that will be created by the Hs2 rolling stock depot at nearby Crofton?

No doubt there will be a few awkward moments for some MPs as they try and balance the wider interests of their constituents with the impossible demands of a minority, but does anyone seriously think they will actually vote to stop Hs2 coming to Yorkshire or carrying on to the North-East, or for that matter Notts?

There’s another consideration too. The Hs2 Hybrid Bill for phase 2 will also contain the line onwards from Crewe to Manchester (another Labour heartland).  I’m sure there will be some very interesting meetings of the Parliamentary Labour Party if a handful of Labour MPs in Yorkshire were seen as putting the whole of the Phase 2 scheme under threat!

StopH2 campaigners in Yorkshire have made the same mistake that those on Phase 1 did. They’ve fallen into the trap of thinking their purely local concerns should be put ahead of national ones, and that others will give way to appease them.

Why Hs2 antis should finally give up on petitions.

19 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Railways, StopHs2, Yorkshire

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I’ve often said that the Stop hs2 campaign never learns from its mistakes. I’ve been provided with another great example of this today when one of the campaigns long-standing Walter Mittys’ (the fantasist Nicholas Batty) tweeted a link to yet another daft petition on the Government’s website.

batty-oct-19

Here’s a link to the actual petition.

Needless to say I went to have a look. The petition was started by a Stephen Simcox from Rotherham on the 26th July 2016 & closes on the 21st January 2017 (all petitions are set to close automatically after 6 months) It’s gathered a grand total of 467 signatures since. It hasn’t got a cat in hell’s chance of success but what I found really interesting was that someone in the Civil Service has been expanding the data these petitions carry. Not only do they tell you the number of signatures from each of the 650 Parliamentary constituencies, now they also tell you what percentage of registered voters have signed. This is extremely useful as it tells you how much people in that constituency care (or rather, don’t care) about an issue. However, for the Stop Hs2 campaigners it’s a disaster, as it allows you to define just how little support they have!

Here’s a screengrab of the constituency map.

petition.PNG

This shows that the greatest number of signatures (a ‘whopping’ 121) come from the Rother Valley constituency on phase 2 of Hs2. 2nd is 62 signatures from the Doncaster North constituency. Now this can be put into context thanks to the new feature.

Rother Valley has 94,959 constituents and a *cough* massive 0.13% of them have signed the petition! In Doncaster North that’s 0.06%. Somehow, I don’t think any MPs are going to be losing sleep over this.

Phase 2 StopHs2 campaigners are running a carbon-copy of the campaign that failed to stop Hs2 on phase 1 in the South. It’s crazy as they don’t have the money or support that their Southern counterparts had. Not only that but the two surviving umbrella groups (Hs2aa and StopHs2) are both based in the South. Neither of them are likely to survive beyond Phase 1 receiving Royal Assent – which will leave phase 2 protestors without any logistical or technical support. The Yorkshire stophs2 campaign is isolated anyway as it doesn’t even have the support of its local MPs (for example, Doncaster North’s Ed Milliband is a firm supporter of Hs2). They’re also up against Yorkshire business groups who’re strong supporters of the project. There’s also the problem of a lack of unity between old and new groups in Yorkshire as some are campaigning for the Hs2 route to be moved back to Meadowhall!

In short, the Yorkshire Stophs2 campaign’s over before it’s even started.

The sad thing about all this is that the people who are genuinely affected by Hs2 are being led up the garden path by the likes of Joe Rukin from Stop Hs2. Instead of campaigning for  the best route possible, maximum mitigation and benefits to their communities from new facilities funded by Hs2 Ltd, they’ve been conned into wasting their time fighting a battle they can’t possibly win by trying to stop Hs2 altogether.

UPDATE.

Since this blog was written (6 days ago) signatures have gone up by 253, from 464 to 720 – or 42.1 a day. The problem is, a petition like this needs an average of 556 signatures per day to stand any chance of getting past the magic 100,000, and each day it fails, that number increases…

The Stop Hs2 campaign revisited

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Hs2, Hs2aa, Mid Cheshire against Hs2, StopHs2, Uncategorized

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I haven’t blogged about the Stop hs2 campaign for some time, mostly because it’s a busted flush nowadays, but I thought it would be useful to sum up the state of play in the final weeks before Phase 1 gets Royal Assent.

Ever since Hs2 passed 2nd reading in the Commons with such a stonking majority the antis campaign has been doomed. From that point on there was a noticeable decline in their efforts which has continued ever since. Now they’re doing a very good impression of the fabled Oozlum bird! The final straw for many of them was the fact the Lords Hs2 Committee made it very clear they weren’t going to tolerate the campaign trying to bog down progress on the bill by sticking in hundreds of pointless petitions. The Committee also severely limited what one of the remaining anti Hs2 groups (Hs2aa) could petition about.

This left the two surviving groups almost redundant. So much so that Hs2aa have given up campaigning on social media. Their Twitter and Facebook accounts haven’t been used since June 12th and their website is pretty much abandoned too. It’s carried 4 articles since June, most of which are repeating newspaper stories. Their campaigning is reduced to funding an advert to be rolled out in a few ‘periodicals’ (so, not the national newspapers then) before the Tory party conference next month and err, that’s it…

Meanwhile, the Stophs2 group is hanging on by the skin of its teeth despite the fact it’s a pointless organization with little to do. Like Hs2aa, its website is mostly kept alive by repeating what the media are saying about Hs2 or recycling old articles from the past, otherwise there’s nothing happening. The days of meetings, conventions and organising protests are long gone. This year they’ve not even attended any of the party conferences, so we’ve been saved from the usual fairy stories about how ‘busy’ their stall was – which is always contradicted by people tweeting pictures of it!

What’s instructive is taking a look at their Facebook page. On it you’ll find the same few names constantly expressing their bewilderment. They simply can’t understand why Hs2 is still happening. However, when you read through the comments and see the sheer level of ignorance about transport, economics and politics being expressed – you can see why they failed. The comments are overwhelmingly from those living on the route howling in incomprehension at everything. Their unguarded comments make it clear most of them have given up the fight, all they’re doing now is moaning about the result.

So, where do things go from here? It’s clear the stop Hs2 campaign’s been a miserable failure. Tactically it’s been a disaster. It never understood that a few hundred people affected by a specific issue like Hs2 would struggle to get wider public support. Pretending some negative opinion polls would somehow translate into anything concrete was a huge mistake – as was incessently painting politicians (the very people they needed) as corrupt. Trotting out a constant stream of lies, deception and dodgy figures wasn’t too bright either.

The anti Hs2 campaign was probably the first major one of the social media age, so it holds a lot of lessons for others. What it’s taught us is that social media is very much a double-edged sword for such campaigns because it exposes your weaknesses just as much as it allows you to get your message across to people. Social media has allowed us to see that the stophs2 campaign was actually a tiny group of people that was shrinking as time went on. It also showed that many of its ‘supporters’ were opportunists from the economic right wing such as the Taxpayers Alliance and the Institute for Economic Affairs, plus UKIP. We can see from Facebook that their campaign stalled years ago. It’s never attracted more than a few thousand people at most. Only a tiny percentage of that few thousand are in any way activists. Twitter paints an even worse picture as it’s clear from the activity surrounding the #hs2 hashtag that there’s been a massive drop in people tweeting anti H2 messages. To make matters worse, the majority of those remaining are either from the political fruitcake end of the spectrum or are tweeting anonymously (which is a complete waste of time). That leaves a handful of ordinary people. As a campaigning tool to stop hs2 it’s useless. Instead, what it has done is expose another of their weaknesses – which is that apart from their ‘heartland’ in the Chilterns, they’re scattered and isolated.

The phase 1 campaign is effectively dead. Royal Assent (which is only a few weeks away) is now certain. The last hope for their campaign was that the reconstituted Tory government would have a change of heart after Brexit. That hope was dashed when it became clear that Teresa May, her new Chancellor and Transport Minister strongly backed hs2. Added to this was the delicious irony that the brexit vote made building Hs2 crucial to the Governments efforts to boost the economy. So much for UKIP (who claimed Hs2 was a dastardly EU plot that was imposed on us) support for the antis! Once phase 1 gets Royal Assent Hs2aa (which is almost exclusively made up of Chiltern Nimbys) is redundant, as is Warwickshire based & funded Stophs2. I can’t see either of them surviving into 2017, which leaves the stop hs2 campaign without any national leadership or structure.

Now the ‘battle’ moves on to phase 2 and phase 2a. So, what’s the state of play on those sections of the route?

Phase 2a to Crewe passes through Staffordshire where the anti Hs2 campaign’s always been a bit of a joke. They’ve spent more time fighting each other than trying to stop hs2 due to the egos and ‘personalities’ involved. Think of Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ and the ‘splitters’ of the Judean Peoples front…Right now there’s not even an established group in Staffs to oppose phase 2a. UKIP support featured heavily in Staffs, but now that party is in decline there’s little to suggest there’s ever going to be coherent opposition to Phase 2a.

Phase 2 is a little more complex. The leg from Crewe to Manchester and the spur to the WCML near Warrington has very little opposition apart from a moribund group of Nimbys in Mid-Cheshire and another around Warrington. What’s significant is that there’s not a single organised StopHs2 group anywhere in the Manchester area. The other leg through Sheffield to Leeds has more opposition due to the recent route change. That said, there’s little that’s coherent. Leeds has a tiny and disorganised group in the outskirts to the South-East. There was a group at Church Fenton, but again, that’s done very little. There is new opposition centred around Rotherham but they seem hell-bent on running a carbon-copy of the failed phase 1 campaign. Instead of concentrating their efforts on route changes or mitigation they’re wasting their time trying to stop the whole Hs2 project. The problem all these groups have is political support for Hs2 is far stronger in the North than it was in the South. Even though some Yorkshire MPs like Ed Miliband have expressed opposition to the route change, they still support building Hs2. This means there’s no chance that there will be a rebellion of MPs to vote down the Hs2 Phase 2 Hybrid Bill when it gets to Parliament. Of course, all this is several years away but what is increasingly clear is that Stophs2 as a national campaign is finished.

EVENING UPDATE:

To add to the doom and gloom for the stophs2 campaign, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor made an announcement at today’s Labour conference. He committed the party to borrowing to invest in an infrastructure fund. He specifically mentioned that both Hs2 & Hs3 would be built from these funds. Now, you can offer odds on the chance of Labour ever getting back in to power before Hs2 is built, but what matters is Labour’s clear commitment to the project. They’re not going to be voting against either the Phase 2a or Phase 2 Hybrid bills…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘great Guido’ gets it wrong – again.

28 Thursday Jul 2016

Posted by in Andrea Leadsom MP, Anti Hs2 mob, Guido Fawkes, Hs2, Victoria Prentis MP

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Hs2 antis have got very excited by a story on the execrable ‘Guido Fawkes’ website. The great ‘Guido’ has tried to make out that the appointment of a prominent anti Hs2 MP as a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Ministers in the Department of Transport somehow causes problems for the HS2 project, leading to a “tough circle to square”. The problem is – the truth is exactly the opposite. Victoria Prentis’ opposition to Hs2 has been neutered. Why? Because as a PPS she is bound by the same rules on collective responsibility as the Cabinet are. This means she can’t speak out against Government policy as she is deemed to have collective responsibility for it! The delicious irony is that this is the second anti Hs2 MP Teresa May has effectively muzzled – the other being one Andrea Leadsom, who is now Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change!

Still, when has the Fawkes camp ever let the facts get in the way…

The anti Hs2 mob live on another planet…

08 Sunday May 2016

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, House of Lords, Hs2, Hs2 petitions, StopHs2

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When is applying the long-established rules of Locus Standi (The right or capacity to bring an action or to appear in a court) and the letter of the law “undemocratic”, “dictatorial” or trying to “over-rule 750 year history of representation”?

Never – unless you live in the weird parallel universe inhabited by Andrew Gilligan and the rest of the anti Hs2 mob!

As I predicted in my last blog, the petitions to the House of Lords are facing far more Locus Standi challenges than the earlier petitions to the Commons. 414 of the 821 are subject to challenge. This has provoked squeals of outrage from stophs2 campaigners and the usual fact-free rubbish from Andrew Gilligan (see here) and Joe Rukin (here).

Of course, what they all neglect to say it that whilst this is the Govt and Hs2 Ltd bringing the challenges, it’s up to the House of Lords Committee to judge if those challenges should be allowed. The Committee is Chaired by Lord Walker of Guestingthorpe, who just happens to be a QC with a long history of senior judicial appointments which include being a High Court judge, Justice of Appeal, Lord of Appeal and Justice of the Supreme Court of the UK. With such an august legal mind Chairing the Committee it’s going to be almost impossible for Hs2 antis to get away with screaming ‘foul’ on this one – hence their anger.

StopHs2 campaigners know this was their very last throw of the dice. Yet again, they’d hoped they could bog-down the process of the bill with repetitive petitions only this time, they weren’t going to be allowed to get away with it. The Govt and Hs2 Ltd had been very generous in the commons by challenging so few petitioners. In their final report the House of Commons Ctte had this to say about Locus Standi;

audience

So, what’s happened shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. The Govt and Hs2 Ltd are simply exercising their legal right to challenge petitioners standing and a very senior and experienced legal mind is chairing the Committee that will rule on their validity.  Expect the majority of the challenges to succeed.