Tag Archives: Anti Hs2 mob

The anti Hs2 mob don’t ‘do’ detail (or academia) – just headlines.

02 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Imperial College London

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It’s been quite funny to see the anti Hs2 mob getting their knickers in a twist over a new academic study & mathematical model from Imperial College London. In its newsletter the college describes the report thus:

“A new mathematical model suggests that major rail infrastructure projects, such as High Speed 2 (HS2) and London Crossrail, will cause some businesses and homeowners to lose out financially, when other destinations become better connected”.

Do we really need an academic study to tell us the blindingly obvious? There are always winners & losers when transport links are improved, nevertheless, trying to quantify this is an interesting exercise.

The newsletter goes on to say that;

“The scientists applied their model to analyse the effect of the proposed High Speed 2 (HS2) ‘phase one’ Birmingham to London route. HS2 has been estimated by a KPMG report, commissioned by the Department for Transport in 2013, to create £15 billion annually in increased economic output, with phase one estimated to deliver 40 per cent of this benefit (£6 billion per annum). However, the new study predicted that phase one would create only £3.6 billion annually in increased economic output; less than one per cent of current output of both cities.”

Needless to say, the anti Hs2 mob jumped on this with glee, although I doubt any of them actually bothered to read the report itself (it’s not exactly holiday reading) or even stop for a moment to consider its implications.

For example, the KPMG report doesn’t actually form part of the Hs2 business case. It’s an extra. Therefore, what this report is actually suggesting is that around £60bn at Present Value (PV) should be added to the Hs2 business case. Eagle-eyed readers will spot the fact that’s at least £10bn more than the cost of building Hs2. Not only that, but it doesn’t take into account all the other benefits Hs2 generates in released capacity on existing lines, fares etc.

So, the report isn’t a reason NOT to build Hs2 – it’s actually the opposite! Oh dear…

The anti Hs2 mob get shown up by the Woodland Trust

25 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2

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In another of life’s delicious ironies the Woodland Trust have intentionality exposed how little real support the anti Hs2 mob have. How? By launching this Twitter campaign.

irony

In just 24 hours they’ve had far more people Tweet than the anti Hs2 mob have ever managed to find! Remember the antis laughable ‘Twitterstorm’ from 2 years ago (you’d be forgiven if you didn’t, it was an abject failure). Or Hs2aa’s more recent ‘thunderclap’? So much for laughable claims that the anti Hs2 campaign’s bigger then the poll tax demos.

Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week – No 9

24 Friday Jul 2015

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For some reason the anti Hs2 campaign has always attracted the Walter Mitty types & this weeks chosen campaigner is a classic example!

Step forward Nicholas Batty…

Today’s superbly daft tweet sets the scene.

batty

‘Relentless & expanding rapidly’? How deluded can you get?

I’ve blogged before on the true situation with their campaign but let’s have a look at the state of play since I wrote that back in January. In the past 6 months the anti campaign’s failed to make any impact on a general election. Unlike previous years it’s not organised a single national event, demonstration or gathering- nor has it any planned. It’s failed to capture much media attention and its social media penetration is poor (to say the least). Here’s the latest ‘scores on the doors’ to illustrate the fact.

scores on doors

The usual caveats apply. Not all followers are supporters etc. The figures show that not only is the anti campaign growing slowly from a ridiculously small base, in some cases it’s going backwards! To put these figures in perspective, over 46 million people are registered to vote in the UK! So much for ‘expanding rapidly’ eh?

2015 has shown that the anti Hs2 campaign only really exists on social media nowadays. The ‘action group’ network that Hs2aa used to boast about (claiming over 90 +) has been shown to be less than half that. No new groups have formed since Phase 2 was announced but plenty have folded.

The anti campaign was further embarrassed when the Mid Cheshire ‘action’ group published their 2015 AGM minutes online. These exposed the fact only 23 people attended out of a Cheshire population of 700-800,000! Unsurprisingly, the group has since taken the minutes off the web. No doubt the ‘action’ group network will dwindle further one the petitioning process is completed. After all – what are they for anymore when there’s nothing going on?

So, where’s any evidence (outside of his own fevered imagination) to back up Batty’s claims? There’s none. Anywhere.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Batty has come out with abject nonsense. Back in 2013 he claimed that there were ‘thousands’ of anti Hs2 protesters in central London ahead of their annual rally. Only around 500 actually turned out to be real. But then Batty is a typical Walter Mitty who invents his own attendance at these events as well as that of others. Mind you, if you look at his profile, then do some research, it seems that’s not all he’s invented…

You’ve got to hand it to the anti Hs2 campaign, they really do know how to attract some very ‘special’ people.

2023 update.

Like the majority of the anti HS2 keyboard warriors, the ‘batty bricklayer’ (as he was known as by HS2 supporters) has vanished into thin air. His Twitter account disappeared years ago as his ridiculous fantasies and bluster came to naught. There’s literally hundreds of other abandoned anti HS2 Twitter accounts still out there, cluttering up social media. It’s one of the reasons the few remaining anti HS2 Twitter accounts get such a poor response. Most of the people who’re following them gave up and moved on years ago. A case in point is this tweet from Batty. It got all of 8 retweets. Of those 8 accounts only one – the human Oxymoron ‘@johnsensible’ is still tweeting, all the others are long gone…

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Pragmatism prevails on Hs2.

22 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, AONBs, Hs2

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Yesterday the Chair of the Hs2 petitioning Committee, Robert Syms MP announced that they had rejected the idea of a full length tunnel to take the railway underneath the Chiltern’s AONB. You can read the full decision here. It was a decision that surprised no-one but a few fundamentalist antis & those naive enough not to understand the issues.

The idea was always a non-starter. there’s lots of reasons why but the main ones are cost & (perhaps more importantly) the precedence it would create. If new transport corridors like Hs2 have to be buried under the Chilterns, what would happen when any have to pass through other AONBs or National Parks? After all, there are 46 AONBs covering 18% of the UK. Many of them are grouped to the North West of London, as this map shows (Interestingly, it also shows how the Chilterns is one of the smallest AONBs). It was an impossible demand & the Committee sensibly rejected it.

Whisper it, but the Chilterns aren’t particularly special. Only 5% of the AONB is virgin landscape. The other 95% is man made. It’s an area already criss-crossed by railways & motorways & I don’t see the local anti’s clamoring to have building restrictions applied that might prevent land being taken by factories etc. Let’s be honest, much of this is about protecting a few folks house prices as much as it is about the environment.

Of course, this decision doesn’t bode well for the anti’s other ridiculous demand – that the Euston terminus is abandoned & Hs2 is terminated at Old Oak Common instead.

The Hs2 Petitioning Committee go into overdrive.

14 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2 petitions

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One of the central planks of the anti Hs2 campaign was the idea that Hs2 could be stopped by bogging it down during the petitioning process. The ‘logic’ ran that if the timetable was dragged out the project would be cancelled by a new Government, such as UKIP (yeah, right..!) or the costs would force a rethink. The Hs2 antis duly stuck in a few thousand carbon-copy petitions & smugly thought ‘job done’.

It was never going to work.

The Hs2 Petitioning Committee have always made it clear that they weren’t going to let the will of Parliament & democratically elected MP’s be subverted in this way. The Committee’s worked with Hs2 Ltd to ensure these template petitions can be dealt with swiftly – and how!

Now the Committee has published its autumn hearing timetables. This lists 720 petitions to be heard in September & another 300 in October

This leaves the anti Hs2 campaign in tatters. They’ve run out of ideas & have no new tactics to offer. Their campaign groups are dying & no doubt the end of the petitioning process will kill a few more off. The writing’s on the wall…

Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week – No 8

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week, Hs2, Peter Jones

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In the crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week competition we seem to have to have one contender who’s determined to stay ahead of the pack. Yet again the award goes to Camden’s Peter Jones. Not content with having won the accolade last week & being involved in Camden’s debacle at the Hybrid Bill Committee yesterday, he’s come out with this absolute gem today.

Duck

So, how will Hs2 stop industrial action on the tube? Probably the same way that it won’t cure cancer or prevent anyone but a Brit winning Wimbledon – or any of the other things it’s not designed to do.

Honestly, what is it with these people?

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The HS2 Euston Action Group have a car crash in Parliament

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

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The HS2 Euston Action Group gave their evidence to the Hs2 Hybrid Bill Committee today – and what a car crash it was too! Presented by Camden’s new MP, Keir Starmer, backed by former MP Frank Dobson & local anti group member Robert Latham, it was halting, incoherent & completely failed to make the case they wanted to – the abandonment of Euston as an Hs2 terminus in favour of halting the line at Old Oak Common.

Starmer was awful. He didn’t seem to understand the case he was trying to make and had no idea about the cross London connectivity issues that are solved by having both Hs2 stations. Put simply, Old Oak Common serves East & West London & Euston serves North & South London.

The Committee looked less than impressed, especially Sir Peter Bottomley who clearly has a far better grasp of the issues than Starmer. Dobson wasn’t much better. His cavalier approach to facts & reliance on supposition didn’t score him any points. As for Latham, he made no impression at all. In contrast Sir Peter Bottomley was excellent. He pointed out that the projections were that only 2 out of 5 Hs2 passengers were expected to use Old Oak Common with the rest using Euston. In his evidence the QC representing Hs2, Timothy Mould gave a far more impressive and informed performance forensically demolishing the antis argument brick by brick – as if it were the former Doric Arch at Euston!

Have a look at the session here;

http://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/1a9f4ae3-c26d-4dda-979c-b62cc696f9c0

Once the transcript is out I’ll update this blog as Mould’s tour de force will be worth reading!

After the session was over, Starmer tweeted this;

Starmer

All I can say is – if that shambles was a ‘good’ session it’s not difficult to see why the anti hs2 campaign’s got nowhere in over 5 years!

To be fair to Starmer, he has been put in an impossible situation. The idea of scrapping the Euston Hs2 terminus is so obviously a non-starter I suspect even he knows it’s going to be impossible to sell. He’s been put in that position through no fault of his own but by a crazy cocktail of a Council that’s become hostage to a vociferous minority and the actions of the previous MP, not to mention a few rather upset Labour luvvies. Admittedly, the original Hs1-Hs2 link plans didn’t help as they weren’t well thought out (which is why Higgins dropped them) but that’s history.

Somehow, I can’t see the Hs2 petitioning Committee being persuaded by today’s efforts….

UPDATE.

The transcript of evidence has been published here

This is why the anti Hs2 campaign was doomed from the beginning…

05 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Mid Cheshire against Hs2

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The anti Hs2 campaign has always tried to pretend more folks support it than really do. More often than not the media swallow their nonsense & talk about the ‘strong’ opposition to Hs2.

The daft thing is, it only takes a few minutes research for these ridiculous claims to be exposed – mostly by the anti Hs2 campaigners themselves! Here’s a great example. Step forward the ‘Mid Cheshire Against Hs2’ group. Regular readers will know about this bunch already, but for those not familiar with them, allow me to elucidate.

The Mid Cheshire group are one of only a handful of anti groups on the whole of the phase 2 route (both East to Leeds & West to Manchester). Famously, a few of them turned up at Sir David Higgins ‘Hs2 plus’ launch in Manchester where they pretended to be from the city. That’s because, embarrassingly for the anti Hs2 campaign – there’s not a single anti group in the whole of the city or larger Greater Manchester area of some 2.7 million souls! Here they are in all their ‘glory’..

DG173944. Anti Hs2 protest. Manchester. 17.3.14

Whilst they were there one of them was interviewed by the Manchester Evening News & made the laughable claim that the anti Hs2 campaign was bigger than the opposition to Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax. I kid you not! Here’s the MEN article.

Bigger than the poll tax eh? So, their annual meeting must have been packed to the rafters then…

Not according to the (barely legible) minutes of their AGM, which they’ve just published

Their minutes reveal that a grand total of 23 people attended. To put this in perspective, between 300-400,000 folks live in what’s loosely described as Mid-Cheshire. Bigger than the poll tax my arse…

Next time you hear certain sections of the media churn out the same lazy nonsense about ‘strong opposition’ to Hs2, feel free to point them in the direction of this blog.

UPDATE.

Not long after I published this blog and exposed the derisory turn out at the AGM, the minutes mysteriously disappeared from their website. Funny, that. None have ever appeared since. I wonder why?

Crazy anti hs2 campaigner of the week – No 7

03 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Economic illiteracy, Hs2, Peter Jones

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Despite strong competition, this weeks award goes to Camden resident Peter Jones (who Tweets as Hs2DeadDuck) for this superb bit of financial illiteracy & economic nimbyism.

dead duck

Quite how overcrowding & a lack of rail capacity can be solved by less public subsidy is a mystery. As for the idea that, rather then providing the means for increasing numbers of people to travel to & from work we should simply price them off the railways – it’s the sort of bonkers nonsense that the Taxpayers Alliance would be proud of! Come to think of it, the anti Hs2 campaign does increasingly resemble the TPA in that it’s anti public transport – having switched from just opposing Hs2 to being against Hs3 & any other modern rail investment.

Jones neatly ignores the fact that the reason most people travel at peak times is that they have to in order to get to work on time! They have no option. If they can’t get on a train then either they have to find another way to get to work, or find another job. Clearly, retired Camden Nimbys like Jones consider themselves first & foremost & damn the rest of the UK, its economy and its environment. It’s the classic ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude.

Now, assuming the vast majority of folks wouldn’t be looking for lower paid jobs elsewhere, how will they get to work? By coach or car, obviously. Both of which are far more dangerous than rail travel – and far more polluting. There’s also the small matter of where they park in London.

So, in one fell swoop, Jones is proposing to get a few more people killed in the inevitable road accidents that would follow, further damage the environment with the pollution these vehicles will cause, cause gridlock on London’s roads – and see us have to build vast multi-storey car parks to accommodate the vehicles. No doubt many of them will have to be built in Camden as it’s outside the congestion charge zone!

There’s also the small matter of freight too. Without the paths for freight that Hs2 frees up on the WCML we’ll be seeing more HGVs on our motorways – and London’s roads. Of course, the problem won’t just be confined to London. Hs2 frees up commuter capacity at other major city stations like Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield & Manchester.

It’s absolutely bonkers but it very neatly illustrates the illogical mindset & ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude that permeates the anti Hs2 campaign. These people try and hide their Nimbyism with a green figleaf, pretending they’re ‘environmentalists’ when it’s clear from what they claim they’re anything but. There’s only one thing they care about. Themselves. 

UPDATE:

Jones is also a very good example of the abusive (& downright defamatory) nature & tactics of many of the anti Hs2 campaigners – as this tweet from last night shows.

dead duck 4

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!

The anti Hs2 campaign have their green figleaf blown away by the Davies Commission

01 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Airports, Anti Hs2 mob, Heathrow 3rd runway, Hs2

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Just as they were sobering up & realising last week’s furore over Network Rail wouldn’t stop Hs2 the anti campaign’s been dealt yet another blow by the Davies commission recommending building a third runway at Heathrow. This has exposed that for many hs2 antis, green issues were merely a figleaf to hide their nimbyism. After all, how can they oppose Hs2 on green grounds yet support building a 3.5km runway with all the associated pollution that will cause?

The truth is, many of those Chiltern Nimbys welcome Heathrow expansion. For them the airports only a short drive down the M40 in a ‘Chelsea tractor’ and they won’t have to put up with the noise, pollution & inconvenience.

So, can we expect the Hs2 anti’s to turn their fire on Heathrow, using the same ‘green’ arguments they trot out against Hs2 to condemn the environmental damage it will cause, or question why we need a 3rd runway if all the planes aren’t full? The immortal words of Jim Royle spring to mind…