The past few months have been awful for the Stop Hs2 campaign. It’s been rendered pointless by Parliament voting through the Hs2 bill with a stonking majority. Its woes have increased as the bill continues to make solid progress towards Royal Assent. The bill also passed 2nd reading in the House of Lords. Now the Lords has chosen the members of the Committee to hear the 827 petitions. As expected, HS2 antis have stuck in as many petitions as they can, hoping the tactics that failed in the Commons will achieve something in the Lords. The composition of the HoL Ctte (it’s chaired by a QC) makes this far less likely as the committee will be no pushover. They’re expected to be far tighter on procedure than the Commons so expect far more Locus Standi challenges.

Meanwhile, the organised anti Hs2 campaign has fallen apart. In 2010 there were four main groups opposing Hs2, this has been reduced to two (Hs2aa & Stophs2) but only the latter is still active. Apparently skint and demoralised, Hs2aa have retreated into representing the Nimby interests of their Directors. Hs2aa have tried the fact by blaming their lack of action on a serious denial of service attack which had taken their website down for a couple of months.

Silence them? What they neglect to mention is they still had two other options with which to continue their campaign: Their Facebook page and their Twitter account. So, what’s happened? Nothing. Neither account has seen any action since March 6th!

The truth is, most Hs2 antis have given up, even on social media – which has been their main campaigning tool for years.

This is yet another lesson in the pitfalls of social media for other campaigning groups to learn. Social media is a mirror on your soul. It can reflect your strengths but it can also expose your weakness. You can’t hide the tumbleweeds…