As the last few weeks of autumn slip away and we enter the last month before winter (supposedly) sets in we’ve been enjoying a thoroughly foggy time here in the Calder Valley. Visibility hasn’t changed throughout the day, leaving the other side of the valley a memory. That said, it’s hardly a typical autumn. It’s been very wet and very mild. Of course, the usual suspects will claim this has absolutely nothing to do with man-made global warming. The rest of us who’ve lived long enough to have experienced a few decades of weather know that this is not normal. In my garden I still have Lobelia flowering. And Geraniums. There’s a lot of other fcuked-up plants as well. They’ve no idea what season this is meant to be. I suspect there’s quite a few wild animals wondering too.
Will the majority of people ever wake up to the reality of climate change before the damage becomes irreparable? Somehow, I doubt it – especially if it involves making personal sacrifices or lifestyle changes. After all, those gas guzzling SUVs are just so important for the school run, and the four-wheel drive is essential for popping down to Tescos.
You may have gathered I’m in cynical mode. Don’t worry, it won’t last. Well, not for long anyway. But my fuse when it comes to faux greens will always be measured in millimeters. You know the ones, they’re really Nimbys. They oppose any green development that’s going to impinge on their space on the grounds of ‘conservation’. Building HS2’s a classic example. Wind and solar farms are another. As far as they’re concerned, let the Maldives sink, as long as no-one chops any trees down around them whilst they’re alive.
OK, enough of the cynicism for now. I’ll have a full spleen-vent another day. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a couple of ethereal pictures from today’s stroll around home.
Scarr woods looking rather spooky.There’s a valley down there somewhere…
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Well, it took up some time but I managed to get all of the last few days pictures edited, titled and filed on my Zenfolio website. Follow this link to see which galleries they’ve been added to. Of course the ‘big’ one is the gallery of High-Speed 2 (HS2) construction pictures. If that’s your bag, you can find ’em here.
The rest of the day’s flown. Dawn’s been out for the day to spend time with her folks whilst I’ve been chained to a computer but we’ve both had good times in out own way. I managed to escape later in the afternoon to enjoy a long walk before meeting up with friends in our local pub for a few games of pool. I’m slowly rediscovering the old skills but sometimes my shots are shocking! I blame the fact my glasses have got smaller over the years. Remember Dennis Taylor, the snooker player and the fact he looked like he wore his upside down? That’s what I need! Still, none of us take it seriously. It’s merely an opportunity to have a few beers whilst laughing, joking and doing something other than just propping up a bar. Now the pair of us are back at home for a quiet night in with some home-cooked food and a movie. Not exactly the ‘rock and roll’ lifestyle but it suits us as we’ve got some busy weeks ahead of us.
As it’s nearly showtime I’ll leave you with today’s picture which is one from my trips out earlier in the week. This HS2 environmental mitigation site at Ladbroke in Northants hit the headlines in 2008 when the national media latched on to a story from HS2 opponents that mitigation work was ‘greenwash’. Why? because many of the newly planted trees died in the 2018 heatwave as it simply wasn’t practical or economic to water them. What made more sense was to replace them with new saplings, which is what happened. But, contrary to the anti HS2 hype, not all of them did die. Plus, you don’t know what’s in many of those plastic tubes (used to stop deer eating everything) until you peer into it or the tree makes it to the top.
I visited the Ladbroke site on Thursday. Dead it ain’t…
Oh, and if you’re still unsure, here’s what you see when you peer into some of those ’empty’ tubes…
Unlike the anti HS2 protesters I’ll be visiting sites like this on a regular basis over the next few years in order to document the reality on the ground. Watch this space…
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I’m back on the rails for the rest of the week, travelling across a large chunk of the UK (as you’ll see). Today I’m off to have a look at some of the High Speed 2 construction and mitigation work around Cubbington in Warwickshire.
Thankfully, the weather’s better where I’m going than where I’m coming from. The Calder valley’s a wet and gloomy place this morning as the area’s trapped beneath a low layer of heavy grey cloud that’s shrouding the valley tops. My first train of the day’s Northern’s 06:23 from Sowerby Bridge which is worked by a pair of 2-car Class 195s. I’m taking it as far as Manchester. This should be a Chester service but it’s been chopped back to Victoria for some unknown reason.
08:00.
On arrival at Manchester I made the customary ‘mad dash’ across the city centre from Victoria to Piccadilly on foot. It took me 15 minutes which meant I was in plenty of time to get an earlier train than originally planned. I’m now ensconced on Cross-Country’s 07:27 to Bournemouth. Today the train’s made up of consecutively numbered, 4-car Class 220s (020 and 021 for the number-crunchers amongst you). Despite the earliness of the hour the front unit is very busy with few spare seats after we’d departed Stockport. Thankfully, the cloud levels are lifting and getting thinner the further South I go.
220020 ready to head the 07:27 from Manchester Piccadilly to Bournemouth.
09:20.
My train was packed all the way to Birmingham New St where the vast majority of travellers decamped only to be replaced by a smaller cohort for the continuation of the journey. Some were only travelling as far as Birmingham International and a few more for Coventry. My stop’s in another 20 mins so I’ll be interested to see how busy we are then.
11:40.
Out exploring the route of HS2…
Looking North to Cubbington wood…
19:00.
Apologies for the break in blogging but I’ve spent most of the day exploring the HS2 route and mitigations sites in the company of local farmer Penny McGregor. Penny’s been kind enough to show me around before and having her local knowledge and passion for the environment (tempered with pragmatism) has been invaluable. We’ve pootled around several sites in her little electric car so that I can see and record the changes that have taken place since I was last here in February.Then the woods and ancient woodland translocation sites were dormant. Now they’ve burst into life and are even past their best as many plants (such as Campions) have gone to seed. Even so, it’s easy to see the opponents of HS2 who claim building the railway has created a barren wasteland are talking out of a fundamental orifice. Yes, of course the trace of HS2 looks like a building site – that’s because it is! The margins however, can be very different depending on the age of the planting. Plus, the ancient woodland soil translocation sites are throwing up surprises as seeds that have lain dormant for years under the tree canopy have now been stirred up and have access to light…
I’ll add a selection of pictures shortly. Right now I’m making my way back North. Having bid farewell to Penny after such an interesting day I caught Cross-Country’s 17:15 to Manchester Piccadilly as far as busy Birmingham New St where I swapped sets to catch the 18:03 to Edinburgh as far as Leeds. Both trains afforded me some great views of HS2 construction – especially around Birmingham. Forget the media froth and protesters howls – HS2 is happening! The amount of work to be seen around Curzon St and Washwood Heath is very, very impressive. I hope to return soon to cover some of it.
23:00.
Time to bring this blog to an end. I’ve been at home for the past few hours, preparing for the next 4 days of fun and travels. I’m in London tomorrow morning ready for a press lunch that’s been on hold for several years due to the pandemic. It’ll be a lovely opportunity to catch up with old and new faces from our hots – Siemens – as well as other colleagues from the rail press. As soon as the lunch finishes I have to hot-foot it up to Crewe to join the annual ‘3 peaks by rail’ charity fundraiser in aid of the Railway Children charity. I’ve been a volunteer on this event since 2017. It’s exhausting but bags of fun. So, expect a varied bunch of rolling blogs over the next few days.
But for now I’ll leave you with a picture of this little critter that Penny and I saw in a field next to HS2 earlier today. It’s a silver studded blue butterfly.
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As the final curtain is about to fall on the pantomime that was the HS2 ‘rebellion’ tunnel fun at Euston, another pantomime has opened at Calvert in Buckinghamshire, where a rag-bag of Nimbys and activists have congregated at Poors Piece wood. But first let’s recap and chart each act in the pantomime.
The theatre curtain rose back in January when police and bailiffs moved in to clear the garden at the front of Euston station which had become a refuge for various Exinction Rebellion/Hs2Rebellion ‘activists’ and a cadre of homeless people who found shelter and security in numbers. As a PR stunt the anti HS2 protesters had dug tunnels under the gardens and 9 of them did white rabbit impressions just as soon as the eviction started. Whilst the rest of the rabble were quickly cleared from tents and trees the troglodytes in the tunnels refused to come out at first, but then departed in dribs and drabs over the days. The most famous occupant of the tunnels was ‘Swampy’, an old road protester from the 1990s who was down there with his young son. What most of the media who covered the story neglected to mention was that ‘Swampy’ was a serial failure who never managed to stop anything, but hey – at least he got publicity!
The description here is pure ‘Comical Ali’! A “hugely successful occupation”? This was as much use in trying to stop Hs2 as is Americans sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ to stop school shootings…
On Monday another serial failure (Larch Maxey) gave up after being cornered by bailiffs. Today (day 30) three more of the tunnellers (including ‘Swampy’ and son) gave up and came out of their own accord. According to Hs2 Rebellion the final (anonymous) troglodyte will give up tomorrow after 31 days, bringing the whole farce to an end. Why a farce? Because they never stopped anything! The big joke about the camp in Euston Gardens is that it’s not cost HS2 a single day in construction time because the gardens are nowhere near an active HS2 construction site! It was pure theatre, nothing more. The theatrics have continued with the protesters claiming the event as some kind of victory – although how having 9 protesters holed up in a tunnel where they can’t stop any work is a ‘victory’ is a mystery…
Several of the protesters evicted from Euston gardens later turned up at the abandoned Harvil Rd ‘protest’ camp in Uxbridge, only to be evicted again within days as that camp was cleared and demolished without them putting up a struggle.
All the remaining ‘protest’ camps are feeling the pinch at the moment as HS2 Ltd are ramping up construction and clearance work along the phase 1 route. At the recent National Rail Recovery Conference Hs2’s Chief Executive announced that the company now has 300 separate worksites in operation. Yet the protesters number less than a few dozen hard-core – which is why the same few faces keep popping up time and time again.
This has been true at the latest eviction at Poors Piece this week where another semi-abandoned camp (which had less then half a dozen regular occupants) had an influx of refugees from Euston and Harvil Rd in a desperate attempt to bolster numbers to attract some more publicity, because let’s be honest – they stand no chance of stopping the eviction, far less actually stopping HS2! The same farcical scenes have played out this week when all the protesters bravado and bluster soon came to nothing as tree-houses quickly fell to the bailiffs, police and HS2 workers who promptly moved in to begin clearing up the mess.
In a lovely touch of irony, some of the protesters from the nearby Wendover camp who turned up at Poors Piece for a day were disconsolate on their return to base as they found Hs2 had been busy clearing woodland uninterrupted whilst they’d been away!
The result of the Poors Piece eviction is beyond doubt and I’d be surprised if it lasted more than another couple of days, despite all the bluster and rhetoric from the protesters and a couple of local Nimbys who bolster the protest but who clearly have nothing better to do. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that these events are more about egos and publicity than being any serious attempt to stop Hs2. This protest is one of the first of the social media age and it’s becoming obvious that a cross-section of those involved are using the protests to boost their social media status as an ego-trip although a minority are more circumspect and use false names or identities.
In fact, the whole StopHs2 ‘campaign’ has changed direction in the past year. The original (Nimby based) groups like the High Speed 2 Action Alliance (who folded in 2016) and StopHs2 (aka the Joe Rukin show) have faded into the background. Now, the running is being made by a rag-bag of Extinction Rebellion devotees, self-publicists, some old road and fracking protesters and hippies – and a smattering of Nimbys. The real aim of the protests now seems to be to raise support for Extinction Rebellion (and make a few bob).
When Extinction Rebellion first appeared on the scene I was broadly sympathetic. I thought that by raising the profile of environmental issues and the desperate need to tackle climate-change, they might actually do some good. Then I watched in bemused amazement as they started to increasingly dumb things, like attacking public transport. That made me start to examine who they really were and it made me realise that they were just another hard-left (anti capitalist) group who used environmental issues and animal rights to further their political agenda – just like the far right in the shape of Britain First and the BNP have done (as well as the vote Leave campaign).
What a lot of this is really about is two things. Recruiting young people through manipulation and indoctrination – and also using social media tools to raise funds.
I’ve blogged about this before when I highlighted the split between some of the people allied to Extinction Rebellion and the ‘old school’ more anarchic protesters who don’t like XR’s command and control tactics – and stranglehold on the money! Over the past couple of years through various Crowdfund appeals and other donations pages six-figure sums have been raised to fund legal cases or to ‘support’ the protest camps (or even individual protesters!). There’s only one problem. No-one has a clue where the money really goes and no-one ever publishes any accounts! The money just disappears and no-one is held responsible for it. There are several example of this. Here’s one.
Over £42,000 raised. Where’s it gone? No-one knows. There’s no updates and there’s no accounts. There’s not even anyone named as being in charge. This is just one of many such fundraisers that go to prove the old adage that “a fool and their money are easily parted”.
Another example is ‘celebrity’ environmentalist Chris Packham, who ran a crowdfunder to raise money for his vanity legal cases against HS2. They were doomed to failure from the start but the money rolled in. Was all the money spent? Who knows. What happened to any surplus? Dunno – as it’s now a year on and Packham (to my knowledge) has never published any accounts or updates explaining what happened to the money. I wonder if the taxman knows either?
The more I dig into the anti HS2 ‘campaign’ the more it starts to look like a scam. Because, let’s face it – it doesn’t have a hope in hell of actually stopping HS2! How can this tiny bunch of protesters halt the largest construction project in Europe when they can’t even stop themselves being evicted? There’s so few of them now they’re doing little more than fire-fighting, stripping bare the remaining camps of people to try and put up a show at the latest one to be evicted.
Mind you, the Poors Piece eviction is showing another (unpleasant) side to these supposed ‘peaceful’ protesters…
Many of those drafted in to ‘defend’ the camp are young people from middle-class backgrounds who would normally be at college if it wasn’t for Covid. They’re a particularly foul-mouthed group who think nothing of hurling vitriolic personal abuse at anyone involved in the eviction – be it HS2 workers, bailiffs, police or the other emergency services. I’m going to take the gloves off now and say that hearing a bunch of self-entitled kids who’ve probably never done a days work in their lives telling anyone and everyone that they know everyone’s job better than them is a nauseating sight. Many of them throw an absolute strop when an adult has the temerity to say ‘no’ to them, but then that does rather reveal something about their backgrounds. Here’s a fine example.
Middle-Class kid who’s never done a proper day’s work in their life accuses working people of being ‘class traitor scum’. There’s a word for people like that…
There’s plenty more examples of this behaviour on the various videos the protesters stick on their Facebook pages. You can find some of them here. “Peaceful” people my arse! The level of delusion and disinformation coming from these people is weapons-grade. It seems the one thing Extinction Rebellion and the other anti HS2 groups are good at is indoctrination, because the nonsense they get people to spout (and believe) is incredible. Here’s an example from the person who was the founder of StopHS2. This appeared yesterday…
Oh, please…!
That so many of the protesters are (or were) college kids is a fatal weakness of the anti HS2 campaign – and especially now that the Government has mapped a way out of lockdown and return to normal with schools and colleges reopening! Many of these mouthy youths are going to find there’s other more pressing activities that will be taking up their time…
The more digging one does into these protests and the people behind them the more it becomes obvious that this is not really about HS2. It’s not even about the environment – or Climate Change – because if it was they’d be following the science and protesting about the new roads building programme. HS2 is being used by Extinction Rebellion as a tool to increase their influence and raise money – and a lot of fools are parting with it…
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Thank God it’s Friday! The week’s been a frustrating one. Nothing seems to have gone right and many of the things I’d hoped to have achieved never came to fruition or are still works in progress. I’m hoping for a much better weekend and a more fruitful week next week. On the bright side, I’m still making progress with scanning old slides although that process has slowed down as a consequence of everything else. This brings me neatly on to the picture of the day, which I took on the 20th February 1999…
This is the magnificent Franz Josef glacier on the West Coast of the South island. The picture was taken from the helicopter that was taking Lynn and myself and a group of other people for a trip onto the middle slopes of the glacier as part of a heli-hiking experience – which was an amazing experience. Seeing a glacier’s magical enough, but having the chance to explore the surface of one is doubly so.
I returned with Dawn in 2019 and I was shocked by what I found (here’s a link to my blog written at the time) Due to global warming the Glacier had shrunk significantly, retreating further up the valley and down off some of the steep mountain sides. It’s a very visible testament to the damage human activity is doing to the planet. I sincerely hope we get our acts together in time to prevent the glacier disappearing completely.
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In my case, today was the discovery of the fact there’s a Bilberry bumblebee!
I’d been on a Zoom call with the friends of Buxton station as part of my role as a Judge for the Community Rail Awards. Buxton has an excellent friends group who’re a great example of the work station friends do in their community beyond their local railway station. Whilst we were talking about their recent achievements Dave Carlisle mentioned that they’d built a huge flower bed outside the station using old railway sleepers donated by Network Rail (and there’s a long story about getting them from Crewe to Buxton during lockdown, but I won’t tell that here), what surprised me was that Dave mentioned 1/3 of the flowerbed was being dedicated to helping a local endangered species – the Bilberry Bumblebee!
Now, I knew there was many species of bee in the UK through working with my former CRA judge, Paul Cook of the Royal Horticultural Society. One of the delights of visiting different stations during the judging was seeing station flower beds literally buzzing with bees, but Bilberry bees? Here’s what Buxton have been up to (in their own words)…
“Buzzing Stations” project – along with Friends of Glossop Station, FoBS initiated this idea that has crossed the whole Peak District to included stations at Buxton, Edale, Glossop, Hadfield, Hope, Bamford, Grindleford & Hathersage.
The High Peak is home to the Bilberry bumblebee, under threat of extinction. Our work aims to help it thrive and survive. We built a huge (2m x 5m) planter unit from recycled railway sleepers (negotiated donation from Network Rail’s Redundant Assets team at Crewe and encouraged long-term partners, DB Cargo to collect them for us!), filled it with donated compost (from SITA/Suez) and plants, mostly donated (some from Morrisons, through their Community Champion, Rob Harrison). The plants were chosen to provide nectar to our bees prior to hibernation.
We are proud that the Bumblebee Express (the name of the planter unit devised as a media vehicle) was built under strict socially-distanced controls during lockdown.
We also intended to run Bumblebee Safaris from the station, but covid ruled this out, so we prepared a Self-guided version in leaflet form – launched on Heritage Open Day to complement their theme of Hidden Nature, 2,000 leaflets were printed. We were very proud when Jimmy Doherty commended our work as part of his recent TV campaign work, Jimmy’s Big Bee Rescue.
Legacy bumblebee artwork takes the form of an interpretation panel, bumblebees of the Peak District “spotters guide” (we negotiated permission to use the artwork directly with the Artist, Becca Thorne), “Make a Bee-line to Buxton” travel promotional poster (we purchased a special Licence to use the 1950’s image by Kenneth Steel) and commissioned a bespoke “special bees on a special landscape” mosaic from local community Artist, Jo Spencer.
It’s great to see the co-operation and information sharing that goes on between station friends groups and the innovative work this inspires. Living in the Pennines in West Yorkshire where bilberries are plentiful and bilberry pies are a local delicacy I was curious to find out if the bees existed here. Sure enough, they do, Here’s an illustration how the bees look from ‘Blooms for Bees’. The fun bit for me is how they remind me of railway workers high-vis!
Copyright Blooms For Bees
You can find out more about this type of bee here from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust.
It’s fantastic to see the work community rail volunteers are doing in so many ways – despite the depravations of Covid and the difficulties that social-distancing and lockdowns have caused.
Perhaps, when all this is over, you might want to pop along and visit one of these stations and see the great work the groups are doing to grow the railways, help the environment and build their local communities. Your visit might even inspire you to get involved…
You can learn much more about the work and world of community rail here – an if you want to learn more about the Friends of Buxton station you can find them on Facebook here.
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Regular readers will know of my growing cynicism around certain conservation charities, especially the single-issue ones like the Woodland Trust who play fast and loose with facts and deliberately exaggerate and distort the effects of HS2 on the environment. These organisations are doing the wider environmental movement no favours at all. People like me should be their natural allies (and donors) but I find there’s now a growing list of them I won’t touch with a bargepole and certainly wouldn’t dream of helping financially. Here’s the latest.
Tomorrow, HS2 is due to take possession of land on the edges of the Calvert Jubilee nature reserve at Calvert, Buckinghamshire to begin the early stages of constructing HS2. The reserve is bordered by the former Great Central main line on the East and the route of East-West rail to the North.
Here was the reaction on Twitter of Estelle Bailey, Chief Exec of the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust who manage the site in response to unrelated news about the IPA…
“Destroy” the nature reserve? That sounds serious! There’s only one tiny problem, it’s complete cobblers, as looking at a (publicly available) design map of the area shows. Calvert Jubilee is at the bottom of the map (link here)
When challenged about her comments and on being shown the above map, this was Ms Bailey’s response.
A “heck of a chunk”? That’s emotive nonsense and hardly a recognised measurement! The map shows it’s also completely untrue. The HS2 line itself passes the edge of the reserve in a deep cutting to cut down on noise and where that edge is on the nature reserve side the cutting will be constructed of vertical piles to minimise land take. The real impact on the reserve is a small auto transformer feeder station and service road, along with a landscaped cutting to drop the existing road under the E-W railway line, plus a narrow road to allow access to the inverted siphon pipes connecting the existing lake with the new ponds on the opposite side of HS2. “Heck of a chunk” Give over!
Here’s how the area looks now on Google maps.
Notice that for the little bit of the reserve that’s taken there’s massive compensation for wildlife in the fact that the monoculture farmland to the right of the railway on Google maps becomes a huge area of new planting which is ringed by ponds, meaning there’s no net loss of biodiversity. Exactly the opposite!
Of course, this doesn’t stop some of the local Nimbys bemoaning what they say is ‘irreplaceable’ loss, but there’s several huge holes in this argument.
For a start, Calvert Jubilee is a brownfield site. It used to be a brickworks! Calvert brickworks was a massive undertaking and major employer that finally closed its doors in 1991. The website of the Great Moor sailing club which occupies one of the five former clay pits that’s now called Grebe lake contains the history of the site, mentioning that “Pit No.2 was formally opened as a nature reserve on 20th March 1978 by Sir Ralph Verney, a local landowner, and owner of the nearby Claydon House (now run by the National Trust). This 50-acre lake with surrounding 30 acres of land is now run by the Berks, Bucks, and Oxon Naturalist Trust”.
So, this 80 acre site has only existed as a nature reserve for just 42 years, in which time nature has completely reclaimed it – which says a lot about how resilient nature really is. Not bad considering some conservationists insist it’s ‘irreplaceable’ once gone – as it was when the clay pits were dug and the brickworks was in operation (from 1902 -1991). The work HS2 will be doing will be far more sensitively managed and the disturbance it will cause will heal a lot quicker – as we can see from the experiences of High Speed 1 in Kent and Essex.
It’s the doom-laden predictions of ecological disaster by conservationists opposed to Hs2 that really get my back up. Calvert has proved they’re nonsense once and it will do so again. It’s these predictions of disaster that do the conservation movements credibility no good at all. Yes, we should all do our best to ensure these projects have the best environmental mitigation possible, but when you get such dishonest claims bandied around, it really doesn’t help anyone. Here’s an example from Facebook posted by one of the locals.
The only catastrophe here is the use of language! They’ve seen the plans, they know the plans, yet they still peddle scaremongering like this. I’ve been critical of HS2 Ltd’s PR and public engagement policies in the past but I’m using these as example of what they’re up against. No mater how open and informative HS2 is, when you’re up against people who deliberately distort and exaggerate like this, you’re facing an uphill struggle – especially when one of these people is the Chief Executive of a charity who supposedly has a professional duty to tell the truth!
HS2 Ltd have countered this misinformation before. They’re quoted in response to yet more scaremongering in this article in the local Bucks Herald newspaper, where it turns out that the ‘heck of a chunk’ is actually just 20%, leaving 80% untouched!
Of course, there’s another irony here. The old railway line that Hs2 will be reusing at this point is the route of the former Great Central. The very line some of them tout as an ‘alternative’ to HS2 that should be reopened instead. Only they don’t seem that keen on the idea when it becomes a reality! Is there any finer example of hypocrisy?
Let’s see if tomorrows threatened protests actually materalise….
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I’m returning to an old topic to take a look at the state of play with the campaign to stop HS2. The Government’s announcement that HS2 was going ahead in its entirety and the obvious commitment and enthusiasm for the project from Prime Minister Johnson has really knocked the remaining wind out of the sails of those opposed to HS2.
The sole remaining national group (StopHs2) which in reality is just two people (Joe Rukin in Kenilworth and Penny Gaines in Bournemouth) is to all intent and purpose redundant. There’s no point to a political campaign to stop HS2 anymore as it’s painfully obvious there’s no support, exactly the opposite. Many of those who’ve opposed HS2 in the past have accepted the futility of continuing their opposition. A good example is former Minister Andrea Leadsom, the MP for South Northamptonshire, who recently Tweeted a video where she said her focus now is on getting the best deals for her constituents from HS2 Ltd.
With the collapse of the political element StopHs2 have sod all to report as they’re not actually doing anything themselves. Both they and what’s left of the ‘action group’ network are redundant. Many ‘action’ group members were elderly, middle-class homeowners worried about their house prices. They’re the last people you’re going to catch traipsing around muddy fields or chaining themselves to bulldozers. A few of them are still fulminating about HS2 on social media, but there’s been a noticeable drop-off there too.
Apart from tedious tweets about every time HS2 is (or isn’t) mentioned on ‘BBC Question Time’ or sending a stream of pointless commentary and spin about someone being questioned about HS2 in a Parliamentary Ctte Penny Gaines might as well not exist. Joe Rukin isn’t much better. His only usefulness now is in throwing his weight (resist the puns, Ed) behind those protesting on the ground at one of the handful of protest camps on Phase 1 although even those appearances are becoming fewer. It can’t be long now before StopHs2 finally folds as it’s completely redundant.
For once in his life, Joe Rukin is right…
Nowadays most of the real running against HS2 is made by the mixed bag of people who gather under the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ banner and occasionally attend one of the protest camps on the Phase 1 route. These can be divided into three categories.
1. The ‘hardliners’: Those who spend their time living at one of the camps for at least several days. Most are self-employed. They return home every so often to do some work to top up their money supply. They fit the image of the ‘eco-warrior’ of old. Those of us who’re old enough and remember the days of the free-festivals and the ‘convoy’ will know exactly the type of people I mean. You have to admire their commitment but they are woefully misinformed about the issues. There’s a sociological study for someone’s PhD to be had here – and it would make really interesting reading!
2. Route Dwellers: Those who live on the route who have the time and inclination to protest and will turn up when they can. The vast majority seem to be middle-class women. Many seem to be using ‘green’ issues as a fig-leaf for Nimbyism. Most will have absolutely no history of concern for environmental issues before HS2 came along.
3. The ‘good timers’: These are a mix of people who’ll turn up to an organised event, especially if there’s a celebrity name behind it like Chris Packham, or those who’d turn up to the Harvil Rd camp of a weekend to party and get pissed/stoned before going home again. Both are equally useless at stopping HS2 as they don’t actually disrupt any construction activity. There’s one such event this weekend and it’ll be very interesting to see how many actually bother turning up.
What has been obvious from social media is that people haven’t exactly been queuing up to go as this shows.
In the end, the few people going are car-sharing. They couldn’t even fill a minibus, much less a coach!
Quite what this little gathering will achieve is open to question. They’ll have their little ramble, then go away – then HS2 will move in soon afterwards to begin work. Any protesters who remain in the area will be removed as HS2 has applied for a court order which will be heard next week on the 17th March. It names two people, Joe Rukin and Matthew Bishop, plus ‘persons unknown’. The order is to restrain future trespass, effectively making the named areas no-go areas to protesters and nipping any more protests in the bud as such actions will be illegal. This injunction will form a legal template for other areas.
Few of the protesters are willing to risk criminal convictions, so the injunctions will act as a huge deterrent, leaving the hardliners out on a limb. That number’s dwindling already as one of them, a woman called Sarah Green, has been noticeably absent from events of late. The number of people who fit into this group is less than a couple of dozen. Most noticeable are serially failed Green Party Candidate Mark Keir. Alan Woodward, Matthew Bishop, Elizabeth Cairns and Sarah Snooks.
They’re all fighting a rearguard action as it is because their numbers are so small. They’re an inconvenience to HS2 rather than a credible threat. This fact is borne out by all the videos they post on their various Facbook pages or YouTube sites. I’ve never quite understood how a video showing a single protester utterly failing to stop any work at all is meant to act as an encouragement to anyone! Here’s an example from Alan ‘Budgee’ Woodward on YouTube.
Stop Hs2 when you can’t even format a video properly?
A cynic might wonder how many of these videos serve any other purpose than narcissism. Even some of the protesters seem to be realising that it’s all very well providing hours of voyeuristic material for your Farcebook ‘friends’ or YouTube followers but their support very rarely materialises in the real world. It may give you a feeling of self-importance, but they don’t matter a damn when it comes to actually trying to stop Hs2. It’s the same when it comes to raising money, as this appeal shows.
Whichever metric you look at it’s clear the campaign’s collapsing. Here’s today’s numbers for their latest petition on the Government’s website.
After two weeks only having 2700 signatures is the lowest amount they’ve ever had in 10 years…
Notice that only HS2 phase 1 features on the petition? Contrast that to this map of their 2017 petition when they had over 26,000 signatures.
The phase 2 routes are conspicuous by their absence! Rother Valley, the only phase 2 constituency that got into four figures has only got 28 signatures so far this time.
So, politically their campaign’s dead. It’s also hopeless on the ground as the numbers turning up are tiny and ineffective which only leaves the legal angle and antis have pinned their hopes on Celebrity environmentalist Chris Packham’s legal case. But there’s one rather large problem. Packham hasn’t even got permission to proceed with it. Before he does he needs to convince a judge that his argument has merit and there’s a case to answer. If he falls at that hurdle, it’s toast. Even if a judge does let him proceed it won’t stop Hs2 in the slightest as the process HS2 went through to get approval is very different to the legal argument over Heathrow. Watch this case go nowhere…
UPDATE.
So, how did today’s token demonstration in Kenilworth go? Badly, although those who took part try and pretend otherwise! Looking at the videos from the event (and being generous) I’d say that around 250 turned up to posture and parade. They weren’t actually stopping anything of course. It was purely symbolic. The problem? Over 2.5 million folk live on phase 1 of HS2, so 250 is politically and statistically insignificant. The only message it sends is – “is that it?”
As the countdown to the Government making its final decision on building HS2 the opposition has ramped up their anti HS2 PR, the latest being today’s overly-long 34 page report from the Wildlife Trusts.
It’s a masterpiece of speculation and scaremongering. Long on apocalyptic predictions of what HS2 will do the UKs flora and fauna but woefully short of facts. It also ignores the critical question. If not HS2, what?
The report’s been collated using responses from 14 Wildlife Trusts and a number of conservation and landowning organisations along the full route of HS2 who’ve all been busy staring into their crystal balls in order to predict a future where HS2 has supposedly laid waste to this green and pleasent land. Here’s some examples. Here’s this from the Executive summary.
“HS2 will result in the loss of irreplaceable habitats, including ancient woodlands, veteran trees, wood pasture, old meadows, mires and wetlands. A total of 108 ancient woodlands are known to be threatened with loss or damage under current plans. Many other important wildlife habitats will be negatively impacted by the construction of HS2 and will not recover their existing biodiversity value, under the timescales used in HS2’s calculations”
At the risk of being flippant, the old expression “you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs” springs to mind here. The idea that we can build anything on the scale of HS2 in the UK without affecting something or someone is pie in the sky. The point is to ensure the least damage is caused as possible, to mitigate the losses and to ensure there’s replacements for what has to be lost. Because (make no mistake) there’s something much bigger at stake here. It’s called planet Earth – but more of that later….
Here’s some more examples.
“1.3 Species at risk It is anticipated that HS2 will impact a wide range of wildlife significantly”
Anticipated? By whom? This is a good example of the language used throughout the report. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the words and phrases “risk”, “potential risk”,”jeopardised”, “may”, “likely”,
Then there’s these classic bits of daft scaremongering from the introduction.
“HS2 is a huge infrastructure project, which will cut and divide England’s natural habitats in two, from London to Manchester and Leeds”…”HS2 will cut right through the heart of England, slashing a large part of the countryside in two”.
Err, hello? This is a railway, it’s not the Berlin wall! And, it’s a damned sight more permeable for wildlife than the alternative – more motorways. It’s this sort of blinkered thinking that is so frustrating, because at no point in the report are any alternatives considered – or a comparison of the destruction they would cause even mentioned. Because – if you did that, the effects of HS2 on the environment would look very different indeed to the bleak picture painted by these groups.
It’s that lack of a bigger picture that makes organisations like this part of the Climate Change problem, not the solution. They’re single-issue campaigners. They daren’t look at the bigger picture, because if they did it would make people realise that they (literally) can’t see the woods for the trees.
Great, say they managed to stop HS2. What then? The need for it won’t go away. Instead, the Government would have to come up with an alternative and the only obvious alternative is more motorways. The old axiom ‘be careful what you wish for’ is very appropriate here. If ‘green’ groups think building a new railway is too higher price to pay, what price is several hundred miles of new motorways?
Of course, the stock answer you get from groups like the Wildlife or Woodland Trusts is “not my problem Guv, we’re only here to campaign about UK trees, or newts, or bats”.
Which brings me back to planet Earth – if only I could bring these groups back there too!
Transport is one of the biggest emitters of Co2. If we’re serious about tackling GLOBAL climate change we need to get modal shift from road and air to the greenest form of mass land transport: Rail. But we can’t do that without the vastly enhanced rail capacity HS2 gives us as our existing network is full and can’t be expanded in any meaningful way. Oh, we can tinker around the edges, removing a few pinch-points here and there, but the truth is we need a new line. The rest of the world has realised that High-Speed rail’s the solution, but many here are too blinkered, too conservative and (seemingly) incapable of grasping the scale of the problem.
Great, we get to ‘save’ a tiny patch of ancient woodland. For now. But in doing so we put the whole ecosystem at risk. Not just in the UK but across the planet as there’s a clue in the name ‘Global Warming’.
This is ultimately my frustration with these supposed environmental groups. Their inability to see and deal with the bigger picture won’t save anything. Just the opposite! There’s another hypocrisy here. ‘Green’ groups constantly shout about the ‘climate emergency’ and the need to act NOW! Yet, when it comes to building HS2 they say “not so fast, we must go back to the drawing board”, thus delaying the means to enable modal shift for several years if not decades. Some ’emergency’! It’s taken us 10 years to get to this point, yet HS2 still won’t be ready for years!
I could spend hours critiqueing the rest of the scaremongering in this report, but I think you get the drift. I want to see the environment protecting too – after all, I’ve got to live on this planet as well. I just wish we had a decent environmental and truly ‘green’ party in the UK, because what we’ve got now is just doing the road lobby and oil companies jobs for them.
Despite all this there has been one very refreshing thing and that’s HS2 Ltd finally taking the gloves off by starting to challenge these factual inaccuracies and spin rather then leaving it to people like myself and Gareth Dennis. Here’s a sample of their ripostes on Twitter.
This challenging of factual inaccuracies and willingness to stand up for the project rather than rely on people like myself, Gareth Dennis and RAIL’s Nigel Harris amongst others is long overdue but nevertheless welcome. Maybe now we can start to cut through the crap and talk about the serious issues as construction of HS2 gets underway.
UPDATE: 16th January.
I know I’ve been a stern critic of the environmental movement in this blog, but I’m going to share this with you as evidence of why this is. Here’s a tweet from Craig David, who is the CEO of the England and Wales ‘friends’ of the Earth (FoE).
This mind-numbingly banal and intellectually bankrupt comparison is the best that a CEO can come up with? Seriously? If anything makes me worry for the future of the planet it’s the fact that these people are the ‘leaders’ of the ‘green’ movement. Talk about out-gunned and out-manoeuvred. Christ on a bike…
It’s another dismal day here in the Calder Valley as we’ve suffered from high winds and waves of sleet and snow showers. In fact the whole weekend’s been a washout due to the changeable weather. It’s prevented me cycle training and left me catching up with household chores, paperwork and some picture editing.
Some of the pictures are from Friday’s visit to nearby Mytholmroyd, which is still recovering from the devastation caused by the Boxing Day floods of 2016. For those of you unfamiliar with events, have a look at this article from the Guardian newspaper.
Whilst most homes and businesses have now been re-occupied, a row of shops that were sandwiched between the main road and the river Calder were seriously damaged and have been demolished by the Environment Agency, they’ve been replaced with these ‘Lego’ blocks which form part of the new flood defences that are still under construction around the town.
The view from the road bridge over the River Calder, showing the new flood defences which occupy the site of former homes and shops.
A few hundred metres up the road, behind the Shoulder of Mutton pub the Environment Agency’s rebuilding the shattered banks of Cragg brook that were overwhelmed. Flooding the pub, nearby homes and the housing estate opposite.
Looking upriver along Cragg Brook towards Cragg Vale. The housing estate behind the wall was under several feet of water after the floods.
Looking in the opposite direction to the previous photo. The Shoulder of Mutton pub can be seen on the right. The River Calder is a few hundred metres beyond the railway viaduct.
I only hope that once the Environment Agency’s finished the work Mytholmroyd will be protected from such devastation in the future and the problem isn’t simply moved downriver…
On another front, the resignalling of the Calder Valley line is continuing apace. More and more new signals are springing up along the route. Some are straight replacements for older signalling such as this pair at Mytholmroyd where the new signal has been moved forwards
Others are new, installed to reduce the size of the signalling sections, such as this one in Sowerby Bridge which is protecting the station.
What’s immediately noticeable about the new signalposts is the absence of ladders that previously allowed S&T staff to reach the signal head. These have been made redundant as the post is hinged at the base so that it can be lowered to the ground.
It’s now Sunday evening and the weather’s deteriorated as the temperature dropped. One minute you could see the other side of the valley – the next you were lucky to see 50 metres!
The calm before the next storm. Looking down over Sowerby Bridge from by the Wainhouse Tower. The next snowstorm is coming in from the West (to the right of the picture).
The wind whipped the snow flurries so that they were almost horizontal. Then, suddenly – blue skies would appear, giving a blissful few minutes peace before the next lot of flakes stormed in. We abandoned attempts to go walking and sought solace in the local pub for an hour of fun and laughter with friends.
The Big 6 is a traditional pub of the old school. There’s no wifi or TV, you go there to drink good beer and engage in conversation with people. Beer like this…
After the pub the two of us settled in for a productive evening at home. Dawn had promised to make another batch of her Thai style chilli pickle so the pair of us spent ages cutting up a large bowl full of red and green chillies which produced these jars full of weapons-grade pickle for ourselves and some friends.
This stuff isn’t for the faint-hearted & should probably be banned under the Geneva convention – especially the next morning when its had chance to work its way through your digestive system. Johnny Cash summed up the effects perfectly…
Paul Bigland 