Tag Archives: ‘Green’ madness

Crazy anti-HS2 campaigner of the week. No 36…

27 Tuesday Jun 2023

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Hs2, Politics, Uxbridge

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Yes – it’s back! It’s been increasingly difficult to find candidates for this feature as there’s so few people left pretending they can stop HS2 and the ones that are would all (in one way or another) qualify for this title. But one does stand head and shoulders above the others at the moment, and helps illustrate a wider political problem. Step forward Sarah Green, long-time anti HS2 timewaster and fantasist and the new Green party candidate for the forthcoming Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election. This is the seat vacated by that narcissistic sack of custard, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who abandoned it in a hurry when his lies caught up with him.

In their ‘wisdom’ the local Green Party chose Green as their candidate, replacing another no-hoper and anti HS2 fantasist Mark Keir (blogs passim), who failed to get anywhere in the 2019 election. He came 4th with just 2.2% of the vote way behind Johnson who won with 52.6%. Both Keir and Green have stood (and been rejected) for the Council several times in the past. I’ve no doubt this record will be maintained.

This time the election’s an even more crowded field as this candidate list from Wikipedia shows.

The favourite to win is the Labour candidate, Danny Beales, a local lad who’s currently Camden Counciller. Labour have always come second in the constituency and with the levels of disgust at both the Tory party and Johnson the predictions are they’ll win (albeit narrowly) this time.

Sarah Green will get nowhere, just like the greens candidate (Carolyne Culver) in the Amersham and Chesham by-election in 2021. Culver managed to decrease the green party’s vote in Amersham and I have a suspicion Green may well do the same in Uxbridge. Why?

Green is running a hopeless single-issue campaign that’s entirely focussed on her personal opposition to HS2. It’s a horribly ‘nimby’ and parochial campaign (just like the one Culver ran) based on nothing but scaremongering and exaggerations on the supposed damage HS2 just might do to the area’s rivers and pollution to the Chiltern aquifer that supplies some of London’s drinking water. There’s just one teeny, tiny problem here. None of this scaremongering has ever come true. No streams have been polluted by HS2 and London’s drinking water remains unaffected. A few minor spills of Bentonite (inert drilling mud) and several sinkholes (embarassing, but with no real impact on anything) do not a pollution incident make. Meanwhile, the piles for the Colne valley viaduct (something else Green spread scare stories about) were all sunk without incident and the two tunnel boring machines launched from the South Ruislip portal continue to bore their way Eastwards – away from the aquifer! Of course, none of these inconvenient facts have stopped Green spreading her scare stories, but like the boy who cried wolf, people are getting increasingly bored of hearing them. Even dragging out Jenny Jones from the House of Lords to join in the scaremongering – sorry – ‘campaigning’ hasn’t had the desired effect as the replies to Jones’s Twitter posts have been anything but supportive. As usual, that led the notoriously touchy Jones reaching for the block button even more. Jones really doesn’t like being challenged by anyone – especially people in possession of facts! She is so infamous Greens4HS2 used to sell a T-shirt which said ‘blocked by Jenny Jones’! Here’s a recent bit of nonsense they’ve put out on Facebook. Note the £100m a week figure, which has been plucked from thin air. Also note that they’re protesting about building a green electric railway – outside a green electric railway station that Jones used to get to there from the Lords! Ironic, eh? – only these people don’t do irony (or self-awareness).

Needless to say, people locally and elsewhere seem to be less than impressed, hence Green’s crowdfunder bombing. With only two days left to go it’s stuck on 25% of its modest £2500 target.

5th July funding update. Greens crowdfunder closed on the 29th of June, having raised no more than the £630 (or 25%) shown here. Way short of the £2,500 they wanted.

Whilst Green doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell, there is a wider issue here – which is the Green party’s inability to put forward credible candidates due to their structure. Why aren’t the Greens (unlike their EU counterparts) seen as little more than a repository for protest votes?

Probably because the Green party of England and Wales (the Scots are much more sensible – and independent of GPEW) are not a credible political party. At best they’re a semi-anarchic protest movement who’ve had the luck to get a single MP elected – although that luck may not hold now that Caroline Lucas has announced she’s standing down from her Brighton seat at the next election. Her personal popularity has helped her get elected but if the local party put forward someone of the caliber of their usual candidates, that could change…

Green party members don’t like being told what to do. They’re an undisciplined and contradictory bunch and that’s how they like it. Their problem is – voters don’t, which is why GPEW have never broken through on the national stage and never will. Oh, it’s OK to have some local councillor posturing and prancing around with a placard but people (in general) expect their MPs to have more credibility. Yes, I know some of the Tories 2019 intake have proved to be a bunch of clowns (especially in ‘red wall’ seats) but they’re heading for extinction at the next election. Does anyone in Uxbridge really look at Sarah Green and see someone who they think can represent their best interests in Parliament (never mind Government)?

Greens aren’t bothered by that. Because most of them would never want to be in power anyway as it would mean putting their money where their mouth is. In that respect they’re like a lot of people on the left, they value ideological purity more than making compromises to actually get anything done.

There’s another problem that’s prevalent within the GPEW. Nimbyism. The BBC recently carried an article illustrating how many ‘green’ Cllrs oppose things like solar farms – often on the flimsiest of pretexts. The irony (and hypocrisy) of a party that’s always telling us we’re in the midst of a ‘climate emergency’ but that constantly opposes ways of tackling it (HS2, solar and wind farms) isn’t lost on a lot of people. This is a classic case of Greens ignoring the science by suggesting solar panels should be on roofs not in fields, ignoring the fact that you can’t build the utility scale of solar we need on rooftops. But hey ho – what do experts know compared to green party members? It’s HS2 all over again.

I’m not alone in being frustrated with GPEW, there’s quite a few decent party members who see the problem too, but the way the party is constituted means there’s no way to change things without root and branch reform and there’s no way the majority of the membership would countenance such a thing – which is why – if you really want to see a green future, it’s a waste of time voting green. There’s more chance of stopping climate change than there is getting GPEW to reform.

I’ll watch the result of the Uxbridge by-election with interest. Still, there’s on bright spot on the horizon. Unlike last time, voters will be spared the pantomime sight of former @stophs2 ‘Campaign Manager’ Joe Rukin dressing up as a tree!

5th July update.

More analysis has come out about the campaign which shows why the Green and the greens are barking up the wrong tree as usual. Ben Walker from ‘Britain elects’ has written this very interesting piece in the New Statesman which suggests local issues may well mean it’s not the cakewalk that Labour are anticipating. But that local issue isn’t HS2 – it’s London’s ULEZ (the Ultra Low Emission Zone) proposed by Boris Johnson but enacted by Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan. This offers no help to the Green as she’s entirely focused on HS2 and if pressed would support the ULEZ.

The bookies aren’t impressed by her either. Here’s recent odds on the various parties.

Green and the greens are 300/1 – behind the Reclaim Party, which is the vehicle for failed actor and right-wing bandwagon-jumper Laurence Fox!

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4th April picture of the day…

04 Monday Apr 2022

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Hs2, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Protest, The Green Party

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It’s been a dank and dismal day here in the Calder Valley which was a shame as I’d hoped to start a new week in positive fashion. Sadly it wasn’t to be. Added to the gloom was the bounce I felt yesterday as I thought I was shaking off Covid bounced the opposite way today! This isn’t uncommon apparently. You have good days and bad days, it’s just the bad days get less bad. I’d tried to keep busy with paperwork and preparing for the week and even ventured out for a walk on my own through the local woods where I wasn’t likely to come into contact with people, but by the time I got back I was knackered! The stamina levels obviously still need a bit of tweaking. To that end I’ve loosened the reins on eating and drinking. After all, there’s got to be some pleasures left in life. Thankfully, Dawn still seems to be Covid free even though she feels that not all cylinders are firing.

Away from our own concerns there’s the tragedy of the Ukraine still unfolding. I’m resisting blogging about this (for now) as I need to be in full spleen-vent to describe my feelings about what’s going on, the atrocities occurring and the senseless waste of life on all sides. Because of this I did snap at one point earlier today when I saw a young HS2 opponent tweet about how the protesters were suffering ‘lifelong trauma’. What? from events that never happened? For years the protesters have complained about ‘brutality’ from police and security. This ‘brutality’ happens just as soon as someone says ‘no’ to them. A classic example would be a trespasser refuses to move despite several requests to do so, so the police/security use their powers and exercise reasonable force (as they’re legally entitled to do). As soon as the protester has a finger laid upon them they start screaming about being ‘assaulted’. Oh, please! Despite these protests having lasted for 5 years the only convictions for assault have been of protesters. Several charges and arrest warrants are outstanding but certain people have ‘disappeared’ in the hope of evading the police. Even though said protesters nearly all carry camera-phones to record their antics they’ve never yet managed to film a single genuine assault and the video they do produce often leads to the exact opposite result in court. Now, I’m not taking sides here (other than that of the law). If any member of HS2 security or the police does actually assault a protester they should have the book thrown at them. But that’s up to a real court to rule upon, not the court of social media. Frankly, I find it insulting that people who’ve suffered genuine traumas in their lives are being compared to a protester being told ‘no, the law applies to you too’ who them makes stuff up. It’s disappointing to see some mainstream greens supporting this position but I can see their dilemma.

The Green party began from a protest movement and it’s struggling to be a mainstream political party with aspirations of political power. It’s torn in too many directions. Because with power comes responsibility. How could you pass laws when you encourage people to break laws? It’s a question some greens would rather you don’t ask – especially coming up to the May elections. How can they reconcile support for the tactics of people allied to the Extinction Rebellion banner who routinely break the law (sometimes receiving custodial sentences) and at the same time criticise the Johnson Goverment for its law-breaking without looking like hypocrites. Clearly in ‘green’ eyes some laws are more equal than others. This leaves a huge hostage to fortune and the right-wing media an open goal.

Anyway, enough of these musings. I’m sure I’ll be revisiting them again in the future. In the meantime, here’s the picture of the day which relates to some of my earlier comments. We spotted this on out walk on Norland Moor yesterday.

The sooner this war criminal’s in the bin the better…

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Extinction Rebellion. ‘Tell the truth’ my arse…

16 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Extinction Rebellion, Hs2

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Supposed ‘eco-warriors’ Extinction Rebellion have a simple slogan. It’s “tell the truth”. There’s only one slight problem with such a slogan. XR wouldn’t know what the truth is if it bit them! Far from telling the ‘truth’ they’ve got a long and nasty habit of making up stuff to feed to their gullible supporters, not all of whom are fooled. Here’s an example from Tuesday, when XR members in the North pulled yet another stupid stunt involving trains to/from Drax power station.

For a while now, @hs2rebellion and XR have been trying to claim that trees chopped down to build the new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway are being chipped and sent to Drax as biofuel. It’s cobblers of course, Drax use trains to move massive amounts of wood chippings from the ports of Liverpool, Immingham and Hull. These trains, weighing in at 2,400 tonnes each carry 1600 tonnes of biomass and operate nearly 30 services A DAY into Drax. The idea the power station needs or requires this to be supplanted by a few hundred tonnes of green woodchips moved by road from scattered sites across the route of HS2 is laughable, but that’s HS2Rebellion for you. The truth is what you make up.

Here’s what those biofuel trains look like. These are the services from Liverpool Docks to Drax which use very high capacity hopper wagons (wood-chip being light, but bulky). All biomass to Drax is moved in long trains of hopper wagons similar to this.

Now have a look at this nonsense and bluster from XR North via one of the useless anti HS2 protesters in Staffs who bills himself as ‘Run Away Jim’!

Their claims are a complete fiction for several reasons. 1. That’s not a biomass train. 2. That silly person didn’t stop anything as a few seconds into the video the train starts pulling away, leaving the bemused protester looking very stupid indeed as she delivers an intellectually incoherent ramble to camera. It’s an incredibly stupid stunt. Believe me, as someone who’s held the PTS (Personal Track Safety) qualification, I can tell you trackside near moving trains is a very dangerous place to be even if you’re fit, active and trained to be there. For a clueless elderly person it’s a potential death-trap. By encouraging such dumb actions XR are putting people’s lives at risk. Plus, it’s no fun (at all) for the railway staff and emergency services who might (literally) have to pick up the pieces. You can watch the whole, ridiculous video on the XR North Facebook page (link).

The comments on the XR FB page show that some people weren’t fooled and knew this wasn’t a biomass train. XR North doubled-down on the lie by pretending its a ‘local’ service bringing in woodchip – which is utter rubbish, because there aren’t any.

How do I know this? Easily. Can I prove it? Yes, of course.

What idiot protesters like XR don’t understand is that even freight trains operate to timetables and those timetables and details of the train types are available online. So, what was that train? Well, it’s very distinctive because of those ‘Interbulk’ container tanks atop flat wagons. It’s actually ash from Drax which only runs on a Tuesday and Thursday when it’s worked from/to sidings at South Milford North of Leeds before travelling down to Appleford near Oxford where the ash is disposed of. Here are the copies of the actual (real time) timetables for Tuesday. Now, I can’t tell which of the two trains this is, but one of the little revelations is neither the inbound or outbound working was delayed at all by that silly protester. Oh, another thing to note. Look at the weights of each train. It went into Drax empty and came out loaded – exactly the opposite of what a biomass train does!

The train was seven minutes late leaving Milford and seven minutes late arriving at Drax. Some ‘delay’.
The train was seventeen minutes late leaving Drax and clearly suffered no extra delays around Drax!

There you have it. Extinction Rebellion caught out lying and then when questioned they double-down on the lie. It’s time people started seeing these people for whom they really are – untrustworthy, dishonest and who couldn’t ‘tell the truth’ if their lives depended on it. Which (allegedly) they do…

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Crazy anti-HS2 campaigner of the week. No 31.

28 Wednesday Jul 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week, Hs2, Politics

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With the collapse of the anti HS2 ‘protection’ camps and protest on the ground, the shambolic remnants of their campaign (and I use that word loosely) spend more and more of the little time they have trying to shore-up their social media efforts to oppose HS2. Like the folks on the ground, this has mostly evaporated as the young people recruited via Extinction Rebellion who made up the bulk of it have (like many young people) short attention-spans. Most have already moved on to whatever lost cause is the latest ‘thing’. What’s left are retreating into an increasingly out of touch world which makes me wonder what some of them have been smoking/ingesting. Here’s an absolute classic of that genre!

Step forward ‘Tellheed Green’, yet another anonymous person supposedly based in London who’s just churned out this rebranded poster and posted it on the Facebook page of the Bluebell woods ‘protection’ camp. I’ve no idea who did the original artwork or where it’s been pinched from, but ‘Green’ has stuck a ‘stop HS2’ logo on it to turn it into something that’s truly ‘through the looking glass’!

Oil companies want HS2? HS2 is a carbon-neutral, electrically powered railway that will get people out of planes and cars to provide a real alternative to fossil fuel use and allow us to wean ourselves off them. Oil companies hate it! It’s the antithesis of everything Shell, Exxon and the others want! This is so bonkers it’s beyond words, yet it’s lapped up by some stophs2 supporters who’ve shared it dozens of times, or left comments like this:

Of course, the fossil fuel companies and their supporters like the Taxpayers Alliance and others must be absolutely p*ssing themselves laughing at this weapons-grade stupidity. The UK ‘green’ movement has swallowed their propaganda hook, line and sinker in order to oppose a carbon-neutral, green railway. The irony? Not one of these supposed ‘environmentalists’ has stopped, looked at this, engaged a brain cell and spoke up to say “Hey, guys? Just stop and think about this for a minute”? Their campaign is so intellectually bereft and bankrupt this stuff gets shared without any thought or question. You genuinely couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, unless you’re the likes of @hs2rebellion and it’s supporters, obviously.

And you wonder why I argue that the UK ‘green’ movement’s completely unfit for purpose? I wonder what madness they’ll come up with next?

UPDATE.

Thanks to a tip-off from Pete Johnson (@pedrojuk) on Twitter I now have the source of the original artwork which was stolen for this. Needless to say the original by Namaya Productions carried a very different message.

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More weapons-grade cognitive dissonance from HS2 antis…

30 Sunday May 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Hs2, HS2Rebellion, Hypocrisy

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The ‘environmentalists’ of Hs2Rebellion never cease to amaze me by their levels of cognitive dissonance, and this one is an absolute doozy! Take a look at this latest attempt to seperate fools from their money by getting them to donate via a crowdfunder.

More detail is given on the Crowdfunder page.
To paraphrase “please donate money so that I can buy another old car to drive down to Cornwall from the South-East to protest about climate change”

Are you having a laugh? Drive an old banger all the way to Cornwall? Have these ‘environmentalists’ never heard of public transport? You know, like trains, the very thing they’re protesting about and trying to stop? The irony that these ‘environmentalists’ are driving between protest camps in a fleet of old gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing jalopies is completely lost on them. I wonder how many of them are diesels too? Here’s another example. I wonder what the emmissions and MPG are for this old Range Rover which is another of the clapped-out vehicles they use (they were crowdunding the repair bill for it the other week). Now, what do you reckon the carbon footprint is of a round trip of circa 300 miles to pick up an old caravan is? Plus, after achieving nothing outside the G7 meeting in Cornwall, these ‘environmentalists’ are proposing to drive all the way to Glasgow to repeat their failure outside the COP26 conference. How many miles is London – Cornwall – Glasgow – London in a gas guzzler I wonder?

Whatever these people are – ‘environmentalists’ they ain’t. They leave a trail of destruction and pollution wherever they go, be it destroying the ecology of pristine chalk streams, sullying woodlands with sewage and other detritus or driving hundreds of miles in old cars – or pulling stunts like this by burning rather than recycling timber from a camp they were being evicted from. Even one of their followers lost it with them over this!

Hopefully, now that their campaign has collapsed, the crowdfunding tap will be turned off. If those mugs who’re donating *really* want to save the environment, give the money to some charities who’re genuinely helping restore and preserve nature!

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, 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 to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

Some (real) HS2 environmental news…

01 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Hs2, Politics

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It’s often difficult to cut through the nonsense and hysteria about the environment spread by the anti HS2 protesters as the media rarely do it and too many organisations tend to keep their heads down, so it’s great to see Natural England sticking their heads above the parapet and explaining what’s going on regarding bat licences at Jones’ Hill wood, one of the few woodlands that’s genuinely affected by HS2. Jones’ Hill will lose 0.7ha out of 1.8ha. On March 30th Natural England granted licences for work at Jones’ Hill woods and published details in a blog on their website, which you can find here. It makes interesting reading.

There’s also some important detail about what NE can and cannot do that the froth from the protesters (who always accuse NE of ‘betraying’ the environment) normally hides.

“Natural England’s role in licensing development is to ensure that activities affecting protected species are carried out without damaging those populations. We don’t have powers to stop projects that have been approved, or to delay them unnecessarily, nor do we have powers to prevent the felling of ancient woodland if it has been approved by the planning system.“

In this case, the ‘planning system’ is the Act of Parliament that decreed that Phase 1 of HS2 shall be built – and you really can’t get any higher up the planning, democratic and legal food-chain than an Act of Parliament! Oh, it’s also worth mentioning that the HS2 Phase 1 Hybrid Bill didn’t scrape through, it flew through both houses of Parliament with a whopping majority in each house.

By becoming law, the HS2 Phase 1 Hybrid Bill granted planning permission for HS2 and Natural England (even if it wanted to) cannot overturn or ignore an Act of Parliament!

NE go on to explain that:

“When a developer applies for a licence to undertake works that will impact on protected species, Natural England assesses whether the works can be carried out in a way that maintains the conservation of the species in that area. We take our regulatory role very seriously; all licences that are issued include conditions that the licensee must apply with. We monitor compliance with licence conditions and will take enforcement action if they are broken.“

This is exactly what NE has done at Jones’ Hill wood. They go on to say that:

“At Jones Hill Wood, we have undertaken a careful assessment of the impacts in this area and requested further hibernation surveys.  Our assessment has concluded that the felling of 0.7 hectares of woodland at Jones Hill Wood will not be detrimental to the favourable conservation of the overall bat populations in this area.

Our decision takes into account a number of elements including the areas over which bats forage and the wider available foraging resource, the proposed methodology for minimising harm to roosting bats, and the compensation measures that must be put in place, which include creating new roosting features, bat boxes and the planting of 3.2 hectares of woodland habitat and fruit trees on an adjacent site. The effect of these compensatory measures will be monitored over a period of many years. The licence also sets out measures that must be undertaken to ensure no bats are harmed during tree and vegetation clearance at the location. Some further details on impacts and compensation measures are included below.

We’ll continue to work both with HS2 and other concerned stakeholders during the works, and our staff will undertake a site visit during felling to ensure that licence conditions are being met.”

So, 0.7ha of woodland is lost but 3.2ha of woodland habitat is created – a net gain of 2.5ha. Funny how the protesters neglect to mention this, isn’t it?

Meanwhile, what impact could the work have on the bat population? NE have this to say:

“Impacts and compensation at Jones Hill Wood

The works at Jones Hill Wood have the potential to affect the following species through the loss of breeding sites and resting places: damage or destruction of up to 4 common pipistrelle resting places and 1 breeding site, 1 soprano pipistrelle resting place, 1 barbastelle resting place and 1 breeding site, 1 noctule resting place, 2 brown long-eared bat resting places and 1 breeding site, and 1 Natterer’s bat resting place. Works could also result in indirect disturbance of bats (if present) and the transport / possession / control / capture of bats.

Note the caveats (in italics) – ” could also result in indirect disturbance of bats (if present )”

Funny how the protesters only talk in absolute terms, isn’t it? Of course, the real world is far more complex. What NE make clear is that every effort will be made to protect wildlife like bats and that – at the end of the day, there’ll be far more habitat for them then before. But again, this doesn’t fit the protesters narrative so it’s ignored.

Instead, the protesters are trying to create a ho-ha on social media and in the press and are encouraging their supporters to bombard NE on Twitter, via mail and Facebook etc. In order to achieve what exactly? Natural England are not above the law, nor can they ignore it to act ultra vires although that’s exactly what the protesters are telling them to do! But then the protesters and people like HS2Rebellion think acting legally is something that doesn’t apply to them. Obeying the law’s for other people, which is why they flagrantly ignore it whilst claiming anything and everything HS2 do is ‘illegal’. It’s weapons-grade hypocrisy, but very much par for the course.

What happens next?

Nothing. The licences have been issued and Hs2s contractors can crack on with the work, despite what the protesters claim. Oh, their may be a bit of too-ing and fro-ing on the ground as the protesters try and make a last stand, but it’s General Custer territory, they neither have the numbers or the legal backing to stop HS2.

Of course (as is often the case) there’s an irony to this. The protesters will claim they’ve delayed the work so ‘saved’ 0.7ha of woodland, when the truth is what they’ve really done is delay the planting of an extra 2.5ha of habitat! Still, when did facts and HS2rebellion ever co-exist?

I’ve a favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this blog, 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 to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

.

The fake environmentalists of Hs2Rebellion let their mask slip…

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Air Travel, Hs2, HS2Rebellion, Malaysia, Politics, Travel

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I’ve always said that Extinction Rebellion and HS2Rebellion are anything but real environmentalists. Both organisations have jumped on the ‘green’ bandwagon to further a wider (anti-capitalist) agenda and nothing more – hence some of their mad tactics that do nothing to promote tackling climate change. Exactly the opposite in fact. One only has to look at the way XR have frequently disrupted public transport in the UK, even going as far as disrupting electric public transport by gluing themselves to trains on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) or standing on the roofs of Underground trains!

HS2Rebellion are doing the same with High-Speed 2, opposing a green railway that is the only way we’ll have the rail capacity to get modal shift from road air to rail to cut our biggest source of Co2 emissions (transport) and meet our international obligations to tackle Climate Change.

Today, HS2Rebellion let the cat out of the bag by showing they either don’t understand the issues – or just don’t care. Their target was the news that Malaysia has cancelled the proposed High-Speed rail project between Kuala-Lumpur and Singapore and they used this (superficial) report on the BBC from a freelance journo based in Singapore. In the report it mentions that there are 30,000 local flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur per annum – as well as a 24 hour bus service. Here’s what XRebellion have to say on their Facebook page.

Yet again we have supposed ‘environmentalists’ playing along to the right-wing libertarian narrative about costs. This is bizarre. After all, aren’t they the ones who’re always telling us that there is no ‘Planet B’ and that the environment is priceless? Not if you’re intending to build High-Speed rail it seems (roads? No problem – carry on!).

What is it that these ‘environmentalists’ are deliberately ignoring? Simple, just how much carbon those different modes of transport generate. Take a look at this and compare domestic flights, buses and high-speed rail (mentioned as ‘Eurostar’ on this chart).

Here you have the blatant hypocrisy of XR and HS2Rebeliion exposed in black and white in one simple chart.

Over in the UK there’s a similar picture. The biggest market for domestic aviation is between Scotland and London’s airports. HS2 (like HS1 before it with flights to Brussels and Paris) will make severe inroads into that market by speeding up Anglo-Scottish services, as Chris Ogilvie often points out.

I have to declare an interest here. I know Malaysia (and Singapore) well. I’ve been travelling there since 1992 and maintain a keen interest in the areas political, economic and transport issues. In the past, I interviewed the then head of Malaysian Railways for the International Railway Journal and I maintain contacts inside both countries, which is why I know the BBC story isn’t the full story by any means. Even so, for ‘environmentalists’ to gloat over the failure to building a carbon-neutral alternative to 30,000 horribly polluting domestic flights a year (never mind all those 24 hour, 5 hour coach trips) is mad – but then, these people aren’t real environmentalists. What’s depressing is the number of genuine ‘green’ groups and people who’ve been taken in by them. We’ve now gone from saving the planet by any means to saving the planet – just as long as the price is right! This is why I’ve long maintained that the the UKs ‘green’ movement (or what passes for it) simply isn’t fit for purpose as they’ve become just another limb of the libertarian right. You have to ask, how (and why) did ‘greens’ suddenly start celebrating the failure of plans for high-speed rail networks whenever and wherever in the world they happen, and how on Earth can they still call themselves greens?

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Chris Packham’s wasting his time (again)…

05 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Chris Packham, Hs2, Politics, Railways

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Still smarting from his spanking in the courts, ‘celebrity’ conservationist Chris Packham has come up with another wheeze to try and stop HS2, the UK’s new high speed railway, of which phase 1 from North of Birmingham to London is already under construction. This time Packham hasn’t needed to persuade people to donate money for his expensive vanity project as he’s fallen back on an old StopHs2 favorite by starting a petition on the Government website! There’s a rag-bag of other names associated with the petition, but the only ones worthy of note are the veteran human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC (who lives near the route), plus Richard Walker, Managing Director of Iceland Foods, charity trustee and Ambassador for the Wildlife Trusts (by the way, that’s some of the same Wildlife Trusts that environmentalist George Monbiot flayed for ‘greenwashing’ road and housing projects in Buckinghamshire).

Packham and his friends have been busy since last week drumming up media support for the petition and exploiting his social media connections. So far, they’ve had quite a bit of success. As I write this, the petition has reached 47,000 signatures, nearly half-way to its target of 100,000 which it needs to hit by the closing date of 17th June 2021. On that performance, it stands a very good chance of being the very first anti HS2 petition to ever reach the magical 100,00 signatures.

There’s just one teeny, tiny problem that Packham and his fellow signatories aren’t admitting in their daft assertions and breathless bluster…

Parliament “must” vote! Really? Says who? No-one. Certainly not the Government petitions website, which points out that these petitions can’t make Parliament *do* anything, as they explain here.

So this may not be debated in June as there’s already been numerous debates (and primary legislation in the shape of 2 Hybrid Bills) already. Still, there’ll be a vote on repealing the HS2 Hybrid Bills AFTER the debate, won’t there?

Nope…

Oh, has Packham not mentioned that? How remiss of him!

You see, the petitions debates are held in Westminster Hall, not the main chamber of the House of Commons – and they’re just that – a debate. Or, to put it in simpler terms – it’s a talking shop! As the Westminster Hall website explains:

“Debates in Westminster Hall take place on ‘general debate’ motions expressed in neutral terms. These motions are worded ‘That this House has considered [a specific matter]’. Amendments to such motions cannot be tabled. Divisions (votes) cannot take place in Westminster Hall.”

So, in short, there’s no way on God’s green earth that the Government’s Parliamentary Managers – or Parliamentary process would allow this (or any other petition) to go to a division (vote) in the Commons. It’s a dead duck! Packham’s peddling the fiction that if 100,000 people sign this petition, MPs will stream into the House of Commons and (en-masse) vote to repeal both HS2 Hybrid Bills! It’s a fantasy that relies on the gullibility of people to have no idea how their Parliamentary democracy actually works.

So, let’s indulge ourselves in a flight of fancy just for one minute. What if there WAS a vote in the Commons on HS2? The Government would win it hands down – for several reasons…

  1. Parliamentary mathematics.
  2. HS2 has massive cross-party support and the Tories would almost certainly ‘whip’ their MPs to vote in favour. So, even in the even more ridiculous and fantastical scenario of everybody else’s MPs voting to oppose HS2 the Government have an 80 seat majority and can’t fail. But, as the only people who oppose HS2 are a handful of Plaid Cymru MPs and the solitary Green, that ain’t gonna happen – but then, neither’s the vote!
  3. The number of MPs who oppose HS2 has fallen in recent years as many of those who did back in 2014 have lost their seats or simply left Parliament, so I refer you back to 1.

In short, this petition’s a complete waste of time. It’s just another myth that Packham’s peddling – like his Court case which was eviscerated as a waste of time with no chance of success by the Judges. This time he’s peddling the fantasy that MPs in Parliament would (if they could) vote to repeal the HS2 bill when they can’t – and wouldn’t.

Oh, there’s also the small matter that by the time this petition ends in June, two tunnel boring machines (TBMs) will already be several miles into their progress digging the Chiltern Tunnels and there’s going to be a lot of earthworks and new bridges being created along the 140 mile route of the line! This is not like pulling the plug in a computer system no-one’s ever seen, and if you think the Government will allow such a visible, physical monument to failure to be left behind you really do need to give your head a wobble! The only monument to failure you’ll be seeing here has Chris Packham’s name written all over it.

I have to say, it’s sad to see that the UK ‘Green’ movement has been hijacked by ‘conservationists’ with no thoughts for the science of climate change, whose only answer to any practical solution to tackle cutting carbon emissions is “but, Trees!” It’s this blinkered, ‘lose not one tree, not one blade of grass’ fundamentalism that’s making them part of the problem, not the solution, and it’s playing right into the oil/road lobby’s hands.

Oh, I take it back when I say this petition’s a ‘complete’ waste of time. It does have a couple of uses, but Packham won’t like either of them.

Firstly, these petitions come with a handy map showing which constituencies the people who’ve signed it live in. This will allow me to map the decline in signatures of people who live in areas HS2 passes through as I have a wealth of data from years and years of other failed petitions!

Secondly, it allows us to see what people acre about MORE than HS2! For example, here’s the top 10 active petitions at the moment.

In comparison to these, Packham and it friends have a mountain to climb. Oh, and that’s without mentioning that the petition to stop Brexit had over 6.1 MILLION signatures. That worked well…

Enjoy watching HS2 being built! If I have time tomorrow I’ll be blogging an update on progress with its construction.

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If you enjoy reading this blog, 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 to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!

“Extinction Rebellion”. How to make friends and influence people (not).

02 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Coronavirus, Environment, Hs2, Railways

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Regular readers will know of my exasperation at the UK’s ‘green’ movement, which seems to spend more time alienating people through its attitudes and behaviours than it does getting them on board. I find it intensely frustrating as we desperately need a credible Green voice in politics and in general. Sadly, we’ve ended up with a bunch of finger-waggers and self-appointed ‘saviours’ of the planet who’re either actively undemocratic or entirely useless. Instead of persuading people to change their behaviours in their own long-term interests and using democratic means to do so, they come across as a mix of eco-fascists and loons.

Here’s an example from the protests against building HS2, Britain’s new high-speed railway. Yes, I know – you’d think Greens would be all for it. But that involves being sensible, pragmatic and seeing the bigger picture. Those are three things noticeably absent from much of the UK’s ‘Green’ movement. Take a look at this.

hs2 rebellion

Seriously? Here’s a bit of background. These clowns are up a tree in Crackley Woods in Warwickshire, in defiance of a High Court Injunction. The only reason they’ve no food is their planning was so piss-poor they never took enough up into the trees with them for more than a couple of days. Instead (stupidly) they expected to be resupplied by friends on the ground. They’re now whining that the High Court Bailiffs and security people won’t let food through to them – and prolong the circus even further, which means everyone is more at risk from Coronovirus.

“Prisoners of war”? They inflicted this upon themselves and they’re free to leave at any time. Instead, they’re playing martyr. Not only that, they’re comparing themselves to people who’ve actually fought for their country to uphold the democratic system. What’s democratic about them? Nothing. They’re eco-fascists. They’re ignoring the fact the HS2 bill was passed by Parliament with a massive majority in both the Commons and the Lords, and they’re ignoring the law of the land as enforced by the High Court. They’re entirely self-appointed and (unlike Parliament) unaccountable. They consider themselves to be above the law. They also spout a load of uninformed rubbish, but that’s another matter…

Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. Their tiny and futile protests are costing a fortune due to the levels of security needed to protect the sites, the delays incurred and the fact they’re tying up literally hundreds of site security people, High Court Bailiffs and police officers when they should and could be at home, safe from exposure to covid-19. Than they have the brass-neck to point the finger at everyone else – and use the NHS in their propaganda.

How is this an advert for the Green movement? These people are preventing us building the rail capacity we need to get modal shift from air/road to rail. It’s madness – but that’s the level of intellectual bankruptcy of the UK’s greens I’m afraid.

The road lobby and oil companies must be laughing their socks off.

UPDATE.

I see the Coventry Telegraph has published a list of these clowns demands! – as if they’re in any position to make any – but then this simply shows how arrogant and out of touch with the real world these people are, and also how undemocratic they are. I’ve reproduced them here.

“We have 5 demands.

Ultimately, we want to stop HS2. It does not serve ordinary people. It does not accommodate for a culture gearing towards a society with ecology on the agenda. HS2 is proclaimed to be carbon neutral in 120 years, yet during a time of biological annihilation and climate emergency, they consider wiping out precious woodland and endangered habitat a sound ecological plan.
The British public have not been informed of the costs or the implications of the project. Considering this is the most expensive railway per mile in the history of the world, at an estimated £307 million per mile, and being paid for by public money, this is completely undemocratic. We therefore seek a democratic solution.
We demand a citizen’s assembly in the nature of the one used in Ireland for the repeal of the eighth amendment on abortion. This will ensure public money is used to meet public needs not private interests … This is our primary demand.
We also have demands that require immediate action.

• Stop HS2 during this pandemic . This is not essential work. HS2 should not be exempt from their current social responsibility. We have witnessed the impossibility of workers being able to keep to their social distancing.
• Stop this eviction, and all others, during this pandemic . We have witnessed the bailiffs be unwilling or unable to comply with the social distancing policy. Any kind of eviction brings high stress, which threatens the immune system. We are also at a height of 20 metres from the woodland floor, exposed to the elements with no free access to food or water. We are being given an ultimatum: either highly risk our personal immune systems, and therefore our close family and community’s health, or hold onto our current home, which is part of the little remaining precious ecosystem we all rely on. This is completely unjust.

• Stop any irreversible work until both Chris Packham’s court case on the legality of the project, and Notice to Proceed go ahead. That includes habitat destruction of any kind, work involving displacing homes, ground and preparatory works, etc.
• Should work cease, we demand that workers receive adequate compensation , the sum of which to be decided by the workers themselves, as only they know the needs for which this compensation need fill. The fallouts of poor decisions made by upper management and politicians should not fall upon those who are forced to implement them.
Signed, The thirsty occupants x”

And you wonder why I have no time for these people?

 

 

Why single-issue campaigners are part of the climate-change problem, not the solution.

15 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Environment, Hs2

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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…