Mind you, you won’t hear the truth from much of the UK media either! Sadly, many journalists lazily recycle whatever the protesters tell them without once bothering to fact-check any of it – which is why this fairy story about a supposed connection between Dahl and Jones’ hill woods has managed to spread.
Who to trust? Was Jones’ Hill woods really the inspiration for Roald Dahl to write ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’?
Well, how about the Roald Dahl museum? If anyone should know about this they should, surely? This is what they say about the inspiration for Dahl’s story on their website.
“Roald Dahl lived with his family in Great Missenden, a village in Buckinghamshire, UK. Their house was surrounded by fields and woods. As a passionate lover of the countryside, there was one particular tree – known locally as “the witches tree” – that sat on the lane near the Dahl home and came to inspire one of Roald’s own favourite stories: Fantastic Mr Fox.
The “witches tree” was a large, 150-year-old beech. Sadly the tree is no longer standing but when his children were growing up Roald always used to tell them that it was where Mr Fox and his family lived, in a hole beneath the trunk, just as the Fox family do in the story.”
So, not only was it NOT Jones’ hill woods – it wasn’t even a woods but a single tree that no longer exists and hasn’t for donkey’s years (hardly surprising as Beech trees have a typical lifespan of 150–200 years). Yet again we find those opposed to HS2 just making stuff up for their own ends (just like the ‘children’s memorial’ and dozens of other ridiculous claims).
The story gets detailed even more in this report called “Finding Fantastic Mr Fox” by the BBC’s ‘Countryfile’ which claims that:
“Beloved children’s author Roald Dahl once lived and worked in rambling Gipsy House, on the edge of the sleepy Chilterns village of Great Missenden, and when stumped for inspiration he would walk in nearby Angling Spring and Hobshill woods. It was among these ancient beeches and carpets of bluebells that Dahl set some of his best-loved stories, including my favourite, the tale of Fantastic Mr Fox. Dahl had a favourite tree, an enormous gnarled specimen in the heart of the wood, which he called The Witches’ Tree“.
Note no mention of Jones’ Hill woods, even if this report slightly contradicts the Roald Dahl museum.
“Angling Spring wood was the inspiration behind one of the writer’s most charismatic characters, Fantastic Mr Fox. The gnarled Witches Tree is said to be where the four-legged family lived.”
Yet again, no mention of Jones’ Hill woods. But there’s more..
The Bucks geology website has an illustrated guide to walks around Great Missenden published by the Chiltern’s Conservation Board (who also might be expected to know the truth) which contains this informative piece.
So that’s another vote for Angling Spring wood – but no mention of Jones’ Hill! Here’s some more perspective courtesy of the Ordnance Survey. I’ve marked the position of Jones’ Hill and Angling Spring woods in relation to Whitefield Lane in Great Missenden, where Dahl lived. As you can see from the map, it backs onto Angling Spring wood. Distance wise, Jones’ Hill is over 3 miles walk from Great Missenden High St. In contrast, Angling Spring woods are right next to Dahl’s home! Now, if you’re going walking with young children, which woods would you chose to take them to – a local one near home or one that’s more than a six mile round trek where you have to walk past loads of other woodland just to get to it?
If I can fact-check this claim by spending just a few minutes on Google, why can’t the BBC or any other journo’s do the same? Because it’s just too easy to swallow whatever the protesters tell them as it makes a nice tear-jerking story and to hell with whatever the truth is! As the old adage goes, never let the facts get in the way of a good story…
Not letting the truth get in the way is exactly what HS2Rebellion and the protesters have done. Yesterday HS2rebellion reposted serially failed Green Party candidate Mark Keir claiming to be pointing out the actual ‘Mr Fox’ tree being felled in Jones’ Hill wood on their laughably entitled and thoroughly dishonest “Save Roald Dahl wood” Facebook page!
How you chop down a tree that fell down in a completely different wood in 2003 is a mystery known only the anti HS2 protesters.
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Those of you of sufficiently advanced years or whom have a penchant for classic comedy may know of the 1960s satirical series ‘Beyond the fringe’ that starred Peter Cook, Jonathon Miller Alan Bennet and Dudley Moore. In one memorable sketch Peter Cook and Johnathon Miller spoofed the British in World War Two. The skit contained these (now famous) lines:
Peter Cook: “I want you to lay down your life, Perkins. We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war. Get up in a crate, Perkins, pop over to Bremen, take a shufti, don’t come back. Goodbye, Perkins. God, I wish I was going too.”
Parodies beget parodies – albeit sometimes unintentionally, and today – with their ‘war’ going so badly the anti HS2 protesters at Jones’ Hill wood provided their very own ‘futile gesture’!
This morning a handful of them attempted to block a road by the tried, tested (and serially failed) method of a ‘lock-on’. In this case an old oil drum containing concrete that a couple of protesters fastened their arms into. Some even boasted about the barrel used as it had been recovered from a previous camp and nicknamed ‘big boy’. The ‘cunning plan’ being this device would supposedly take ages to break into so they’d cause maximum disruption by preventing HS2 workers getting to work. Only a futile gesture it was…
The protesters and their ‘lock-on’ were in place before contractors arrived for work but they didn’t stop anyone getting there, they merely caused a traffic jam as vehicles were left nearby. The police soon arrived en-masse and shortly after midday the ‘lock-on’ had been cut up and rendered unusable and the pair of protesters taken away, presumably to be charged under S241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 for trying to prevent people going about their lawful employment. So, that’ll be two more of the tiny number of protesters left having their wings clipped by bail conditions then! It’s a kamikaze tactic that doesn’t stop a thing, but it gives the protesters something to stick on social media where they’ll get lots of ‘thoughts and prayers’ from useless keyboard warriors – as if that will stop HS2!
Here’s the Facebook post from serially failed Green Party candidate Mark Keir who’s one of the tiny number of regular protesters at Jones’ Hill wood.
The numbers for likes, shares and comments aren’t exactly what you’d call setting the world alight…
At this stage I don’t know if other arrests were made, but the fact there’s only a handful of protesters taking part tells you all you need to know. Meanwhile, what was happening inside Jones’ Hill wood? It was business as usual for HS2 ecologists, contractors and security staff – as this screen-shot of another of Keir’s video posts demonstrates!
So much for stopping people getting to work! In the video Keir hurls insults and expletives at the HS2 workers and security people as they go about their work unhindered.
It was also business as usual at all the other 300+ worksites on the HS2 route too as this was the only protest. Elsewhere there were a few people grumbling as they filmed work going on, but that’s hardly stopping HS2, is it?
I wonder how many more of these futile gestures the protesters can afford to mount before they run out of volunteers? The more the merrier in some ways as it has the effect of stripping the camps and making them easier to evict when the time comes – which will be soon for the remaining few camps. It’s soo tempting to resort to another WW2 parody about ‘for you, the war is over’ – but I’ll resist the temptation – honest!
Of course, the protesters like to claim that they have almost universal local support for their stupid stunts. The reality is rather different. Some residents don’t take very kindly to having these waste of time protests blocking roads – as this illustrates…
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Funny how you never hear real news on the StopHs2 website – especially when it relates to yet another of their failures! Just as there was total radio silence about ‘Campaign Manager’ Joe Rukin’s embarrassing (and expensive) legal fiasco last October, there’s been no public announcement that the man’s finally admitted what the rest of us have known for years – he’s been wasting his time!
This fact has finally dawned on Rukin, who sent an email around to the groups supporters at the end of March – after yet another legal failure when his latest application for a Judicial Review was dismissed. Here’s part of what Rukin has said.
True to the end, Rukin’s not been honest with people. The truth is that he’s been looking for a proper job for several years now and the real reason he’s stayed is because he didn’t get one. Rukin’s retirement means that the only person left is Bournemouth based Penny Gaines, so effectively, it’s game over. I mean, seriously – ‘StopHs2’? based in Bournemouth? As a campaign group StopHS2 have been irrelevant for several years as they never managed to secure what they needed to stop HS2 – political support. The writing’s been on the wall since 2014 when the Phase 1 Hybrid Bill passed with such whopping majorities (both in the Commons and Lords). Cross-party support for HS2’s never wavered (despite some of the nonsense claimed by people like Rukin) and without the political numbers adding up in their favour – they were toast. The demise of StopHs2 puts the final nail in the coffin that already contains the remains of ‘AGAHST’ (Action Groups Against HS2), the High Speed 2 Action Alliance’ (HS2aa) and dozens of local ‘action’ groups up and down the HS2 routes.
Now, the only thing left is the dwindling number of protesters allied to Extinction Rebellion, Hs2Rebellion and the local Nimbys who support them. It’s only a matter of time before the bell tolls for them too. Despite their bombast and bluster they’ve not stopped a thing. Now they’re reduced to boasting of ‘delaying’ pockets of work on HS2 (conveniently ignoring the fact what’s caused the most delays to the project has been the Government shilly-shallying with reviews). The protesters ‘protection camp’ network has been shrinking ever since last summer, with many camps now being redundant as there’s nothing left to ‘protect’! Meanwhile, site clearances and construction on Phase 1 have ramped up massively, completely overwhelming the puddle of protesters. Now, Phase 2 has been given the go-ahead and a contract to create new woods and wetlands as part of early environmental works on the route between the West Midlands and Crewe was signed on April 1st.
The days of the final ‘protection camps’ that have any relevance to the route are numbered and we can expect to see their demise happen soon. No doubt there will still be isolated protests here and there and some people will be left in pointless camps on private land, out of harm’s way, but they’ll be posturing, nothing more.
The campaign to stop Hs2 never stood a chance. Now it’s spluttering to an ignominious end…
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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?
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Sadly, we all live in a world where it seems that nowadays facts are what you make up. Nowhere summed this situation up more perfectly than America during the administration of the orange fool otherwise known as Donald Trump. Memorably, one of his spokespeople (U.S. Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway) once talked of being in possession of ‘alternative facts’ or – what’s known to the rest of us as – lies…
It seems HS2rebellion have been supping from the same teat, only this time we not only have alternative facts, we also have alternative laws!
Colluding in this parallel universe is someone I’ve introduced you to before as a ‘crazy anti HS2 campaigner of the week’. Caroline Thompson Smith – take another bow! After her last arboreal atrocity hairdresser Caroline has put on her legal wig to attempt to expound on the finer points of English law only to fail miserably as she just made stuff up. Ms Smith filmed a load of nonsense outside High Wycombe court earlier today when two anti HS2 protesters were found guilty of breaking Section 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 by trying (and failing) to blockade an HS2 worksite.
Caroline tries to claim the Judge totally ignored a defense that they weren’t trespassing (so weren’t breaking the law) despite the fact no such defense exists as S241 doesn’t even mention trespass – as is made clear, here…
Still unsure? OK. Contrast the legal ‘wisdom’ and assertions of a hairdresser with this from an independent (but left leaning) legal group. They say;
Yep, you guessed it – no mention of trespass (or tools) but exactly the description of what the anti HS2 protesters were doing! Think about who and why this law was brought about in the first place. The intention was to ban secondary picketing. Remember the ‘flying pickets’? No, not the band, the real ones feared and famed from the days of the 1984-85 miners strikes! Also known as ‘secondary picketing’, this is what the legislation was intended to curb, but it also applies to protesters who’re trying to prevent people from getting to work.
So, yet again the anti Hs2 demonstrators have been led down the garden path by Thompson-Smith and HS2 ‘rebellion’ have slavishly copied her nonsense – as they always do.
Thompson-Smith talking complete spheroids, as usual…
I (almost) feel sorry for the fools who’re falling for this. The one’s who’re not bothering fact checking but who’ll probably throw away their money on yet another online fundraiser to pay for a pointless appeal which has no chance of success. I’ve said for years that the only people who’re benefitting from the anti HS2 ‘campaign’ are the legal profession. This looks like it could be another classic example.
How will any of this stop HS2? It won’t of course. What it has shown is that more of the dwindling number of protesters are having their wings clipped by the courts.
So, how are the few remaining HS2 ‘rebellion’ protection camps getting on? Badly – as this little snippet reveals. Remember this time last year when Crackley was the biggest of the ‘protection’ camps and the occupants used to boast about how they were going to stop HS2? How things change in a year! Most of those people from the camp who were so active on social media have vanished. Only a few have reappeared at other camps. So who’se left at Crackley? Here’s the answer…
Because just two people are going to stop HS2…
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Hs2 ‘rebellion’ and the other anti rail protesters are set to have yet another bad week, partly due to their own incompetence and habit of lying. Never was the Extinction Rebellion slogan ‘tell the truth’ more warped than when its used by the XR people who’re opposing HS2.
In the early hours of this morning bailiffs and HS2 staff moved in on the Denham ‘protection’ camp, a squalid site occupied by a handful of protesters on the edge of North-West London near Ruislip. The protesters had gone to a lot of effort to build a couple of towers out of old pallets and scrap timber, claiming these structures would resist being evicted. As usual, it was a hollow boast. Time and time again we’ve seen these structures thrown up at protest camps and not one of them lasts more than a day or two because there’s so few people to occupy them and the bailiffs and contractors have sophisticated equipment and the tactics to negate them. Still, I suppose we should be grateful that the protesters still use the same unimaginative and failed tactics time and time again.
Protesters videoed the first tower being demolished by bailiffs from inside the second tower. As you can see, there’s a lot of damage to the area caused by this camp and its occupants and HS2 contractors will have to clear all this mess away.Filmed several hours ago, this shows the Bailiffs demolishing the second tower using cherry-pickers. Later, two more bailiffs joined them, suspended from a crane. It didn’t take long to tear the flimsy structure apart. By the way, “Niqabi Hippie” is the pseudonym of the young girl who was the last person to be removed from the useless Euston protest tunnel last month.
The two towers at Denham didn’t survive beyond lunchtime. The first was evicted and demolished before breakfast and the second was emptied of the two people inside it before one o’ clock. All that remains at the time of writing is an unknown number of people in at least one tree. I wouldn’t expect them to last the day if the bailiffs decide to take them down. The whole event has been yet another sorry waste of people’s time and money – and I include in that the mugs who’ve coughed up money to finance the protest camps via numerous appeals and crowdfunders. ‘Stop’ HS2? How, when these people can’t even stop themselves being evicted? Of course, regular readers may well remember Denham as being the site of another of the protesters towering failures! It was here that they put the famous (but useless) ‘Swampy’ up in a bamboo tower to stop National Grid from building a bridge across a stream. That one didn’t last more than a day either! No doubt by the end of the week HS2Rebellion will be spinning like tops to present this latest debacle as a ‘heroic resistance’ and some kind of victory when the reality is that they’re rapidly facing the extinction of their camp network as there’s simply too few of them anywhere to prevent an eviction. Another sign that people are losing interest in their futile campaign is just how few people watch or respond to their livestreams and social media posts now compared to a year ago.
Just two people watching the livestream – and one of them is me!
Not that sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ on Facebook (Or Twitter, Instagram, etc) was ever going to do any good. I’ll be interested to see how the funding tap fares over the next few weeks. Will the mugs who give them money start to realise all they’re doing is throwing it away?
Unsurprisingly, the protesters videos of the eviction featured the same handful of faces. Refugees from numerous other evictions. Some of them have now been evicted at least 3-4 times! These peripatetic protesters are doomed to drift from camp to camp, but their options are shrinking rapidly, which is why so many have given up the fight and drifted away, either by going home or heading off to other non-HS2 events like the Stonehenge road protest. Other have had their wings clipped by bail conditions after being arrested for futile actions like climbing onto contractors lorries or blocking entrances to worksites.
As ‘direct action’ has failed, HS2Rebellion are left with their equally useless social media campaign. Quite how a few people with no influence spouting untruths on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram are meant to stop the largest construction project in Europe is a mystery, but then they’ve spent so much time lying about the project they’ve clearly fallen for their own propaganda. Here’s an example of their latest blatant lies.
As Pete Johnson has pointed out, the photographs are of the East-West rail project which is reinstating the old railway from Oxford to Cambridge – the old ‘Varsity Line’. Ignoring the breathtaking hypocrisy of people who’re always whining that reopening old railways is a viable alternative to HS2 whining about reopening an old railway – this is a good example of the depths HS2Rebellion will sink to as they obviously know these are not photographs of HS2. It’s also a good example of how UK ‘environmentalists’ have completely lost the plot nowadays and are actively opposing the expansion of the rail network and the greenest form of travel. Mad, utterly mad…
In other news another serial failure was back in the Courts last week, but not for long! Joe Rukin, StopHs2’s ‘Campaign Manager’ had yet another application for a Judicial Review thrown out. The Judge ruled that Rukin had nothing new to say and was essentially trying to re-run celebrity environmentalist Chris Packham’s failed legal action. With no prospect of success and with no other avenues open to them, you really have to wonder what’s the point of Rukin and ‘StopHs2’ now?
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There’s an old philosophical question that’s really rather apt when it comes to the farcical ‘campaign’ against HS2. It’s “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” One could update it to the present day to ask “If an Hs2rebellion protest camp’s evicted and no-one was around to Livestream/video it, did it really happen”?
This question could have been posed today when an eviction took place today of the sole anti HS2 camp north of Warwickshire. Named ‘Camp Isla’ after someone’s canine friend, it really did seem to be a one man and his dog operation! Although it appears on Hs2Rebellion’s dwindling list of ‘protection’ camps, it hasn’t been any trouble for HS2 as nothing much has been happening – until today, when this appeared on the camp’s Facebook page.
This eviction must hold a special place in the annals as since this appeared, not a single video, livestream, photograph or any verifiable record of the event has appeared – despite the appeals for people to turn up to ‘protect’ the camp. This is all the more mysterious when one looks at some more claims made when the camp went from one man and his dog to group of people down a tunnel and folk festooning the trees! .
Needless to say, not of this has been supported by the slightest bit of evidence from anyone. I’ve little doubt an eviction has happened – but the rest strikes me as pure fantasy. Not one of them has a camera-phone? Well, that’s a first. Normally the internet is awash with long and boring livestreams recording every eviction.
Of course, the daft thing about all these Walter Mitty fantasies about tunnels etc, is they soon fall apart in the cold light of day. I suspect (and not for the first time) the ‘camp’ Facebook account will be kept alive to churn out messages of support, fictitious updates and claims of winning – but the reality will be very different. Mind you, the HS2Rebellion website is rather good at that too. Here’s the list of ‘protection’ camps they claim exist, with the reality added…
So, 8 camps. 3 of which no longer exist, 2 more which have been partly evicted and 2 more (Crackley and Denham) which are almost certainly redundant as there’s left to ‘protect’ anymore! Some ‘winning’! Two other camps have never made the list as one (Leather Lane near Jones’ Hill woods) didn’t last a fortnight whilst the other on Wormwood Scrubs has no permanent site and has less than 5 regular occupants! In fact, if you added up the regular occupants of all these camps together I doubt you’d find more than a few dozen people.
Pitch this against the largest construction site in Europe with 10s of 1000s of workers over 300 worksites on a 140 mile long route and you can start to see the futility of all this. Mind you, so can many of the protesters, which is why so many of them have wandered off back to other causes to fight yet more lost battles for Extinction Rebellion and other groups – hence some of the Euston tunnel refugees appearing in Lichfield to spray paint on a factory supposedly supplying military equipment to Israel! Obviously, political activism (just like being a SPAD to the PM) makes you immune to Covid or the need to follow lockdown rules! Whilst XR and it’s friends might not think those rules apply they might find the new police, crime, sentencing and courts bill which passed second reading by 359 to 263 votes rather harder to ignore as provisions in it will criminalise some of their activities. Despite my own personal reservations about the bill I will be interested to see how quickly it becomes law and how it’s used in practice against groups like Extinction Rebellion and HS2Rebellion.
Of course, today happened on the same day that HS2 Ltd announced the start of work on what will be one of the most visible civil engineering projects on phase 1 – the 3.5km long Colne viaduct on the edge of London. Unlike ‘Camp Isla’, this won’t be a one man and his dog operation! The world’s moved on even if the remaining protesters haven’t. Poor ‘Isla’ is left barking up the wrong tree – in more ways than one…
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Having watched the abortive anti HS2 campaign for nearly 10 years now two words always spring to mind: Déjà vu – or in the expression made famous by the 1990s film – it’s another “Groundhog Day”…
After 11 years of failure those opposed to building our new high-speed railway haven’t learned a thing and keep repeating the same failed, stale tactics in an endless series of re-runs. Observing their campaign is like having a TV stuck on one of those cable channels that spew out endless repeats! I’ve lost count of the number of petitions launched, legal challenges threatened or boycotts demanded.
The latest ‘haven’t we been here before’? moment comes courtesy of Joe Rukin and StopHs2, the one man and his dog operation that’s been irrelevant for some time now. As Joe’s still not found a proper job after years of trying he’s desperate to try and keep the group running as it helps bring some money in.
So, Joe’s recycling the tried, tested (and failed) route of – yet another Judicial Review! You can find the full details in this rather rambling entry on the stophs2 website.
More Comical Ali than legal eagle, Joe Rukin videoed a call for help from the StopHS2 registered office and ‘nerve’ centre (his spare bedroom).
Over the years anti HS2 campaigners have tried dozens of JR’s. The late (unlamented) High Speed 2 Action Alliance launched a plethora of them, all but one failed and the one that didn’t was on a consultation that HS2 swiftly re-ran, so it was all rather pointless. It’s been the same with celebrity environmentalist Chris Packham who also tried and failed, achieving little more than parting a lot of fools from their money via Crowdfunding. Money that was then trousered by his grateful solicitors ‘Pay Day’ (you mean Leigh Day! Ed). As usual, the only people who benefit from any of these doomed legal cases are the Lawyers.
I’ve little doubt this latest attempt will result in the same outcome. Rukin is applying for permission to launch a Judicial Review, but the fact he’s appealing to others for evidence to back up his claims tell you all you need to know. The fact that he’s giving people so little time to gather this evidence doesn’t bode well either. His closing date is the 9th March (Tuesday).
Of course, what Rukin isn’t telling his supporters is what happened last time he applied for a Judicial Review. This was back in October last year – only then he didn’t bother with such a trivial thing as evidence – which is why his request was summarily thrown out at the first hurdle and he was landed with a legal bill of £4300!
I blogged about the debacle at the time, which you can find here.
For some mysterious reason you won’t find any mention of his October 2020 failure anywhere on the StopHs2 website or Facebook page. It’s been expunged from history, as if it never happened! I wonder why?
Perusing his latest request for help it looks like Rukin is trying to re-run the same failed case again, which suggests he’ll get short-shrift from the Judges who end up having to consider his request. As usual with Rukin, details of these things are scant, so there’s no information on who his legal advisors are (if he even has any) or when the hearing will be, so watch this space as I’ll report on the outcome of the judgement when it’s delivered – as I suspect Rukin will be as reticent as last time to announce another failure! Watch this space…
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I’ve always been amused by how little the ‘conservationists’ who’re opposed to HS2 actually know about the environment they’re supposedly so concerned about saving. In many cases this is because they’re using ‘green’ issues as a figleaf for the fact that really, they’re just Nimbys. Even the serial protesters of Extinction Rebellion (the ones who wander from cause to cause) seem to know bugger all about the natural world they’re allegedly trying to save. I had to chuckle at the fun and games at Denham, when the protesters claimed they were trying to save an ‘ancient’ Alder tree. A tree whose age kept increasing as the stories got wilder. First it was 400 years old, then 600. People who know anything about trees will know why I was giggling at the claims.
An even better one happened a couple of years ago after one of the local Buckinghamshire rags reported the moans of a local farmer who was complaining about Ragwort growing on land owned by HS2 as the plant could spread to his fields and ‘pollute’ his land, threatening his livestock who get upset tummies if Ragwort gets into their feed. Suitably outraged, some of the local Nimbys tried to get a group together via one of their Facebook pages with the intention of going out to pull up the ragwort! It took a real environmentalist to point out that would be illegal as Ragwort is a valuable native plant that’s a source of food for insects and butterflies!
It seems these people never learn, hence this weeks award. Step forward Caroline Thompson-Smith, the determined self-publicist and serial spreader of exaggerated nonsense who can normally be found at Calvert, where she lives. Well, unless she’s breaking the Covid lockdown to travel to other protest camps, such as her spot of gratuitous self-publicity and filming at Euston the other month.
Caroline has produced another long video diatribe which has appeared on the HS2Rebellion Facebook page and features the latest failure of the protesters at the Poors Piece eviction near Calvert. Here’s a screengrab.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good story eh, Caroline?
Her garbled story starts unravelling at 1’23” when she makes the claim that behind her contractors are felling Black Alder trees and that the Woodland Trust say the ‘Black Alder’ is one of the rarest trees in the UK with just 600 remaining, so HS2 contractors are felling 1% of the entire UK population! Wow – some claim! And a claim that rapidly unravels by 5’50” when Caroline forgets her original fairy story. Now it’s the Wildlife (not Woodland) Trust who claim the ‘Black Alder’ is rare. So rare the number has shrunk from 600 to 6 in the space of 4 minutes!
So, what’s the truth here? As usual, just a few minutes searching on Google and Caroline’s claims are in tatters. Here’s what the Woodland Trust REALLY say about the Black Alder. Yep, you’ve guessed it – the ‘black’ Alder is just another name for the Alder tree – and it’s also called the Common Alder – because it’s not rare at all! Nor is it a particularly long-lived species, which is why I was giggling last year at the claims about ‘ancient’ Alders!
There’s more on the Alder here from Wikipedia which reveals that the Alder is on the ‘least threatened’ list.
Of course some viewers of Caroline’s nonsense clearly just lap this stuff up. Gullible isn’t the word here. You could literally sell them anything. Listening to people like Caroline you’d think it was Genghis Khan and the Mongol hordes sweeping across the Chilterns, raping, pillaging and laying waste to the countryside in their wake – not a company building a railway who have to abide by legally-binding environmental protocols and laws and who are subject to strict oversight by a whole host of agencies.
Still, never let the truth get in the way of a good story, eh?
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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…
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/
