Tag Archives: Hs2

The fog.

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Hs2, Rail Investment, Rail PR, The fog

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It’s been less dramatic than the James Herbert novel of the same name but there’s no doubt the foggy weather that’s dominated much of the country this week has caused a few problems – especially for the airports. On Monday 10% of Heathrow flights were cancelled. Other airports were hit too. Driving wasn’t much fun either as visibility was slashed across the motorway network, leading to concerns about safety.

In contrast, the railways carried on pretty much regardless. I took the train from Halifax to London on Monday & for many parts of the journey my 125mph service ran to time or early. The same picture was true across the network.

Sadly, the railways publicity departments haven’t capitalised on this at all. This may be because they’re not exactly short of passengers as it is – but even so. The opportunity to stress the benefits of rail travel shouldn’t be missed.

A message I’ve been trying to get across is the fog shows how modern railway systems aren’t bothered by fog. Hs2 will be a good example. It will rely on in-cab signalling systems rather than lineside signalling (aka lights on poles).

fog signal

The benefits of a frequent high-speed, high-capacity rail line between our major cities that’s immune to fog is something to celebrate. It’s also a rather good argument to ensure that Hs1 and Hs2 are eventually linked to allow pan-European travel.

London bound, again (despite the fog)…

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by in Hs2, RAIL magazine, Travel, Work

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Having enjoyed an evening at home after a weekend in London with friends I’m heading back to the capital once more – this time for work. I’m at the Rail Forum (East Midlands) Parliamentary reception this afternoon. The Palace of Westminster is always a fascinating place to visit as it’s so rich in history and political power. Plus, events like this are normally a good time to catch up with people – and gossip.

Right now I’m sitting back in air conditioned luxury aboard one of Grand Central’s 125mph Adelante’s, sipping coffee & admiring the view from the window as we speed down the East Coast Mail Line. Well, what view there is as the countryside has been blanketed in fog since we started. Despite the fog we’re bowling along – unlike the airlines, who’ve had to cancel many flights, as the BBC reports here.

In contrast, the railways are unaffected. Here’s the running reports for services through Peterborough between 08:00-13:00 today – not a single cancellation reported. Needless to say this is a great advert for the railways & also Hs2…

Talking of Hs2 – On Thursday I’ll be at another important event: The National Rail Conference is maintaining its recent focus on Hs2 so it’s moved location to another crucial city on the route – Leeds. You can find the details of the event here. There’s an excellent line-up of speakers so I expect the event to be well-attended. There’s still time to book if you want to come along & hear the latest on this transformational project.

In between these events I’m looking forward to a few days at home. The new office at home is coming along but I’m desperate to have some time to get it more organised. Then there’s the backlog of paperwork to deal with before I decamp to the South once more. There’s going to be plenty to blog about in the next few weeks…

The anti Hs2 mob and the Daily Wail get outraged!

01 Sunday Nov 2015

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Today’s Mail on Sunday has managed to mix together sloppy sensationalism and innuendo with a dollop of ridiculous Rukin rhetoric to half-bake a story about Hs2 Ltd buying houses along the route.

You can find the Wail’s story here.

Needless to say, some of the usual suspects started hyperventilating about the story on social media. Hypocrisy being their forte, the same folks who are outraged that Hs2 supposedly isn’t paying enough compensation to people are getting outraged that Hs2 are alleged to have paid – in the Mail’s own words – a “staggering” £225m for 300 homes. The article accuses Hs2 Ltd of ‘underhand’ tactics in buying some properties but details or evidence to back up this assertion is conspicuous by its absence. The article hinges on the fact some people are complaining they haven’t got the price the property was on the market for. It’s a state of affairs sellers anywhere can complain about as it’s not a situation unique to Hs2. Anyone who has ever bought or sold a house will know that sellers have a habit of inflating what their property is worth – but that doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll get (as buyers can tell you!). In fact, the article demonstrates there’s not a huge difference in many cases. The claims that the Government has somehow managed to ‘squander’ taxpayers money by acquiring a property portfolio are equally laughable. In fact, the Government could well make a tidy sum on the deal once all the anti Hs2 mob induced hysteria about building the line subsides.

The map the Wail has produced to accompany the article is as factual as the article. It’s managed to divert the West Coast Main Line to run through Buckingham!

Here’s some examples of outrage from Twitter…

wail 3

wail 2

wail 4

A sad truth for those homeowners affected by the building of the line is that no-one has done more to depress house prices than the groups campaigning AGAINST Hs2. Both Hs2aa and Stophs2 have done their damnedest to make it sound like Hs2 will be more devastating than the arrival of Genghis Khan & the Mongol hordes. They’ve tried to scare people half to death, then cynically exploited that fear for their own ends.

Of course, the ability for the anti Hs2 mob to complain that compensation isn’t enough whilst at the same time getting outraged at the cost of buying houses won’t stop hs2 in the least. But it can provide us all with a good laugh…

Here’s why the anti Hs2 mobs Twitter campaign’s a joke.

22 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Social media, StopHs2, Twitter (and how not to use it)

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Having utterly failed to make any impact in the real world the anti Hs2 campaign’s increasingly become a cyber campaign that’s almost totally reliant on social media to try and get its message out.

Their problem is – they’re mostly shouting at each other.

I’ve long said that their daft & desperate campaign will be an object lesson in how not to do it and here’s another of their masterclasses.

Having failed to gain much of a following on Facebook (see here) Hs2 antis have increasingly fallen back on Twitter. There’s a certain logic to this. In theory, it’s easy to pretend there’s a lot of support for your aims. Setting up a series of accounts that feed off each other to all retweet the same rubbish seems like an attractive idea. The difficulty is there’s obvious pitfalls that the ignorant or unwary can fall into – and the anti Hs2 mob do that every time!

Take today’s example. Let’s welcome the anti Hs2 mobs latest sock puppet account: @CotyHS2

This anonymous account was created today. Straight away it started to follow folk and amassed 15 within a few minutes – all of which are other anti Hs2 accounts. Here they are:

Hs2 coty

Some other anti’s started to follow back almost straight away.

coty 2

One of the first was the IEA transport ‘economist’ Richard Wellings who’s a bit of a tart. He’ll follow anyone to try to make himself look more important and influential. If you don’t believe me, take a look at his Twitter bio.

It’s so obvious that this account is nothing but an anti Hs2 mob propaganda tool and not a real person it’s positively painful.

How will any of this Stop Hs2? It won’t. Not in the slightest. Instead you have a campaign that spends most of its time ranting (pointlessly) at each other – whilst convinced they’re actually achieving something. It’s the political and campaigning version of this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfBG0d5Oj3c”

This is why campaigners should never fool themselves into thinking a fiddled social media strategy is going to influence anyone. It’s nothing better than mutual masturbation. It might give them a warm glow but the people they think they’re influencing aren’t stupid. They have the ability to analyse metrics that show the anti Hs2 campaigns reach is tiny – and mostly ranting at itself rather than influencing outsiders.

After five years the anti Hs2 mob still haven’t learned the lesson but campaigns that follow them will ignore it at their peril.

Of course, if you want another example of a social media disaster, look no further than the StopHs2 Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/STOP.HS2?fref=ts

It has less than 7000 followers. Many of their comments are priceless. Does this look like an energetic & focussed campaign with a clear strategy & political will? They wish! Instead it’s a wonderful insight into the soul of their campaign, which consists of a few bewildered folk who have absolutely no understanding of the issues & simply can’t understand why no-one is taking them seriously. They remind me of the Duke of Wellington’s famous quote “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me”.

Their problem is, the ‘enemy’ aren’t frightened by them in the slightest…

The anti Hs2 mob plumb a new moral low to exploit steelworkers

19 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa, Rail Investment, UK steel industry

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I thought the anti Hs2 campaign couldn’t find any more of the barrel-bottom to scrape but their cynical attempts to exploit the steelworkers has proved me wrong.

One might have thought a campaign to stop the biggest civil engineering and railway construction project in the UK and possibly Europe would have the integrity, morality and PR nous to steer clear from trying to link stopping Hs2 with saving UK steelworkers jobs – but this is the anti Hs2 mob we’re talking about. Morality & integrity went out of the window years ago…

First out of the traps was the main Chiltern Nimby group, Hs2aa with a tweet of such breathtaking stupidity it spawned this blog.

Obviously, they’re so ‘concerned’ about the UK steel industry they didn’t even realise Redcar isn’t the country’s last steelworks.

We’ve had a number of people jump on the bandwagon since then. Here’s a sample of some of their tweets.

DR Kate

bullivant

DD steel

So, what do a Bucks Doctor, A Devon Reiki Master and a Camden ‘activist’ have in common? Well, you can bet your bottom dollar it’s not the welfare & jobs of UK steelworkers. If they really were so bothered about steelworkers they’d be campaigning FOR Hs2 to be built and for the steel to do it to be produced in the UK – but hell will freeze over before they do that.

Their level of intellectual & moral bankruptcy says an awful lot about the anti Hs2 campaign – as does their efforts to defend their cynical exploitation of others misfortunes for personal or political reasons.

The sooner their increasingly unpleasant campaign is put out of its misery, the better.

More doom & gloom for the anti Hs2 mob…

17 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2aa

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Now the party conference season is over I thought it would be a good time to take a look at the anti Hs2 campaign to see if they’ve made any headway after touting themselves around the various conference venues. StopHs2 made some daft claims about how ‘busy’ their stalls got which was contradicted by people tweeting pictures like this.

stophs2 stand

So, let’s see if any of their claims are backed up by any statistics. Of course, the answer is – no. Their social media campaign’s still a disaster. Take a look.

stop hs2 scores 17 oct 15We now have eight months worth of figures to analyse which show that – not only is their campaign failing to reach people, in some cases it’s still going backwards. The usual caveat applies – not all followers are supporters, many are there just to keep an eye on them. Here’s a breakdown that shows how many more people each of them have reached in 8 months.

scores 2There’s a wonderful irony in the fact that the most successful, Deanne Dukhan has pretty much abandoned tweeting about Hs2 & moved on to other things. This isn’t much of a surprise. Deanne was Campaign Director of the woefully inept AGAHST (Action Groups Against HS2) which ceased to exist. You can find their abandoned website here. I’m still keeping her in to provide a useful contrast.

To say these numbers are woeful is an understatement. Look at Stophs2. After eight months they’ve only reached another 337 people on Twitter and 281 on Facebook. The numbers show there’s been absolutely no improvement after the party conferences – which have proved to be a waste of both their time & dwindling resources.

The Facebook stats are of particular interest as it’s Facebook that has by far the biggest audience with 30.3 million users in the UK compared to Twitters 13.8 million.

Away from social media the news is even worse. Bucks County Council leader Martin Tett has effectively admitted the 51M campaign is dead and buried. With the earlier demise of AGAHST this leaves just StopHs2 and Hs2aa and neither of them are getting anywhere. One can only speculate how long their campaign can survive like this.

The Bow Groups ‘fresh thinking’ is anything but.

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Hs2 Bow Group, Railways, Transport

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The Conservative Bow group are currently touting a ‘new’ report which claims we shouldn’t be building Hs2 but reopening old lines instead. The problem is, this report is neither new (it came out in August) or the ‘fresh thinking’ the group use as their slogan.

The report seems to have only one function which is to say “anything but Hs2”. The reports main premise is that whilst the railways clearly need new capacity, this can be provided by reopening old railway lines. How? They never say. Instead, they quote a few examples of lines that have reopened (the Borders railway being one) or lines that they suggest could (BML2). What they fail to deal with is what happens to trains from these lines when they rejoin existing routes. For example. New platforms had to be provided at Edinburgh Waverley to allow the Borders railway to use the station. Edinburgh had old platforms to allow this to happen. Most stations don’t. So, what do you do then? The Bow group have no idea.

The report also ignores the recent fall in performance & punctuality that has been linked to an increasingly crowded network. Put simply, the railways are that busy with extra trains there’s little room for the timetable to recover during times of disruption. The Bow groups ‘solution’ would be to make this worse.

Here’s the group talking about the capacity question.

bow group

How, exactly, can this be achieved “through the use of existing lines”? The Bow group don’t even attempt to justify this claim. There’s no explanation at all on how this can (supposedly) be done which makes this report worse than useless. It’s all very well making such assertions but when you can’t even justify them – what’s the point? The obvious question – how would running more trains in/out of our existing termini relieve congestion – is completely ignored. You might as well claim Heathrow doesn’t need a 3rd runway because planes can take new and different routes to get there! The best the group can do is say “the logistics of merging the flow of trains from a re-opened line into existing timetables is a large job in itself.”

So what’s their answer to this revelation? They don’t have one. That’s hardly surprising when you look at the references for this report. The group haven’t talked to anyone who understands how the railways work. Instead, they quote from the likes of the IEA and articles in the Daily Mail rather than Network Rail, timetable planners or signal engineers.

Clearly, the only point to this report is to try & cast doubt on Hs2, not to seriously address the issues of capacity & congestion on the UK’s railways. If this muddy mélange of sources and assertions without answers is “fresh thinking” then we really are in trouble.

The anti Hs2 mob parade their bigotry

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Bigotry, Hs2, Islamophobia, UKIP

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There’s always been a deeply unpleasant side to the anti Hs2 campaign. It’s not just their willingness to lie and deceive, it’s the darker side. This manifests itself in their xenophobic & racist tendencies and willingness to use threats & intimidation. A good example of their bigotry has surfaced on the Facebook page of ‘Yorkshire doesn’t buy Hs2’

hs2

This unpleasant little group group appears to be run by UKIP supporters. Of course UKIP have been heavily involved with the StopHs2 campaign as (cynically) they saw it as a way of snatching votes. UKIP dropped its 2010 manifesto pledge to build three high-speed rail lines as they’d been conned by the anti Hs2 campaign into believing there was mass opposition to Hs2 & so lots of votes to harvest by opposing Hs2. Of course, the reality was very different & UKIP failed to gain a single seat in any area that Hs2 will pass through. Despite the general election humiliation, it’s clear UKIP & the StopHs2 campaign are still working together through groups like this. Not that it’s doing them much good, this Yorkshire group only has around 250 followers. Truth be told, there’s bugger all opposition to Hs2 in Yorkshire. There’s only a couple of anti ‘action’ groups in the county, neither of which are very active.

Rather typically, when I drew attention to this bigoted nonsense there was a deafening silence from anti Hs2 campaigners. Not a single one condemned it. Instead, one of the usual suspects (fond of resorting to bigotry himself) tried to accuse me of faking it, which is rather stupid when the post is still displayed on this groups Facebook page for all to see!

DD bigotry

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions about what this says about the anti Hs2 campaign, its members and their tactics…

Where’s the anti Hs2 mobs media bounce?

26 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2

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Hs2 has had a huge amount of media coverage in the past couple of days thanks to George Osborne’s trip to China and him firing the starting pistol on the bidding process for nearly £12bn’s worth of contracts.

Needless to say, anti Hs2 campaigners have had the chance to put their (skewed) side of the story too, especially on the BBC, which gives pressure groups undue prominence for the sake of ‘balance’ without ever explaining just what a minority view they are.

In light of all this publicity I thought is would be interesting to see if the anti Hs2 campaign had been revitalised on social media. The answer (surprise surprise) is – No.

Here’s a look at the ‘scores on the doors’ before the announcement with those for today. The first set is Twitter followers, the second Facebook followers

scores

Need I say more?

That said, when you look at the StopHs2 Facebook page you can see why people steer clear. David Icke would feel very at home here…

Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week: No 13

26 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in Crazy anti Hs2 campaigner of the week, Hs2, StopHs2

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This weeks award goes to StopHs2 Chair Penny Gaines for an absolutely bonkers & delusional tweet she’s just posted from the Green party conference in Bournemouth!

elepahnt

If one disinterested passer-by is what Penny thinks is “attracting attention” it’s no wonder the anti Hs2 campaign’s in such dire straits. Notice the complete absence of any Stophs2 protesters. We’re assured (by them) that their campaign’s unstoppable & going from strength to strength – so where is everybody? Of course, the only reason Penny is there is that she lives in Bournemouth, having moved away from the HS2 route several years ago. Imagine, the Chair (but what is there to chair in an empty room? Ed) of StopHs2 lives hundreds of miles away from HS2! In the ‘old’ days StopHs2 used to have stalls inside the various conferences but a lack of money, volunteers and the fact they got nowhere soon put a stop to that. Now the best they can do is a bag of wind and (if they’re lucky) a couple of volunteers trying to foist leaflets onto disinterested passers-by. How that was ever meant to stop HS2 is a mystery, but there you go…

With support like this, is it any wonder politicians are ignoring them?

2023 Update.

With the collapse of StopHs2 they’re no longer seen outside the party conferences. I believe their last derisory appearance was with two bags of hot air (Nellie the inflatable – and Joe Rukin) plus a couple of leafleteers outside the Tory conference in Birmingham in 2018. Their mantle passed to the equally useless protesters of HS2 ‘rebellion’ who are also history, having come and gone in the space of three short years.

Whilst Penny is in Bournemouth and Joe Rukin is in Kenilworth trying to resurrect some sort of post stopHs2 career, the present whereabouts of the inflatable bag of wind (aka ‘Nellie’) are unknown…

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