Tag Archives: Politics

Whatever happened to the anti HS2 campaign?

24 Tuesday Jan 2023

Posted by in Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Politics, Rail Investment, Railways

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I’ve not blogged about these people for quite some time for the simple reason there’s been nothing of interest to blog about. But I wanted to do a round-up and potted history as I still get asked where they went and my last blog on the subject is way out of date. So, what did happen to them?

The short answer is, in 2022 their campaign collapsed completely with the demise of the Extinction Rebellion inspired ‘HS2Rebellion’ and the last remaining protest camp. Politically, their campaign had given up the ghost several years before.

This was always going to happen. Support had been ebbing away for years as it had become clear to all but the most blinkered that pretending HS2 could be stopped when construction was well underway was a fools errand. The protest camps were always a sideshow. They were an attempt to attract publicity and raise funds but they never stood a chance of success as they were poorly supported, many were in the wrong place and the people in them were such a rag-bag of conflicting ideologies and interests. A mixture of Nimbys, part-timers who just turned up to party plus a tiny hard-core of ‘professional’ protesters who drifted from one lost cause to another. The camps also attracted their fair share of ne’er-do-wells and damaged people, hence some camps getting reputations for thievery, sexual harassment and violence. Some young idealists attracted to the cause through social media soon had their dreams shattered by the reality of life in the camps and never returned. Plus, wealthy Chiltern Nimbys and a rag-bag of anarchists and left-wing dreamers (and a few thieves) were always going to be uneasy bedfellows – as it proved. Many opponents of HS2 in the Chilterns weren’t too sad to see the back of the camps.

The kamikaze tactics of people in the camps also limited their effectiveness as once people were arrested they had bail conditions imposed which kept them away from HS2 sites. Other had injunctions taken out against them which kept them away from places like the first protest camp at Harvil Rd near London. Support also waned when the camps nearest to London were evicted as that’s where the biggest pool of weekenders and party people came from. The final camp was in rural Staffordshire, far away from the Nimby heartlands of the Chilterns and London, plus local support was lukewarm to say the least. Money began to dry up too. In the past people had donated 10s of 1000s via various crowdfunders but these became mired in controversy as no-one ever knew where the money actually went. This led to some very public spats and fallings out which I’ve documented in the past.

The final nails in the coffin were the eviction of the ‘Bluebell’ camp in Staffordshire which fell extremely quickly. Three activists retreated into a tunnel that had been dug underneath the camp and stayed their for 47 days in an attempt to attract publicity, but they received very little. No-one was really interested in three people in a hole in the ground that was so far away from the Londoncentric media. Euston Sq gardens it wasn’t!

Meanwhile, events in the High Court in Birmingham were about to hammer home the final nail…

HS2 Ltd had applied to the High Court for a route-wide injunction that would ban any further disruptive protests or trespass on HS2 land. Over the years HS2 security and bailiffs had amassed a huge amount of evidence showing the dangerous, disruptive and violent nature of the protesters and this evidence was submitted to the Judge. Ironically, evidence was also provided by the protesters themselves through some of the video recording and livestreams they’d stuck on social media in an attempt to drum up support and funds. This backfired spectacularly in court! The old adage about ‘give ’em enough rope’ couldn’t have been more apt! There are thousands and thousand of pages of court documents, which you can find here.

After months of deliberations, Mr Justice Knowles granted the route-wide injunction on the 20th September 2022.

Contrary to claims from the protesters, the injunction did not make protesting against HS2 ‘illegal’. The injunction’s very specific in its wording about what it covers, which is;

(2) PERSONS UNKNOWN ENTERING OR REMAINING WITHOUT THE CONSENT
OF THE CLAIMANTS ON, IN OR UNDER LAND ACQUIRED OR HELD BY THE
CLAIMANTS IN CONNECTION WITH THE HIGH SPEED TWO RAILWAY
SCHEME SHOWN COLOURED PINK, AND GREEN ON THE HS2 LAND PLANS
AT https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hs2-route-wide-injunction-proceedings
(“THE HS2 LAND”) WITH THE EFFECT OF DAMAGING AND/OR DELAYING
AND/OR HINDERING THE CLAIMANTS, THEIR AGENTS, SERVANTS,
CONTRACTORS, SUBCONTRACTORS, GROUP COMPANIES, LICENSEES,
INVITEES AND/OR EMPLOYEES


(3) PERSONS UNKNOWN OBSTRUCTING AND/OR INTERFERING WITH ACCESS
TO AND/OR EGRESS FROM THE HS2 LAND IN CONNECTION WITH THE HS2
SCHEME WITH OR WITHOUT VEHICLES, MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT,
WITH THE EFFECT OF DAMAGING AND/OR DELAYING AND/OR HINDERING
THE CLAIMANTS, THEIR AGENTS, SERVANTS, CONTRACTORS, SUBCONTRACTORS, GROUP COMPANIES, LICENSEES, INVITEES AND/OR EMPLOYEES WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE CLAIMANTS


(4) PERSONS UNKNOWN CUTTING, DAMAGING, MOVING, CLIMBING ON OR
OVER, DIGGING BENEATH OR REMOVING ANY ITEMS AFFIXED TO ANY
TEMPORARY OR PERMANENT FENCING OR GATES ON OR AT THE
PERIMETER OF THE HS2 LAND, OR DAMAGING, APPLYING ANY SUBSTANCE
TO OR INTERFERING WITH ANY LOCK OR ANY GATE AT THE PERIMETER
OF THE HS2 LAND WITHOUT THE CONSENT OF THE CLAIMANTS

With the injunction in force it was game over for the protesters who’ve never attempted to set up another camp, or break the terms of the injunction. To reinforce the seriousness of their position, a couple of protesters were given jail time for contempt of court. As usual the protesters tried to spin this as being jailed for protesting. It was no such thing, but you flout the authority of the courts at your peril! One of the protesters, Elliott Cuciurean (aka ‘Jellytot) remains behind bars now.

In October 2022 one of the protesters named in the injunction (James Taylor, aka ‘Jimmy Knaggs’) started to raise money for an appeal, but his application was refused on the 9th December 2022. There will be no appeal. In typically underhand fashion, the news of the refusal of leave to appeal has been kept quiet. It’s not mentioned on any of the protest groups Facebook pages. Instead, there’s still a Crowdfunder running to raise money to fund the non-existent appeal – although no-one’s been mug enough to donate for quite some time. Here’s a screenshot from today.

No update since May 2022. No news the appeal was refused but the crowdfunder’s renewed for another 30 days every time it expires. With just 10 days left that means it was last renewed Early January – long after the appeal was refused!. Sounds like a scam to me…

So, it’s game over for the protest camps and the protesters trying to interfere with HS2. Now scattered to the four winds with many of them having simply disappeared, there’s no way back for them. HS2 ‘rebellion’ exists only as a few social media accounts which occasionally recycle the odd newspaper article critical of HS2 or try and raise more money for the lad in prison. No-one’s trying to stop HS2 anymore…

The political campaign died even earlier. Originally, there had been 2 main groups opposing HS2. The High Speed 2 Action Alliance (HS2AA) based in the Chilterns and ‘StopHs2’ based in Kenilworth in Warwickshire. HS2AA gave up in 2016 after getting the Wendover tunnel extension as that was on their doorstep. StopHS2 staggered on until 2020. They were only two people, Joe Rukin in Kenilworth and Penny Gaines in err…Bournemouth! Joe was the main mouthpiece who would do the media interviews where he’d often lie through his teeth – all to no avail! He’s left behind an interesting legacy on Social Media – a trail of lies and half-truths which really haven’t aged well.

During the injunction proceedings Rukin was named as a defendant and was forced to admit that StopHS2 had given up campaigning against HS2 in 2020!

As for the supposed ‘StopHs2 North’, it doesn’t exist. There’s no such organisation. You can’t find any trace of it anywhere. Stop HS2 have even given up posting stuff on their website now. From posting stuff daily they only managed 6 stories last year, the last of which was in June 2022. There’s been nothing in 2023 and I doubt there will be.

Political pressure was the only hope of stopping HS2 but it never stood a chance as it never had any real political support in Parliament, especially in the Lords which has always been very pro HS2. When the Phase 1 HS2 bill passed 2nd reading in 2014 only 41 MPs voted against the bill. More than half of them are no longer MPs!

The Phase 2a Bill (West Midlands to Crewe) passed 2nd reading on the 30th January 2018 with another crushing majority of 295 to 12. Interestingly enough, some of the 41 MPs who voted against Phase 1 voted FOR phase 2a whilst others abstained! I blogged about it at the time here.

Phase 2b (Crewe to Manchester) passed 2nd reading on the 20th June 2022. By this time those voting against had dwindled to just 6 whilst 206 MPs voted for. The 6 were the usual suspects, including Greg Smith the hardline Brexiter from Buckinghamshire and (equally Brexity) Bill Cash. In fact, a Venn diagram of MPs who’re rabid Brexit supporters but who also oppose HS2 would be an almost perfect circle. This would encompass the few former Labour MPs who opposed HS2, like Kate Hoey. Co-incidence? I think not. You can see the malign influence of the Tufton St cabal at work here. After the 2019 election when there was a new intake of MPs noises were made about reforming a Parliamentary group of MPs who opposed HS2 called the HS2 Review Group but it never came to anything.

The problem for these few MPs and the Tufton St cabal is there are no more Parliamentary votes on HS2 for quite some considerable time. Legislation to build HS2 all the way to Manchester has passed. 2nd reading is the only stage that really matters as that establishes the principle of the bill. 3rd reading in the Commons and the process in the Lords can’t change that. By the time the next Hybrid bill appears we’ll have a new Government. Barring a disaster the Tories will be out on their arses and Labour will be in with a huge majority – and Labour are committed to building HS2 in full.

So, there’s really nowhere for the remaining opponents of HS2 to turn. They’re a dead duck politically and the protesters are finished. All that’s left is a dwindling bunch of Nimbys, right-wing libertarians and faux ‘greens’ wasting their time ranting in their social media echo-chamber. No-one sees them as a threat to HS2.

Meanwhile, HS2 construction is speeding up unopposed. Many of the major structures on Phase 1 are already under construction (for example, the Chiltern tunnels are already 50% complete) and work will only ramp up more this year. Civils Work on Phase 2 a to Crewe will be starting shortly whilst the Petitioning Ctte for Phase 2b from Crewe to Manchester will be sitting through 2023. It will be interesting to see how many people actually petition this Ctte as there were always so few StopHS2 ‘action’ groups on this section of the line.

I suspect this will be my final blog on the anti Hs2 campaign as it’s ceased to exist in any meaningful way. Oh, there might be some mad ones to poke fun at sometime during the year, but that’s it. It really is all over now. Most of my time now will be spent reporting on progress building HS2, not on those who so spectacularly failed to stop it!

Stop HS2 is dead. Happy New Year!

The last blog of 2022. (revised and completed on Jan 1st).

31 Saturday Dec 2022

Posted by in Musings, Photography, Politics, Railways

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I’m sitting here at the keyboard trying to work out how to make sense of such a tumultuous year without disappearing into repetitious rambling so I’m going to use a few headings to help – although there’s bound to be a few crossovers in the subjects. Let’s face it, it’s been one hell of a year, both in the UK and wider world, so it’s no surprise the the Collins dictionary word of the year 2022 is “permacrisis” – it sums up the situation perfectly. Having seen the back of Donald Trump and with Covid looking like it was burning itself out with no more nasty mutations the year started with some hope, but that was soon dashed.

Politics

On 24th February Russia invaded the Ukraine. ‘Special military operation’ (as the Russians called it) my arse, this was a full scale attempt to annex to country. It’s led to the largest refugee situation in Europe since world war two (both Ukrainian, and Russians who’ve fled their own country), along with the most destructive and devastating war since 1939. It’s also looking likely to lead to the collapse of Russia as it’s clear the war was a disastrous miscalculation of the part of Vladimir Putin. The pressures on the Russian economy due to sanctions plus the increasing lawlessness within the country as conscripts return from the war, disillusioned (and often with smuggled weapons) and the increasing isolation of the country are threads that are unwinding the fabric of the nation. It’s hardly surprising. Ordinary Russians are being kept tin the dark by their Government, but the scale of the Russian losses in men and equipment estimated by the Ukrainians (and others like the Oryx website) are staggering.

The knock-on effects across Europe and the UK have been huge. The British economy, already reeling from Covid, Brexit and 12 years of increasingly chaotic mismanagement by the Tories was then hit by massive increases in energy costs. In short. It’s a shit-storm and sadly, there’s no sign of it getting better in 2023. The Tories have run out of ideas (other than feathering their own nests) but they seem to have an endless supply of hopeless and hapless Prime Ministers. You may have thought serial liar Boris Johnson and his ‘oven ready’ Brexit deal was bad but after a painfully long election process Liz Truss said ‘hold my beer’ and managed to crash the UK economy and make the UK an international laughing-stock in just 49 days – the shortest tenure any British Prime Minister. Then there was the death of the Queen, which paralyzed the UK at the same time. Cards on the table (to quote right-wing Twitter trolls) – I’m not a monarchist, although having met many (including the late Queen and her husband) of them I have no problem with the people, just the institution. Most Brits have no idea how that institution has an impact on their daily lives as all they see is the pomp and circumstance – or read about the bitching that goes on in the UK press about them as a useful diversion from the real world. The Romans had ‘bread and circuses’, we have the spectator sport of Harry and Meghan vs the Palace as part of the extension of the right-wingers ‘war on woke’. It fills the news media to keep you distracted and stops you looking at the bigger picture.

Unabashed after their ousting of Boris Johnson – then Liz Truss, the Tory party then turned to an also ran – Rishi Sunak, a multi-millionaire who’s so out of touch his PR stunt serving food to homeless people went so spectacularly wrong a team of comedy writers would have dismissed it as too far-fetched. ‘Do you work in business’? Oh, FFS! With this bunch unashamedly clinging onto power for as long as they possibly can (2024) the new year looks to hold little cheer. It’s clear Rishi Sunak is a weak leader, but then his party is ungovernable. It’s riven by factions and dominated by swivel-eyed loons inside and outside the cabinet. Privately (and not so privately) many of them realise that they next election is lost, the question now is how much damage they’ll do before they’re turfed out when the votes are cast. There’s a lot of nest-feathering going on at the expense of ordinary people and I doubt the extent of the corruption will be revealed until (and unless) the next government hold some enquiries. The current situation goes to prove the old adage that oppositions don’t win elections, Governments lose them. Labour under Keir Starmer have vanquished the ghost of Jeremy Corbyn, the man who gifted the Tories such a huge majority in 2019 (cue howls of outrage, bluster and selective statistics from Corbynistas) but that’s all they’ve done. People will vote for them out purely for the fact they’re the only way to oust the Tories – not because they feel inspired by them. Starmer’s strategy to pretend he can make Brexit work may be seen as clever politicking, but it doesn’t make him look honest – and we desperately need a return to honest politics after so many years of lies and deceit. In the meantime, Brexit will continue to unravel. It’s painfully obvious that it’s a turd that can’t be polished but Brexit is like a religion to some, it’s an article of faith and they’ll cling onto it. But faith can’t make fiction fact and the economic harm its doing to the UK will continue to manifest itself no matter how deep its adherent stick their heads in the sand. Now people can travel again it’s not hard to see the disparity when you cross the channel. The EU hasn’t collapsed as predicted, supermarket shelves are full and despite the energy crisis caused by the war, living standards (and wages) are higher. Not only that but other countries are still clamouring to join the EU. In fact on January 1st Croatia adopted the Euro as its currency and also joined Schengen (the free travel area). It’s easy to see just how isolationist and out of step the UK is. Europe’s going forward and we’re going backwards.

Railways

It’s been another torrid time on the UK rail network. Just as the system seemed to be recovering from Covid and passenger numbers growing far quicker than many pessimists predicted we’ve had a series of debilitating strikes with central government and the unions at loggerheads. Whilst regional governments in Scotland and Wales are willing to compromise and find a way forward through pay agreements, central government ain’t. They see it as a trial of strength and a way of shoring up their collapsing vote (have you seen the opinion polls recently?) by playing hardball to pander to their hardcore. We’ve had the worst Transport Minister for decades (Grant Shapps) followed by a revolving door. In the meantime, the Treasury (as always) are dictating terms via the DfT and there’s no sign of any political coherence – much less a strategic plan that will last longer than the next Ministerial appointment. It’s a depressing time when there’s so many real issues needing serious answers – and a long term plan (hello ‘climate change’ anybody? That you despair. On the bright side, Crossrail – sorry the Elizabeth line – opened on the 24th May and proved to be a massive success, as many of us knew it would be. The expression ‘build it and they will come’ is appropriate for so many UK rail projects – and sod the useless and BCR (Benefit Cost Ratio) calculations which so often prove to be that conservative they’re useless. A fag-packet would be embarrassed to have them scrawled on its back.

London’s East End never used to look like this! This is the new Crossrail interchange station at Whitechapel. Once the territory of ‘Jack the Ripper’. Murder it ain’t!

The dumb thing? The future of the railways should be a no-brainer due to the need to get modal shift from road/air to rail to tackle climate change. But then you have the problem of competing political ideologies and the fact the Tories are underpinned by so many crazies from the libertarian far-right who’re doing their best to pretend it’s not real. Thankfully, they’ve not managed to stop the majority of building High-Speed 2. Forget the Nimbys and protesters, they never had nay political clout, it was people close to Boris ‘two-faced’ Johnson who’ve done the most damage to the project by paring away at it without any credible replacement, timetable or plan. The bright side? The next Labour government (because that’s what we’ll have) have committed to building HS2 in full. What will drag on is the interminable and utterly pointless political arguments over privatisation vs nationalisation which is a distraction from actually making the railways work for everyone. ‘Great British Railways’ is now dead. The reorganisation’s stalled, but we have no idea what will replace it. Instead we have the classic British ‘buggers muddle’ with the railways caught between a rock (the Treasury) and a hard place (The Dept of Transport), made worse by a Government that has no idea what it’s doing, other than trying to cling on to power. Here in West Yorkshire we do have some things to look forward to as at least the Trans-Pennine route upgrade is going ahead, although that’s still a mixed picture. We know what it will look like East of Huddersfield as far as Dewsbury where work’s already started, but we’ve no real idea how it will look Westwards, or how this supposed new line from Liverpool that’s (somehow) going to end in the village of Marsden will happen – if it ever does as there’ll be another election before work even starts!

Travel

I’ve been fortunate to have several breaks from the Septic Isle in 2022, Most of which have involved working (and meeting friends) in Germany which gives a completely different perspective from this bizarre up it’s own arse island nation many people choose to be marooned on. Then the pair of us had a a fortnight in Greece, which showed us another side. Funny how Rhodes – despite it being an island – didn’t suffer the supermarket shortages and empty shelves that have become a matter of routine in the UK – and that includes from imported goods. Once could almost imagine being in a customs union and single-market had advantages! Now, in the new year I’m preparing to take a break from Britain for a couple of months and catch up with old friends and happenings in South-East Asia. No doubt the contrasts to the UK will be very interesting, expecially as I’ll be starting in Singapore, the island state that some Tories touted as their aspiration for the Brexit Britain, with London becoming Singapore on Thames. It was all bollocks of course.

2023. Things to look forward to…

I’d love to be able to say ‘a general election’ but that’s extremely unlikely! Instead I’m looking forward to a Russian defeat and Ukrainian victory this year. I’m hopeful that there might be some economic cheer too but with this lot in charge I’d suggest that will be more down to luck and the actions of others than the Government. I’m also looking forward to seeing High Speed 2 construction proceeding apace. The project passed some impressive milestones in 2022, the anti HS2 rebellion collapsed as their camps were swept away and the few remaining occupants scattered to the four winds. I’ll be visiting as many locations as I can in 2023 to report on progress.

In the meantime, let me wish you all a peaceful and optimistic New Year and all the best for 2023.

Thanks for popping by and reading some of the 264 blogs I published in 2022. This site had 72,006 views from 115 nations last year plus several donations towards helping me cover the (not inconsiderable) costs of running my blog. Thank you one and all! And finally, a big thank you (and love) to Dawn, my wife, for putting up with me disappearing many an evening to pen one of these blogs. Thanks Babe!

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12th December picture of the day…

12 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Railways, Travel, West Yorkshire

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We’ve had a wintery start to the week here at Bigland Towers. Snow arrived in the Calder Valley at the weekend and, whilst it’s hardly deep and crisp and even the dusting we’ve had is certainly sticking around. To make matters worse the temperature plummeted today with the mercury never getting above -2 but hitting -5 this morning whilst the valley itself disappeared behind a mask of freezing fog. So, I’ve spent the entire day indoors, not even making it out for my daily stroll. Instead, I’ve beavered away in the office sorting out pictures and filing in order to create some space in the calendar for the future (more about that later).

I doubt I’ll be venturing far for the rest of the week. Whilst the temperature’s due to creep above zero towards the end of the week there’s another problem. Tomorrow sees the start of the next round of rail strikes, only our local operator (Northern) has essentially thrown in the towel. They’re not bothering to run any service at all through Halifax and the Calder Valley until Sunday! That’s’ 5 days without any services across most of their network, which covers the whole of the North, taking in Cumbria, Yorkshire, the North-West and Cheshire, including major cities like Manchester. and Leeds (which sees a skeleton service based on the Aire valley electric trains, see below).

Sadly, there’s no sign of this dispute coming to an end. It looks like it will drag on well into next year. There’s conflicting reports coming out about who’s to blame for the breakdown in negotiations, as my RAIL magazine colleague, Phil Haigh, pointed out on Twitter earlier.

Whilst I can appreciate both sides of this dispute the people I feel for are those caught in the crossfire. I don’t just mean passengers, although having no trains here for the rest of the week when we have snow and ice on the ground is hardly desirable. I feel for the many small businesses who rely on the railways for their trade. The shop and cafe owners who’ve been suffering and struggling for years as Northern and the unions have been in regular disputes for years. The toll this has taken on many businesses goes unrecognised. Just as they were getting back on their feet Covid struck. Then, as they were slowly recovering from that we had the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy crises. Oh, and that’s without mentioning the impact Brexit has had, making goods ever more expensive. It’s been a perfect storm for rail-based businesses so I’m not in the least surprised to have seen how many had closed down when I was doing my recent round Britain trip for RAIL. Station cafes and shops the length and breadth of the network have gone forever, and my fear is that more will follow in the new year because there’s no sign of a light at the end of the tunnel. They’re the ‘collateral damage’ from these strikes.

Another casualty of these strikes is my annual visit to the Railway Carol service in London, which is being held in Euston on Thursday. There’s no way I can get there in time, and even getting back would be risky. Instead, I’ll be spending another day at home, planning another adventure that’s been deferred by Covid.

On Saturday I had confirmation of my flight to Singapore in January. I’ll be spending two months away from the Septic Isle, exploring old haunts in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia – and also taking in some new sights too (hopefully). So, the enforced ‘downtime’ I have this week will allow me to start planning the trip. I’d originally hoped to have left the UK before Christmas, but the cost of flights was ridiculous. This many have been a blessing in disguise as the Christmas period is looking like a lousy time to travel due to the rail dispute and disruption at airports due to the Border Force taking strike action. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the date I’ve chosen to fly out (January 10th) is in that ‘sweet spot’ between strikes. Time will tell.

So, don’t expect much in the way of new rail pictures from me this week, which is very frustrating as I have a market for railway snow scenes but no way of capturing them! Instead, here’s an archive shot taken in the Calder Valley several years ago.

On the 21st January 2013 ‘Pacer’ 144009 approaches Sowerby Bridge from the East with a service for Manchester Victoria.

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If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

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Thank you!

Simon Jenkins, HS2 and the tunnel that never was…

15 Tuesday Nov 2022

Posted by in Hs2, Politics, Railways, Simon Jenkins

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It’s not often nowadays that I have the opportunity to fillet so much dishonest and fact-free nonsense about HS2 in the media nowadays, but I’ve been given the rare threat thanks to two people who’ve been writing trash about HS2 for years. Yesterday it was Andrew ‘transcription error’ Gilligan, one of the Tories client journalists who for many years was embedded in the heart of the Tory party as one of Boris Johnson’s coterie.

Today it’s the turn of the dyspeptic Simon Jenkins, whose penned his latest fact-free polemic in the Guardian, which you can find here. It’s up to his usual standard, loads of assertions with no facts to back it up and made-up numbers for the ‘true’ cost of HS2. I’ve examined Jenkins troubled relationship with facts before in this blog.

However, Jenkin’s goes one further than Gilligan and claims that ALL of HS2 should be cancelled immediately – even Phase 1 where construction is well advanced. To support his claim, Jenkins says this;

“A New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, famously halted a rail tunnel under the Hudson river by simply ordering the contractors to fill in the hole”.

There just one teeny problem with this claim. It’s complete and utter bollocks. Jenkins has made it up, and the reality shows Jenkins example of the ARC demonstrates that his idea is short-sighted and stupid in the extreme.

Here’s the reality. Chris Christie does exist. He was the Republican Governer of New Jersey between 2010 and 2018 when he lost to his Democrat challenger. He’d put his hat in the ring for his party’s Presidential nomination, he got nowhere, but Donald Trump did, Christie endorsed him and joined his team, and the rest, as they say, is history.

But what about this tunnel? That didn’t exist. There *were* plans to build one (there still are). Known as ‘Access to the Regions Core’ (ARC) the plan was to build two new tunnels from New Jersey to Manhattan and a new railway station next to Penn Station which was at capacity. The original cost of the project was estimated at $8.7bn. Preparations for building the tunnels began in 2009 with a completion date of 2018, but in 2010 Christie effectively cancelled the project by withdrawing his part of the funding, citing ‘concerns’ about cost overruns. By the time the project was cancelled in October 2010 all that was built was the Palisades ‘tunnel’, an underpass under Tonnelle Ave in North Bergen. Contracts *had* been let for tunnelling, Skanska had won the design and build contract for the full Palisades Tunnel on May 5, 2010, just 5 months earlier but tunnelling proper hadn’t even begun.

That wasn’t the end of the story. The decision was controversial and Christie became embroiled in a series of legal actions over where the money went – especially Federal funding towards the project. The federal government demanded repayment of funding received by New Jersey Transit for the project. After litigation, an agreement was reached where part of the funds were returned while other monies were used on transit-related projects.

That wasn’t the end of the story. Christie’s administration was later investigated and fined $400,00 for diverting funds from the project to subsidise various roads projects. Plus, some of New Jersey’s funds earmarked for ARC were eventually diverted to the state transportation trust, normally funded by a gasoline tax, one of the lowest in the United States. This was believed by many to be a cynical attempt to subsidise motoring by avoiding raising gas tax,

In March 2012, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal agency, published a report entitled Commuter Rail Potential Impacts and Cost Estimates for the Cancelled Hudson River Tunnel Project, which concluded that Christie’s basis for cancellation was a misrepresentation and that he misstated the estimated costs, cost over-runs, and New Jersey’s obligation to pay them (see link)

So, was anything ‘filled in’ as Jenkins claims? No, because the project never really died because it was still needed. This need became ever more evident after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy caused damage to the existing 100 year old rail tunnels which led to flooding of the New York subway. It’s estimated $5bn damage was caused to the rail systems. Some of the completed design and engineering work has been used by Amtrak to develop the Gateway Programme, which will build yes – you’ve guessed it – new tunnels under the Hudson! The Gateway Project was unveiled on February 7, 2011, just 4 months after Christie cancelled ARC.

So, the project Jenkins cites isn’t dead at all. Nothing was filled in and the delays and political shenanigans have cost taxpayers dearly! The original ARC project was budgeted at $10 billion and was due to open in 2018-20. The Gateway programme’s 2022 projected cost of the tunnels and related projects is $16.1 billion.

What Jenkins completely fails to mention is cancelling a project where no main construction works and no Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) were running is a very different kettle of fish to HS2, where the Chiltern tunnels are already over 8 miles long, the Long Itchington Tunnel has one of the 1-mile-long tunnels completed and at West Rusilip there are two more TBMs already boring East into London. Oh, and that’s without the 3.5km long Colne Valley viaduct which is already well underway! Add in all the other civil engineering work along the phase 1 route and we’re talking of 10s of billions already spent or committed. To claim this can just be cancelled or ‘filled in’ is nothing more than idiocy. But then when did Jenkins ever deal in reality when it comes to HS2? The most amusing thing about Jenkins using the Hudson tunnels as an example of how you could scrap HS2 (apart from the fact it was bollocks) is it’s exactly the opposite. It’s a classic example of why you shouldn’t cancel these vital projects and how doing so comes back to bite you on the arse!

Unlike Jenkins US tunnel which was never started much less ‘filled in’. here’s one of the HS2 Chiltern tunnels under construction. This is now over 4 miles long, as is its next door neighbour. The Long Itchington tunnel is half-complete and the West Ruislip tunnels already have two TBMs running. That’s over 9 miles of tunnels bored already…

January 1st 2023 update.

I was sent this link yesterday which puts the nail in the coffin of Jenkins nonsense. The new rail tunnel under the Hudson is on its way…

“Hudson River Rail Tunnel Construction to Begin in 2023 With $292M Grant”

The project is now expected to cost $30 billion.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Thank you!

More right-wing tosh about High Speed 2 from opaque lobbyists.

14 Monday Nov 2022

Posted by in Andrew Gilligan, Hs2, Politics, Railways

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Today the right-wing press and a few other media outlets are falling over themselves to report of the latest right-wing nonsense about HS2 from the secretive political lobbyists at ‘Policy Exchange’.

But who are ‘policy exchange’? none of the media bothers to ask.

Like other right-wing lobbyists, PE claim to be an educational charity. They bill themselves as “the UK’s most influential think tank”, an appellation awarded to them by the right-wing newspapers who lap up whatever they report. Yep, that’s the reason they’re ‘influential’. Their friends in the media push their agenda and the organistion has a revolving door with Tory Governments, with many of its members having been part of Tory administrations at advisory or Ministerial level!

How you can be an educational charity when it’s plain to anyone who does the slightest research that they’re actually political lobbyists is a sad indictment of the laws around charities and political lobbying. Sadly, the Charity Commission is both weak and feeble when it comes to allowing overtly political lobby groups to get away with claiming charitable status and availing themselves of the tax breaks that bestows. PE is also the opaquest of all the ‘think-tanks’ when it comes to revealing who funds it. You can read more about that here on the ‘Teacher Toolkit’ website.

PE was set up in 2002 by prominent Tories including Nicholeas Boles as its first Director. Micheal Gove as Chairman and also Francis Maude. There’s a long list of familiar names associated with the right-wing and PE, including one who wrote the latest hatchet job on HS2. Step forward, Andrew ‘transcription error’ Gilligan! Former advisor to Boris Johnson (both when he was Mayor of London and Prime Minister). Gilligan’s long had antipathy towards HS2, so his fingerprints being on this report ‘HS2: The kindest cut of all’ are hardly a surprise.

So, what does Gilligan claim? Nothing new at all, so no change there then! In fact, the report is just the usual rehash of old claims about HS2 the libertarian right have been bandying around for years. Gilligan has a long history of rehashing knocking copy about HS2, as I’ve blogged about in the past.

“By cancelling all sections of HS2 where main construction has not yet started, we can save around £3bn a year by 2027/8, and £44bn or more in total.”

And the evidence for this is? There’s none, apart from a few back of a fag-packet calculations and assumptions, each one is caveated with the phrase “likely to be an underestimate“. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? How is this meant to ‘fill’ a supposed black hole in the Government’s current budget? It can’t – obviously, this is pure spin on the part of the media who’re reporting on this. Not only would it not fill any holes in Government coffers, but Gilligan’s suggestion also to stop work at Euston would actually COST money as contracts would be cancelled and compensation paid and workers (who’re currently paying tax) would be laid off.

Whilst admitting it’s not possible to scrap phase 1 of HS2 are construction is already well underway and the costs and penalties would be astronomical he does suggest scrapping the line from Old Oak Common into Euston. What Gilligan completely ignores is the fact Old Oak Common can’t be used as a replacement for Euston station as it’s far, far too small and would hamstring any possibility of running a full service on HS2, thus rendering the project pointless. This is classic penny-pinching and either not understanding (or deliberately ignoring) why a 10-platform station at Euston is being built in the first place. Gilligan claims people can change onto the Elizabeth line and use that to get to Central London instead. In that he contradicts himself as earlier in the report he claims that to cope with the extra passenger numbers HS2 would bring to Euston we’d need Crossrail 2’s capacity. Yet Crossrail 1 (which wasn’t designed to cope with HS2 passengers) can somehow fit everyone on regardless! But then, consistency has never been Gilligan’s forte. Gilligan grudgingly admits that “Old Oak will, admittedly, be less convenient than Euston for passengers seeking to continue their journeys by taxi, car or foot, or going to the Eurostar terminal”. But he completely ignores another dimension and reason Euston was chosen as the HS2 terminus. It not only has East-West connectivity, but it also has something Old Oak doesn’t have – North-South connectivity, Euston serves the whole of London in a way Old Oak never could – even if it had the platform capacity! That a former transport advisor to the Mayor of London doesn’t understand this (or more likely, choses to ignore because it doesn’t fit his narrative) tells you a lot about Gilligan.

Building HS2 at Euston in October 2021. Gilligan completely ignores the reasons Euston was chosen as the terminus (connectivity) and the fact the railway systems are designed and developed, it’s only the oversite development where plans are in a state of flux.

We see other bald assertions such as “HS2’s real benefit-cost ratio may be somewhere between 0.4 and 0.7 – even at the official price” (note the word ‘may’ doing some very heavy lifting there’s no evidence for this claim is offered at all). Gilligan often quotes the BCR as being lower than 1, occasionally he admits this excludes the wider economic impacts (WEIs) but completely ignores the fact the WEI’s are woefully underestimated because they don’t include real environmental impacts such as tackling Climate Change. Transport is the biggest single emitter of carbon in the UK, but Gilligan hardly even mentions the environment in his ‘report’ except when he makes this evidence free assertion “Per pound spent, almost literally any other public transport project imaginable could achieve greater modal shift and CO2 reduction than HS2; that it takes vast sums away from such projects is another of its environmental harms”. Yet again we see the fabrication that HS2 is taking money “away” from other things. The truth? Cancelling HS2 wouldn’t release any money for anything else: the money just doesn’t exist until the government issues the bonds for it. Oh, and let’s not forget the fact that (just as they did with HS1) the government can make money from selling the operating concession, which you can’t do if you don’t build it, or only build a rump of HS2 that makes the whole project pointless (which is what Gilligan wants).

Gilligan makes much play about the conservative %’s the Government use for modal shift from other modes of transport to HS2. As usual, these percentages have no context, saying what they’re percentages of. 3% of 100 is tiny, 3% of (say) 100 million is a very different proposition. Plus, what are the carbon savings by moving from high carbon travel (domestic air) to high-speed rail? Gilligan ignores that as it’s inconvenient. It’s also worth noting that whilst Gillian rubbishes any official figures he doesn’t like, the takes the governments modal shift numbers as holy writ, yet the Government’s forecast method is known to be weak. It specifically excludes any factors that favour rail over car or air. Plus, mainland Europe high-speed rail has much higher from-air percentage than the UK Governments figures All the UK modal shift claims are ridiculously low compared to what has actually happened with high-speed rail elsewhere – for which empirical evidence exists.

Reading the report it’s clear that Gilligan’s ignored the most important reasons for building HS2 (rail capacity and the environment) in order to focus solely on what always drives these libertarians. Money and ideology. He offers no alternatives to HS2 because that would mean admitting the central reasons for building it. Instead, he dismisses it purely on the grounds of cost with the spurious arguments that we ‘can’t afford’ HS2 and that the money can be used to fill holes elsewhere – even though that money doesn’t actually exist until it’s borrowed. There isn’t and never has been a big pot of money sat in the Treasury labelled ‘for HS2’ just waiting to be rebadged and spent on other things.

No doubt the usual suspects will fawn over Gilligan and his recycled report, despite it being the usual rehash he’s made a career out of. Will it stop HS2? Of course not. He never has. Because even this Government is starting to realise that it’s these ‘think-tanks’ and their loony libertarian thinking that doomed Truss and got the Tories into the mess they’re in now. If a ‘black hole’ does exist, it’s because of the ‘think tanks’ that Truss listened to! Cancelling HS2 would add another nail in the coffin of their reputation of economic competence and leave the UK looking even more like a laughing stock, unable to build infrastructure because the swivel-eyed loons on the right want small government (and tax cuts).

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Thank you!

The ‘back to normal’ blog…

25 Tuesday Oct 2022

Posted by in Greece, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Travel

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OK, I may have lied about the normal bit as I’ve no idea what normal is nowadays – especially in the UK as it seems to lurch from political farce to economic crises and back again – unless that’s the new normal? Having returned to the UK from Greece early Sunday morning the pair of us are still trying to find our feet after two glorious weeks on Rhodes, insulated from much of the madness that’s struck the UK of late. We made the conscious decision not to have a wifi connection in our hotel room so that we could largely detach ourselves from the world and social media, to enjoy reading and playing music instead of being glued to screens. That’s why you’ve seen few blogs from me.

It worked a charm and helped make the holiday – as it actually felt like one. Neither of us had been to Rhodes before although I know Greece well, having spent a lot of time there in a previous life. I really enjoy the country for a variety of reasons. Partly because of its history and geography but also for the friendliness of the people. Oh, the sunshine helps too. Enjoying October days where it’s wall to wall sunshine with temperatures in the high 20s does make a difference to one’s mood! Of course, nowhere is perfect and the one thing I was disappointed to see was the way roadside litter has become a problem. Most of it seems to be due to plastic, especially plastic discarded from vehicles. Roadsides are strewn with empty water bottles and cans. It seems people can’t bear to keep waste inside their precious cars until they can dispose of it properly.

That aside, we really enjoyed our time exploring Rhodes or just relaxing by the hotel pool. Normally my travels are more about exploring rather than ‘chillin’ but both of us felt the need to do just that. It’s made being back in the UK harder as now we’ve got to ramp up into ‘normal’ life – juggling lots of different balls (and feeling the pressure). There’s also the added strain of coping with the economic shambles that the UK’s become thanks to the present Government. I’m having to get used to empty supermarket shelves, expensive items and constant price rises again. Today I popped into the local Lidl in Sowerby Bridge to buy a few tinned goods and a couple of bottles of beer. Before I left the beers were £1.09 each. Today they were £1.29 – an 18.3% increase. I noticed the same swinging increases on some staples in Tesco yesterday. I dread to think what I’d find if I compared many 2019 supermarket prices to those of today. It’s painful. Add in the effect of the disastrous economic policies of the short-lived Truss government and many people are faced with a financial shitstorm – even those who would once have considered themselves ‘comfortable’. God help those closer to the breadline.

I’ve tried to steer clear of political comments recently, mainly because the stream of invective I could type about the dogmatic and opportunistic shit-show that passes for the Conservative party nowadays would probably get me banned from WordPress! The Johnson government was bad enough, but the Truss administration, dominated as it was by the ideological headbangers of the Taxpayers Alliance, Institute of Economic Affairs and the other rabid occupants of 55 Tufton St – along with the party within a party who calls themselves the European Research Group took ‘shitshow’ to another level. The irony was, these ‘free marketeers’ were so ideologically hopeless it was the real markets that saw through them and their mad plans, leading to the collapse of ‘Trussonomics’ and the further weaking of the UKs economic credibility which had already been damaged by their last ‘big idea’ (and big lie) – Brexit.

Let’s not be under any illusions. The root of our political and economic problems lie with Brexit because it was Brexit that normalised lying on a vast scale. The promised ‘sunny uplands’ of Brexit were always a mirage and always unachievable. So, it’s supporters had to lie about them – and have never stopped lying since. Now lying has become second nature to them. Admittedly, to some of them (yes, you Boris Johnson) lying was always second nature! The depressing thing is how so many of those who were lied to still believe in the lies, despite all the evidence that’s come to light since.

And now we have yet another Prime Minister

Having failed to get elected just a few weeks earlier, Rishi Sunak has managed to make the grade, but hardly down to his own talents. He owes his position to the utter uselessness of Truss and the fact that egotistical bag of custard known as Johnson was so arrogant, he thought he could just swan back in and MPs would rush to welcome him back. He failed, so he lied – as he always does – pretending he’d reached the 100 MP threshold and was stepping back for the ‘good of the country’. The other candidate (Mordant) never stood a chance as the right of the party couldn’t agree who to support. So, Sunak got the job. Only now his troubles are just beginning.

In recent years the Tory party has been taken over by entryists from the far-right, from UKIP and groups like Britain First and the BNP, all of whom signed up as members (and boasted about it too). Johnson exacerbated this by throwing out of the party many old ‘one nation’ Tories like Ken Clarke. This means there’s a significant number of Tory members who will never support Sunak for one simple reason – the colour of his skin. Oh, they try and dress it up by pretending it’s because he ‘betrayed’ their blond-haired boy Johnson, but they’re letting their mask slip on social media. Here’s an example.

This guy spent all day spamming Twitter with the same message. The ‘come back Farage’ bit rather gives the game away too…

Meanwhile, Sunak’s not helping himself by his wooden performances at the lectern, his empty slogans – or his choice of appointees. In his speech he talked of ‘compassion’ and ‘integrity’ but as I write this I find he’s reappointed Suella Braverman as Home Secretary – a woman who hasn’t an ounce of compassion and who was sacked only a few days ago for breaching the Ministerial Code! Another dud is Dominic Raab, the intellectual powerhouse who never appreciated the importance of Dover to UK trade! Christ on a bike – Labour must be clapping their hands in glee at this! The next set of opinion polls could prove to be very interesting indeed…

Right, let’s move on from politics as I can see I’m going to be returning to this shit-show more often in future as I need to let off steam before I explode…

Now we’re back my nose is against the grindstone once more. I’ve not been blogging as I’ve been scribbling for a living. Part 1 of my round Britain trip for RAIL magazine will be published on the 1st November. I finished writing part 2 today, and hope to have part 3 submitted next week. In the meantime I’ve other jobs planned. Tomorrow evening I’m back on the road and heading to London as I’ll be visiting a High Speed 2 construction site early on Thursday morning, so expect a couple of rolling blogs as part of my travels. I’m looking forward to being able to blog again, it’s a form of catharsis for me and I hope it’s entertaining (and even informative) for you, dear readers.

So, until tomorrow I’ll leave you with a picture from our Greek travels. Like many Greek towns and villages the wonderful medieval town of Rhodes has its fair share of feral cats, which often pop up in the strangest of places. Here’s one, pretending to be a Gargoyle!

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Thank you!

5th October picture of the day…

05 Wednesday Oct 2022

Posted by in Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Travel

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I’ve spent another day marooned here at Bigland Towers, although to be honest – it’s been the right day to be stuck indoors as the weather’s been awful. We had rain throughout most of the day and some very heavy cloudbursts from pitch-black skies. Anyone would have thought the heavens knew Liz Truss was about to deliver her speech at the Tory party conference!

As I was slaving away in the office I thought I’d tune in, just to see how bad it was. I wasn’t disappointed. She was awful. Her first gaffe came in her opening paragraph when she praised Andy Street, the Tory “Mayor of Birmingham” – clearly unaware that Street is actually the Mayor of the West Midlands, not just Birmingham. It didn’t get any better. It was trite, nostalgic and cringeworthy, with constant references to the past – especially hers. She said that “I grew up in Paisley and in Leeds in the 80s and 90s. I have seen the boarded-up shops. I have seen people left with no hope turning to drugs. I have seen families struggling to put food on the table”. Amnesia has clearly kicked in as what she forgot to mention is who was in power between 1979 and 1997 – the years she’s speaking about? Oh, yes – the Tories!

This amnesia ran through her speech like the letters through a stick of rock. At one point she had the audacity to say “I believe in getting value for the taxpayer”. This from a woman who was in Johnson’s government, the same Government that wasted billions on dodgy PPE contracts dished out to its friends, and £37bn on a Covid ‘track and trace’ programme that was an abject failure!

She then took aim at something she dubbed the “anti-growth coalition” – whatever the hell that’s meant to mean – other than anyone who doesn’t agree with her mad economics! Soundbites were the only thing that weren’t in short supply in her speech. We were treated to bucketfuls. What we weren’t told was how she was going to make any of her economic fantasies come true. Needless to say, the markets weren’t impressed. By the time she’d finished speaking she’d managed to knock another point of the value of Sterling! Well, that’ll really help the economy grow!

The sooner her and the whole rotten bunch go the better. I’ll be very interested to see what the next batch of opinion polls come out at as I can’t see anyone but the most rabid Tory thinking this speech was a winner. Meanwhile, ordinary people will still be wondering what the hell’s going to happen to their mortgage payments, wages and the cost of living, because it’s clear Truss has no answers.

Having listened to this tripe I got on with the things I needed to do ready for heading off to Manchester tomorrow for the Community Rail Awards. I should have time for some blogging and pictures (even though I’ll be working) so expect some light relief from the Tory farce. I’m really looking forward to catching up with old friends on what’s always an enjoyable night. We’re staying overnight in Manchester before heading back on Friday, then the tempo changes as its…holiday time!

But, for now, here’s today’s picture. I’m slowly working my way through all the pictures from my recent travels in order to get them on my Zenfolio website. This is one of the most recent additions. Harwich port is hardly the most scenic of places, but the night I sailed there was a gorgeous sunset. So, here’s the Stena Britannica at Harwich a few hours before departure, seen from Harwich Town.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Thank you!

29th September picture of the day…

29 Thursday Sep 2022

Posted by in Architecture, Musings, Norfolk, Picture of the day, Politics, Travel

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There was no blog from me last night as the pair of us were having a convivial night round at the house of friends. Tonight, Dee’s out with friends whilst I’m ‘billy no mates’, sat at home working and trying to catch-up with writing and picture editing, along with a few household chores. Not that I’m complaining. After my time in Germany/Holland it’s nice to have some time not lugging a heavy camera bag around all day. Instead, I get to sit at home in the warm, do some work and observe (via the internet) the Truss government implode. Sadly, that’s not all that’s imploding, the FTSE100 and the currency are too. I always suspected Boris Johnson’s reputation of being the worst Prime Minister we’ve ever had was going to be short-lived, but I had little idea Truss would be so quick to steal that mantle. After all, she’s only been in the job for a few weeks! Today she gave a series of BBC local radio interviews which were excruciatingly painful as it was obvious how ill-prepared and wooden she was as she responded to some very pertinent and hardball questions – or rather, didn’t respond, as time and time again she came back to her script rather than answer the actual questions but doubled-down on her economic madness which immediately caused more damage to the pound and the stock market!

I’ve avoided talking much about politics recently, but the events of the past week have left me both angry and fearful as it painfully obvious the swivel-eyed loons of the libertarian right are in charge now and seen hell-bent on wrecking the country as they apply their economic theories, no matter what.

The result? A sense of disbelief across the country as this shitstorm is engulfing everyone. It may be dogmatic theory to Truss and her Tufton St cabal but ordinary people are genuinely worried about how they’re going to keep a roof over their head and feed themselves and their loved ones. Forget the lie that Truss told that no-one will pay more than £2,500 for heating bills this year. As many others have explained, either she doesn’t understand her own policy, or she just outright lied about it. Meanwhile, the very real threat of massive interest rate hikes could see many people losing their homes which is a far greater worry than paying to heat a house you no longer have.

The upshot of this is that the Tories are tanking in the opinion polls. One (YouGov) put Labour with an unheard-of lead of 33 points! Others had more modest but equally ‘wipe-out’ territory leads of 17-19 points. Next week’s Tory party conference is going to be a very ‘interesting’ event as many Tory MPs arses are going to be twitching like a bunny’s nose. They know they can’t depose another leader and get away with it, nor can they survive the levels of public outrage over her policies. All they can do is try and persuade her to change her mind (or what passes for one) but as she models herself on Thatcher the lady ‘who wasn’t for turning’, that’s going to be a massive challenge.

If it wasn’t so damned serious and affecting us all so badly I’d be happy to sit back with some popcorn and watch the Tory party tear itself apart. They’ve got themselves into the mess, sadly, the rest of the country will be collateral damage.

Right, enough for now. I’ve got to go back to writing for a living. So, here’s today’s picture which was taken on our recent Suffolk holiday but is with others in the queue for editing and adding to my Zenfolio website in the future. This is the rather elegant National Trust property called Blickling Hall.

I hate to think what their energy bills are going to be this winter…

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Thank you!

11th September picture of the day…

11 Sunday Sep 2022

Posted by in Musings, Picture of the day, Politics, Railways, Thailand, Travel

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Talk about life comes at you fast! There’s been no lazy Sunday here at Bigland Towers as the maelstrom of events in the real world have kept me occupied most of the day. Planning stuff at the moment is proving to be difficult due to what the late Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously replied to a question in an interview when asked about what would determine his governments course “Events, dear boy, events.”

I know exactly how he felt – although I’m not facing my own personal Suez crisis. Instead, I’m responding to the events of others. The death of the Queen is the one that’s having the biggest impact on my own life due to the way it’s affecting the rail industry. Outside of that I’m looking at worldwide events and the situation in the Ukraine where the Russian invaders are suffering a humiliating defeat right now. The Ukrainian offensive has recaptured 1000s of Kms of territory and inflicted a rout on the Russian army the likes of which haven’t been seen since the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1941 – but with one huge difference. Now the Russians are the aggressor. Twitter has proved to be invaluable when it comes to accurate and up to date information and accounts like ‘Ukraine Weapons Tracker’ @UAWeapons which documents losses on both sides is well worth following. My hope it that the Ukrainians continue to be supported by the West (including the UK) and that the Russian people begin to wake up from the fantasy they’ve been fed by their leader before more people on all sides have to die.

What I find fascinating about how the internet age and the way various social media platforms are disseminating (often real-time) experiences from the frontline is how it’s made control of the media impossible. In the Vietnam war the Americans learned how a free media was damaging their ability to control the narrative. The public swung against the war because of the scenes they were seeing played out on their TVs most nights. Both the British and the American governments learned from that in future conflicts by ’embedding’ journalists into military units as a way of controlling (and therefore censoring) their outputs. The internet age has destroyed that level of control. Now you can see cameraphone footage as it happens. Troops record and broadcast their experiences (even sometimes their last experiences). The genie is out of the bottle once more and the war in Ukraine is playing out in real-time in a way no other war has. Add in the drone footage of actual strikes and it’s a million miles away from grainy gun camera footage from world war 2 fighter planes.

Meanwhile, remember Covid? It’s still here – even if it’s no longer considered newsworthy. Thankfully, it’s on the decline worldwide, so I’m looking forward to being able resume my international travels soon. But before that I’ve an awful lot of pictures to edit and words to write – and events to attend if I possibly can.

Apropos of that, here’s today’s picture, which is another delve into my travel archives. Here’s a country I’m really looking forward to returning to – Thailand. It’s no paradise (where is?) as it has a military government, but the people are amazing, and the railway system is changing so much. This picture was taken at Hua Lamphong station in central Bangkok 10 years ago. Soon the station will be made redundant by a newer, vaster and more modern multi-level interchange at Bang Sue. It will be fit for the 21st century – but it won’t be the same…

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, 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 me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312

Thank you!

25th July picture of the day….

25 Monday Jul 2022

Posted by in Calder Valley, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, West Yorkshire

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I can’t quite believe the contrast in the weather up here in the Pennines. This time last week we were basking in a heatwave which saw the UK being scorched by record temperatures. Even the Calder valley made it up to 37 degrees. Now? It’s been raining most of the day (making that 6 days in a row) with the temperature never rising above the mid-teens. Bizarre…

I’m not knocking it as I’m going to be stuck at home for a few more days yet as I’ve loads of paperwork, picture editing and prepping to do. It would be nice to get out for a walk without getting wet but the forecast for much of the rest of the week is more of the same – bar Wednesday which just happens to coincide with the next rail strike. That means no trains through the Calder valley so I doubt I’ll be going anywhere sadly. I know other parts of the UK would be very jealous of our rainfall as they’re still experiencing a drought, so I’m not going to complain. I took a stroll through our local woods earlier. They looked very lush and far less stressed than they did this time last week. It was a pleasure to be wandering through them as they’re such a peaceful and beautiful part of where we live.

There’s no long blog form me tonight and I certainly won’t be commenting on the latest Tory Leadership debate as I haven’t watched it. I’d rather stick forks in my eyes to be honest. We’ll learn nothing. Besides we already know neither of them are fit for high office – much less the highest elected office in the land. Whatever the result, we’re doomed to mediocrity and incompetence until the next General Election. Oh, joy…

Instead, I’m going to leave you with the picture of the day which is from my woodland walk earlier today. Welcome to Scarr woods!

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