Whilst the HS2 Chiltern Tunnel Boring Machines continue their relentless progress North 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the contractors building the new railway continue to recruit more staff and expand work-sites up and down the route, the rump of the protest campaign against HS2 retreats more and more into the world of fantasy. It’s a bit like the historical occupant of a certain Berlin bunker moving around imaginary army divisions on a map. Reality isn’t allowed to intrude into their echo-chamber.
The latest example of this is the fact that Chris Packhams Parliamentary petition (which got stuck on a paltry 155,000 signatures) has been scheduled to be debated by the Petitions Committee on September 13th. Extinction Rebellion/HS2Rebellion have a grandiosely titled ‘Parliamentary Liaison Team’ (aka ‘one man and his dog’). Led by one Sebastian Sandys, a London based XR member. Now, you’d think that a good start for such a person would be to actually understand how Parliament works. But oh, no – this is the anti HS2 campaign! Here’s Sandy’s latest post on one of the campaign Facebook pages.
“Support repeal”? Really? This is an option? There’s going to be a debate in the chamber of the Commons at the end of which there will be a vote on whether to repeal the HS2 Hybrid Bill(s)?
No, it’s complete cobblers. It’s a fantasy, nothing more and it’s only going to end in tears as those opposed to HS2 are being led down the garden path by these ridiculous claims.
How so? Well, let’s have a look at the Petitioning Ctte itself and it’s rules and regulations. Here the ‘how petitions work’ page on their website, which says the following:
“7. At 100,000 signatures your petition on the UK Government and Parliament site will be considered for a debate in Parliament.”
All well and good, Packhams petition passed that hurdle. The vote’s on, isn’t it? MPs will soon be flooding in to the Commons to debate and repeal. Well, no – there’s more…
“Petitions can disagree with the Government and can ask for it to change its policies. Petitions can be critical of the UK Government or Parliament.”
Yeah, yeah – get on with it – and?
As usual, the devil’s in the detail – and the details can be found on this page entitled ‘actions on petitions’ which says…
“”The Committee can schedule debates on petitions in Westminster Hall on Mondays from 4.30pm (for up to 3 hours). Petition debates are general debates about the issues raised by the petition. This means that the debates cannot directly change the law or result in a vote to implement the request of the petition. If your petition is debated, it means that MPs can discuss your petition, ask questions about the Government’s position on the issue, or press the Government to take action. A Government Minister takes part in the debate and answers the points raised.”
Wait? What? The debate’s in Westminster Hall? That’s not the floor of the house of Commons! and what’s this about the debate can’t ‘change the law’ (the HS2 Hybrid bills are law) or result in a vote? There’s no vote?
No. HS2 antis have been completely conned. Here’s how Packham’s petition was worded.
Put simply, it was an impossible ask because (as usual) Packham hadn’t done his homework and understood what these petitions can and can’t do. So, on the 13th September there will be a nice little talking shop in Westminster Hall that will be attended by a handful of MPs enjoying tea and biscuits, debating HS2 for a few hours, and at the end of – absolutely nothing will have changed!
Sandys *should* know this. So, either he doesn’t know so is accidentally leading people up the garden path, or he does know this and is deliberately leading people up the garden path! Either way, there’s going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth from HS2 protesters who’ve been misled into thinking there’s going to be a vote to repeal the HS2 Hybrid Bills on the 13th. All those people who’ve been persuaded to write to their MPs have wasted their time, but no change there then.
Did anyone seriously think any Government (of any political persuasion) would set up a system where laws passed by Parliament as part of Government policy could be repealed by a bunch of back-bench MPs in a Committee room on the back of the results of an e-petition? Talk about away with the fairies!
Order some popcorn, because I suspect there’s going to be some interesting comments posted on the various anti HS2 groups Facebook pages when folks realise the false hopes they’ve been fed by the likes of Sandys, XR and Hs2rebellion have been dashed – yet again…
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Every so often Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins bile duct overflows and he releases a torrent of vituperative and bombastic nonsense about the HS2 rail project. He’s been doing this on a regular basis for years now. The fact he’s always proved spectacularly wrong and fact-free never stops him as the man clearly believes his own myths and is unashamed by the fact his fictional tirades never age well.
Crewe based blogger Tim Fenton has punctured Jenkins hot air balloon several times in the past. Notably here in 2014 and here in 2015. Sadly, the fact nowadays he’s in the fairy story business rather than real Journalism hasn’t stopped the Guardian publishing him. I’m assuming their Editor no longer cares about trivial things like facts and the truth as clicks are more important. The rubbish Jenkins writes are good enough to generate those as his rants against HS2 are guaranteed to be shared by the projects opponents – even ones whom aren’t natural Guardian readers! It’s a win for the Grauniad and a loss for those who like decent, factual journalism, analysis – and the truth.
Let’s have a look at Jenkins latest fact-free farrago shall we? I’d suggest wearing a peg on your nose whilst doing it as the smell of bullshit is overpowering. It’s entitled “Depleted and unwanted, HS2 hurtles on as Johnson’s £100bn vanity project” – which is a good start as that’s three untruths in the headline and we haven’t even got to the article yet! The first paragraph is no better…
“Britain’s new high-speed railway will not – repeat: not – get to the north of England. It will go back and forth from London to the Midlands and its chief beneficiaries will be London commuters. All else is political spin”
Really? Jenkins seems unaware that contracts for building HS2 Phase 2a from Birmingham to Crewe have already been let. Contractors have already started on preparatory work as Phase 2a gained Royal Assent on the 11th February 2021 after flying through both Houses of Parliament with a huge majority – just as Phase 1 did. Now, what was that about “unwanted”? HS2 has always commanded huge-cross party political support. So much so that the handful of opponents in the Lords didn’t even bother calling for a vote on the Phase 2a bill as they knew they were completely outnumbered.
Oh, and “London Commuters”? Hs2 is a long-distance railway. Like all other long-distance railways that means the vast majority of passengers will be leisure travellers, NOT commuters. The HS2 business case is based on 70% of travellers doing so for leisure. How can that be predicted? Easy, because we know who uses the existing Long-Distance services.
Meanwhile, Jenkins continues to dig a hole…
“This became certain last week as the government’s internal major projects authority declared phase two of the HS2 project, to Manchester and Leeds, effectively dead. While the already-started London-to-Birmingham stretch is still marked at “amber/red” for “successful delivery in doubt”, anything north of Crewe has been designated “unachievable”.
This is complete cobblers of course and will come as real news to people on the leg from Crewe to Manchester (and HS2 Ltd themselves) as the Government announced the timetable for the Phase 2b leg in the Queens Speech at the state opening of Parliament. The bill will be deposited in Parliament next year.
As for this amber/red and ‘unachievable’ nonsense, this is Jenkins failing to understand what the ratings (given by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority) actually mean. For example, we have two ‘unachievable’ Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers floating around right now that the IPA rated red. Oh, and the new Intercity Express Programme (IEP) trains built by Hitachi that are ploughing up and down the East Coast and Great Western main lines? They were rated ‘unachievable’ as well.
What’s next? Oh yes,
“Since HS2 has always been politics-driven – no rail strategy ever gave it priority”
This is more complete bollocks. The origins of HS2 are in several studies looking at the needs for future rail capacity that were carried out by the likes of Network Rail. In fact, it was this study. “Meeting the capacity challenge: The case for new lines” which was published by NR in 2009 that was the basis for HS2. It was the rail industry who established the need for HS2, not politicians.
Next?
“The only way of conveying the scale of Johnson’s vanity in this vanity project is to convey its opportunity cost, a projected £106bn (and rising) over 20 years.”
More cobblers. The cost of HS2 is not a ‘projected’ £106bn. Yet again Jenkins resorts to fiction as he’s just too idle and sure of himself to fact check but he’s not alone in filching figures from others without checking so I’ll cut him some slack. This number has been bandied around an awful lot in the media. That’s because the media is so incestuous as well as lazy. Nicking other people’s copy is endemic. It’s like Chinese whispers and ‘send three and fourpence, the General’s going to a dance’, an error’s circulated, magnified and becomes a ‘fact’. It’s claimed the £106bn is an ‘official’ figure because it was in the Oakervee Review of HS2. There’s just one teeny problem – the actual figure (£106.6bn) was mentioned in the review so that Oakervee could specifically dismiss it! Here’s a link to the Oakervee review. Here’s what Oakervee actually said.
Here’s what Oakervee ‘really’ said about the costs (there’s a range, not a single figure).
So, £80.7 – 87-7bn. Not figures you’ll see the press using as it’s not a single number that’s scary enough!
Jenkins then goes into the standard economic illiteracy about what spending funds for HS2 could do for the NHS, neatly showing he doesn’t understand the fact there’s no pot of money sat in the Treasury labelled ‘For HS2’ that’s waiting to rebadged, that he doesn’t know the difference between operational expenditure and capital expenditure, and thirdly, that Hs2’s funded by borrowing, not taxation. I’ve covered all those points in this blog in the past.
Continuing with his nonsensical claims, Jenkins than says;
“This one train line will consume the equivalent of Britain’s entire projected railway investment budget during its two decades of construction. Even the initial phase to Birmingham, at roughly £70bn, is twice the £40bn cost of the “northern powerhouse” rail system”
Firstly, Phase 1 is budgeted at £40-43bn (see above) £70bn is a number Jenkins has invented. Secondly, No-one knows that the UKs projected rail budget is for the next 20 years as it’s not set that far in advance. Network Rail’s budget is set in 5 year periods, known as ‘Control Periods’. The current one (CP6) runs from 2019-2024. That was set at 47bn. Of course the line between maintenance and ‘investment’ is blurred. For example, is replacing life-expired signalling with an upgraded system maintenance or investment? Here’s a link to the Department of transport’s budget 2019-2020. It makes it clear that the amount spent on Hs2 is dwarfed by what’s spent on the existing national rail network.
Oh, and that doesn’t include what others (like the Welsh and Scottish Governments, or train builders) invest in the railways either. Jenkin’s claim is simply more spherical objects..
Jenkin’s diatribe of nonsense continues with this tosh.
“Meanwhile arguments continue over the trains themselves. They are not planned to tilt, which means that any time saved on a new track to Birmingham will be lost on winding track further north. A re-signalled King’s Cross line could even get to Scotland faster. HS2 is more a taxpayer-funded theme park ride”.
*Sigh*. Where to start on this rubbish? 1. HS2’s already being built North of Birmingham to Crewe. 2. The trains don’t need to tilt to keep time as the new Hitachi Class 802s operated by Transpennine Express have already proved, (technology has moved on) plus Network Rail are proposing some track upgrades on the route to Scotland anyway. 3. Re-signalling The East Coast won’t speed it up in any meaningful way as you’d need to close all the level and foot crossings which would cost a fortune and you still wouldn’t get HS2 speed – plus – you’d devastate capacity on the route by running faster trains! This crucial factor is missed by armchair experts like Jenkins. Speed up trains on the existing main lines which are already overflowing with services and you reduce capacity as slower trains have to be ditched from the timetable to leave room for the faster ones. It’s the raison d’être for HS2, by removing those non-stop high-speed services you free up large chunks of capacity on the existing network. Jenkins ignores that crucial point because it doesn’t fit his narrative. As for the final tosh about ‘taxpayer funded’ – we’ve been over this until we’re blue in the face. HS2 is funded by borrowing against future GDP increases, not taxation!
Jenkin’s continues with his ‘vanity project’ tosh with this statement;
“What is intriguing is how HS2 has mutated from from a transport project to political machismo – “infrastructure” that is good in itself.”
Trying to label HS2 as a ‘Johnson’ project simply won’t wash – because by the time HS2 opens Johnson (hopefully) will be long gone. HS2’s been in development for over 11 years. In that time we’ve had Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Teresa May and Boris Johnson premierships. The project was kicked off by a Labour Government, taken forward by a Coalition Government and now construction’s started under a Tory Government. It’s hard to think of many schemes as apolitical as HS2. By the time the whole project’s completed that will be nearer 25 years. Who know who’ll be the Prime Minister cutting the tape when the first phase opens in 2029!
Jenkin’s final canard is this, the old “Hs2 is stealing your investment money”
“(Andy Burnham) will now find Birmingham blessed with cash that might have renovated his dire northern powerhouse rail network three times over – money he may now never see”
Playing regional mayors off against each other I see. It won’t wash. That money comes from Whitehall anyway. They make the investment choices as funding powers and budgets haven’t been devolved by the Government – much to the North’s annoyance – and that’s not exclusively to do with Burnham either. The Government set up Transport for the North but didn’t give it control of its budget. This is a Government decision but it’s nothing to do with HS2 which has a separate funding stream. Still, facts eh? You’ll never get ’em from Jenkins!
No doubt Jenkins latest pile of cobblers will keep the Grauniad happy as it’s done it’s job creating clicks and comments. It won’t stop HS2 in the slightest of course, the only effect it will have in the long term is to continue the downwards trajectory of the reputation of English journalism. Next time you see a Jenkins article on HS2, save yourself some time and file it straight in the bin…
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Personally, I preferred the Eurhythmics version myself, but I have to admit the latest caterwauling from the opponents of HS2 in the form of the self-appointed ‘tree-protectors’ who’ve wasted so much time and money getting nowhere when it comes to stopping HS2 is actually quite revealing. This long thread (featuring all the usual suspects) has appeared on the ‘stopHs2’ Facebook page!
It seems that little old me has upset them again and the mask of them being ‘peaceful’ and non-violent’ has well and truly slipped!
I applied to join one of their groups to post a riposte to this abject load of nonsense I blogged about a couple of days ago. I didn’t hide who I was as I thought the reaction might be interesting. After all, they believe in ‘free speech’, don’t they? Obviously not – and a lot more besides. Go get some popcorn before you start reading…
My, what nice people! Oh, but wait, it gets better…For clarification, ‘Carl Woods’ is the pseudonym of one Caroline Thompson Smith, who’s from Steeple Claydon. I’ve blogged about her before, here and here aanndd… here! Caroline has appeared to have deleted her own Facebook account to use the fake one instead. Still, she sounds like a nice woman when she thinks she’s amongst friends and she’s not being all smarmy to HS2 staff in her livestreams, doesn’t she?
Brent Poland is the serially failed Green Party candidate whom I’ve blogged about here. The remarks from Mark Keir (another serially failed Green Party candidate) look curious. “Delete” me? What can he possibly mean? Take a look at this (expanded) explanation. “I want HIM deleted”.
My, that’s very peaceful and non-violent, isn’t it? Mark Keir is one of the leading lights (that’s not saying much: Ed) of the HS2 ‘rebellion’ who’s spent several years lying about HS2, most famously claiming he watched the tree that inspired Roald Dahl to write ‘Fantastic Mr Fox’ actually being cut down by HS2 contractors in Jones’ Hill Woods. It was complete cobblers of course, as I revealed in this blog.
Keir has a habit of being very abusive to HS2 staff on camera, then acting all aggrieved if anyone ever answers back. Meanwhile, back at that thread it seems they also want to burn me…
And there’s more…
You have to laugh at them moaning about ‘shutting down opposition’ whilst they’re all saying the opposition to them (me) should be shut down (permanently, according to Keir)! Hypocritical, much? But that’s the protesters for you – free speech only applies to them, apparently…
What a nice bunch of people they sound! Remember that next time you hear someone wanting to donate money to this bunch of anarchists and fantasists, because all they’re doing is harm. Harm to the woods they’re supposedly protecting, and harm to the HS2 contactors who’re merely going about their jobs. They have a habit of stirring up hate wherever they go and this shows what’s beneath the mask they try and wear. Now that their campaign’s collapsed that mask gets dropped more and more often. Soon they’ll be scattered to the four winds – and good riddance…
UPDATE. 1st August.
Some more ‘nice’ people popped in to add their pennorth and support freedom of information and the right to free speech, or not…
They really don’t seem to able to put down that shovel. Here are the latest diatribes from these lovely people! With such erudition and ambition, how could they possibly have failed so dismally to stop HS2?
UPDATE: 2nd August.
Meanwhile, the fantasies and accusations get even more bizarre from these ‘freedom of speech’ loving people! I do chuckle at the ‘accusation’ – otherwise known as ‘let’s just make stuff up’! Plus, what an utterly bizarre accusation Keir’s dreamt up but then the poor chap’s always had a vivid imagination as well as a tenuous grasp on reality!
UPDATE. 7th August 2021.
Talking of ‘non-violent’. I see one of the ‘non-violent’ protesters from Jones’ Hill Woods has been up in court this week. The Bucks Free Press reported that Ross Monaghan, 38, assaulted two HS2 security guards and damaged fences at the ancient woodland site between November last year and February this year. Monaghan was found guilty of two counts of assault and four counts of criminal damage. He was ordered to pay £775 in costs and £50 to each of the guards he assaulted. I believe Monaghan still has other court cases pending…
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With the collapse of the anti HS2 ‘protection’ camps and protest on the ground, the shambolic remnants of their campaign (and I use that word loosely) spend more and more of the little time they have trying to shore-up their social media efforts to oppose HS2. Like the folks on the ground, this has mostly evaporated as the young people recruited via Extinction Rebellion who made up the bulk of it have (like many young people) short attention-spans. Most have already moved on to whatever lost cause is the latest ‘thing’. What’s left are retreating into an increasingly out of touch world which makes me wonder what some of them have been smoking/ingesting. Here’s an absolute classic of that genre!
Step forward ‘Tellheed Green’, yet another anonymous person supposedly based in London who’s just churned out this rebranded poster and posted it on the Facebook page of the Bluebell woods ‘protection’ camp. I’ve no idea who did the original artwork or where it’s been pinched from, but ‘Green’ has stuck a ‘stop HS2’ logo on it to turn it into something that’s truly ‘through the looking glass’!
Oil companies want HS2? HS2 is a carbon-neutral, electrically powered railway that will get people out of planes and cars to provide a real alternative to fossil fuel use and allow us to wean ourselves off them. Oil companies hate it! It’s the antithesis of everything Shell, Exxon and the others want! This is so bonkers it’s beyond words, yet it’s lapped up by some stophs2 supporters who’ve shared it dozens of times, or left comments like this:
Of course, the fossil fuel companies and their supporters like the Taxpayers Alliance and others must be absolutely p*ssing themselves laughing at this weapons-grade stupidity. The UK ‘green’ movement has swallowed their propaganda hook, line and sinker in order to oppose a carbon-neutral, green railway. The irony? Not one of these supposed ‘environmentalists’ has stopped, looked at this, engaged a brain cell and spoke up to say “Hey, guys? Just stop and think about this for a minute”? Their campaign is so intellectually bereft and bankrupt this stuff gets shared without any thought or question. You genuinely couldn’t make this stuff up. Well, unless you’re the likes of @hs2rebellion and it’s supporters, obviously.
And you wonder why I argue that the UK ‘green’ movement’s completely unfit for purpose? I wonder what madness they’ll come up with next?
UPDATE.
Thanks to a tip-off from Pete Johnson (@pedrojuk) on Twitter I now have the source of the original artwork which was stolen for this. Needless to say the original by Namaya Productions carried a very different message.
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This is not exactly a two-pipe problem, it’s pretty easy to guess what’s causing this, although some people will do their damndest to pretend otherwise. It’s all about Covid, apparently…
Really? Well, Covid is a global pandemic that’s hit the entire planet, so surely, other countries must be suffering the same problem, no? Here’s a few shots I took at my local Tesco supermarket today. This is a Sunday morning. The shops had all night and until 10:00 to restock and replenish before opening its doors to the public. I took the pictures at 11:50 when the place had been open for less than two hours. One of the things I was shopping for was Strawberries. Here’s where they should be. These shelves have been empty for a couple of days. The surrounding soft fruit shelves aren’t much better.
Here’s where the Tomatoes are normally on display. Spot the gaps…
Salad veg stocks weren’t looking much better either…
Good job I wasn’t after any Satsumas…
It’s not just fruit and veg either. Here’s the meat isle. Notice the gaps and low stocks.
If you wanted to drown your sorrows you’d have to be a lot more selective…
This shot tells another tale. The top self is where reserve stocks are kept that allow the shelves below to be restocked during opening hours, so that the isles can be kept free of shelf-stacking trollies. These shelves would normally be refilled every night.
This isn’t an isolated phenomenon or restricted to any one supermarket chain. I’ve just spent a week down in Surrey where we had to shop between different supermarkets because the large Sainsbury’s in Farnham looked very much like Tesco in Halifax. I’ve seen this in other towns and Cities I’ve visited too.
We’re now in the 17th month since the Covid pandemic triggered the first lockdown. Yet, in that first year during the first lockdown the only empty shelves I remember seeing in supermarkets were due to people panic buying stuff like toilet roll, pasta and hand sanitizer. Everything else was well stocked throughout, with the occasional product gap. Those shortages were soon sorted as panic buying subsided and suppliers stepped up production. This begs the question, if Covid is the culprit here, why now and not then? Why did shops manage to maintain stocks at the height of the pandemic, but not now, when tomorrow we hit the Government’s much trumpeted ‘freedom day’ and many restrictions are binned? Will we suddenly see these problems evaporate? I’ll be keeping an eye out on supermarket selves to bring photographic evidence.
Another thing we’re being told is that part of the reason for the shortage is that the existing lorry driver shortage has been made worse by the fact potential new drivers are struggling to book tests. Really? So why has this become a problem now, after 17 months of restrictions? What else had changed this year that didn’t have an impact last year? This BBC article gives a clue…
“Based on a survey of its members, the Road Haulage Association estimates there is now a shortage of more than 100,000 drivers in the UK, out of a pre-pandemic total of about 600,000.
That number included tens of thousands of drivers from EU member states who were living and working in the UK.
Even before Covid, the estimated shortage was about 60,000 drivers”.
So, even if Covid hadn’t restricted driver training, there’d still be a shortage of HGV drivers because of – Brexit. The Road Haulage Association lists Covid 19 as No 6 on their list of reasons for the driver shortage. Brexit is No 2 after drivers retiring.
Oh, and don’t forget those drivers are now taking far longer to deliver produce from outside the UK because we’ve now declared customs sanctions on ourselves which means drivers spend far longer dealing with forms and other red tape. And I’m not even going to ask how much of the UK fresh produce is unavailable because the EU citizens who used to come to the UK in their 10s of 1000s to pluck and pack it are no longer here…
Now, what was it Brexiters like David Davis once said? Oh, yes…
They lied to you. They’re still lying to you. Remember that next time you go shopping and see empty shelves like this, because you won’t see them in any EU country – despite Covid.
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Over the past few weeks I’ve been privileged to visit two of the major High Speed 2 railway construction sites. Firstly the one at Calvert, Buckinghamshire on the 23rd June where HS2 will cross the rebuilt East-West Railway, then the site at West Hyde in Hertfordshire on the 13th July where the Chiltern tunnels are being driven North whilst the Colne valley viaduct will be built Southwards. My article on the Calvert site will be appearing in a future edition of RAIL magazine but I’ll be blogging at length about my visit to West Hyde next week. Both visits demonstrate how construction of the new railway is ramping up massively now that contractors have finally been able to mobilise and begin the main civil engineering. This process will really more obvious next year when the Colne valley viaduct starts to span the lakes as you can’t see the tunneling and many cuttings that are being constructed are below peoples line of sight, so out of view – especially as they’re tucked away in the countryside. It’s the bridges and stations that are the most visible signs of progress. I’ve now got most of the pictures I’ve taken during my visits online. You can find them in this gallery on my Zenfolio website.
Over the the next few months I’ll be visiting other HS2 construction site to bring you views and in-depth news of what’s actually going on with the largest construction project in Europe. As well as the engineering I’ll be talking a look at some of the ecological and mitigation work that’s being carried out to make this the greenest project of its kind.
What you’ll be hearing less and less about is the protests against HS2, becuase they’ve collapsed.
Having reached their height last summer they’ve been gradually fizzling out ever since. The Euston Gardens tunnel eviction early this year was their most public failure, but there’s been many since. Now, even their umbrella group – HS2Rebellion – are tacitly admitting that the protests asre on the wane. Yesterday they announced that after 38 issues their weekly (no)newsletter is going from weekly to fortnightly!
Mind you, its appearence has beeb patchy for some months due to a lack of anything to report. Deserted ‘protection’ camps don’t produce anything so they’ve filled space by talking about other political campaigns. Here’s a look at their probel. These are the ‘protection’ camps they list on their website with my annotations to reflect the true picture that HS2Rebellion aren’t admitting.
Hardly what you’d call an active campaign, is it? The handful of people left at the camps are in no position to mount any coherent actions against HS2, most of their time seems to be spent getting splinters in their backsides whilst appealling for funds to keep them in food. Even their social media activity’s dropping away as the mostly young people involved lose interest and find other things to get outraged about. When you consider the summer is meant to be the height of the activist season it’s clear they’re a busted flush now.
Come the autumn when it’s clear they’ve failed to ‘protect’ anything, much less actually stop HS2 I’m expecting the last few camps on Phase 1 to pack up and the people involved either drift off to other campaigns or try to set up new camps on Phase 2a. But they have several problems. Their support up North is nowhere near as strong or well-established as it was in the Chilterns, the weather’s harsher in the winter and they’re going to be waiting until Spring 2024 before the main civils work starts on phase 2a. That’s three winters away. Care to take bets on how many people are willing or able to sit around for that length of time – even if they’re not evicted first? So, as you can see, this is going to be the final year of any organised (and I use that term very loosly) campaign against HS2, which leaves me free to write about other things. No doubt I’ll still keep a watchful eye on the rump of their campaign as it continues to sink but I’m looking forward to writing future blogs on the positive events going on with the HS2 project.
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After 8 days of walking from Lichfield to Wigan @hs2rebellion’s ‘Truth Trail’ ended like a damp squib in Wigan this afternoon – as it was always going to. Despite getting some support from local Extinction Rebellion groups it was painfully obvious this was a tiny band of people talking to themselves. Most days the march only had a couple of dozen people on it – and the vast majority of them were the usual suspects.
A smattering of Nimbys from the HS2 Phase 1 route in Buckinghamshire, plus many faces stripped from the deserted ‘protection’ camps in the same area. They were sometimes joined by a few local Nimbys, but therein lies their problem. The old StopHs2 ‘action’ group network has collapsed, not that it was ever very strong on the Lichfield – Manchester leg of HS2 anyway. There were never more than half a dozen (all rural) groups and none in any of the towns and cities on the route like Stafford, Crewe, Wigan or Manchester. Most people gave up years ago and have moved on, metaphorically or literally – especially as the phase 2a Hybrid Bill became law and the early stages of constructing the line as far as Crewe have begun.
There’s also another problem. There’s no political appetite to stop HS2 in the North-West. Exactly the opposite. A few local MPs sometimes make noises about HS2 but no-one pretends they can stop it. Instead, the project enjoys huge support at all levels, from Parliament, the city regions elected Mayors and regional authorities. Why they chose to end up in Wigan rather than Manchester is another mystery. I doubt any of them have ever been near the place before and certainly won’t know anything about the town or its people. Still, I’m sure the posh Southern accents of the Buckinghamshire Nimbys will have carried great weight in ‘Wiggin’!
So this ‘travesty of the truth trail’ was always doomed to failure. Even the media ignored it apart from a couple of local news websites. After all, where’s the news? “A few southern Nimbys, anarchists and hippies march to the North to tell it what’s good for it” is hardly a good story, is it? The well-known Crewe based political blogger Tim Fenton (aka @zelo_street) had this to say on Twitter.
Here’s illustrations of today’s fiasco taken from the HS2rebellion Facebook page.
This is serially failed Green party Candidate for Uxbridge and former resident of Jones’ Hill Woods (where he failed to stop HS2 yet again) Mark Kier addressing the tiny crowd of Extinction Rebellion members and marchers in Wigan. Yep, the only speaker they had actually lives in West London! I’m sure the good folk of Wigan must have been impressed. Well, maybe if any of them had turned out that is…
Here’s a look at the ‘crowd’ he was addressing.
If you want to hear just how deluded and mixed-up the messaging from these people are (and you’re on Facebook) you can hear the speeches on this link. The levels of naivety and denial of political reality is weapons-grade. This is worthy of the Flat-Earth Society!
Not exactly what you’d call a cross-section of the local community either, is it? This is really just a bunch of XR supporters talking to themselves. Despite the big billing they gave this event, the almost non-existant support it gained from ordinary people says everything – as does the lack of money it’s raised. They set up a crowdfunder with the target of £3000. It’s not even managed to get half of that. Clearly, real Northerners are more careful with their brass!
If this was meant to ‘reinvigorate’ the anti HS2 campaign in the North, then someone really didn’t do their homework! Meanwhile, in the Chilterns the second of 10 HS2 tunnel boring machines started drilling this week…
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Just when I think those ‘environmentalists’ protesting against the High Speed 2 railway couldn’t get any more hypocritical or be more out of touch with reality, they say ‘hold my beer’ and come out with another absolute stunner. In the latest case it’s this weapons-grade hypocrisy from HS2Rebellion, whose ‘truth trail’ march to Wigan isn’t exactly setting the media channels alight. Hardly surprising as a couple of dozen people traipsing from Lichfield to Wigan is hardly ‘news’.
This is more Monty Python and the Holy Grail than Lord of the Rings!
So, HS2Rebellion have been desperately trying to find other stuff to fill their social media with and hit upon this, a screenshot of the new but failing right-wing ‘news’ channel GBNews (or ‘gammon news’ as it’s become known as), featuring – the Taxpayers Alliance!
Yes, HS2Rebellion are now endorsing and advertising the TPA and their low tax agenda! The secretive TPA, that refuses to admit who funds it, is one of a cabal of organisations operating out of 55 Tufton St in London. It includes the equally right wing and secretive Institute of Economic Affairs and also Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by former chancellor Nigel Lawson – one of a network of organisations spreading misinformation about and denying the existance of Global Warming.
Seriously, you couldn’t get stranger bedfellows than HS2Rebellion and the TPA. I can only assume the middle-class kids behind HS2rebellion haven’t got a clue who the TPA are!
They might want to do a little research and reading, like this;
That groups like HS2Rebellion are pushing the same right-wing agenda that says we need to cut public spending is utterly bizarre. Do they honestly think tackling Climate Change can be done on the cheap? That’s a rhetorical question as I don’t see much thinking being done by them on anything serious. The sooner these faux ‘green’ groups collapse the better as they do nothing but trash (in more ways than one) the reputation of the real environmental movement. Thankfully, they’ve been utterly useless when it comes to stopping HS2 and will remain that way. I just wish some of the gullible but well-meaning people who keep funding them would realise just what they really are throwing their money away on – a dubious bunch of anarchists and hard-left political dogmatists with an agenda that has nothing to do with the environment.
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I woke up this morning to the news that the Lib-Dems had pulled off what many thought improbable if not impossible and taken the safe Tory seat of Amersham and Chesham in a by-election. Here’s a breakdown of the result c/o Wikipedia
It’s an impressive result, especially when you consider this has been a safe Tory seat since it was established in 1974.
As usual, we’re seeing all sorts of claims about why this has happened. Many are trying to blame it on purely local issues like HS2 and the proposed reform of planning regulations. Good old Nimbyism in other words! What none of these commentators can explain is – if HS2 really was the issue, why now? The project has been around since 2009 and never lost the Tories the seat, even when UKIP were around and stood on an anti HS2 platform. Take a look at the 2017 general election results, the last time UKIP stood. Despite HS2 having gained Royal Assent earlier that year, UKIP’s share of the vote collapsed. They went from 2nd place in 2015 with 7218 votes down to 1525, a fall of just under 79%. In fact, the swing that year was from the Tories to Labour (who also endorsed HS2).
Now HS2’s being built, construction’s well under way so the time to try and stop it is long gone. So *why* would it cause such a political upset now when it never has before – even when the 2nd placed party opposed it in 2015? Why would people who, if they wanted to send a political message about HS2, wait 11 years to send said message? Why wait until the project’s gone from the drawing board, all the way through Parliament via two Governments to actual construction? Talk about shutting the stable door! This is why the idea simply isn’t credible.
Also, whilst the 2021 winner (Sarah Green) may have made anti HS2 noises her party nationally backs the project – as can be seen from this – which is pretty plain.
In fact, the only party of any national standing in this by-election that actually opposed HS2 is the Green party. Their candidate (Caorlyne Culver) ran a vehemently anti HS2 campaign where it was literally all she talked about! Imagine, a ‘green’ who didn’t once mention Climate Change in her campaign and focussed exclusively on local Nimby issues. That must have worked, right? Wrong.
The Greens share of the vote dropped by 1.6%, but that doesn’t tell the full story. When Alan Booth stood for the Greens in the 2019 general election he collected 3042 votes and increased the greens share from 3% to 5.5%
Culver only managed to attract 1,480 votes, a fall of over 51% on their 2019 result. Yet HS2 is meant to be the issue that ‘swung’ it for the Lib-Dems? Of course, blaming HS2 is a convenient smokescreen for some people. It’s noticeable that so many right-wingers are doing exactly that as a ‘look over there’ tactic to avoid talking about what’s likely to be a much more important issue – Brexit and the shambolic performance of the Government on a range of of issues, including Covid and the economy. Plus, blaming HS2 fits their narrative. The right have always despised the project as it’s public infrastructure, hence the likes of the Taxpayers Alliance and IEA always banging on about it. Both big Brexit supporters, you can see why they find it convenient to use HS2 to say ‘look over there’. You can see this phenomenon most on Twitter, where anonymous ‘flag-shagger’ accounts like this one who retweet the likes of John Redwood and the ‘Guido’ website have gone into overdrive.
Also, let’s not forget the fact Chesham and Amersham voted Remain in the 2016 referendum.
There’s clearly other issues at play here other than HS2 but no-one wants to talk about them. There’s obviously been a strong ‘get the Tories out’ movement here as people are disatisfied with Boris Johnson’s government. Look at the actual turnout, which is down by nearly a quarter. Many Tories have obviously decided to stay at home. Plus, look at the collapse of the Labour vote, down by 11.2%, how many Labour voters have decided to vote tactically – and not because of HS2 either!
There’s another clue that the issue of HS2 has been exaggerated thanks to a petition on the Government website that (co-incidentally) closed after 6 months on polling day in Chesham. Started by celebrity petrolhead and car advertiser (don’t you mean ‘environmentalist’? Ed) Chris Packham and backed by the Green Party, Extinction Rebellion and a rag-bag of political interests from left and right, it managed a measly 155,000 signatures UK-wide. To put that into perspective 2.6 million live in constituencies affected by HS2. So, how many signed in Amersham? Actually, it got the best result of anywhere in the UK, but that’s nothing to crow about! Just 4.05% of C&A’s 96046 constituents signed it in 6 months. Which means 96% couldn’t be bothered. Yet (supposedly) they could be bothered to change their long held political allegiences for the very first time in yesterday’s by-election. I smell bovine excrement…
No doubt certain people will continue to try and blame HS2 as a way of ignoring the real reasons people have elected the Lib-Dems and HS2 opponents are already trying to pretend this has strengthened their campaign. Really? How? CCHQ already know there are other far more real issues at play here across the Tory Shires, hence their increasing nervousness – and HS2 only affects a small number of constituencies. In May the Independent published this well-informed article about the Lib-Dems election chaces. Written by Andrew Woodcock it never even mentions HS2 as an issue, pointing out that there are far more important things in play.
As for the Green party, this was an awful result for them. They let their candidate run an appallingly dishonest and parochial campaign (see this blog). If HS2 was such a big thing, they should have increased their vote, instead they did the opposite. Their big question now is will they learn from their mistake – doubtful as they refuse to listen to anyone but themselves. As of Friday night the Chiltern Green party still couldn’t bring itself to update their website or Facebook account to even mention the result! It’s like it never happened!
No doubt the ructions of this result will continue to echo around for days as many people try to put their spin on it. The Psephologists will be going into a frenzy of speculation over what it means for the Government, the opposition and maybe even HS2.
What won’t happen is HS2 being cancelled, despite the extravagent claims. In the meantime, go get some popcorn and enjoy the media fun!
Next week I’ll be blogging from the Calvert area as I’ll be on an HS2 site visit, showing you what’s really happening on the ground, away from the rarified atmosphere of political punditry and daft claims.
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Over the past few years I’ve become increasingly cynical about the ‘green’ credentials of the Green Party of England and Wales (please note, the Scottish Green party is a seperate entity and a very different kettle of fish, they’re actually sensible!) mainly because I had to study their policies on transport, rail privatisation and High-Speed 2 way back in 2015. Everything I’ve experienced since has made me even more cynical. Frankly, as a ‘green’ party, they’re not fit for purpose. They’re little more than a posturing protest group where dogmatism is allowed to override science and facts.
The latest example of this is the antics of their candidate for the Chesham and Amersham by-election on June 17th. The local ‘green’ party chose one Carolyne Culver who is currently the leader of the ‘Green’ group on West Berkshire council.
The by-election was called following the death of the sitting Conservative MP, Dame Cheryl Gillan, who passed away on the 4th April 2021. Gillan was a Brexit supporter and opposer of the High Speed 2 railway which passes through the constituency.
The ‘Greens’ have decided that the ‘cunning plan’ of their campaign in Amersham and Chesham will be to base it around a single issue (opposition to HS2) in the hope of attracting the ‘Nimby’ vote. To that end Culver is running one of the most cynical and opportunistic campaigns I’ve ever seen from the GPEW. Imagine, a party that’s supposedly concerned about ‘green’ issues and global climate change pandering to parochialism, nimbyism and self interest – and the truth (and science) be damned!
Here’s an example. This is Culver’s statement on the local Green party website.
Carolyne says,
“The people of Chesham and Amersham have been taken for granted for too long. The government should scrap HS2 and invest in local services and infrastructure instead. The destruction of the environment, homes and businesses must stop. HS2 tunnel boring has started, threatening the chalk aquifer and water supply. The residents of this constituency are bearing the brunt of this project but will gain nothing from it. At the same time, they have to put up with poor quality, unsafe roads and inadequate bus services.
“Spending more than £100bn on HS2 is frankly obscene. The Covid-19 pandemic has taught us that we need to spend more on the NHS and adult social care, school students who have missed out on education, and helping people back into work and to reskill.
“I have campaigned alongside local residents and other Green Party members to protect Jones Hill Wood and the Leather Lane oaks. I have witnessed the anger, despair and disbelief of residents affected by HS2. If elected to parliament I would be a fearless advocate for local people and opponent of HS2.”
So, no mention of anything to do with anything outside of local issues and forget GLOBAL Climate Change! It’s a manifesto for Nimbys, nothing more. It’s also pure posturing. HS2’s being built, now. Even if by a miracle Culver was elected (she won’t be) it’s a dead issue as far as Parliament is concerned. She can no more stop it than fly in the air.
There’s more…
This is the “vote Culver” website which contains the following gems.
“Carolyne is the only candidate endorsed by the Stop HS2 campaign”. Well, ignoring for a moment that campaign is as dead as a Dodo now that Joe Rukin hung up his inflateable white elephant for the final time earlier this year, it’s also bizarre thing to boast about because this conflicts with the Green Party policy TR244, which says “The Green Party supports the principle of a new north-south high speed line which would reduce the number of short-haul flights within the UK.” Except when it actually comes to putting your money where your mouth is and building one, obviously! Hypocritical, much? Confused, much?
It gets worse. Culver is shown on her website holding this banner.
That’s 6 claims – and not a single one is true! Let’s go through them.
‘Biggest deforestation’? I nailed that lie here. It’s not even close…
108 Woodlands ‘destroyed’ Another lie nailed. In fact, not a single ancient woodland is destroyed (but a minority do suffer some loss of area).
‘Experts say’? No, experts (plural) don’t say. In fact, only one man has claimed this, Lord Berkeley’s sidekick Micheal Byng. It’s a figure no-one else recognises. Oh, and as for the HS2 only ‘saves’ 15 minutes, that’s complete cobblers too, as the official journey times show. Culver seems unaware (or just doesn’t care) that HS2 isn’t just a Euston to Birmingham service only running between the two stations so there are multiple journey time savings. This claim was always idiotic, it’s even more idiotic now that HS2’s being built from Birmingham to Crewe, but does Culver care? Obviously not.
No ‘local’ benefits? HS2 frees up capacity on lines running through the constituency, it also helps take lorries off the roads (cutting local pollution), can reduce domestic aviation and contribute to UK GDP (which benefits everyone) – and cut transport Co2 emissions which benefits the whole planet, not just a few local Nimbys.
The old Working From Home (WFH) and videoconferencing claim isn’t borne out by any real statistics either, least of all by the fact road traffic’s almost back to pre-Covid levels and rail traffic continues to recover. It’s middle-class wishful thinking, nothing more. The reality is the majority of people can’t work from home.
Err, no taxes are paying for HS2, like most big-ticket infrastucture projects and Government spending, the money’s borrowed on the Gilts markets where the costs of borrowing have reached historic lows.
Oh, and as for that ‘NHS not HS2’ economic illiteracy – I dealt with that here.
Still, facts eh? Carolyne clearly wouldn’t know one if it bit her.
There’s (yet) more. Here’s an interview Culver gave to the Bucks Free Press which is a rehash of all the daft claims off her website plus extra scaremongering about local water supplies.
What’s facinating and depressing about all of Culvers electioneering is the way she’s running a rabidly parochial campaign all about local issues like potholes and with an obsessive focus on HS2. You’d be forgiven for thinking she’s running for the position of Councillor, not Member of Parliament. None of the great issues of the day – like Brexit, the economy, or most bizarrely – Climate Change – even get a mention!
So, what’s her background? Could that help explain this? Her bio says;
“Ms Culver, a Green Party county councillor in West Berkshire, has spent much of her career working in communications in the charity and university sectors, including the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust and the University of Oxford. She has also been a teacher, lecturer and journalist.”
Hang on, how can someone who’s educated and worked most of her life in PR and Comms be so tone deaf and inept? Her campaign’s a PR car-crash – literally! Here’s a classic example from this week, when another ‘Green’ party car crash (Natalie Bennet of ‘brain fade’ fame) popped in. What did the two of them do? Toured HS2 worksites – in a 2014 built petrol-driven car! Here’s a Green party candidate who opposes building a green electric railway that we need to get modal shift from road/air to rail to tackle global climate change and she’s touring around the sites in a petrol driven car!
Needless to say, this Tweet soon attracted attention – and it wasn’t kind…
Sadly, like most ‘green’ candidates or members of the heirachy, Culver doesn’t like being questioned or challenged. Raise any of these issues with her or ask how someone from a party whose priority is supposedly global climate change can run such a parochial, fact-free campaign and this happens…
See what I mean about that tone-deafness?
The really dumb thing about this apparently experienced communications and PR ‘wizard’ running an anti HS2 based campaign is that Culver hasn’t bothered learning about Cheshaam and Amersham’s political history in relation to HS2, because Culver’s not the first one to optimistically think opposing HS2 will win her a safe-Tory seat. UKIP tried that one too!
Let’s delve into a bit of history…
The Chesham and Amersham seat was formed in 1974. Only two MPs have held it in all that time – both Tory. Dame Cheryl Gillan first won it in 1992 and held it until her death this year. Although she was a Brexiter, the area returned the biggest Remain vote on the UK mainland at 55%, it was second only to Gibralter. But, like many Tory MPs what mattered to Gillan wasn’t the views of her constituents, it was her local Tory party association who are the real power behind MPs and their views. Nonetheless, on the back of HS2 passing through the area and the vocal cries of a Nimby minority, UKIP were persuaded that if they stood on an anti HS2 platform they just might take the seat. Hence bombastic nonsense like this.
UKIP were to be disappointed as the local HS2 nimbys had been writing cheques they couldn’t cash by boasting of support thay didn’t have as the General election results in 2010, 2015 and 2017 demonstrate. Oh, they also show the problem Culver and the ‘Greens’ have. How on earth does she think she’s going to persuade dyed-in-the-wool Tory voters to vote ‘Green’ when they couldn’t even bring themselves to vote for a party that was so close to many Tory hearts (UKIP)?
UKIP never got close to unseating Gillan, despite HS2 and the ‘Green’ vote has been up and down like a bride’s nightie! In 2019 it was 3042, or 5.5%, only mariginally better than it was in 2015!
So, Culver doesn’t stand a hope in hell of winning. Her only achievement by running such a fact-free and parochial campaign will be to tarnish the national party’s image even further. I mean seriously, a ‘green’ candidate who campaigns on potholes and better roads, but doesn’t even mention Climate Change? It’s time the GPEW grasped the nettle that’s their mad policy on HS2 before it does them any more damage. Sadly, with the dogmatic leadership they’ have in place, I can’t see that happening, which takes us back to the theatre of the absurd. By pushing ahead with HS2, Boris Johnson and his Government have proved (with their rail policy anyway) they’re actually greener that the ‘green’ party! How absurd is that!
UPDATE: 6th June 2021.
Things haven’t got any better with the ‘green’ party. Exactly the opposite in fact. Seemingly stung by the criticisms of their campaign, the Chiltern ‘green’ party has resorted to blocking anyone on Twitter who has the temerity to question the wisdom of their campaign – including other Green party members and voters!
It’s a classic example of ‘groupthink’ and why the party is so out of touch with ordinary voters. Mind you, as this policy come right from the top and is practised by the majority of ‘green’ leaders it’s hardly any wonder it’s taken up by the grassroots. The ‘greens’ block list is beginning to resemble an old London telephone directory in size!
It’s incredibly unhealthy for a supposed democratic party but then I’ve always maintained that the ‘greens’ are no such thing, as they’re proving by their actions. This is a protest group that brooks no dissent from the party orthodoxy.
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/
Paul Bigland 