This was originally posted on South Heath Against HS2.
Answer: When it’s a ‘cock-up’!
MP and HS2 minister Robert Goodwill has admitted, according to The Telegraph’s Andrew Gilligan, that if and when the High Speed Railway is built, it might just have to terminate in Harlesden.
It’s a bird, it’s a train, it’s a dodo!
That’s stuffed any idea that HS2 had anything to do with speed hasn’t it Bob? No doubt it has also made a few people wonder if it will be a railway either.
Straight from Parliament’s Select Committee hearings, I rather felt that something of a banana skin was in the offing. I know these hearings are all rather tedious, but if you have followed them on Parliament Live you will have seen that some HS2’s bank of experts were having a job staying awake.
Did they already know that the government had finally realised that HS2 was a bonkers idea and were on the brink of ‘calling the whole thing off’? Me neither.
Supposing they do build it, where passengers get on and off, surely should be a consideration… No?
Yet HS2 won’t stop in city centres in Sheffield, Nottingham or Derby and now it looks like it is going to terminate near Harlesden. Where… is that still in London?
You dunno where it is? Never mind, you can catch a bus the other six miles to anywhere else, or take a Boris bike! Just pick up a map at the ticket office.
Described as the “West Bronx of London”, it sounds like you might be better off taking a taxi than hanging around Harlesden for long. I found this interesting little piece about the area on the CaribVoice website (Harlesden: London’s Yardies’ Backyard) it’s from 2002, but I am assured that little has changed. Frankly I can’t say I know the place, but I am in no hurry to do so either if this is an accurate portrayal.
But seriously Bob, if you want to give the North a ‘powerhouse’, just tell Dave and George to give them Northerners the money. It will save a fortune in the long run and might even win some of your traditional voters back from UKIP.
Be honest… nobody could do a worse job at blowing a fortune than your government has so far over HS2, could they Bob?