Woody’s back, with a friend, on the HS2 trail…
PS Like the video says, you have until 29th July to respond to the HS2 consultation.
25 comments to “Warning: Extremely Destructive Creature”
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Woody’s back, with a friend, on the HS2 trail…
PS Like the video says, you have until 29th July to respond to the HS2 consultation.
Brilliant!!!
Its money we don’t have for something we don’t need.
It’s a good motto to have, LOOK AFTER TODAY AND TOMORROW WILL LOOK AFTER ITSELF
At the moment we are in intensive care or to put it another way
“Clearly we have got a huge budget deficit, bigger than Greece2” as our PM has pointed out,
What money we have to spend should be for the benefit of those in trouble in their homes and communities today,
not the comfort of those who want to travel in comfort at speed tomorrow.
thefatcontroller@live.co.uk
John Williams looks for a focused strategy and suggests that elephants in the Chilterns might do more.
Do not despair, Mr. Williams!
Woody is here, on the right track(?!) as ever.
Who could resist such a knock down argument?
Well done, Woody! Now, just watch Mr. Hammond run.
(the end…???)
HS2 supporters are such killjoys, Woody is just a bit of fun.
But that’s what HS2 if I guess, not only is it a White Elephant, but it’s a great big wet blanket across the countryside, destroying the environment for everyone.
arent you guys tired of going on and on about the white elephant cant you think of something else it is very boring to keep reading it over and over again, especially as it isnt even proven that it is. likewise the £1000 cost for every family when it is in fact £1000 benefit for every family. given this it doesnt surpise me that you have picked the above mascot ! and killjoy actually describes hs2 critics better then the supporters !
and i can think of other things worse for the environment luke like maglev which would strut across the countryside on a huge viaduct like something out of War of the Worlds ! or more traffic on roads and in the air when the existing railway network is finally overrun by congestion. or we could follow stophs2 suggestion and have an upgrade that is either more expensive (full rp package) or less effective (rp2) which would of course cause more disruption to more people.
As regards £ 1,000 benefit for each taxpayer I presume you refer to the BCR of 2.0 which is pumped up by £ 3 bn of agglomeration ( I still haven’t got anyone to explain that to me yet — HS2 Ltd don’t know what it is nor even does Gary ) and that ridiculous valuation of time saved. £ 48.64 per hour saved and none of it was productive.
The cash return on this money is 42 p in the £ and that is probably overstated given the downside risk on the demand assumptions. Once a long term franchisee’s profits are factored in we will be lucky to get a third of our money back.
Less a white elephant, more a king whose clothes are see through.
The costs are already escalating – i.e. an extra £8bn for the link to Heathrow, and now Mayor Boris has waded in and said the entire London section all the way to Hillingdon has to go in a tunnel. How many more £billions will that cost?
By understating the costs and overstating the benefits Nick and others have been duped into believing that HS2 is a good investment.
Simple…it won’t go in a tunnel. Boris is just after positioning himself to be Tory leader after Cameron…always nice to see personal ambition getting ahead of national interest.
TUNNELLING OUT OF TROUBLE?
High Speed 1, the final link in the Channel Tunnel project, was originally planned to run on the surface for much of its way through East London, but the plan was changed to avoid the environmental impact on the communities along the route.
* (Sniping at the Link such as sometimes appears on this site, merely displays a misunderstanding of its purpose- one might as well decry the M11/A11 link road into London, or the rebuilt A40 through Hillingdon and Acton: both schemes which were controversial, disruptive and built at the cost of considerable loss of houses.)
HS1 was, of course, not an entity in itself, but a means of bypassing the dense congestion on the lines into London, routes which were never planned as an integrated planned network,but originally as private, often competing schemes, which were built by rival companies.
* Unlike some Continental countries, where Imperial and military pressures influenced the spread of railways, British Governments were fearful of Monopolies and encouraged competition, but all too often this led to wasteful duplication, with some lines built merely to block another company’s access.
It took two World Wars to force the Government to bring the Railway Companies to integrate and combine their services inthe national interest.
If The Government is determined to go ahead with HS2, then it must be done properly.
If that means more tunnel- then so be it.
(The M3 motorway could have passed under St. Catherine’s Down beside Winchester- either bored or” cut and cover”- but it was ruled out by the government as “too expensive”-a few £million, small beer compared with the amounts we are considering for HS2- and great controversy and environmental damage resulted.)
Having learned from the HS1 issue, the HS2 planners designed large amounts of it to be in tunnel, such as from the M25 to Amersham. Still, if you don’t mind the costs going up, then it can all be in tunnel, but as one of the main objections seems to be cost, I think that is unlikely.
Its money we don’t have for something we don’t need.
It’s a good motto to have, LOOK AFTER TODAY AND TOMORROW WILL LOOK AFTER ITSELF
At the moment we are in intensive care or to put it another way
“Clearly we have got a huge budget deficit, bigger than Greece2” as our PM has pointed out,
What money we have to spend should be for the benefit of those in trouble in their homes and communities today not the comfort of those who want to travel in comfort at speed tomorrow.
Winston Churchill claimed that the two “Queens”,” Queen Mary” and” Queen Elizabeth” had shortened the war in Europe by a whole year.Each ship carried up to 15 000 US troops on their trips Atlantic crossing s, who would take part in the Normandy landings and the subsequent liberation of Europe.
But it very nearly never happened.
Half built, the” Queen Mary” languished for a year and a half, idle and rusting at John Brown’s shipyard on Clydebank. It was in the midst of the Depression of the early 1930’s and Cunard had run out of money to complete her.With the ,albeit temporary, lack of demand, they couldn’t afford to go on, still less contemplate a running mate. She could have been broken up on the slip, had her owners not been able to negotiate a Government loan, an enormous sum in those days
As it turned out, the loan enabled the men to return to work and the ship was launched – by Queen Mary herself.
So instead of being scrapped,when she made her maiden voyage in 1936, the ship became an triumphant symbol of British engineering and perhaps the best known of all the famous liners, including her arch challenger”Normandie”.
She was featured and celebrated in newspapers magazines and childrens’ books. The whole Nation took a pride in something, which to be honest,less than one person in a hundred could expect to travel on.
The same was true when it came to the air and to land transport. Everyone seemed to have taken an interest and a pride in new aircraft, though few could expect to fly for any thing more than a brief pleasure trip.
“New planes for the world’s airways”was a weekly feature in a paper for girls and boys.
Comparatively few would ride the “Silver Jubilee”, the”Coronation Scot” or the “Cheltenham Flier”, though most people had heard of them, certainly heard of the “Flying Scotsman” and “Royal Scot” and again their pictures were featured in books and magazines,some things that we could take pride in , though our actual experience might be of ill heated overcrowded and grubby carriages or a once a year visit to the sea.
In truth, these record breakers were the exception. Today our routine twice hourly main line trains touch and exceed their speed on many journeys, day in day out. Perhaps we take for granted the greater speed and frequency. Regular long distance travel, certainly daily long distance travel, was once the exception; now it has become commonplace. We may go to Scotland and return the same day.Travellers to Cornwall used to make an overnight stop on the Devon before going on to their holiday destination.Now, for better or worse, return journeys from Oxfordshire to say Redruth are considered routine. We have lost our fear of distance.
But we also seem to have lost, along with our pride and admiration for engineering excellence, our sense of proportion. It seems that the very thought of seeing a train or of hearing , even in the distance,’produces the sort of reaction expressed in the 1830s.
I don’t want to hear a motorway, or even the constant sound of tyres on the nearby A 43, but I use them.
I don’t like looking at streams of traffic, nor waiting in a queue, nor looking at historic towns disfigured with (other peoples’) parked cars, but I don’t pretend that it will make me go blind, nor result in the collapse of civilisation nor “the destruction of all we hold dear”.
If the campaign to StopHS2 is successful, what then? Shall we rely on the rail enhancement schemes already in the course of development?
Shall we wait and “try again” with some sort of “Hs Light”,slower, more curvacious through somebody else’s back garden ?
Would anyone like to push for rebuilding the Complete Great Central line at least as far as Rugby?
Or shall we sitback and wait for the motorways to clog up-possibly adding an extra lane or two- (through some more back gardens, ancient woodlands, horse pastures, etc. etc.)
If Hs2 goes ahead it will be with Chinese Money. Built by Eastern Europeans with German Trains running on French Electricity. Makes you proud dosen’t it?
What would you rather we called it, a damp squid?
If you care to read the £1m privately funded study on the application of Transrapid Maglev (PDFs available on my website), you would know that Maglev is a lot better for the environment then HS2.
It has no engine, so the only CO2 emissions come from the power source, emissions free if that source is renewable.
The struts that the guideway sits on are nowhere as large as railway viaducts, the land underneath can be used as per normal for farming. The track in Emsland, Germany is a perfect example of what it would be like in England
High speed trains don’t have an engine either; they are electrically powered so, like Maglev, their CO2 emissions are also at the power source only.
As for viaduct widths, I see no difference – it all depends if you have double track, single track, quadruple; for mass production, there would need to be safety platforms every few hundred metres the entire length of the route. More concrete, more digging and far uglier.
The objective of this site is to explore ways and means of preventing colossal expenditure on something we don’t need with money we haven’t got. The above comment is irrelevant, immaterial and should be ignored.
Why wasn’t there a Stand at the Prestwood Steam Rally?
Are you now the self-appointed spokesman for Stop HS2? Why don’t you ban all comments opposing your views and shut down all discussion? It’s an option.
Of course, the anti-congestion charge campaign group did that and I think we can see how successful that was…
Well there’s a true saying, either lead or follow, but get out of the way.
How would you try to overcome the infiltration of ProHS2 people on this site whose clear intention it is to divert discussion of ways to prevent the HS2 expenditure.?
and not even 50% of target achieved yet with just 4 weeks to go
I think you mean all fur coat and no knickers but that again is irrelevant immaterial and should be ignored.
Lets try and get down to the job in hand shall we?
How do we raise 100,000 signatures?
Quickly .
John,can you be absolutely sure that the supporters of a Steam Rally will necessarily follow your line regarding HS2?
To what extent can you be certain that all the names on the Petition are those of informed,considered, convinced judgement?
My experience at various events is straight away being asked “Would you like to sign?” followed by a look of surprise should you thank them but decline. It is assumed that anyone attending an event must automatically be of one mind.You need your troops to be well informed on all aspects, for and against, and themselves able to articulate these points without mere repetition of slogans.
On an associated point. is anyone going to check through the lists to ensure that they are genuine and not duplicated; a misguided zeal could lead some to sign on several occasions.
Remember that old slogan said to have originated beyond the Irish Sea; “Vote Early- and Vote Often!”
IN regard to some signing more than once there may be but so are there those who are only counted as one but there are two names as they have signed as a couple.I have also spoken to many non users of computers who would sign if they could.
Is there to be a stand at the Bucks County Show?
The objective of this site is to explore ways and means of preventing colossal expenditure on something we don’t need with money we haven’t got. The above comment is irrelevant, immaterial and should be ignored.
There’ll be a stand at the Bucks County Show if someone organises it. Can you organise it for the campaign, John?
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Bearing in mind these things have to be booked in advance, and paid for, have any sites been booked?
Have they even been investigated?
How much is a stand?
Who will pay for it?
Where does one seek out volunteers?
Is there ANY form of coordination and forward planning in this campaign?
How do I seek cooperation from the other 50 odd groups when you haven’t even forwarded my original request to them..
This is a very emotive and sensitive subject and with the right approach there should be no shortage of Petition signatures.
I just get the impression that each little group is doing its own thing , and with the best intentions and to the best of their ability because they want to help, but you are really ignoring a huge untapped source unless you offer them some guidance and leadership.
If you seek tens of thousands more signatures, they are out there, nigh on the doorstep. But we need you to help us. We are just the foot soldiers remember?
We want a central pool of events over the summer, a coordinating office to check sites, dates, prices.
And most of all a list of volunteers who given the dates, can help.
That’s for starters.
If none of that is within your remit then we do have a big problem.
John, I disagree entirely with Penny’s viewpoint about HS2 (obviously) but you really are all mouth and no trousers. And very aggressive in tone with it.
Don’t have a problem with Woody – you just keep on going there! As long as it makes you feel happy, I’m sure no HS2 supporter is going to to complain.