This weekend it is the Green Party Conference. It is taking place just yards from where redevelopment has stalled because the land where Birmingham City University were going to fully relocate to has been earmarked for the pointless HS2 station. Green Party Leader, Natalie Bennett, said at the conference that HS2 is a “white-elephant rich man’s railway”, and advocated the view Stop HS2 has always put, that investment in local connections is what the nation really needs.
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The electorate have first hand experience in politics and economics of what may be Oxford University Intellectual Snobishness. There is more because the debates are curtailed. The nannie state prevails with the bizar use of pseudo petitioning in front of a lay number of MPs with little business and practical experience of large projects. planning or railways.
People made their minds up no to this HS2 with many justifiable reasons. However the small group of Oxford Graduates with little training in mathematics become more dogmatic. Time for change with so much kidology and the number of tomorrows promises expanding. The faking and narrow assessments continue whilst people prepare to say thank you but no thank you. The manifesto bringing a change to HS2 Phases 1 and 2 for less costly alternatives for wider usefullness for more people commuting daily will be welcome. So far this is out of sight of over the horizon radar. What are in sight are the same people who did not get Britain out of the doldrums only made matters worse for the next decade too with HS2.
The loss for many people is current and continuing depreciation in value of homes within 1Km either side of the HS2 Route. The assessments by HS2 and DFT did not consider the cumulative loss to people within the corridor. Villagers have lost and had confiscated millions of pounds from their properties from a railway of no local value.
In the 21st Century when homes are priced at £100K to over £600K in rural settings the disregard of the context losses as well as impacts on environmentally sensitive location by DFT and HS2 was sequestration and mandated possession of peoples assets with no real consideration of all alternatives. The UK people do not have the care of a Government balancing all relevant criteria. Stubborn Coalition and weak opposition politicians have not demanded the duty of diligence and balanced needed in this Island.