HS2
There is an incident in the episode of Landman (with the ever excellent Billy Bob Thornton) which I watched yesterday in which people and the feral pigs they were hunting with assault rifles are killed by a gas leak. The gas is identified as HS2. I didn’t know what that was so looked it up.
Hydrogen Sulfide, “a colorless, flammable and highly toxic gas with a characteristic rotten egg odor.”
You might think someone would have googled “HS2” before namng the disastrous HS2 rail project, a toxic undertaking with a characteristic rotten egg odour. I wrote at length about it in Animal Wild. I seem to have been correct on all counts. Whenever I come across sections of it, it takes me a moment to realise what the horrendous version of Mordor is.
The pointless HS2 which nobody wants or needs, apart from the construction industry, continues to wreak destruction on a huge scale. It seems to have become one of those state projects which can neither be stopped nor completed. I visited Jones’ Hill Wood (the ‘Roald Dahl wood’) in Buckinghamshire and met warm, welcoming and decent people willing to devote their time to trying to protect it, people who had come to know the place and its wildlife intimately and some of whom1 were literally sleeping in the treetops. One of them took the time to give me a complete tour and tell me of the appalling treatment suffered by a local family whose farm and home had been repossessed. Undervaluations and late payments regarding Compulsory Purchase Orders obtained by HS2 have been common. The pattern with protesters has been arrest, harsh bail conditions and then release without charge. The case against six of these particular activists set to face trial in May 2021 was dismissed when Thames Valley Police failed to submit any evidence. When the Court of Appeal ruled against a judicial review of HS2, the judges confessed they had only given it “light scrutiny” because it was a government decision …
HS2 Ltd have been repeatedly and officially found to be brutal and dishonest in their dealings.
A report from the Wildlife Trusts found that proposals will risk the loss of, or significantly impact:
“5 Wildlife refuges of international importance, protected by UK law
33 Sites of Special Scientific Interest which are protected by UK law
693 Classified Local Wildlife Sites
21 Designated Local Nature Reserves
26 Large landscapescale initiatives, including:
4 Nature Improvement Areas awarded £1.7 million of public money
22 Living Landscapes – partnership schemes to restore nature
18 Wildlife Trust Nature Reserves – many are also designated wildlife sites
108 Ancient woodlands, an irreplaceable habitat
Other irreplaceable habitats such as veteran trees, wood pasture, old meadows
Extensive further areas of wider natural habitat
Barn Owls and endangered wildlife such as white-clawed crayfish, willow tit and lizard orchid. Rarities like dingy skipper may become locally extinct.”
And that “HS2 Ltd’s proposed mitigation and compensation is inadequate and the small measures that they have suggested are inappropriate – amateurish suggestions of paltry measures in the wrong places.”
After a long Freedom of Information battle, which should not have been necessary at all, a list of companies and public bodies including district councils and charities persuaded to enter into non disclosure agreements (a.k.a. gagging orders) with HS2 Ltd, between September 2012 and March 2019, is published in New Civil Engineer in 2020. It’s a long list but does not include 38 NDAs with
individuals nor at least another 50 signed before the end of 2020.
[The list follows in the book.]
It is almost as though they have something to hide. Since writing the above, in October 2023 whistle-blowers have revealed that they very much did. Profligacy and the concealment of escalating costs are being described as “a fraud against the British people.”
I understand the need for commercial confidentiality in any business in certain circumstances, even one that is publicly funded, but there is a shabby circularity of secrecy here which stretches the imagination. At a time in this country when so many are struggling to make ends meet, when the number of food banks is growing exponentially, billions of pounds of money, hard-earned by the
taxpayer, continues to be wasted on a hare-brained project which will almost certainly never be completed nor deliver on its futile promises. The presence on the list of certain universities, The Canal and River Trust and even a wildlife trust are disappointing. The presence of so many bodies composed of our elected, supposedly accountable representatives in the form of local, borough,
district and county councils is an outrage. Royal Mail? Highways England? The Health and Safety Executive? Transport for London? Historic England, a public body with an avowed “core purpose to champion and protect England’s remarkable heritage”? The National Trust derives income from various sources, but it is not just its members who have been betrayed here, it’s the taxpayer again too – it also receives grants from The National Heritage Lottery Fund, The National Lottery Community Fund, The Arts Councils, Sport England/Wales/Northern Ireland, The Landfill Communities Fund, National Highways, central and local government, the National Environment Research Council, UK Research and Innovation and the Arts and Humanities
Research Council.
In July 2023 The Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) gave the project a red rating, which is to say it considered it unachievable. “There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need rescoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.”
In a letter to The Times Labour peer Tony Berkeley wrote: “There is no safe and buildable station design for it at Euston, no forecasts for demand postpandemic and no easy connection to other rail lines. Parts of HS2 where construction has not started should be cancelled and what has been built repurposed to improve regional services.”
HS2 was originally scheduled to open in 2026 but will be years late, and although two tunnelling machines will be buried under Old Oak Common Station (how ironic is that name) for future use, and weirdly, apparently blessed using a statue of St Barbara1, the patron saint of tunnelling (can this be right?) 2041 is the very earliest date by which trains might be expected to run into central London.
Since writing this chapter, the northern leg of HS2, which was the avowed point of the whole thing, has been cancelled. All that destruction and suffering for nothing.
Starmer
High levels of toxicity and the odour of rotten eggs in Parliament yesterday too. Kemi Badenoch really seems to have found her voice and a confidence she lacked when she became leader of the Conservative party. I am not a huge fan but she really shredded Starmer and I am very much a fan of that.
He eventually conceded that he had known that Mandelson was still in touch with Epstein when he appointed him but only after he had been asked three times. He has quickly u-turned in the face of rebellion by his own MPs on the matter of the independence and impartiality of the enquiry which is now to follow. Mandelson lied during the vetting process, he said, as though that was in any way surprising to anyone who knows anything about his career and previous sackings. I think Starmer is finished. We know that he considers press and public opinion irrelevant. I do hope he is reconsidering and thoroughly ashamed, but I doubt it. Pride comes before a fall.
As I wrote in an earlier post: “I recently jokingly posted on Facebook that I had had a revelation – that he is in fact a robot doing a p***poor impersonation of a human being, his hair, dead eyes and weird staccato speech reminding me of Max Headroom, the 1980s satirical creation purported to be the first computer-generated TV presenter. I added that no one says “sausages” when they mean “hostages”. This was a programming error, a glitch in the Matrix, AI gone wrong. Google him if you are not familiar and you will see what I mean.”
James O’Brian wondered during his show yesterday why the switchboard was not lighting up given the profound importance and ramifications of the Mandelson story. I think I know why. People are so cynical, so exhausted by the endless corruption, that they no longer expect anything else. There were two particularly weird things about the story of David Cameron and the pig’s head, apart from the obvious, whether it was true or not. One was that it was foretold in an episode of Black Mirror, the other that no one seemed terribly surprised.
Bird flu
Bird flu is devastating swans in Berkshire and no doubt elsewhere. I remember asking the former head of HART Wildlife Rescue, the redoubtable Paul Reynolds (now at The New Arc Wildlife Rescue in Scotland), if we were responsible. “Yes”, he replied. I thought I had better check. Although the virus originates in wild birds it is factory farming of poultry that is the accelerator, through overcrowding and lack of genetic diversity, transport and export, enabling the virus to mutate into more damaging forms and spread like proverbial wildfire. From farm run-off and ventilation the virus loops back into the wild in the most vicious of circles. I know that at least one wildlife rescue has stopped taking in birds altogether. It is dreadfully sad.
The Great Spotted Woodpecker has just arrived at the feeder, It must be about half past ten.
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