It isn't very often I find myself in agreement with the leader writers of the Daily Mail and the notable looney tunes politician Nigel Farage, but when it comes to the proposed HS2 project we are, curiously, of one mind.
A vast undertaking, now priced at a cool £80 billion, the net benefit appears to be cutting half an hour off the London to Birmingham journey, and a whole hour to Manchester. This, the government believes, is worth the enormous ecological damage that will result from its building.
I travel by train from time to time, and find that most people manage to occupy their time quite productively, playing games on their mobiles, tapping away on their laptops and otherwise carrying out the business of their day. Personally, I like to read, and occasionally even stare out of the window at the world rushing by. What does it gain us to steal an hour from time when we risk unleashing untold damage on the countryside? Meanwhile the problems of overcrowding and overcharging on the rail network go unaddressed. To me (and here I think we may find my views and those of the Mail and Farage begin to diverge) the problems began in earnest with privatisation and the rush to turn a profit rather than running an effective and efficient system of rail transport.
There are many more important things on which to spend such a huge amount of taxpayer's money; flood defences (call it climate change damage control if you like), developing sustainable energy alternatives (vide supra) being just two that occur to me off the top of my head. But vested interests are far too powerful to stop this ugly juggernaut riding roughshod over the heartland of England. It may already be too late. Or is it? It is time to protest I say, or as a 90 year old lady put it to me during an anti-nuke rally some years ago:
"Don't just say something, stand there!"
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