Train Of Thought - Wed Jan 11

Regular readers will know that it is an extremely laborious process for me to try and ascertain what I truly think about any great Issue Of The Day™. Partly cos I am by nature a reasonably apathetic character, and partly cos I am usually so liberal in my outlook that I tend to swing back and forth between polarised viewpoints depending on what I’m told, and ending up in the middle in the end anyway – cos that’s where swingers end up. Hotcha!

But here I am again anyway, back for more, trying to work out where I stand on the whole HS2 news story. It almost impacts on Milton Keynes, given that the proposed route passes just the other side of Buckingham… close to Stowe Gardens which we like, and right in the middle of Phil’s drive to work! Certainly there seem to have been plenty of people who live and work along that controversial diagonal line who are up in arms. Not to mention innumerable badgers and hedgehogs, I expect.

And maybe it was this very “up-in-arms”ness from the citizens of semi-rural Bucks, Northants, and Warwickshire which made my initial knee-jerk response “well, this sounds good! A futuristic speedy way of getting to t’North where there’s quite a few people and things I like that I don’t see often enough. Surely these objections are mainly coming from people whose homes and the peace of the villages are threatened.”

Because of course, it’s easy for me to not be outraged and be loosely in support of such a project when it’s not coming with a few hundred of yards of my house. Though I like to think – theoretically of course, eeeeasy when it’s theoretical – that I still wouldn’t be even if it was (if you can untangle that syntax!). Not for that reason, at any rate. In a similar example, a retired couple who are very dear to me live in the small almost-countryside-almost-MK estate of Haversham and have recently been on the edges of the local struggle to try and put up some wind turbines to help power our ever-expanding urban MK mega-site in a field nearby. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and some of the residents of Haversham (including said retired couple, and me!) think this sounds like a good idea. Other residents of Haversham screech loudly “N.I.M.B.Y.!”

So maybe it is that whiff of N.I.M.B.Y.ism that made me think HS2 must be a good idea off the bat. I don’t often have much truck with dyed-in-the-wool N.I.M.B.Y.s. But scratch a little deeper, and the landscape changes. (Har!)

Where do the reputable eco-bods stand on HS2, f’rinstance? Well, the Green Party think it hasn’t been fully thought through and that the vast sums of money could be spent on better, greener alternatives – or even massively improving the current system. Friends of the Earth echo those sentiments: “We need to revolutionise travel away from roads and planes, but pumping £32bn into high-speed travel for the wealthy few while ordinary commuters suffer is not the answer.” The BBC’s environment correspondent states “The government's own projections show it's not certain to reduce either flying or road use.” – which does beg the question as to why it’s going ahead at this stage then? Cynics comment here.

And yet… and yet – I could be having a pint in Manchester in, like, an hour! Hmm…

So as usual, I have flip-flopped back and forth on this like a mo’fo, and I’m only very slightly closer to having an opinion. Clearly I need to read more. Or… just throw up my hands and decide “well, if it’s happening it’s happening, maybe I don’t have the time to care”. God damn me.

Either way, by the time it’s actually running, I will be 51 years old. Flipping heck. That is a troubling thought. I totally know where I stand on that!

(looks sad)