"I Wanted to go to Birmingham" . . . . .Really?

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"Oh! Mr Porter, what shall I do?"

"I wanted to go to Birmingham........in 75minutes!"

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Today's headlines in our local papers tell a sad tale.

"The owners of 440 homes face having their properties demolished to make way for the first stage of a 250mph rail line from London to Birmingham”

The proposed line after leaving London will slice through our beloved Chilterns, an area of outstanding natural beauty.

All of those places that I have been posting about recently are likely to be affected.

Amersham, Great Missenden and Wendover.

Already, as you would expect, the people of these villages are forming protest groups, and rightly so. But what we have here is a proposal, a blueprint and is not being supported by the Conservatives.

A change of government could see a change of plan.

What I am unable to understand is WHY there is a need for a third line to Birmingham? It is certainly not one of our most attractive cities.

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Old Amersham High Street.

We already have a rail service running quietly up through Amersham to Aylesbury.

We already have the Chiltern Line serving Beaconsfield, Wycombe and Princes Risborough. Both can take you on to Birmingham gently and peacefully.

Why this obsession with speed?

Who would benefit from arriving in New Street ten or twenty minutes earlier than at the present?

A few wealthy business travellers, that’s who.

Everything seems to be wrong with this proposal.

Spending £30 billion on another railway line linking cities which are already well linked by road and rail, merely to reduce the time spent in the train for a small minority, is truly stupidity and extravagance on a monumental scale.

We are told it may provide up to 10,000 jobs (for Labour voters), but I believe it to be an utterly pointless waste of effort, a waste of resources and will bring about the destruction of a huge swathe of our already diminishing countryside.

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A back lane in Princes Risborough.

Theresa Villiers, the Tory shadow secretary of state for transport, poured scorn on the plans. She said,

“We have made a clear pledge to the travelling public that we see no point in building a line which only the rich can afford to use. No equivalent promise has been made by Labour.”

“The next Conservative government will begin work immediately to create a high speed rail line connecting London and Heathrow with Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, with construction to begin in 2015.”

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Peace in Little Missenden.

So friends, a change of government will only bring a change of route and will still upset thousands of people, gobble up millions of square yards of our countryside just so the wealthy can save minutes off their journey to one of the most unattractive cities in Britain.

“Fast trains are like fast food: the wrong diet for healthy growth”