HS2 – a catalyst for crass

I got into a spat on LinkedIn recently, with several people who couldn’t fathom why anyone could be against HS2 and who objected to an interloper (me) invading their pro-HS2 feed with a short and polite reminder that no, the HS2-objectors will not come to love the scheme.

Anyone would have thought I’d said I was delighted England had lost to Scotland at the weekend. But I suppose if I were doing a job I loved, which paid the mortgage, with mates I liked and had been brainwashed into believing I was doing the country if not the planet a favour, I’d be miffed when someone crashed the party. 

After I had posted my first wake-up call, I spent the rest of the day and into the next, and maybe the next I really can’t remember, swatting away my new – ahem – admirers like flies around my homemade flapjacks. For every criticism of HS2 I made, for every this-is-how-it-might-have-been-better suggestion I floated, I was faced with an opposing view.

Well what did I expect? This was a pro-HS2 feed after all. 

Yeah and actually rather Kindergartenish. You’d think that clever people who were ‘right’ would easily get the better of an ignoramus who was ‘wrong’, without resorting to sarcasm, sneers, insults and toy-throwing. The fact that they couldn’t says so much more than a flawed cost-benefit analysis ever could.

 Here’s a flavour of comments that were aimed explicitly in my direction:

“Yawn. Another naysayer who would rather we still stayed in the dark ages instead of thinking ahead for future generations.”

 “Brilliant.” (Meant sarcastically in response to me proposing an alternative solution that had been previously considered by industry experts.)

 “someone else who has entirely missed the point”

 “… obviously drawing on your years of vast knowledge of the rail and construction sector.”

“… I don’t need a lecture on democracy. As for your qualifications, all you’ve done is comment from a biased perspective.”

“Rubbish.”

“your generation did much more damage by closing the railway ie beaching [sic], built massive motorway networks and encourage single use plastics”

Some of my counter-attacks included:

“Please read what I wrote and not what you would like to think I wrote.”

“I don't understand how my perspective is biased and yours isn't.”

“I never pretend to have all the answers. I just ask the questions that should have been asked a long time ago and hopefully someone will sit up and take note so that the same mistakes are not made again with other projects.”

“… those who can, discuss the issues; those who can't, resort to insults.”

I really like that last rejoinder. I use it a lot. But I have to admit that my personal favourite of all the shots I fired referred to the persistent defence of the annihilation of ancient forests because lots of new trees are going to be planted:

“It's like flushing champagne from a crystal glass down the toilet and replacing it with water in a plastic beaker.”

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