Bullying tactics

[Martin Cassini]

If transport minister, Philip Hammond, isn’t a philistine, he gives a convincing impression. His claim that objectors to high-speed rail are self-interested nimbys is false. I don't live in the threatened area, so I'm no nimby. Apart from the likelihood that the £33bn projected cost would balloon to at least twice that sum, the trade-off, whichever way you cut it, is negative. HS2 would shave minutes off a journey between cities that are already well-served, while doing nothing to connect outlying regions currently starved of viable links, at a time when web interconnectivity is rendering traditional business meetings increasingly pointless. On the altar of this high-cost vanity project, they propose to sacrifice some of England’s most green and pleasant land. Traffic policy presides over avoidable casualties, congestion and environmental damage on a grotesque scale. Instead of threatening havens of peace with spurious progress, we should be improving regional infrastructure and creating Equality Streets.