Pagan London 2: The Stanwell Cursus

The second is this series of videos looks at a prehistoric earthwork that is now partly beneath the runways of Heathrow.

Brexit Britain could have a low-speed high-speed train

HS2 Ltd's chief executive Mark Thurston has told a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Rail Group that train speeds and frequency on the new line could be changed to reduce costs, says the Evening Standard.

Its report says the options discussed included lowering train speeds by around 50kmph (30mph), reducing train numbers from 18 to 14 per hour and changing from slab to ballast track.

A low-speed high-speed train would be a perfect symbol of the dynamic new Brexit Britain.

More and more, politics today reminds me of the early 1970s, when prestige projects were promoted and then abandoned.

There was the third London airport at Maplin (announced 1971, abandoned 1974), the Channel Tunnel (started 1974, abandoned 1975) and Concorde, which was kept going, but proved hard to sell to anyone but Britain and France's national airlines.

HS2, you may recall, was approved by David Cameron, as a way of making good on his pledge not to build another runway at Heathrow.

Then came Theresa May, Brexit and the need for a new prestige project to show that Britain was open to the world. So a new runway was announced after all.

Ever since that, HS2 has been in danger of looking a bit of a white elephant.

I suspect it will be built from London to Birmingham, but it will be a long time before it gets any further than that.

However fast it runs.

Theresa May opposed Brexit and a third runway at Heathrow

Theresa May's opposition to a third Runway #heathrowexpansion pic.twitter.com/vJw5pVGAZN

— I was a JSA claimant (@imajsaclaimant) June 25, 2018

Theresa May warned during the EU referendum campaign that

if we do vote to leave the European Union, we risk bringing the development of the single market to a halt, we risk a loss of investors and businesses to remaining EU member states driven by discriminatory EU policies, and we risk going backwards when it comes to international trade. But the big question is whether, in the event of Brexit, we would be able to negotiate a new free trade agreement with the EU and on what terms.

She also gave a clear warning of the problems Brexit would lead to at the Irish border.

And. as the video above shows, she also opposed a third runway at Heathrow.

Once you could also read of this opposition on Maidenhead Conservatives' website, but that page has strangely disappeared.

But some kind person has preserved it.

Another now-deleted page on Theresa May's website: "I am clear that we must say no to a third runway." pic.twitter.com/LpzuICrnwk

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) June 25, 2018

Does Theresa May believe in anything? The causes have both been dropped, just like the promise she made to tackle those burning injustices when she became prime minister.

Sarah Olney exposes the nonsense of Zac Goldsmith's resignation

Embed from Getty Images

Good stuff from Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat candidate in this week's Richmond Park by-election:

"Zac Goldsmith's idea that this was going to be a referendum about Heathrow has turned out to be nonsense because there is no pro-Heathrow candidate standing. 

"Actually, what people really want to talk about is Brexit." 

Mrs Olney called his decision to resign "ludicrous". 

"He doesn't need a further mandate to oppose Heathrow," she said. "He already had that twice over."

These wise words come from the Press Association, via the Daily Mail.

The Lib Dems should trumpet their opposition to a third runway at Heathrow, not talk about process issues

Embed from Getty Images

When the government plan to put the building of a third runway at Heathrow to parliament was revealed after someone photographed it on the tube, John McDonnell appeared on Channel 4 News.

Though the shadow chancellor is a longstanding opponent of the idea, in that interview he spent most of his time rubbishing the idea that collective cabinet responsibility could be suspended for the Commons vote.

Similarly, Tim Farron's statement on the subject began:

The suggestion that there might be a free vote on Heathrow is farcical – this is a huge decision and the Conservative government has to make a collective decision and take full responsibility. If people disagree they can resign. 

But is the public greatly interested in the details of how the vote will be handled at Westminster?

I can imagine people being against a third runway because their lives will be affected by aircraft noise or because they think it will be bad for the environment more generally.

I can imagine them being in favour of it because they think it will be good for the economy.

I find it much harder to imagine people being much concerned by whether there is a free vote or not.

In fact to most voters the idea that politicians will vote in accord with what they believe rather than they way their party tells them will be rather attractive.

I am willing to believe a free vote in impractical, and opposing it might chime with the narrative that this is an incompetent government. But I can't see this line of attack moving many voters.

We Liberal Democrats would do better to emphasise the second paragraph of Tim's statement (which should have been the first):

Liberal Democrats are the only party consistently opposed to a third runway at Heathrow and we will fight any plans to allow it to be built.

That will interest many voters.

Ambitious Liberal Democrats circle our most promising seats

Back in September I blogged about Liberator's take on the row between Tony Greaves and Liberal Democrat Voice.

Members of the Lib Dem Voice queued up to comment, but it was all a bit gnomic and I am not sure we were much better informed when they had.

The good news is that peace has broken out and Tony Greaves is writing for Lib Dem Voice - on an almost daily basis.

I imagine him and the editorial team running through flower-filled meadows hand in hand.

The best gossip in the new Liberator concerns the people who have their eyes on some of the more promising seats for ambitious Lib Dems:

Richmond may soon be the scene of a by-election if Tory incumbent Zac Goldsmith is either elected mayor of London or sticks to his pledge to resign if a third Heathrow runway is permitted. 

With last May's candidate Robin Meltzer having decided not to stand again, flocks of Lib Dems are circling, some from as far afield as Guildford. 

Next door in Twickenham, which Vince Cable almost held, a similar effect can be seen.

And then there are Yeovil and Sheffield Hallam... But to find out who has their eyes on those you will have to buy the magazine.

You can subscribe to Liberator via its website.

David Cameron: "No ifs, no buts, no third runway"

One of Justine Greening's leaflets delivered in Putney during the 2010 general election campaign.

Six of the Best 520

Nick Tyrone asks how the right-wing press will react when David Cameron campaigns to stay in the EU.

Nigel Farage and his senior adviser were caught up by the glamour of the Tea Party – to the fury of some in their own party, say Freddy Gray and Sebastian Payne.

Dominic Minghella stands up for the BBC.

I remember being one of many people who bought a parcel of land in the shadow of Heathrow to prevent the construction of another runway. Gwyn Topham reveals that Greenpeace has sold all that land without telling any of us.

"One morning in March 1921 a large man in an overcoat left his house in Charlottenburg, Berlin, to take a walk in the Tiergarten. A young man crossed his path, drew a pistol and shot him in the neck." Dominic Green reviews a book on the avenging of the Armenian Genocide.

Psychogeographic Review follows the River Gwenfro through Wrexham to find its confluence with town's other river, the Clywedog.

David Cameron: "No ifs, no buts, no third runway"

Time to repeat an image from September of last year. This was one of Justine Greening's leaflets at the last general election.

David Cameron: "No ifs, no buts, no third runway"

One of Justine Greenings leaflets from the last election (h/t William Green of The Journal).

The Guardian, the M25 and the 15th century

Today's Guardian carries the welcome news that English Heritage has bought the Great Barn at Harmondsworth, which John Betjeman once called "the cathedral of Middlesex".

However, I wonder if Maev Kennedy meant what she said in her second sentence:

Just beyond the sprawl of Heathrow, the Great Barn at Harmondsworth has stood between the roaring M25 and the M4 motorways and the straggling warehouse and industrial estates around the airport perimeter since 1426. 

Presumably not, as a revised version now appears on the newspaper's website. Still, the printed version has won her this blog's prestigious Bizarre Newspaper Sentence of the Day award.

Heathrow third runway: The fight continues

Actors, poets and politicians join Greenpeace, the Woodland Trust and local residents to plant an orchard in the path of the proposed third runway at Heathrow. You may recognise Nick Clegg and Susan Kramer among those taking part.

The latest news on the campaign can be found on the Airplot site.

House Points: Police harrassment of photographers

My House Points column from today's issue of Liberal Democrat News.

The UK Press Gazette - which, sadly, is now a solely web-based publication - takes a more positive view of the outcome of John Randall's debate. We shall see.

Sipson Stasi

Because I own land there, I take a keen interest in the Middlesex village of Sipson. I was concerned last Thursday when John Randall, the Tory MP for Uxbridge, said police had used anti-terrorism laws to stop someone photographing its buildings.

Sipson is the village that will be destroyed if a third runway is built at Heathrow. And Greenpeace has bought a field there to sell off in small plots (hence my landholding), making it hard for the authorities to arrange compulsory purchase.

Randall was taking part in the Easter adjournment debate. In his speech he referred to a debate on photography in public places he had called in Westminster Hall the previous day. Then, stories of the harassment of innocent photographers had tumbled from Randall and the other MPs taking part.

Someone photographing decrepit properties in Uxbridge had inadvertently snapped a car containing community support officers parked on a double yellow line. One of them came over and said he must delete the photograph.

A 15-year-old in school uniform taking pictures at Wimbledon station as part of a GCSE project was stopped by community support officers and asked to sign forms under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act. Andrew Pelling (the former Tory who now sits as an Independent) had been stopped and searched on suspicion of terrorism for taking pictures of roadworks near East Croydon station.

And who would dare take a camera to an event involving children these days?

The minister who replied was Shahid Malik. The Independent sketchwriter Simon Carr once said: “It's not that politicians lie, it's that they don't know if they are telling the truth.” He meant that ministers rarely know much about the events they discuss so authoritatively. They rely on advisers and civil servants to tell them what is going on out there.

Just before his time ran out, it began to dawn on Malik that the world he and his colleagues have built is nothing like he has been told. “Anecdotally,” he said “there seems to be a disconnect between what the Government intended and what might be happening on the ground.”

When they hear about that the whips will want to bury him under concrete at Sipson. To stop them, visit www.airplot.org.uk.

Greenpeace launches new website against Heathrow third runway

Like all the best people - 36,902 and counting - I have signed up to be a beneficial owner of the field that Greenpeace has bought at Sipson near Heathrow.

Now the charity has launched a new Airplot website devoted to this campaign and issued the video above.

I have bought some land at Heathrow

Having seen the graphic on Sara Bedford's blog last night and admired it, I have added the Greenpeace "I'm a plot owner" logo (and a link to their Heathrow campaign site) to Liberal England.

So far I have just sent Greenpeace an e-mail, but I suspect there will be money involved sooner or later.

As long as I am not next to Emma Thompson...

Hounslow Heath Airport

A comment on my recent posting on Croydon Airport rightly says that the first civil airport in Britain was Hounslow Heath.

I had heard of it but had assumed that it was another name for Heathrow. Not so, as Hidden London explains:

In 1919 Hounslow Heath became the site of the first civil airport in the country. The earliest commercial flight was from Bristol to Hounslow and the inaugural scheduled air service was from Hounslow to Paris. On 12 November the first flight to Australia left Hounslow, arriving 28 days later. Commercial aviation moved to Croydon in 1920 and the airport closed. Its buildings were destroyed by fire in 1929 but a plaque in Staines Road marks the site.

Calder's Comfort Farm: Heathrow, lightbulbs and Emma Thompson

My latest column for the New Statesman website is now in place:

A friend installed the new bulbs last year. Within days, he reports, Izal lavatory paper had appeared in his bathroom and corned beef in his fridge. He now lives in terror of meeting the landlord on the stairs and being asked to pay the rent he owes.

He wouldn’t mind, but he owns the house.

Heathrow: If only they had listened to Sir Reginald Bennett

Here is Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett, as Hansard calls him, speaking in the Commons on 11 May 1951:

I am informed in another answer which I received today, that to build the aerodrome at Heathrow, 57 houses have had to be demolished. The further runways north of the Bath Road may involve the demolition of some 600 residential properties and a further 150 properties may have to be demolished for the final stage of development. That is, 800 houses have to go to make this one airport. I will not say any more about that. We need not be so sanguine about the housing situation as to view that with equanimity.

Another figure relevant to Heathrow Airport is this. The ground required for Heathrow alone is 4,600 acres. If that area, good land as it is, were sown with wheat, it would provide enough to keep 70,000 people of our population supplied with bread all the year round. If we have several aerodromes of this size there will be very little left of this island, and we have to weigh other interests against that of aviation. Surely the accumulation of these facts is very heavily against the infinite development of the concrete runway.

Sir Reginald Bennett was MP for Gosport and Fareham from 1950 to February 1974 and then for Fareham until 1979. According to his Daily Telegraph obituary, his publications included Why Executives Die Young and Psychological Disturbances of Young Married Life.

David Boyle on the government's Heathrow decision

Read him at The Real Blog:

This is a No Pasaran moment for the green movement, shared by an extraordinary cross-section of society who believe there has to be a limit to what we sacrifice on the altar of wrong-headed progress. That there has to be a limit to the appeasement of those corporate interests that believe with so little evidence that the decision will benefit London, the economy, the jobless or anything else. The destruction of whole villages, twelfth century churches, the peace of great swathes of London, the sight of elderly ladies bundled into police vans: it will change the way people think.

In short, they will not let it happen, and the resulting clash is going to be painful for both sides. But there comes a point in history where the powerful so misread the signs that they lose their power, and so it will prove.

Isn't the British constitution great?

Two short quotations from reports that went up on the Guardian website this afternoon.

On Heathrow:

Hoon insisted that a vote was not needed because the decision was "quasi-judicial". The government's decision was made in the interest of the country and not just Londoners, Hoon told McDonnell. "Heathrow is a national airport," he said.

On plans to exempt MPs' expense claims from freedom of information legislation:

Harriet Harman, the leader of the house, is to use a special parliamentary order that can become law within 24 hours after being debated by MPs and peers next week.

I get the impression that in Britain the government can short cut or dispense with democracy whenever it threatens to become inconvenient.

If MPs have any sense (and I grant you that a big if...) they will vote against this exemption of their expense claims. And Hoon is talking nonsense. Local councillors have a "quasi-judicial" role in planning matters, but they still take votes.