Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 59

Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry

Day 59

Wednesday 8th October 2014

Recordings of all sessions from Day 59 are linked here, and I add some commentary below.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-59a-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-8-oct-2014-first-morning-session/

In the first  morning session of Day 59 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 8th Oct 2014,  Dawn Carey Jones on behalf of the South Headingley Community Association and herself gives the cases against the NGT trolleybus scheme.  Sue Buckle of the SHCA also supports this case.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-59b-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-8-oct-2014-late-morning-session/

In the late morning session of Day 59 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 8th Oct 2014, Dawn Carey Jones on behalf of the South Headingley Community Association and herself completes their cases against the NGT trolleybus scheme. Sue Buckle of the SHCA also supports this case.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-59c-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-8-oct-2014-afternoon-session/

In the afternoon session of Day 59 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 8th Oct 2014,  Mr Walton for the Applicant NGT and the Inspector cross examine Dawn Carey Jones and Sue Buckle on their cases for themselves and the South Headingley Community Association against the trolleybus scheme.

The Enquiry is now wearing away into the final month, or so we are all hoping.  Even at this late stage the programme is suffering change and reorganisation.  I don’t envy the task of Mr Graham Groom the Programme Officer or his second in command Mrs Joanna Vincent in arranging this.

The loss of Ms Katie Lightbody from this week’s schedule yesterday was something of a blow to the smooth running of the proceedings, but fortunately we were back on track today with the presentation of evidence from Dawn Carey Jones of the South Headingley Community Association, assisted by local resident of some fifty years, Sue Buckle.

My good friend Dawn has appeared on a number of occasions for cross examination of the NGT witnesses, but today she gave her own case.

I always learn something new when she speaks about the area she loves, and indeed which I lived in myself for about a decade before I moved up to West Headingley.

Her case covered a wide range of aspects of the trolleybus scheme, from practical points which the roads engineers and traffic modellers had neglected to pay attention to or had detailed poorly, to the monstrous affront of the consultations which had been almost farcically carried out.

The point of the consultation responses was raised again and we found out that only 45 responses out of some 340 or so were actually supportive of the trolleybus scheme.  Amongst these were general comments that indicated the writer didn’t really know much about it, but just thought that an improvement in public transport would be a good thing.  The majority of the remainder were opposed, and there were many concerned complaints about the consultation process, or about misinformation and the inadequate website etc etc.

This is not only an important point in respect of how it is certainly perceived by objectors that the consultations were biased and highly flawed ~ for instance the appearance of the landscape designs the day after the Plans Panel day in Council last year ~ but indicates that while some people were in favour of the idea in the most general principle, that they didn’t really understand what it was that they were actually supporting.

This is a common and widespread tale.  Former trolleybus supporters are like ex-smokers, more vigorous in their opposition than those who have never been seduced by its lures.  I saw Dr Maurice King, Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, local Hyde Park resident and deep green environmentalist, in the audience today.  I recall that when he first heard about the scheme in 2012 he was gung ho for it, but a few weeks later when the subject was mentioned again he didn’t have a good word to say for it.

You can’t blame people for this reaction when they find out any of the many downsides to the trolleybus scheme.

The destruction of the fancy dress shop, the former garage, and the row of shops in the angle of Headingley Lane and Victoria Road is a troubling matter for the small businesses and the local residents who shop there.  I particularly admire Dawn in the way she has stood up to the misrepresentation of these buildings by Metro and the Council.

They are perpetually portrayed as run down, ramshackle, in need of repair, little more than lean tos thrown up and of no importance.

If they have been allowed to become run down, which is a much exaggerated statement (as are so many that NGT makes) it cannot be unrelated to the fact that Metro are the owners of them and through a mixture of their own neglect and the planning blight associated with their uncertain future, there is demonstration of a clear desire if not actual intent to get rid of these buildings.

And yet there are rarely any of them left empty for long.  Low rent premises in such a convenient place for passing trade are hard to come by.  I used to commonly drop into several of these shops when I was around that area. 

The aesthetic value of the shops is also falsely derided by the NGT assessors, who said that the frontages were cheap modern ones, when actually they still have the original Victorian features.  And the description in the Heritage documents says they are early 20^th C, when actually documentary evidence exists that they are clearly from at least the 1890s.  These are not the only buildings which have been wrongly dated as 20^th C.  Their continued occupancy and use for some 120 years is a testament to their value to the community over the generations.

Leeds City Council and Metro, now WYCA, have no interest or concern for the needs or aspirations of local people.  If they did they would not seek to overwrite their very lives with their own grand designs which will obliterate the history and identity which is an integral part of the genius loci of the place.  Certainly over the last couple of years since I have started to imagine what it was like when the young Professor Tolkien would walk these streets ninety years ago I have been able to see greater value in the surviving legacy of past generations.  A legacy which would be all too casually swept away for the ‘bold initiatives’ and ‘exciting design opportunities’ of people whose only interest seems to be in making their own marks rather than really thinking about the effects they might have on people and place.

The road designs that go with all this are often not even safe.  Ms Jones identified that the loss of railings in front of the LS6 Café for a trolleybus stop would tempt pedestrians to take short cuts across this busy road.  While at the same time putting the trolleybus shelter in front of the café where people sit outside the south facing frontage, and so which would have disbenefits to the business and cause obstruction for people queuing for the trolleybus.  Both would be adversely affected.  If you know this frontage you will know that it is not an appropriate place to be putting a stop for an articulated vehicle, too near by far as it is to the Hyde Park Corner traffic lights and opposite the open end of Victoria Road.

The litany of disregard for heritage and people is added to with their shoddy and inadequate planning and design.  The trouble for NGT is that they have so little to work with and would have to do so much more damage than they already purpose to in order to really make it work, that they are continually faced with having to squeeze through narrow bottlenecks in our Victorian streets, or to simply destroy them and have done.

Mr Walton in his cross examination took the now familiar line trying to suggest that simply getting a witness to agree that some sort of improvement to public transport arrangements on the Headingley Lane would be beneficial is enough to justify the trolleybus.  He tried to pin down Dawn Jones demanding that she offer alternate solutions, but she quite rightly said that she was not an expert and could not make recommendations other than perhaps a tube, but that her view was that the entire concept of the trolleybus was flawed and a bad idea and that it was one idea which should be rejected.

This is what many people have said, not just long term residents who get accused of being ‘nimbys’ (although what is wrong with valuing your community heritage and trying to protect it is not clear to me).  The trolleybus is pretty much the worst of all solutions that might be applied to Leeds traffic issues. 

For the issues go far beyond the A660, and we must see our problems in the broader context of the entire city.  Eviscerating the string of pearls that are the Conservation areas along the A660 is only one more of the political agendas behind the trolleybus, in which community is to be trampled under foot in the stampede for endless economic development which serves none but the large corporate empires.  Meanwhile the slaves are to be trolleybussed into the work pens in the city, standing like cattle, seven to a square meter, through the bulldozed remnants of our communities.      

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 58

Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry

Day 58

Here is the link to the audio recording of today's brief session at the Enquiry.  The discussion is about how to programme in order to make the best use of time taking into account the availability of witnesses.  The session was broken briefly so I have joined both pieces together with a two second gap to indicate the adjournment.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-58-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-7-oct-2014-only-session/

On Day 58  of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Tuesday 7th Oct 2014  there was only one short session since the programmed witness Ms Katie Lightbody had been taken ill last night.  There was discussion around the programming schedule.  The Enquiry resumes tomorrow, Wednesday 8^th October at 9.30 am.

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 57

Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry

Day 57

Day 57 Monday 06 Oct 2014

The second Heritage Week begins with Mrs Katie Peerless assisting the Inspector.

Audio recordings for the two afternoon sessions are linked here and I follow this with some commentary on the proceedings below.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-57a-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-6-oct-2014-early-afternoon-session/

In the early afternoon session of Day 57 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Mr Ian Barraclough, on behalf of the residents and management of Headingley Castle, give their cases against the NGT proposals.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-57b-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-6-oct-2014-late-afternoon-session/

In the late afternoon session of Day 57 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry Mr Ian Barraclough, on behalf of the residents and management of Headingley Castle, continues to give their cases against the NGT

proposals, and is examined by Mr Walton for the Applicant and the Inspector.

This was an interesting couple of sessions to observe, especially if you are interested in the heritage aspects of the scheme.

I don’t actually fully agree with Mr Barraclough’s position myself, but it is nonetheless an interesting one, and it will be the case that people come at this from different positions.

Clearly his first concern are the residents of Headingley Castle and the business which manages it.  Headingley Castle is a Grade 2 listed building and yet there had been no direct consultation with anyone there prior to last summer.

The problems which arise are around the fact that the trolleybus would not only run within the curtilage of the Castle grounds but across the south facing view of the open parkland in front of it.  There would also be some issues around the drive and boundary wall.

Mr Barraclough cited an impressive series of documents detailing the formal guidance on the considerations which should be taken into account when dealing with a situation like this near a listed building.

The chief issue was the visibility of the running trolleybus from in front of the house, following on the Design Freeze 7 line.  The earlier Design Freeze 2, from a previous stage, had it running through the much lower car park of St Columba’s Church which is cut into the hillside up to almost 2 meters in places.  This, the examination of Mr Walton elicited, would not be a serious problem for Headingley Castle, hidden as it would be in a cutting and masked to a certain degree by the new planted trees, which of course would take a good number of years to mature.

Personally I would have liked him to take a stronger line of rejection of the scheme, but he has to do what he thinks best.

However, this is not the end of it.  There have been some considerable goings on about that very car park between St Columba’s and NGT.

It is my understanding that the car park which was a matter of some concern to the management of the church because of consequent loss of users while it was taken up with NGT plant and vehicles was a point of issue which was resolved behind the scenes.  Whilst congregation and users of the church remain opposed, the management found some accommodation with the Applicant which is not entirely clear.

I would agree with Mr Barraclough that his case for minimising the impact (if the ghastly thing had to go ahead) is a strong one and that the parkland view from the Castle should be protected as much as possible and putting the route into a cutting behind the church would make a big difference with that.

Of course, the trouble with this is that the church is even worse off than before.  What was only a temporary loss of the car park which would affect room bookings would now be permanent, and the trolleybus would have to go within a few yards of the church.

And the dominoes don’t stop here.  A suggestion was put forward by Mr Barraclough in his case that a new car park for the lost 17 spaces could be sited just to the south in what is the adjacent piece of land where the horses currently graze.

But this piece of land has been earmarked for the ‘pocket park’ which is supposed to provide Headingley with some new green space in the event of the scheme proceeding.

The pocket park is a rather sad little idea.  It relies mostly on its funny little name and the delusion that putting a road with poles and wires through a green field that has probably never been built on, and then designating a fragment of that field, that could not be put to any other use because it is so small, as a ‘new green space for Headingley’, would somehow be ‘improving’ the area, as I seem to recall Mr Flesher of Parks suggested an eternity ago.

So I was left wondering if Mr Barraclough was being incredibly subtle and clever in passing the problem along, not it the hope that it would go away, but in the almost certain and clear knowledge that it would not, and would be batted down the line (as so many things in the examination of this scheme have been), causing consequent change and stress to other factors which had ostensibly been sorted out.

I don’t know if the Inspector will come to the same conclusion about this as I did, but to me all this demonstrated a fact which has been pointed out by a significant number of objectors, not least among them Professor Bonsall and Mr Archbold.  And that fact is that this is not a suitable route for a system such as this.  The streets are too narrow and the character too well established for it.  The only way it could be achieved would be by massive destruction and invasion of existing established buildings, heritage and so forth.

To satisfy one objector, it would be necessary to harm another.  And to get out of doing that, it would be necessary to reduce what scant provision is being offered to balance all the disbeneficial impact on the area.

This is simply another example in the perpetual stream which has issued from the enquiry of instances of inadequate consultation and planning, while at the same time over egging the pudding with grossly inflated claims which cannot be supported.  They are trying to do too much in too little space and seek to persuade us that a sow’s ear is a silk purse.

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 56

Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry

Day 56

Day 56 Friday 3 Oct 

There was only one session on the morning of Day 56 of the Enquiry, here is the link to the audio recording.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-56-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-2-oct-2014-only-session/

In the only session of Day 56 of the Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry, Friday 3^rd October 2014 cases of objection to NGT are given by Mr Mike Holmes Practice Manager Highfield Surgery in Holt Park, Matthew Hill local resident and finally Catherine Shuttleworth, Governor of Richmond House School.  There is some examination by Mr Cameron and the Inspector.

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 55

Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry

Day 55

Thursday 2^nd October 2014

Links to the audio recordings from Day 55.

 

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-55a-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-2-oct-2014-first-morning-session/

In the first morning session of Day 55 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Thursday October 2014, Mr Jeff Fawcett gives the case on behalf of Adel and Wharfedale Labour Part.  This if followed by cases from Mr John Crawley on questions around Burton Crescent and Janet Matthews a qualified accountant on the public expenditure involved. There is some examination by Mr Walton for the Applicant NGT and by the Inspector.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-55b-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-2-oct-2014-late-morning-session/

In the late morning session of Day 55 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Thursday October 2014, Lorraine Nelis, tenant of the fields on Headingley Hill and Mr Ian Simpson both give their cases for objection to the NGT scheme and there is some examination from counsel for the Applicant and the Inspector.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-55c-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-2-oct-2014-early-afternoon-session/

In the early afternoon session of Day 55 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Thursday October 2014 , cases for objection are given by Mr Alan Haigh, and by Mr George Geapin who concentrates on electric installation issues of the trolleybus system.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-55d-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-2-oct-2014-late-afternoon-session/

In the late afternoon session of Day 55 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Thursday 3^rd October 2014, Mr George Geapin is examined by the Inspector.

Leeds Trolleybus Enquiry Day 54

Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry

Day 54

Wednesday 1^st October 2014

Recordings of each session of the proceedings are linked here and I make some commentary about the ongoing positions below.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-54a-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-1-oct-2014-first-morning-session/

In the first morning session of Day 54 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 1^st October 2014 Neil Cameron QC on behalf of the Applicant NGT continues to cross examine Emeritus Professor of Transport Planning Studies Peter Bonsall on his evidence against the trolleybus scheme.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-54b-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-1-oct-2014-late-morning-session/

In the late morning session of Day 54 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 1^st October 2014 Neil Cameron QC on behalf of the Applicant NGT concludes his cross examination of Emeritus Professor of Transport Planning Studies Peter Bonsall on his evidence against the trolleybus scheme.  This is then followed by the Inspector who asks a number of questions of his own.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-54c-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-1-oct-2014-early-afternoon-session/

In the early afternoon session of Day 54 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 1^st October Chris Longley of the Federation of Small Businesses presents his evidence and there is some cross examination from the Inspector.

http://www.mixcloud.com/CosmicClaire/day-54d-leeds-trolleybus-public-enquiry-1-oct-2014-late-afternoon-session/

In the late afternoon session of Day 54 of the Leeds Trolleybus Public Enquiry, Wednesday 1^st October cases are given against the NGT scheme by Mr Graham Lauder and Mrs Susan Sleeman, both long term residents of Leeds 6.

Today’s sessions began with the continuation of the war of attrition between Mr Cameron and Professor Bonsall.

To be honest I do find some of this stuff rather opaque to my own personal skills, but even that tells me something.  As a former teacher I’m a great believer that things should be able to be expressed in forms which can be easily understood, building from general overviews to more detail once the foundation has been established.

In his own evidence Peter Bonsall gave some very clear and simple views on key features of the NGT proposals which should be obvious to any layperson who gives them more than a casual glance, and he is able to support these views with evidence, WebTAG guidance and so forth.

When it comes to cross examination, the feeling amongst many of the objectors was that Mr Cameron went into such realms of obscurity that even the Inspector was challenged at times, as were most of the objectors.

One would have thought that demonstrating seriously flawed methodologies with consultation, (the absurd comparison of old and super modern buses apparently justifying a trolley system), modelling (Mr Hanson’s 50% variability of predicted use at Bodington) and on and on would have been enough, but Mr Cameron goes into endless detail which one has to question the relevance of.

One thing I do understand the relevance of is his continually returning to the assumption that since the DfT has allowed the scheme to get this far then it must already have received enough scrutiny to allow it to go further.  He seems almost to be attempting to back the Inspector into a corner where he can’t recommend against NGT because he would be going against the wishes of the Department. 

If so, why have we had to go through the process of the Public Enquiry?  There doesn’t seem to be an official figure on how much it will have cost by the time it is over in another month of so, but it must be a substantial amount, and I heard the figure of £4million mentioned the other day which wouldn’t seem unreasonable for the hire of the suite at the Regus Building, paying the Inspector and seemingly dozens of NGT wonks who come and go on the Applicant’s side of the room, not least Neil Cameron QC.  Silks don’t come cheap and guesses at how much he might be getting paid (on Leeds taxpayers’ tab) can be based on the following ‘The 10 to 15 percent [of barristers who are] Queen's Counsel earn on average in excess of £250,000 a year.

http://sixthformlaw.info/01_modules/mod1/1_4_legal_personnel/1_4_2_barristers_solicitors/02_barristers_work.htm

I don’t know if they fit into the following category ‘Barristers doing Chancery, commercial and other specialist work have incomes twice as great as those working in criminal or family law do.’  But it seems possible.  So he may be on as much as £1,000 a day, and then he has his junior Mr Walton, who I understand is not Silk but nonetheless is probably getting what most of us would consider a bundle.

Then there are all the NGT witnesses and backroom people who have prepared all the documents (the late submitted Heritage Doc B-13 was massive and the printing alone would have cost several thousand I am reliably informed by a contact I have in the printing industry).

Of course the objectors, amongst them First West Yorkshire bus company, have to pay their own way.  You can imagine that the Directors of First would have quite a grudge on with WYCA (formerly Metro), not only for making a seriously hostile attempt to destroy their business and making unsubstantiated claims that they had been unco-operative, but also for having to spend probably a million or more on their own case merely to defend themselves from sharp and biased business practice.  In fact, not only is the proposed prioritised scheme probably illegal in enforcing a preferential two tier system, but it is now well understood that WYCA wants to increase its political control over public transport providers and get into the game of becoming a provider itself.

If they were to be successful with the NGT bid, we have been told that they would want to follow it with a roll out of trolleybuses on several other routes in Leeds and eventually throughout West Yorkshire.  With a price tag of at least £28m per mile and vehicles costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, when this would be the only trolleybus system in the UK, that would be a dangerous path to follow.

One thing that has struck me for a while, is that trying to put a trolleybus line through the Conservation Area ‘string of pearls’ that stretches unbroken from the University to the ring road is setting themselves a very difficult task in terms of planning, whereas the Kirkstall Road, the A65, is already wide enough for such a scheme at least in the parts where it approaches the city centre, would connect easily into Wellington Street for the station, and an extension to Bradford would make more sense if it were established along the link road between the two cities beyond Horsforth.

Not that I am in favour of such a scheme, but it certainly would have fewer hurdles to jump than one up the A660, through the ‘jewel in the crown of Leeds’ as it was described by the Chair of the Planning Committee some years ago, who also said at the time that Headingley should have everything done to protect it.

So why are they attempting this unsuitable route? 

Some readers may know of the story of Wentworth Woodhouse, one of our finest stately homes, which had Coal Board strip mining to within a hundred yards or so of the frontage in the post war period.  The man responsible was Manny Shinwell who it is strongly believed by many simply wanted to put the owners in their place and let them know who was boss.  The need for coal can’t have been so desperate that they couldn’t look  elsewhere for a few tons of the stuff (I was brought up in the ’60s with the mantra that Britain had enough coal underground for 400 years, and the deeper stuff is often much better than the shallow open cast material) so it is not unreasonable in my view to agree with the position that Mr Shinwell had another agenda, one which the Labour Party were not ashamed of at the time.  I speak of course of bringing down the hoity toities.

Or as Cllr Richard Lewis said to me after the Headingley public meeting about the trolleybus scheme last year ‘never think you can have progress without doing some damage’.  Nice excuse.  However it is one which conveniently ignores the fact that different people have different values and what some might do with gusto is what others would consider vandalism.

So it would seem to me that a significant part of the thinking behind this is that if they can break the will of the independently minded residents of the A660 route and achieve the degradation of the finest extended route through Leeds, then implementing a further series of connecting routes would be made a great deal easier, one might almost consider inevitable.

During the eighties and nineties I considered myself solid Labour but I see things differently after Mr B.Liar decided it was a good idea to get involved in a war without end, and on a local basis our own Council have been behaving in the draconian manner that we see exemplified by the way the have attempted to ram NGT down our throats, and Councillors such as John Illingworth get suspended for doing things that they didn’t even know was against party policy.  (Not that I have any preference to other parties I should add.)

I hope I shan’t alienate some of my more left leaning readers, but it has become plain that largely as the instrument of Leeds City Council, WYCA is attempting to pursue a very undemocratic and far left policy, not only of looking for more involvement in transport, but much more dramatically and importantly, to do down the successful private sector company that provides such a good service to passengers on the A660, while at the same time putting those smug well heeled types with their nice heritage in their place.

The manner in which they have attempted to foist this on the taxpayers of Leeds has involved seriously flawed and even manipulated consultations, repeatedly making claims which aren’t even in their case (reduction of traffic congestion, which they actually admit would probably get worse due to the delays to other traffic caused by trolleybus prioritisation at junctions) and repeating these false or dubious claims until the most sceptical listener could be forgiven for repeating them in their sleep.

Just as Mr Haskins went back to the WYCA meeting last week to tell them that all was hunky dory at the enquiry (I assume they don’t wish to flatter me by bothering to actually listen to the evidence themselves online and thereby admit privately to themselves that they should have provided some kind of recording or transcript) their more low level lackeys continue the propaganda war in the response columns in the Yorkshire Evening Post.  Principle amongst these must be the gentleman (I’m trying to be polite here) who styles himself ‘oldsyphilitic’ and routinely posts replies to news items or letters concerning the trolleybus.  Endlessly churning out his cyclic tropes about ‘naysayers’ and how we don’t know what a good thing we are on to, besides which we “will” (his neurolingistic attack on our assumptions that it could be rejected) get to love it when it is, or rather, would be, on our streets.  Perhaps I should mention that he is a Bradford resident and therefore is not making a case at the enquiry.

He never of course makes considered responses to issues raised or points made, he just goes on about us naysaying ‘nimbies’.  A term I cordially despise since that too is more neurolingistics aimed at undermining our local sense of value in our mature heritage community.  Of course, you shouldn’t care about your own community, that’s selfish.  We can’t be allowed to defend our social cohesion and environment which contributes to a good quality of life and encourages community spirit.  No ~ to be a good sheep we have to sacrifice everything to the great god of the State.  These nihilist  sneers seek to degrade the sense of local identity and pride in human value. 

And are repeatedly churned out, again and again and again.

So this is truly turning into a propaganda war.  And as in all such wars, the facts, or even the truth are to some of no importance.  Just as in Orwell’s 1984, the perception is everything, there is no truth, only what the party designates to currently be the line.

Meanwhile, the Public Enquiry grinds on with ever deeper condemnations of the flawed methodologies, vague estimates, unjustified views and now a continuous stream of outraged private objectors saying that they have not been properly consulted and that it would be expected to seriously damage a high proportion of small businesses along the route.

All of which should have been properly and formally put in the public domain with Council or WYCA funded daily podcasts, streaming and transcripts, all cheap and readily available services which can now be put online.  So if we as the objectors group were not co-ordinating the public uploading of our own recordings to demonstrate what has really been coming out of the enquiry examinations, no-one, that is NO-ONE who had not been present would really know one way or the other what was going on except by casual word of mouth or private correspondence.

This is frankly iniquitous and is, for me at least, the single biggest condemnation of the whole process.  The false assertions made by NGT would continue to be bandied about and what could people do to rebut them other than to say ‘Well my friend was there and told me that such and such was established’.  If it is not properly in the public domain it didn’t happen in the eyes of many, and that is how our wonderful, supposedly democratic political leaders want it.

As a lighter aside, I’d like to briefly draw attention to my spelling, which a colleague who is a former English teacher mentioned to me.  My own spelling of ‘Enquiry’ in particular, as opposed to the official Public Inquiry spelling.  I began using my own spelling with an ‘E’ since that is the one I was brought up with.  A few day into the ‘Inquiry’ I noticed the variation between the two, so went hotfoot to my Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, (Vol 1) and was relieved to find that both spellings are acceptable.  However, for continuity’s sake I have continued using my original spelling on all recording and blog headers.

Anyway, to briefly return to the evidence at the Enquiry, or Inquiry, however you like it, I will just give one last example of how NGT have attempted to pull the wool over our eyes and hoodwink us.  One small detail that was winkled out the other day was that the Low Cost Alternative which involved upgrading bus stops (shelters, seats, lights, cctv, real time display) was massively more expensive per stop than the apparent cost for doing it for a trolleybus route.  As I understood Professor Bonsall it was the case that they were saying ‘Don’t do that, you won’t get much for your money, but do ours, you’ll get super duper value!’ but the costs were not applied in an equal way and so the comparison was entirely misleading.  Again…

I have heard it said that the truth need no defence.  On the contrary, I would agree with Churchill when he said that a lie will be half way round the world while the truth is still getting its boots on.  The truth is a strong weapon, but it has to be wielded assertively or else it is of little value.

This then is, as are all politics eventually, a psychological war.  A war of mindsets, where political ideology and will attempts to triumph over truth and common sense.  But with the internet we seem to have come to a point where people no longer feel isolated and disempowered but are prepared to stand up and speak things as they see them, for they realise that they are not alone.