HS2 type Hi-Speed Rail Works in the Charente

Here are the latest snaps of the progress of the LGV Tours to Bordeaux link, equally wasteful as HS2 as already air connections are cheaper and speedier.

More to follow, these showing a three tunnel overpass on a quiet road to handle the spur line to Angoulême near Roullet

These general viws show the vast devestation, hard to picture given the narrow guage of modern railway lines:

Finally, still underway nearby, the harvest of the grapes for this winter's cognac production continues nearby at Champagne Vigny:

The Rape of the Countryside by EU Hi-Speed Rail

The LGV high speed train project, imposed on a nearly bankrupt France by the EU, gives those about to be similarly HS2 blighted within the UK a chance to see what damage such unnecessary and wasteful projects, merely duplicating existing rail systems, cause to the surrounding countryside. The extra lorry congestion and other miseries cannot be captured in snaps like these, all of which were taken today and all close by my home.

This first looks north towards the Charente river valley, the lovely hillside on which the old farm on the right sits, is where the white scar of the railway line, for fat bloated and EU corrupted  bureaucrats, is being driven. The next two show how close the trains will pass to this farm which sits alongside the ancient Romanesque church at Porcheress:

Once cut through this hillside the track emerges to be elevated close-by the town of Blanzac, where the work continues since several years with many more such lying ahead:

So it continues northwards towards Angoulême and Poitiers; Further shots near Blanzac are here:

Elected Politicians? How can they sleep or look into constituents' eyes?

Here is absolute proof of how governance of the UK has been given away and that elected politicians are merely there for the perks 5even ultimate self-serving slippery fish Lord Mandelson has now reportedly withdrawn his support):

Imposing the German Way across the Globe

Are we right to fear German Hegemony?

The cover of this week's New Statesman certainly seems to wish to alert its readers and newsstand browsers to such a possibility with this week's edition reproduced here:

The agreed "Conclusions" to the European Council Meeting of last evening, available in pdf format from this link, make absolutely clear how the Teutonic Juggernaut has been able to merely roll over and completely disregard PM David Cameron's pointless attempt to make an impact by removing Britain from the EU "Compact for Growth and Jobs" note this passage from the main summary:

"The European Council had a comprehensive discussion on the economic and social situation and set the orientations for the economic policy of the Member States and the European Union in 2013. The focus should be on the implementation of decisions taken, in particular as regards the Compact for Growth and Jobs."

Note here the melange created amongst the supposed separate and different involvements of the 17 slave-states of the Euro Group, the 26 EU Compact victims and the now apparently irrelevant but actually Treaty defined 27 actual Member States.

The giant corporations that run German industry, having Europe now they clearly believe, fully under their control; are turning their main attentions  elsewhere, witness these three very recent examples of one such, Siemens, interests and influence within the USA:

Siemens feted at the State of the Union address by President Obama 24th January 

Video from Fox News with the CEO of Siemens US Corporation on a meeting on Cybersecurity with President Obama at the White House 

Video from Bloomberg TV where the interviewer Peter Cook has the courage to ask CEO Peter Spiegel, what is the deal between Obama and Siemens!

In Europe of course, Siemens, is one of the more obvious German Giant industrial concerns, as it is for that companies useless High Speed Trains Europeans' countryside is widely being ripped apart at huge cost, for journeys those most affected by the devestation will never be able to afford to make nor have the need so to do. 4G investment would be far better spent but of little return to German heavy industry.

The High Speed rail lines remind me a bit of Roman roads, all leading to the useless and corrupt centre, in the case of the EU Brussels, rather than Rome, not for the use or convenience of the people along the route, but for the rapid movement of the forces necessary to ensure the peoples continued subjugation!

Peter Cook, the Bloomberg interviwer in the latter link, tweeted in advance of his report, if any tweeters had suggested questions for Siemens' Siegel, I suggested he ask whether Siemens were the real victors of World War Two?

Decadence in Public Administration

There was a time in Britain when Civil Servants, if not their political co-administrators, could be largely relied upon to act in the main part, in the overall wider public interest. Note this passage from Arthur Herman's "To Rule the Waves" - 

'Everyone admitted the Admiralty was the most efficient of the three service headquarters, with a deep sense of its own traditions and history. As Britain's oldest continuous department of state, it was still "an absolutely first-class organization," said one outside observer, and "in a class by itself." 

But the pressure to conform to the demands of modern bureaucracy was too much. On March 31, 1964, the Admiralty Board met for the last time, surrendered its letters patent, and hauled down its flag, after three hundred and thirty-six years of continuous existence. From now on, it was just one more set of dreary offices in the Ministry of Defense, looking forward with dread every year for the next Defense Survey and the next round of cuts.'

Worse, far worse, was of course to follow as Britain's public administration, (largely as a result of the pure power lust and private greed of Britain's incumbent civil servants,) became adapted and merged to fit the purposes of the European federalist conspirators. All standards quickly became debased as domestic administrators viewed and came to ape the tactics of their Continental superiors in obtaining the maximum possible personal returns for the minimum possible input and effort.

Now HS2 proceeds in spite of the complete farce and travel disruption and huge costs increases resulting from the introduction of a similar mad-cap EU scheme "Fyra" between Amsterdam and Brussels, presently suspended.

The general public largely made up by the taxpaying middle classes are being squeezed to death by the greed of the very wealthy, running the corporate giants who control the bureaucracy, and the entitlement-greedy and often idle benefit claimants below. Their one opportunity to escape this squeeze appears to be to join the public servants gorging from an ever diminishing and increasingly EU-controlled tax take.

  

HS2 AND Horsemeat Horseshit

Study the document, linked here in pdf format, issued at the conclusion of the seven year spending-fixing session of the EU Council in Brussels yesterday, and the truth behind the never-ceasing lies, evasions and utter horseshit that are emitted from that Great Wen,  like excrement into the sewers of a city one hundred times its size, will become immediately clear!


On page 3 of the document we are informed that   "Heading 2 “Sustainable growth: natural resources” which will include a sub-ceiling for market related expenditure and direct payments"

Paragraph 17 at the foot of Page 8 starts with this statement "17. Interconnected transport, energy and digital networks are an important element in the completion of the European single market. Moreover, investments in key infrastructures with EU added value can boost Europe’s competitiveness in the medium and long term in a difficult economic context, marked by slow growth and tight public budgets.


Why, we must wonder in amazement, was this palpable nonsense not challenged in a group of national leaders imposing austerity across their Continent. This money is mainly being spent on rail projects such as HS2, which will do nothing but provide track for near empty and non-economic trains to run at a loss for decades into the future, mostly no doubt to be provided by a Siemens monopoly only for the use of servants of the evil EU institution itself. Productive personnel in private enterprise, should any survive the high taxes, required to lay the worthless rail-track, will probably long before have eradicated such individuals, who would of course in any event elect to use the cheaper and faster option of air travel or go by car. This is evident when looking at travel means across other more advanced continental land masses.

The costs set aside for this preferred transport options are set out on ¨Page 9 as follows:

(a) transport: EUR 23 174 million, out of which EUR 10 000 million will be transferred from the Cohesion Fund to be spent in line with the CEF Regulation in Member States eligible for funding from the Cohesion Fund;
(b) energy: EUR 5 126 million; 
(c) telecommunications: EUR 1000 million. 

Note the pathetic €1 billion for modern communications methods such as telcoms,  set against the huge sums for trains and the threat to Britain's energy independence by letting corrupt EU officialdom loose with over €5 billion to distort fully working free market decision making while lining their own pockets and pensions in manners of which we are now all fully informed.

So here is the cause of the latest lies from from our own political leaders of the three main parties. They see €23 Billion in a pot and without questioning its worth compete to get their fair share, lumbering Britain with a useless train line for decades ahead for which we will be committed to buy foreigners locomotives and suffer totally uneconomic transport costs WITHIN OUR ISLAND BARELY CONNECTED (if not hopefully fully divorced) from the Marxist run sclerotic nightmare that is regrettably our neighbour, but which our surrounding sea gives us every ability to fully and once and for all ignore!

AND the horse meat in this post's title you may wonder? Yet more of the total lies that the example given by our political parties have caused to spread throughout society. If not a word uttered by our leaders, civil servants and regulators is to be believed, why not pretend a cow is a horse? It makes more sense than pretending HS2 can be economically justified - within or without the EU!

HS2 Securing Siemen's Market for the Future

Contrary to the impression given on this linked website, extolling Siemens as a UK Superbrand, this conglomerate is a German company whose past is described here.

Like all other German industry the ongoing, and now likely to be permanent Euro Crisis, benefits such businesses, mainly in the longer run, by lower German interest rates allowing competitive advantages in investment compared with its Euro Zone partners. Thus Siemens' trains will have pushed out competition from the products of its French and Italian competitors long before the HS2 line is completed. 

Britain's high speed rail lines are therefore a high cost and unnecessary expense being incurred by Britain to provide a long term monopoly outlet for German trains, destroying much precious and scarce British countryside in the process and placing an almost unsupportable burden on capital availability for modern industries which might otherwise be invested to compete with Germany.

HS2 chosen three character designation has an interesting connotation in this respect, as it seems to fulfill the ambitions of the Nazi Third Reich; thus potentially leading to Hitler'S 2nd attempt at world domination?

HS2 Equivalent Waste and Pointless Vandalism in France

Pictures taken around once quiet town of Brossac 26/1/13

HS2 - The Whole of Westminster is Scared to Cross EU Commission

The Daily Telegraph has an item this morning titled "Minister; high-speed rail is worth the upset" linked here.

What is actually the situation regarding High-Speed Rail, demanded by the EU as part of its grotesque project is the following:

"Britain's entire political class and establishment is scared witless by the EU and will betray the British public at all times merely to try to curry favour!"

If the weather clears at all over this weekend, I will drive south to Brossac some 20 km of my home, to get some photographs of the destruction of the lovely landscape underway around that pretty town, in the hopeless bid to connect Lisbon to Brussels, while planes can make the trip already at a tenth of the time and about one hundredth of the coming cost!

The EU is at risk of earning a reputation as 21st century Vandals, wreaking far greater damage on Aquitaine and continent-wide human suffering than the reputation their namesakes, perhaps wrongly, gained from the Romans.

Some unifying item of outrage is badly needed to bring home to the 500 million people suffering the corruption and ill governance of the EU, how utterly repulsive this project has now become. Could the pointless destruction and huge financial waste involved in High Speed Rail be the spark that re-ignites the flame of freedom and democracy, all across Europe, against this truly sick, secretive and lying institution that has somehow gained unfettered power over us all; but in particular over our lying, power-seeking national politicians such as the completely callous sounding Minister in the article linked above?

Manic EU Rail Building proves Centralised Control & Democracies Destruction

The Spanish language newspaper El Pais yesterday published a brilliant analysis in its English edition of the EU's disastrous and obsessional, money wasting, high-speed rail madness in Spain. Similar projects are planned throughout the former sovereign states now under the jackboot of the despotic, supposed "trading institution" -  the EU. The article may be read from here.

Any about to be affected by the dreadful and equally useless HS2 project in the UK should give it as wide a circulation as possible.

I have blogged a lot in the past about these crazed, environment destroying and completely uneconomic schemes, even resorting to a YouTube video to plead for investing the money instead in 4G mobile communications which would allow under-used rural housing in France to be both occupied and put to profitable use. 

Today, however, I would like to point out how the article illustrates the extent that National Politicians are now controlled completely by the EU machine! The article  provides a snapshot as to the level of control the EU enjoys and exerts. Take this passage from the El Pais article on the AVE, the initials used in Spain to describe this insanity:

 Twenty years after the first high-speed train cut a swath through the Castilian uplands, the evidence suggests that they are simply not viable economically, or even necessary to provide rapid links between the country's cities. But no politician seems able, or willing, to put a stop to the spread of the AVE. 

No Politician, has been able to halt it! As the aricle makes clear, that includes all Spanish politicians of most parties starting with the Socialist Party leader Felipe González, through  Aznar and Zapatero to Rajoy today. So has it been across the EU, in the UK - Major, through Blair and Brown to Cameron/Clegg. In France it is somewhat different, the country already having been  politically wedded to their TGV, and gaining extra benefit in so far as they have also (so far and probably only through the conspiracy of the secret meetings under the Elysée Treaty, 50th birthday next Tuesday) been allowed to supply some of the trains. (We must wonder how much longer Alstom will be allowed to survive the competition in that area?) Nevertheless it is mind-boggling that as both Sarkozy and Hollande, sought means to cut spending to inflict the centrally ordained EU austerity, neither President, saw the obvious uselessness of the billions going to waste on the LGV Tours/Bordeaux farce.

Perhaps here is an example of the sheer ugliness of the EU, becoming so evident across almost the entire area now under its control,  that people will finally wake up to the sheer ridiculousness of the damage and cost of the sheer waste and be motivated to bring this "EU project", of absolute citizen control and subjugation, to an early and abrupt end!

EU Rail Waste - LGV, HS2

The sun shone today so I was able to get out and take some snaps of the latest devastation being caused in the expenditure of billions of Euros to shave a few minutes journey time on a rail trip between Tours and Bordeaux, all at the behest of the EU! 

First off is a snap of a present-day High Speed TGV train on the existing perfectly good track, making its way through the beautiful Boëme river valley. Trains have to slow down across this viaduct, something the EU controlled robots cannot afford (in spite of the already high fares,) as they need every minute they can get back at their desks to to squeeze in even longer lunches!

The ugly pictures of the needless destruction of the beautiful Charente countryside I have pasted in small versions on the A4 document below. If any Anti-HS2 protester would like a bigger version of a particular shot, please email me and I will send it back as an attachment. I also have others or can take particular shots if requested, this will be ongoing for years!

Earlier posts have pictures and links to the official bumph, most recently tagged LGV Tours-Bordeaux

EU Rail desecration and waste, latest image

The carving apart of ancient hillsides,  leaving a vicious wound where productive vineyards for centuries delivered their precious cognac, continues apace in the Charente.

By night, arc lights block out the stars, in some of the last few remaining European skies previously untouched even by streetlight pollution!

The pointless and vastly expensive EU ordained act of LGV vandalsm, gobbling billions of euros in an economy hell bent towards bankruptcy, (as will be confirmed this weekend at the Socialist Perty conference headed by President François Hollande in nearby historic La Rochelle,) throws up columns of dust, as the diesel thirsty mammoth machines rape the countryside, while economically priced jet planes speed overhead, in any direction they choose, at fractions of the existing, never mind future, rail fare costs!

4G - Perhaps blogs can sometimes have an effect!

About a month ago my wife and I got annoyed in conversation about the absurd LGV Tours to Bordeaux railway upgrade that at the cost of billions will shave mere minutes off the present travel time between those cities at the EU's behest in a country in grave economic difficulties. Our chat brought out the absurdity of the work progressing though our local area, lacking modern internet and mobile communication capabilities in an area with a mass of unused but inhabitable housing capacity. I therefore made a brief video posted on this blog via YouTube:



I followed this up with a couple more blog posts, linked here and here, with pictures of the desecration in progress and various tweets on twitter, often pointing out the similarities to the HS2 project planned by the EU's ministerial minnions in the UK.

Yesterday the Government in England announced that 4G would suddenly be allowed to proceed, Everything Everywhere, (the communications company that combines former French and German mobile telcom interests within the UK,) being given a year's jump on its competitors, showing every sign of a rushed decision at the EU's possible cost and instigation.

Perhaps a small victory for bloggers and tweeters, possibly also evidenced by the recent evidence of attempts to change the archived records of my blog as recorded here earlier this week.

Perhaps it is mere co-incidence, I hope not, for if some small change to policy has been effected by these postings, who knows, one day our national governments might actually listen to this blog's main message on the obscene, oppressive, wealth destroying monster that the EU has become.

The Railway Friends of Fascism and HS2

The above is the map from the website of the Department of Transport for the EU ordered HS2 rail developments in the UK. Who will provide and pour the concrete? Who will blast the steel? Who will build the trains? Who other than EU fonctionaires and their lackeys travelling at the public's expense will be able to use these expensive and useless environment destroying follies.

Investments in G4 communication would allow most office work from home regardless of that home's location. Rail travel at whatever speed is passé. There must be other factors at work, a clue comes from the change in rail operators for the West Coast  route announced by Theresa Villiers, Transport Minister, ex-MEP, blatant second home expenses fiddler while an MP, read here who reports to a Secretary of State, Justine Greening, yet another supposed Rt Hon!

I have no sympathy for Virgin Trains? Richard Branson, to be heard complaining  by telephone from Necker island last night, lost his particular backers in the change of government, no doubt that pop funded, mega-millionaire, will have his turn to play with trains return when his particular bunch of EU puppet fascists are inevitably returned to power!

What I wonder is why the British electorate put up with this foreign controlled fascism? I will be returning to the questions raised in the opening paragraph of this posting in due course, meantime for a clue to the first of these, who will provide and pour the concrete, see this pdf file on the results of Lafarge, the French concrete company. (Note from page 7 the €51 million lower proceeds from the EU scam of carbon credits, for just half the year.) What cannot be quantified in such a report is the huge extra revenue from an EU project such as the LGV, another EU rail scam, passing right by its La Couronne concrete plant, no wonder normal British commercial concerns such as Portland's Blue Circle were unable to survive against such continental competition and its once profitable plants today lie idle, such as this in Weardale

Britain's expense fiddling fascists are under the control of others of a foreign variety from the Continent, while that remains the case, as is the policy of all three of Britain's main political parties, Britons cannot prosper, for we are enslaved, and among other things will pay through the nose to pointlessly travel by rail to no purpose whatsoever other than to stuff the pockets of our politicians and whatever franchise operators they choose to reward according to their own transitory and corrupt desires. Such is the EU system.

EU Rail Projects - LGV One Year On.

   A year ago today I blogged about the €7.33 Billion being wasted in my small corner of France, for a reduction of only about a quarter of an hour in the jouney time from Bordeaux to Brussels, which none in their right minds or employees of the EU (generally the same thing) would ever choose to make. That posting with pictures of unspoilt countryside is linked here.

   One year on and the machines are hard at work, although a new puppet government of the EU is now in place in France, and the gigantic scope of the economic crisis facing the country is daily ever more stark and evident.

   The following photographs show the extent of the pointless damage being wrought:

On the horizon is the scar in the hillside at Porcheresse featured in last year's images, having then just been deforested.

The work between the villages of Becheresse and Champagne Vigny.

New legal action against the UK Government over the pointless EU's HS2 rail scheme

The report is linked from here.

English Democrats reveal Tory motivations behind England's Planning Betrayal

Read the latest from the Leader of the English Democrats Party, "New City in England! Why?"  linked here.  An earlier report from the same source on Cameron's Conservatives themselves is here.

Sir John Hampden & Hannan on HS2

Read Daniel Hannan on Hartwell House and HS2

  An excerpt from the post highlights several complaints

You don't have to live along the route to feel the loss. All of us will have given something up if a new line slits its way through the Chilterns. And, of course, all of us will end up paying for the wretched thing. Even if Britain were running a healthy surplus, I'd be sceptical of the economics of HS2. The costs are vast and immediate, the gains speculative. As local campaigners contest the route inch by inch, securing a tunnel here, a diversion there, the price will rise further. We might end up having to spend more than £30 billion on the link – money which we shall have to borrow, at a time when our deficit is higher than Portugal's, Ireland's or Italy's.
The democratic objection is almost as powerful as the economic. At every general election, you hear the same complaint on doorstep after doorstep: 'It doesn't matter how you vote, nothing ever changes'. Is it any wonder people feel this way? Along the route of the line, there is almost unanimous opposition from elected representatives. District councillors, county councillors, MPs and, for what it's worth, MEPs are against the new line. (I'll be meeting local anti-HS2 campaigners this evening in East Claydon, along with my Euro-colleague James Elles: contact the Buckingham Conservative Association if you'd like to come.) Such opposition has made no difference. No wonder people are giving up on the ballot box.

Oak Tree Lament (Stop the EU's HS2)

Sacrificing our Sovereignty - HS2 and TEN-T

Research by Anne Palmer

The Coalition’s Program for Government?

The linked research paper has been prepared by Anne Palmer and is too long to include in full as a posting on this blog. I have therefore posted it on a little used but relevant sister blog linked here. I quote merely the first few papragraphs and omit all the hugely important links. Please read it in full when your time allows, it is immensely important for Britain.

These two paragraphs below are acknowledged as Crown Copyright from the Coalition’s program for Government. Chapter 13: Europe.

“The Government believes that Britain should play a leading role in an enlarged European Union, but that no further powers should be transferred to Brussels without a referendum. This approach strikes the right balance between constructive engagement with the EU to deal with the issues that affect us all, and protecting our national sovereignty”.

“We will ensure that there is no further transfer of sovereignty or powers over the course of the next Parliament. We will examine the balance of the EU’s existing competences and will, in particular, work to limit the application of the Working Time Directive in the United Kingdom”.   End of quotes.

We have read recently of the Government’s acceptance of a full speed ahead with HS2.  Yet, not one word from our Government or explanation that the HS2 is part of the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) Policy.  Although I have written about this before, I did not emphasize just how, in accepting this EU project, it is transferring ever more masses of UK Sovereignty to the European Union. In the acceptance of this EU Legislation our politicians are allowing the European Union to dictate what we must do on our land, sea, and air. All of which so many people fought so very hard to prevent in the 1939-1945 war, when the people of every age-yes even children- fought so hard for this once sovereign Country to remain forever FREE FROM FOREIGN RULE.