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:

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

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.

Bastille Day finds France blowing €Billions on EU Glorification

I had hoped that in spite of completely mental taxation and spending policies the incoming socialist administration in France would at least have the common sense to halt the ridiculous massive spending on vainglorious rail improvement projects cutting mere minutes from journey times to Brussels, solely for the pride of the insane EU and its pampered Commissioners and employees. Not so!

Attending our commune's Mairie to complete the new five paged formalities regarding bonfires in our garden (President Hollande's plan to ease unemployment so far consists of hiring an extra 150,000 civil servants, so we can expect more of these,) we were given a broadsheet, twelve page, full colour presentation called LISEA Express, detailing the incredible waste of billions of €uros on the high-speed upgrade for the existing efficient and speedy rail link, between Tours and Bordeaux, known as LGV (Ligne Grande Vitesse) Tours Bordeaux. Visit the website here if you are interested or opposed to the similar HS2 in the UK!

France was lucky in that Britain pipped it to the post in getting the 2012 Olympics, so the French will be spared the ludicrous waste of taxpayers' money in the full face of the worst economic crisis the world has likely ever faced. In France, Renault and Peugeot this week announced car sales in France down around 15% in the second quarter, a truly shocking fall given the depressed start point from the 2007/2008 crisis effected levels. One Peugeot factory will be shut with 8,000 more job losses on top of the 6,500 previously announced.

Here are some of the dreadful statistics this free brochure boasts about in extolling the detail of this rail project, exceeded technologically, of course, while Queen Victoria sat upon England's throne:

Train speeds will rise from 230 km/hr to 320km/hr (Keeping civil servants from their desks as long as possible would likely yield greater taxpayer savings, ordinary folk will be flying with budget airlines):

No matter, the EU inspired railway line, designed to get Spanish and Portuguese fonctionaires to their Brussels desks some twenty minutes faster than previously, ignoring the fact that flying from Lisbon and Madrid would be quicker and cheaper AND that there will likely be no need for such journeys, given both countries might soon regain their independence from Brussels through economic necessity.

70 stream and 4 major river crossings:

14 crossings above or below existing rail tracks:

1,000 diversions of gas pipelines,telephone and fibre optic cables, 300 deviations of electricity power lines and moving 320 water mains.

3 million tons of ballast to be quarried and laid.

3,000 hectares of preventitive archaeology, etc., etc., etc.

Can one credit the supposed thought processes of those authorising and overseeing such waste, not just at a national level, where the lunacy of appointing civil servants to reduce unemployment now sits alongside the compulsory 35 hour week for extreme governmental absurdity?

At the back of the French administrative mind, I suspect lies the thought that much of the cash being blown away comes from others in the EU. Cameron should take note, criminal waste on such a grand scale will not be tolerated in England,  HS2 should be cancelled in the UK and concurrently Britain should freeze all EU budget contributions dedicated to the transport sector, failure to do so is an abdication of responsibility; Justine Greening the transport secretary should present that case.

Instead we get an announcement this moment on the BBC Radio 4 news at 8:00 that the rail line between London and Sheffield is to be electrified, funded by the EU as well? My foot, we are all broke! £500 million down the drain to keep Nick Clegg sweet, Sheffield holds his constituency, pork barrel spending at its worst!

Baroin - France needs no new cuts, will continue building unwanted railways for the EU

Reuters has this really quite astounding report, on the words of the French Finance Minister, François Baroin,  to a German newspaper this Sunday, linked here.

EU's High speed rail project HS2 gets go-ahead

As ever the Coalition Government of Cameron and Clegg does exactly as the EU requires without even any attempt at resistance. Read the announcement here.

One never knows perhaps this will prove the final straw.

For much more on these EU rail disasters see the key words HS2 and LGV Tours-Bordeaux.

EU Rail waste and vandalism - HS2 (continued)

EU Rail Vandalism and Waste

I took the photograph above at around noon today from the footpath that leads across the south face of the very ancient and historic church of Porcheresse.  The scar in land to the right of the centre is approximately where the new high speed rail line will pass, saving mere minutes from the present journey time between Tours and Bordeaux. To the left of the picture is another ancient building of worship and cemetery "St Genis" while to the far right is a yet more historic Romanesque church at Cressac-St-Genis, all soon to be blighted by the High Speed Rail train, only affordable for EU fonctionaires (although the local communities through which the line passes will bear the financial and environmental costs).

Cressac-St-Genis seen in the right of this picture. The old church carries scars said to have been inflicted by the English during the 100 years war.

The scar of where the railway line will be constructed over the coming years is clear in all these pictures.

Saint-Genis Chapel, all that remains of a tannery that once stood in this now tranquil spot.

The church of Saint-Cybard at Porcheresse which overlooks this scene, dates from the 11th century and is thought to have the earliest example of a suspended dome on pendatives in the South Charente. The High Speed trains will pass within mere tens of metres to contiunue cutting through a lovely hillside, upon which the church stands, then onwards at mad speed, across these once wonderful views.

 

Updates of this scenery will be provided if the work progresses. A collapse of the euro could halt it in its tracks, especially as the billions needed bring no known benefits to the citizens of France, as will be the case in England with the HS2!

Telegraph reports EU High Speed Rail White Elephant to proceed at huge costs.

I have been following these EU rail projects, through which billions of wasted money is being spent solely for the prestige of the EU, for some time. The Daily Telegraph this morning is now reporting that the British Coalition Government has approved the HS2 line which will slash through some of the last remaining home counties countryside is now to go ahead, read here.

More on this, with hopefully some updated photographs of similar desecration in France, on the Tours/Bordeaux LGV stupidity, later on this blog.

Harvard Economics Professor tries to explain the Euro for the French.

Professor Martin Feldstein writing in Project Syndicate, linked here, has tried to explain some of the present problems of the Euro currency for the French, whom he states " Don't Get It".

Two paragraphs set out the main thrust of his case which, puzzingly for me, seems to ignore the growing incongruities within the ECB and the mystery as to eventual liabilities for the staggering debts and worthless assets it is now accumulating:

If investors are unwilling to finance the French budget deficit – that is, if France cannot borrow to finance that deficit – France will be forced to default. That is why the market treats French bonds as riskier and demands a higher interest rate, even though France’s budget deficit is 5.8% of its GDP, whereas Britain’s budget deficit is 8.8% of GDP.

There is a second reason why the British situation is less risky than that of France. Britain can reduce its current-account deficit by causing the British pound to weaken relative to the dollar and the euro, which the French, again, cannot do without their own currency. Indeed, that is precisely what Britain has been doing with its monetary policy: bringing the sterling-euro and sterling-dollar exchange rates down to more competitive levels.

The Professor concludes with a suggestion that it is policies at home that France should be considering, (as urged on this blog) as follows:

France should focus its attention on its domestic fiscal problems and the dire situation of its commercial banks, rather than lashing out at Britain or calling for political changes that are not going to occur.

Martin Feldstein, Professor of Economics at Harvard, was Chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers and is former President of the National Bureau for Economic Research.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

The EU Train system - folly for its corrupted and cossetted officials and employees.

The hustle and bustle of busy airports, with their intrusive searches and lack of business classs facilities for short to medium length intra-european flights are considered beneath the dignity of the sneeringly superior EU administrative classes. Thus taxpayers across the EU must see precious farmland destroyed and billions wasted in prestigious and useless high speed rail projects.

Yesterday in Britain's House of Commons, one such link was found by a Committee of MPs to represent a good case for investment against all logic, read here. In France further deep austerity cuts were being announced on the same day. I could find no immediate cessation of the hugely expensive and ludicrous scheme, on which work is already underway, to cut mere minutes from a journey time between Tours and Bordeaux (part of the EU Trans-European Transport Network, read here, eventually linking that centre of EU corruption Brussels to Madrid and Lisbon, althought the Iberian projects are reportedly effectively abandoned due to the sweeping cuts necessary across Europe due to the EU's maladministration and excessive expenditure on those within its malign sphere of influence). More on this may be found here.

A giant engineering project, such as my proposed E.A.S.E.E., linking the world, which benefits all mankind for use in their own cars, now that could be the kind of prestigious project which could return the globe to growth, as I blogged here, last weekend.

Everything proposed or connected with the EU should sensibly be immediately abandoned, surely it must now be clear to all, that this dreadful project is in its death throes and the sooner it is scrapped the better.

French Finance Minister Baroin warns growth may fall!

The French Finance Minister, François Baroin, warned on TV France 2 this morning, report here, that growth in the country may not achieve the expected 1.5% for next year.

Many viewers, such as this observer will be frankly startled if growth this year even approaches its targets. Nevertheless digging for the pointless new TGV upgrade that will knock mere minutes off the journey time between Bordeaux and Paris, continues apace here in SW France. Growth created by such projects, costing hundreds of millions seems absolutely pointless, unless of course you are an EU fonctionaire, with expenses paid by taxpayers to make such pointless trips!

€7.33 Billion euros will be the cost to slash mere minutes between Bordeuax and Tours

France is under pressure, rumours abound regarding its banks, its credit rating and the losses still being committed from the national coffers to somehow ease the plight of the doomed Euro.

Yet work is just beginning on a seven billion euro project designed to shave mere minutes from the jouney time by rail between Tours and Bordeaux, as blogged about here yesterday and earlier today.

As promised, here are some pictures, taken this afternoon, of the work in progress in the still charming Charente countryside between Mouthiers and Porcheresse.

 

The village of Voulgezac before work starts on the quarry and landfill behind.

A works depot under construction at Pérignac Déchetterie

Deforestation at Porcheresse

A high-speed train ambles its way along a viaduct giving today's passengers superb views of the Boëme River vally

The biggest single project of the whole entirely wasteful scheme will be a 1319 metre bridge crossing of the Gironde River, which this recent article from Sud-Ouest decribes on this link.

This blog will explore alternatives for a less costly speedier trans-EU link, ignoring the glories of former capitals in the coming days!