Letters: HS2 has become a symbol of politicians’ carelessness with taxpayers’ money

SIR – You report (August 6) on Sir Keir Starmer’s support for HS2. 

Our politicians appear to live in a fantasy world where they still think this project is giving us “value for money” – even though the infrastructure watchdog has warned that it is out of control (report, July 30), with projected costs exceeding £100 billion. What does the country have to show for this? A railway line that has destroyed hundreds of hectares of natural woodland, has cost over two and a half times the original budget, and will not connect our two major cities for more than 20 years. 

It is a shambles. Stop it now.

Terry Lloyd
Derby

SIR – You report that the Infrastructure and Projects authority has declared HS2 unachievable. As construction of the core route from London to the West Midlands is well advanced, this verdict can only reflect the uncertainty over Euston station.

The rationale for new rail infrastructure always was, and remains, to add long-distance capacity so the existing West Coast Main Line can be repurposed for freight and local services, with speed primarily a bonus.

The HS2 Phase 1 hybrid Bill was based perfectly sensibly on a two-stage construction process for Euston that would deliver all this, initially providing six platforms for services to Birmingham and the North West, followed by five more as and when trains were to be added with the extensions towards Scotland, Yorkshire and the North East. Largely to maximise scope for property development, this scheme was replaced with a single-stage build with fewer and narrower platforms for HS2 services, and the problems have mounted up ever since. 

It is time the Government reverted to its original plan: given that decisions on HS2’s northern extensions have been postponed, the two-stage build would only incur the minimum costs of building on the already cleared site at Euston and allow the benefits of the scheme to be unlocked.

William Barter
Towcester, Northamptonshire 

SIR – An open return train ticket to London from Plymouth costs as much as £322, and the 250-mile journey takes more than three hours. 

The same open return journey from Edinburgh costs £150, and it takes four and a half hours to cover the 400-mile distance. The train from the West Country is, in short, twice the price and runs at a slower speed. 

May I suggest that the argument in favour of HS2 – that the North-South divide needs to be tackled – is reconsidered, and some attention paid to us in the South West?

Christopher Wood
Plymouth, Devon 

SIR – You report (August 10) that two HS2 diggers will receive a ceremonial burial at Old Oak Common. Why just two diggers? Surely it’s high time the whole project was buried.

Duncan Rayner
Sunningdale, Berkshire

ECHR overreach 

SIR – In 1950, Britain led the Council of Europe in drawing up the European Convention on Human Rights and setting up the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). 

British lawyers drafted large parts of the convention to provide the European Continent with liberties long enjoyed in Britain. However, Winston Churchill insisted that the Strasbourg Court should have no jurisdiction in Britain because we had – and have – no need of it. Our own laws already guaranteed and guarantee our freedoms.

For political reasons, Tony Blair granted the ECHR jurisdiction in Britain through the 1998 Human Rights Act. He soon regretted it. The main outcomes have been the politicisation of our judiciary and the introduction of new, phoney “human rights” to things like privacy and family life. These rights are routinely abused by publicity-shy millionaires, criminals, terrorists and illegal immigrants. Continental legal practice is not easily compatible with Britain’s brilliant common law, and British courts are now subject to often perverse ECHR appeal decisions.

The bench of the ECHR includes second-rate, political judges from countries such as Bosnia and Turkey. Indeed, Russia only left the court last September. Too often its judgments ignore natural justice and bring the law into disrepute. It would be risible to suggest that, without the ECHR, Britain would lack liberties enjoyed on the Continent. We must repeal the 1998 Act and replace it with legislation preventing power-hungry British judges from making new law. 

Our rights and liberties should be based exclusively on British law, subject to democratic control exclusively by our own Parliament.

Gregory Shenkman
London SW7

SIR – I read with incredulity that about 60 Tory MPs have expressed the view that leaving the ECHR would boost the Conservatives’ chances at the next general election (report, August 10). 

I would suggest that most people do not know what the ECHR is, or what it does, and probably don’t care anyway. They may even think it has something to do with the EU. I also suspect they do not wake in the night fretting about the effect that the ECHR is going to have on them.

Philip Thomas
Arundel, West Sussex

Wokeness at Eton

SIR – Simon Henderson, the Eton headmaster, is either naive or disingenuous in saying that he is fine with being described as “woke” (report, August 10). 

He claims that wokeness is simply kindness. Yet it is not kind to encourage young people to undergo medical interventions that may well cause them irreversible harm. It is not kind to discourage children of minority backgrounds from enjoying the treasures of the Western literary and musical canons. I could go on. 

It seems to me that Mr Henderson is merely another elite leader seeking to conform to the cultural zeitgeist. 

Kenneth Brownell
London E8 

SIR – Nobody should be surprised that the headmaster of Eton is woke. The school has always had a counter-cultural ethos, which in the past produced some infamous traitors.

Andrew Wauchope (Old Harrovian)
London SE11

SIR – Rarely do I disagree with Daniel Hannan (“Britain is now a poor nation”, Comment, July 23), but to suggest that British politics ought to revolve around just one question – “Why are we falling behind other advanced economies?” – is surely wrong.

The nature, beliefs and culture of a nation are its heart and soul, its ethos. Resisting the incessant attack by the Left and the woke on that ethos – including on freedom of thought and speech – is crucial to halting both our economic and cultural decline.

Nicholas Southward
Salisbury, Wiltshire

Battle of Britain hero

SIR – I was delighted to read Sarah Knapton’s report about the Battle of Britain (“Victory of the Few came down to the One”, August 6), having written a novel on the theme. 

If Trafford Leigh-Mallory and Douglas Bader had had their way in the summer of 1940, the battle would have been far more costly for Fighter Command, London and, ultimately, the free world. It was Keith Park’s tactics that prevented the Luftwaffe securing the conditions for the invasion of these islands. And if Park had not been replaced by Leigh-Mallory following an infamous meeting in the Air Ministry after the battle (alongside his boss, Hugh Dowding), Fighter Command losses over France during the subsequent campaign would have been nowhere near as high.

In 2010, the statue of Park now in Waterloo Place briefly occupied the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. With the debate on permanent occupation of the plinth reopened, I believe there could be no more fitting occupant.

Gp Capt Ron Powell RAF (retd)
Barry, Glamorgan

Why the travelling public gave up on buses

SIR – If politicians want to encourage people to travel by bus (report, August 6), they might give some consideration to the poor state of many bus stops. 

One stop where I live – which is owned by Stone Town Council – has had no panels in it for many months, so is all but useless as a bus “shelter”. Repairs are a long time coming. Another, which for unknown reasons is owned by Stafford Borough Council, is covered in semi-literate graffiti. When I complained about this I was told the council had “no funding for the removal of non-obscene graffiti”. 

The temptation to add a few obscenities must be firmly resisted, but I can only conclude that those who travel by bus come very low down in the list of local government priorities.

Jane Moth
Stone, Staffordshire 

SIR – Lots of villages in Suffolk and Norfolk have no bus or train services. The nearest town is often 10 miles away. Hospitals can be 20 miles away and the NHS won’t allow pick-ups for pensioners if they say yes to the question: can you climb on to a bus without help?

Michael D Dagger 
Woodbridge, Suffolk
 

A Spanish surprise 

SIR – Anyone who reads James Henderson’s article (“The coolest European resort you’ve never heard of”, Travel, August 6) and as a consequence confidently orders croquetas de choco when in Spain, expecting something made of chocolate, will be in for a surprise.

They are made of cuttlefish, a very chewy, tentacled cousin of the squid.

Dr Jennifer Longhurst
Ruthin, Denbighshire

Happy hitching 

SIR – Jennifer Murray’s letter (August 6) reminded me of my own hitchhiking days. During my National Service, I used to hitchhike home from the camp in South Wales dressed in my uniform. On one occasion, I was lost, without a map, in the pitch dark and rain on the Brecon Beacons. The only lift I could get was on a milk float. After visiting several farms, I realised that this would not do on a 48-hour pass. 

Wandering back to the main road, if it could be called that, I was amazed when two enormous golden headlights glided almost silently next to me and a window purred down. A gentle voice inquired if I needed a lift. I climbed in and slid on to a leather seat made for four. The driver, an elderly gentleman with white hair and a beard, told me he was driving to London, to within a mile of my home. Before I fell asleep I thought he looked very like Saint Christopher, patron saint of travellers. 

He woke me up and told me we had arrived. Looking around I noted that I had travelled in a Bentley Hearse with a coffin in the back.

David Bright 
Oxford

SIR – After I had thumbed a lift in Notting Hill to get me to Taunton one morning, it turned out that the driver of the two-seater special was an old Tauntonian. I knew the roads well. He didn’t. Approaching a 90-degree corner near Langport, I warned him that he was going too fast, twice.

Once we had extricated ourselves from the hedge I continued home alone, promising that the least I could do was to borrow my mother’s car and return to collect him, which I did.

Hamish Grant
Buckland St Mary, Somerset 

SIR – I gave many lifts to hitchhikers. Perhaps the most memorable hail came from one carrying a sign that read “Anywhere but Mansfield”. I still cannot think why.

Tony Manning
Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire 

SIR – In the 1980s my friends and I were at Southampton University, and had a hitching “race” to the Peak District in three boy-girl pairs. 

The girl’s role was to stand by the roadside attracting passing drivers. If a car pulled over, her partner would then spring from the undergrowth in the hope that they would both secure a lift. We all made it there and back, meeting assorted lorry drivers and interesting characters en route.

As a mother to three young adult daughters, I would be horrified if they suggested something similar today. Has the world become more dangerous, or parents more paranoid? 

Kate Pycock 
Ipswich, Suffolk

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