Though Cowards Flinch

Today the government used its manifesto to reaffirm its commitment to the construction of a high-speed rail link between Birmingham and London. 

I’ve expressed my doubts about the overall economic value of the project, but I can see the logic behind it, not least in relation to the road-building and airport alternatives.

The Conservatives, on the other hand have refused to engage with the proposals set out on March 11th, largely for fear of alienating voters in constituencies along the path of the proposed line.

However, the Conservative-supporting Sunday Times has risen to the challenge, giving prominence to the outrage felt at the proposals by one Lord Jacob Rothschild. 

His sorry story is that the proposed line will pass about a mile away from Waddesdon Manor, where he doesn’t live. 

Even more terribly for Lord Rotschild, the new line will need a viaduct  on his land about a mile away from where actually he lives at Eythorpe Pavilion, on an estate of 5,700 acres (one acre is about the size of a football field).

That’s right.  The line will pass a full mile away from the house his family owned until 50 years ago, but without encroaching on its 120 acres, and a mile away from where he currently lives, though not (if you look closely at the green boundaries on the map) through the parks and gardens as the Sunday Times suggests, but through the farmland he also owns beyond.

In fact if you look at the map the very same viaduct planned for Rothschild’s land will actually be built closer to hundreds of houses on the south western edge of Aylesbury, but that is not deemed worth of mention by the Sunday Times.

Anyway, Lord Rothschild’s got his planning consultants on the case, and as the Sunday Times notes, he “is likely to prove a formidable opponent”, lining up as he is alongside celebrity residents Fern Brittan, Sophie Dahl, and Ozzie Osbourne.

Meanwhile, a hundred and fifty miles to the North, and in a parallel universe, a council is proposing the extension of a hazardous waste dump with a ‘doubtful’ safety track record about 500 hundred yards from hundreds of houses on a Skelmersdale housing estate, with thousands more directly downwind (see plan on page 115). 

For some reason, these residents’ misgivings about the scheme planned for near them have not been covered in the Sunday Times.   I’m sure their hearts bleed for Lord Rothschild, though.