Is a half-hour off the journey to Brum really worth all this?

EDITOR'S COMMENT
Published: 30 September, 2010

IS one expected to take seriously the proposal to demolish four blocks of flats on the Regent’s Park Estate housing 500 families – in order to build a high speed link between Euston and Birmingham that will knock 20 or 30 minutes off a journey?

Where was this devilish plan concocted?  By which civil servants? With whose approval?

Suddenly, proposals that affect the livelihoods of hundreds of people are churned out from the Whitehall machine without, one suspects, the application of the fullest appraisal governing the social and economic impact on those whose lives would be turned upside down by it.

The high speed plan crept untrumpeted onto the scene last year. People in the Primrose Hill area, also affected by the Whitehall nightmarish plan, were the first to become aware of the plan – and when they did, they could only shake their  their heads in sheer disbelief that it had been possible for such a fatuous plan to see the light of day.

However, families living in Regent’s Park Estate took a little longer to wake up to the threat.

This week, they too have joined in the fight to root out such a bilious scheme.

They must be asking themselves how it is possible today, when there is such a grave shortage of social housing in the borough, that faceless mandarins can conjure up a scheme that can only exacerbate the shortage.

Or is this a case where one  civil service department is anarchically pursuing its own ends irrespective of the problems facing another department?

If this scheme were laid to rest, it would save billions and help to balance Britain’s books.

Mourning a quiet hero 

A QUIET man who leaves the scene  often passes unnoticed.

But the hundreds of mourners who came to pay their respects at yesterday’s (Wednesday) funeral of Dave Horan was evidence that quiet though Dave was in his life he had gathered around him deep layers of friends and admirers – people who knew the good work he did.

He never made a fuss of his good deeds – helping his students while a teacher, fighting the good fight on behalf of council tenants ensnared by officialdom, shaping up against private landlords who had been harassing tenants.

He fought – in his quiet way – big battles, too.  He championed the wrongly imprisoned Guildford Four when it was unpopular to do so.

But this giant did it all – quietly and without fuss.