A week after a ship was wrecked off Portland Bill, masses of timber were washed ashore on the Sussex coast. In Brighton, people were building structures like this on the beach.
Strict warnings were given against taking the timber away, even though it was battered and soaked with seawater. A week later a clean-up team arrived in Brighton. They began by clearing away the structures that people had made. They have some huge machines to collect the timber, consuming huge quantities of diesel.
This morning, because the swimmers can't use their arch because the lock has been glued up for the fifth time since the new year, we made up a fire below high water mark, using odd scraps, and the clearance people with their big machines promptly turned up even though there is a mile of beach they are working on, which looks as if they were trying to intimidate. But they didn't, and we had a nice swim and a warm-up afterwards in front of the blaze.
Apparently the wood is just going to be shredded. There is a mean-spirited way in which the whole thing has been dealt with.
The Guardian has published a couple more articles against HS2, one by specialist rail commentator Christian Wolmar, and another today by journalist Simon Jenkins. The main arguments in favour will doubtless be wheeled out by the commentators: the need for capacity and the disruption caused by upgrading existing routes. HST itself will severely disrupt services to Euston during the construction period. Capacity can be increased at a fraction of the cost by a variety of measures, provided that it is accepted that the additional traffic will run at existing speeds. It is not generally known that the Midland main line is, or was, four track all the way from London to Trent Junction, between Nottingham and Derby. This is because the additional tracks are separate, having been added for coal trains which trundled down to Brent sidings, on the edge of London, from a collection point at Toton in Nottinghamshire, where the Midland Railway build a huge marshalling yard. Beyond Derby, the main l...
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