OXFORDSHIRE County Council should be commended for its recent decision to join the “51m” group of councils which oppose the High Speed 2 rail link (HS2).
It is called this because the cost of the overall scheme equates to £51m for every single parliamentary constituency in the country.
In doing so, the council is not only standing up for its residents in the northern part of the county, but also showing that it understands the scheme, which the Government still seems obsessed with.
It is a disaster in both a financial sense and a wider environmental sense.
At £33bn it is a truly huge project that, by the Government’s own figure, can at best give a financial return of just one third back.
At a time when police budgets are being slashed, our defence capability cut back, public sector pensions reneged on, and social care in crisis, this is a total extravagance.
With the close of the public consultation people can still make a powerful statement about this dreadful scheme by going to the Government’s E-petition site, searching “Stop HS2” and adding towards the 100,000 total which would trigger a debate in the Houses of Parliament.
MARTIN HALLIDAY, Howbery Park, Wallingford
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