"What's your biggest fear, dear Reader?" I hear myself cry. "Biggest", by the way, means, bigger than all your other fears, just to be clear (!). And yet, those superlatives - best, worst, biggest etc - we tend to overuse all those words, don't we.
Sometimes, however, those superlatives are fully justified, and that's one of my best-ever judgments, like - ever (!). And especially when those judgments are backed up with the cold, hard numbers, which are the "best" judgments anyway, always, aren't they. Be fair !!!!
[Get on with it! - Ed]
Greatest fears - that's always a favourite one, isn't it. You know, what I mean - "What's my greatest fear?". And "what's yours?" [Thanks for asking, I'll have a gin and tonic! - Ed] etc. Well, finally that question has been answered most (!) definitively, I'm happy to say [Source for all stories below: Onion News]:
And when it comes to world's greatest military disasters, it's hard to beat the 1456 Ottoman Siege of Belgrade, isn't it. Fortunately, back in 2013, Obama showed his discretion and knowledge of history to assure Americans that such a catastrophe as the Siege would never happen again, on his watch at least, when intervening in any Middle East crises.
Which all goes to show, a bit of "smart" thinking can sometimes avert disasters. And, experts say, a bit of "smart" nutritional advice could even have prevented that "most worst" (!) of all maritime disasters, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.
But for more on this, let's go back to the Obama family for this "doozy" of a bombshell finding, published around the time of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.
I wonder.....!
But what was the view of Boris, Gilligan's boss, back in 2019?
However, it would "look bad", the thinking went, to cancel the project, and the HS2 Management played upon that fear.
[That's enough disasters! - Ed]
Well, hang on a minute if you don't mind (!). I've got one more disaster for you, if you please - the HS2, which my medium-to-long-suffering wife Lois and I find out about tonight, in a hard-hitting BBC1 Panorama documentary.
the original plans for the high-speed HS2 rail link
from London to the North of England
The planned HS2 "high speed rail link from London to the North" takes some beating as a disaster, doesn't it. Crucially we hear tonight from Andrew Gilligan, who was for 25 years a journalist, before working at London's City Hall alongside Boris Johnson, then mayor of London, amongst other things introducing bicycle lanes along the Thames Embankment and other places. And when Boris became UK Prime Minister in 2019, he duly appointed Gilligan as his transport adviser.
What was Gilligan's reaction when Boris first asked him to get involved in the HS2 project, designed to give England the sort of high-speed rail network successfully introduced in countries like France, Germany and Spain?
Yes, dear Reader, do you remember Boris's cable-car-across-the-Thames scheme, loudly trumpeted-about [sic] when Boris was Lord Mayor of London, back in 2012?
"What does Gilligan have to say about Boris's cable car scheme?", I hear you cry. [Not me, I've already cleared my desk and gone for the day! - Ed].
This cable-car idea, and many other of Boris's schemes as mayor were "stupid under any definition of the word", says Gilligan. "But [these examples] were far cheaper than HS2. That was the difference - HS2 is extremely stupid, but also extremely expensive."
Oh dear! And after Boris became Prime Minister in 2019, later that year, his successful re-election campaign meant that HS2 now provided a unique political opportunity also.
Eddie Lister, who was the Downing Street Chief of Staff recalls how in 2019, the Conservative Party was deeply divided over Brexit, and Boris made the decision to paper over the cracks by prioritising "levelling up", promising to reduce the gap in the UK between "the haves" and "the have not's".
And Gilligan recalls on tonight's programme how Boris had scored a huge landslide election victory in 2019 with the help of an awful lot of people in the North of England, who'd never voted Tory before.
Boris had been concerned that cancelling the project to link London with the North by means of a high-speed rail network would have harmed his chances of re-election. But at the same time, adds Gilligan, Boris was well aware of what a mess the HS2 management were already making of the project. In this interview tonight with the BBC's Richard Bilton, Gilligan recalls one of the many meetings he had on the project at 10 Downing Street, and here, reads from the notes he made during one of those meetings:
But fascinating stuff isn't it.
["Oh folly!" And, by the way, also "Oh, just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment