Dear Editor, In March Birmingham City Council welcomed HS2 as an investment in the future, and urged all to pledge support by signing up to their Chamber of Commerce action group.
It believes that a capital investment of nearly 18 thousand million pounds for a meagre 140 miles of railway line, that’s over £100,000,000 for every mile, just to get the better-off in Birmingham and the surrounding areas to London a half hour earlier is better value for money than investing in their local police, their children’s education, their schools, playing fields, parklands waterways, their hospitals, their roads, their old people, the infirm the handicapped, and their local communities.
I want a high speed rail network too but not at the expense of my core values.
Yet the council members, who were elected to look after our interests, whilst actively promoting the investment of HS2 seek to cut a paltry 17.5 million funding for the disabled, the transport budget by £16.8million, children’s services by £21.5million, and even tried to reduce funding for Citizens Advice Bureau and other voluntary organisations.
They have the audacity to say this High Speed Rail expenditure at this time of austerity and government cuts is in our interests. They tell people that I am selfish and put myself before others and want to protect my local countryside, and call me a NIMBY because I feel there are more urgent priorities for such expenditure.
No sir, it is my country I want to protect and its prosperity, and from idiots who profess it’s in the public good to spend money we haven’t got.
John Willliams
Aylesbury
