Starmer has declared war on £100m bat shed - but has he got a solution?
For the last six months, the prime minister has singled out the most hated construction site in Britain for criticism - a kilometre-long, £100m shed to protect bats in Buckinghamshire from the high speed trains of the future.
Sir Keir regularly thunders that this is the emblem of a broken planning system. His chancellor says such things will never happen again. But is their joint political sonar advanced enough to avoid a collision in the coming months?
Sir Keir regularly thunders? He doesn't come across as a thundering type, but maybe it's down to the acoustics of the bat shed.
It's typically political to single out one prominent aspect of the HS2 mess and present it as if this is almost the same as dealing with the problem. It's a start, but the way to go about it was in his hands from the beginning, or would have been had he adopted the Donald Trump approach.
In that case, repeal laws, get rid of obstructive bureaucracy, abolish quangos would have been Starmer's primary activity from the off, but it wasn't.
Instead we have had the winter fuel payment debacle, damaging tax rises, yet more immigration, ludicrous house building promises, absurd adherence to Net Zero, ridiculous international posturing and enough mendacity to fill a kilometre-long bat shed.
2 comments:
Interesting structure, that shed. It seems to be a sort of above-ground tunnel to stop the bats being hit or upset by the trains. What happens to the bats who want to cross the line at other points on the 140 miles of track? And they do know that bats actually like to live in tunnels and sheds?
And £100m? I know it's a kilometre long, but it's a shed.
Sam - it seems odd, but presumably they know this tunnel won't attract bats for some reason, but yes, £100m seems to be very expensive. I wonder if anyone will count the number of bat crossings?
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