Yesterday’s Rugby Observer carried a piece written by Lawrence Baker, proclaiming “HS2 opponents call for reopening of Rugby’s Great Central Railway“. The origins of the story came from a ‘press release’ that was alleged to come from the English Regional Transport Association. Their press release bears no address, no website details, no charity or other registration number – just a couple of telephone numbers and a picture of their ‘spokesman’ – a chap called Richard Pill.
This is what the ERTA had to say…
The ERTA has decided? Wow! So who is this august body that their deliberations should carry any weight & make it into print?
They don’t exist.
Lawrence Baker has made the fundamental mistake of not bothering to do the slightest bit of fact checking. No alarm bells rang when all the ‘news release’ carried was a couple of phone numbers & no address. He didn’t even bother running Richard Pill’s name through Google. If he had done, he’d have saved himself & his paper a lot of embarrassment.
Why?
Here’s Richard Pill’s LinkedIn page;
And here’s the picture of Pill from the ‘press release’
The Rugby Observer have been conned by a part time gardener.
Mind you, it’s not just the Rugby Observer who are so easily fooled by anti Hs2 rubbish. When he’s not making his own rubbish up, Richard Wellings from the IEA falls for stuff hook, line and sinker too!
That said, Wellings is well known for falling for anything. He’s recently been caught out retweeting a load of cobblers from an anonymous anti Hs2 blogger who calls himself ‘Beleben’. This individual claimed half the WCML freight paths go unused. When presented with the real time data that proved otherwise Wellings ducked the issue & still does to this day!
What this says about the anti Hs2 camps intellectual & critical prowess is up to the readers to decide.
Paul Bigland 
Reopening the VCR ID an excellent plan but it’s an old chestnut that is dredged up repeatedly. It’s no HS replacement though. A I recall, at least one of the many reopening plans was a scam.
As an idea, it’s a non-starter as it doesn’t take into account how much of the course of the GC has disappeared over the years. Especially around towns & cities like Nottingham, Leicester & Rugby. It also ignores the fact there’s no capacity at the South end to run services into Marylebone anymore. It’s a solution looking for a problem to solve.
I wouldn’t worry about the course of the route. That can be solved. Having worked with one of the anti-HS2 people locally, I’ve volunteered to drive the bulldozer. I don’t even care if they are out. or on the route.
Of course it is a shame that the GCR ever closed but highlights the short signtedness of UK transport policy over the decades. HS2 is an attempt to reverse that.
Stupid autocorrect. GCR is.