Okay, I admit it, I had a bit of fun with the poster now known as 'Compulsory Purchase Man'. He began to run down everything we were doing, I answered his points in a restrained and I think informed manner, but he then went on to claim, in all seriousness, that nobody takes any notice of compulsory purchase orders. This marked him, to me, as a non-serious poster, a joker or a troll.
He promised not to make any more comments but this gem has just arrived -
I also thought by the way that this was a forum to express personal view's [sic]. You obviosly[sic] can't take comments that are slightly negitive[sic] towards the full reinstatement of the line without trying to make those statements seem fool hardy[sic]. It's a case of you can dish it but you can't take it. I have shown your comments on here to other rail ethusiasts i[sic] know and they also agree the S/D can't go back the way it was. But fully support each project.
Hmmm. So he's now running to other railway enthusiasts yet they are still saying they support us? I don't get it. He seems to know me so well! I pondered a little on this, and finally responded as follows -
I think the main point is that this is a group/forum for people who want to rebuild the S&D. There are a lot of people giving up a lot of time making this happen. In reality all the members of the New S&D accept that the S&D will be rebuilt - that's no longer the issue, HOW we do it is what's important now.
So if a few people - who always have agendas of their own - try to drag the argument backwards but without any actual information, evidence, analysis what is the point? What do they want - for us to declare the whole project dead in the water, and for us to return to doing nothing? What exactly do they want??
A few times I've asked these posters what their credentials and qualifications are and not once have any of them got back to me! So I have to conclude that these are merely personal opinions with no grounding in reality but instead in prejudices and ignorance.
We have to move with the times. In a few decades there will be no more road traffic or air traffic, there simply won't be enough energy available. And not ONE poster has ever challenged this assertion with facts and figures. We may have a few electric vehicles connecting stations to outlying farms, shops etc, but these will be extremely expensive and really just waiting for rail to reach them. This is the future into which the New S&D - and hundreds of other lines round the country - is moving in to. I'm sorry that that upsets some people - heritage railway fans, petrolheads, Occupy, utopians etc - but what's the point of pretending it's not happening?
At the heart of the New S&D, ironically, are rail enthusiasts of the broadest sort, who loved the old S&D and want to preserve at least some aspects of it when the line's rebuilt. The alternative isn't a closed S&D - that was a temporary aberration from a different age - but, to paraphrase Mick Knox, a bland reopened network route hemmed in by palisade fencing.
Is this really what people want, because I don't!
The S&D deserves the very best, it deserves people that will FIGHT for its future and the people that have already realised this and are doing the work surely have the right to ignore those that would want to drag us back to the 1960s? Especially if there's absolutely nothing underpinning their arguments?
The simple fact is all this 'should the S&D reopen' nonsense was done and dusted five years ago. We've moved on. The New S&D was born from the winning of that argument. The argument now is clearly not 'should it happpen' but 'HOW do we make it happen?' That's where we are now. And it's so important to put the S&D at the top of the queue, because this is now starting to happen everywhere! Just be pleased that there are people giving us loads of time and money to do it, with more joining us all the time.
My gift for restraint amazes me sometimes! There is a certain value in this sort of comment because it often opens up a stream of conciousness from which emerges some interesting points.
The main one is that the New S&D only really happpened AFTER the argument about whether there was a case for reopening the S&D was settled. The second, and this in context to yesterday's AGM is really interesting, is that what's the problem even to people who still don't 'get' Peak Oil and the New S&D that our aim is to restore the WHOLE line? Who does that threaten? We have a good deal of heritage fans within our ranks and the rest are certainly sympathetic to the original S&D. We don't threaten to destroy the memory of the S&D, quite the opposite. Many of our members are also members at Shillingstone, Midsomer Norton and Washford. I myself am a Life Member at Midsomer Norton and a regular member at Shillingstone.
Continuing on this it's important to stress that the constitution of the New S&D charges us to restore the WHOLE route. It's at the absolute heart of the New S&D. Nothing less will do. But this doesn't mean that we expect to restore the whole line next week. Within that overarching ambition are the far smaller ambitions of restoring Midford and Spetisbury, ambitions in their own way far smaller than anything Midsomer Norton and Shillingstone currently have! This is a gradual, step by step, leveraged project. None of us know how we are going to restore the whole S&D. That's for the future, twenty, thirty, perhaps even forty years down the line. We can only do our small bit, now.
What happens in the real world out there will affect the pace at which the New S&D is restored. We still have very cheap fuel, but that price is illusory. There are many hidden subsidies and prejudices that keep the price low, but with current cuts they won't last forever. Cheap fuel is still easy to source but the peak has now been reached, probably a few years ago, and continuing growth in places like India and China, coupled with falling production, will soon begin to be reflected in the price of oil, and everything that depends on cheap oil. This is not contentious, yet some ill informed posters seem to think it's all conjecture. They are of course entitled to their opinion, but to me the value of one's opinion is intimately linked to the knowledge, qualifications and expertise of the person with the opinion ... and in this case the commentator seriously suggested that nobody takes any notice of compulsory purchase orders, which immediately devalued everything else he said!
At the end of the day there are an increasing number of well-educated, qualified and experienced people who are joining the New S&D cause. Our energy should be directed at getting the S&D back, not wasted on arguing with people who couldn't care less about the S&D and haven't even armed themselves with the information to make their 'point'.
Personally this is the last time I'll engage with this issue, and I'm only doing this for nostalgic reasons! If it does come up ever again - and I doubt it will - I'll simply direct the poster to this blog post!
