psychology, agenda and ownership

Nick Howes pointed me in the direction of an S&D forum today with the email header !!!!!!!

It soon became obvious what his point was!

One post read - (this was regarding this blog!)

MMmmm, the juries out on this one.I have an uneasy discontent with the underlying politics in the blog.But the wishful dreaming is harmless.

LOL! I have no idea what the 'underlying politics' are on this blog. If anybody or any group are radically non-political it's me and the New S&D - in fact the only time I've ever mentioned politics was when I damned the lot of them! But I have found in the past that when people accuse you of something they are often really talking about themselves. And as for 'wishful dreaming' - none of that nostalgic drivel will EVER get past me! This group has always been immersed in cold, hard, unsentimental economic reality, and hopefully always will be. It's funny when someone gets something totally wrong!

So I was left a little speechless when I read this. But then a later post started to give me a clue as to what this was all about. This was from somebody else.

There are some parts of the old S&DJR route that, without extraordinary amounts of money and some serious compulsory purchase orders, are unrecoverable. These are mainly the old routes and station sites that are within the larger towns.So while I applaud the aim of the group the reality is that the original road could never be restored in its entirety, and consideration would need to be given to 'bypass' such locations by constructing new route. I will hazard a guess that such new route building would be as just as expensive as trying to compulsory purchase the old route. The upshot of these costs is that the complete line itself could never earn them back as a profitable service in a millennia of Sundays, and as a community project the costs would simply be too high compared to providing replacement bus services.It's sad, but unfortunately true.

Ignore the initial teaching 'grandma to suck eggs' bit. It qualifies itself in any case and is only really repeating what we've always said. The New S&D, from day one, will be profitable. We have no intention of borrowing a penny to finance construction and shares won't pay a dividend except out of profit. As for talking about 'replacement bus services' this shows the writer hasn't even reached their Peak Oil Moment yet. Bus services using what fuel at what cost and on what useable roads? And how exactly are buses going to carry freight? Everyone has to have a sack of wood or cow sat on their lap? And a replacement for what? Cars?

'It's sad, but unfortunately true'. No, that's just your unthought out opinion. Get a bloody backbone man and stop thinking it's still the 70s!!

Oh dear, two of 'em!

And then, as a final treat, number one comes back with a riposte and suddenly everything becomes clear!

Too true, the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway is part of our archeological/historical heritage, that we should be proud of, and there it will stay, killed by the march of time, unfortunately some people need a serious reality check.

I'm not going to embarass the poster by naming him on this blog, as he's going to have to live this down in the future. But let's at least analyse this reply.

Straight away he's in with '[t]oo true'. Well, again, it's only an unthought out OPINION, not a fact. And then it all comes out ... heritage ... blah, blah, blah ... (portentiously) and there it will stay ... blah, blah, blah ... killed by the march of time ... blah, blah, blah, and then, as a final treat to us all another very revealing bit of self-analysis 'unfortunately some people need a serious reality check'!!!

Yes, it's called the Peak Oil Moment, when you suddenly clearly see that the way forward is rail, and that our comfortable cheap oil fuelled existence is drawing to its natural end! It'll come Backwards of Blandford, and then you'll join us as have many other doubters in the past!

So it all boils down to a rather selfish need to think of the old, destroyed S&D as 'theirs'. It's true that in the run up to closure and its aftermath old disused railways gain a strange patina of charm and decay. I know this because once it appealed to me. The old dinosaurs don't want us to tread on their memories and more importantly on their relics. They HATE the idea of modern freight and passenger trains running up and down the line. Sod the passengers, sod the companies that want their goods delivered quickly, cheaply and efficiently. They seriously think their memories, their patches of land 'where once ran a sabotaged and defeated railway' should remain unfettered by the infrastructure of the 21st century. They want to be free to live with their dreams and nostalgia, crying on a crumbling embankment as the years pass them by.

The sad thing is that we have ALLOWED for this. We want to rebuild the S&D as closely to the original, in terms of infrastructure, and preserve the relics that do remain, providing they are still economically viable. We're not really stamping on anyone's dream, surely just making them clearer and accessible to all?

I know the Lynton and Barnstaple had this problem as well. The dinosaurs need to understand that we also appreciate the heritage aspect of the S&D and will do everything to capture and preserve it. We can blend the modern era and the past, and both can benefit from each other.

I'm sorry if this is a little intense for some of you, but I think people out there need to know that we're not stupid, that we detest 'dreamers' and that we're here for the long haul. The S&D will return and probably a lot quicker than most of us realise. And a few dinosaurs are hardly going to stop us.