I hand this week’s blog space over to Professor John Whitelegg, a spokesman for the Green Party who echoes many of my thoughts on the ill-conceived HS2 idea:
“The case for a new high speed rail link from Euston to Birmingham with the promise of extensions to Manchester and Leeds and ultimately Scotland is based on deeply flawed assumptions that have not been subjected to rigorous, independent audit. The idea that time savings on rail trips translate into job creation gains is not supported by the evidence. The assumption that time spent on trains is ‘wasted’ and is not spent working is simply wrong as any inspection of passenger behaviour on any intercity train will show.  The business case depends on this flawed assumption and if the assumption is corrected the case collapses. Capacity problems on the West Coast Main Line can be solved by more trains, longer trains, passing loops and intelligent city regional planning. Going for extra capacity with a new high speed line ignores the impressive development of sophisticated teleconferencing, video conferences and on-the-move IT solutions. The demand for rail transport is not an immutable physical law and can be reduced by promoting IT solutions. High speed rail is not a ‘get out of jail’ free card for carbon emissions and climate change. The proposed HS2 trains would burn 50% more energy mile-for-mile than the Eurostar and HS2 would produce more than twice the emissions of an intercity train.
It is justified on the back of very large increases in all modes of transport and increases in energy use. At a time when all our city regions lack the kind of reliable, affordable, sophisticated public transport systems we can find in Frankfurt, Zurich and Vienna it is madness to put all our eggs in the ‘faster, further is better’ basket. The economic, social and environmental gains from spending £3 billion in each of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle and Birmingham far outweigh the gains claimed for HS2. It is a disaster that we will spend so much money on such a useless project at such a difficult time in our economic life when so much useful work could be done for the same amount in most of our large cities.”

I called in at the WWT Martin Mere centre near Southport last week – I couldn’t have timed a better visit. Cold weather in Scotland meant that hundreds of whooper swans had decided to move further south to the Lancashire coast. It brought the total number of whoopers to around 1,900 swans, with more predicted to arrive over the weekend. The swans winter at Martin Mere and will begin their migration back to Iceland in March, where they will spend the summer. The noise was incredible and with a great variety of ducks also present it was a memorable spectacle. www.wwt.org.uk/visit/martinmere for more information.
Look out for February’s edition of Countryman which is on sale this week. There is a special feature on our traditional county boundaries, we take a look at Dickens country and reveal the truth about cuckoos. www.thecountryman.co.uk

A friend, jokingly I hope, told me stop being bothered about HS2 because I’ll be long gone before it’s built. He’s right, of course, but the consequences of last week’s incomprehensible decision to forge ahead with the high speed route from London to Birmingham are being felt right now. The blight, stress and anger will be witnessed by a generation. The next in line will learn that today’s estimate of £32bn will actually be double that amount; the thousands of promised jobs will never materialise and that acre upon acre of precious irreplaceable countryside has been vandalised. No doubt the line will then be owned by private companies hoping to make money out of something paid for by taxpayers. There will still be a north-south divide, there will be no, or inadequate, local rail/bus services to link into HS2 and that the whole of the route between Birmingham and London will become a commuter belt and car park for the capital. Good luck, son – I’m so sorry, and I apologise for my generation of politicians.

I make no apologies for repeating – or rather, combining – earlier rants but as it seems that the Government has seemingly once again ignored public opinion and made its mind up to go ahead with HS2, I thought I might as well let out this last desperate cry of a drowning man…
There’s been a fair bit of flooding in my area since Christmas. The flood plains of two local rivers have generally done their job and held back the water from populated areas further down the valley. When I see all this water lying around I always wonder why we don’t make better use of it, either through creating power or redistributing it to places where water is scarce. Those of us living in areas where there is excess water often don’t realise that in many parts of the country, especially in the south east, there are problems keeping up with demand, not just for residents but for livestock and crops. Surely the billions which look like being spent on the white elephant high speed railway from London to Birmingham, which might knock 25 minutes (wow!) off somebody’s journey to the capital, would be better invested in a grid system to get water where it is needed? I repeat, HS2 does not make business sense, it will have dreadful consequences on the countryside and environment and is not worth the money especially at a time when the country has none.

Watching starlings making those mesmerising random patterns in the sky just before roosting was a real treat for me during what has been a really grey Christmas and New Year period in these parts. For around 15 minutes at ‘sunset’ on December 27 I was able to enjoy, from my back door, the sight and sound of thousands of the birds carrying out their nightly ritual. Starling murmurations can be seen all over the country but it’s the first time I’ve witnessed one so close to home – a real natural treat at a time when we tend to immerse ourselves in manmade frivolity. I hope you enjoy more of Nature’s wonders in 2012 – happy new year.

I think St Swithin is taking a Christmas break where I live… it’s rained every day for a week here in the western Yorkshire Dales with more forecast for the next few days. I’d rather have the snow of last year. Wherever you are in the country have a great New Year. Pic shows Ribblesdale December 2010.

In producing monthly magazines it’s quite easy to to find myself out of kilter with everyone else. When most people’s minds are on Christmas, this week sees the publication of our January issue and I’m actually getting close to finishing off our February issue, trying to tie up loose ends before it becomes impossible to get hold of anyone during the big festive shut-down. I’ve been looking at photos of snowdrops and bluebells and thinking spring might be just around the corner!
I’ve just received a lovely letter from a reader saying she will be renewing her subscription to Countryman for another year because the magazine is ‘a breath of fresh air in a world of gloom and greed – please don’t change’. She need not worry on that score and I wish all readers of the magazine and the blog a happy new year and a merry Christmas – or should that be Easter…?

When the beck outside our office window is so high the water’s covering the small island where the ducks spend their days arguing amongst themselves it’s difficult for people round here to believe there’s something of a water crisis in the country. The main rivers in the Dales have been swollen for a while now and the flood plains in the valley bottoms have turned the place into a mini Lake District. But we don’t have a national water grid to take the wet stuff where it’s needed most. The excess rain that has fallen here in the last fortnight will not go towards providing a valuable resource for arable farmers, more tap water, or power… it will simply flow back to the sea. I notice the CLA (Country Landowners Association) are calling for planning laws to be relaxed so that more on-farm reservoirs can be built. That suggestion needs plenty of thought, of course, as water is for everyone not just those who can afford to build reservoirs or tanks or are lucky enough to live on land near a catchment area. We also have to think about wildlife and how water affects the balance of Nature. Maybe the billions being ploughed into knocking a few minutes off a train journey north could be put towards finding an environmentally friendly way of taking northern water to the south east?

On average I’m now receiving around 700 work-related emails a week… that’s not including spam, most of which, thankfully, is filtered out before it reaches me. Keeping on top of all this electronic correspondence has become a major part of my job, and not having a secretary to sort the chaff from the the wheat, is extremely time consuming. I imagine many correspondents, sitting at their computer/laptop, tablet, mobile phone or whatever’s been invented since I started writing this note, will hit the ‘send’ button and impatiently tap their fingers awaiting an immediate reply from me. They don’t hear back from me so they send another email asking if I’ve got their first email. Some will even telephone to see if I’ve got their email, or merely call me to tell me they’re about to send me one.  I’ve had letters posted to me by people who haven’t heard back from me within 24 hours, in which the correspondent states they don’t trust emails so they’ve used the postal service instead. Then there are those to whom I have eventually replied,  who come back with unnecessary supplementary emails. And so it goes on. What prompted this Victor Meldrew-type rant? An email I received stating that rural folk were feeling cut off because of poor broadband services. Hmm… I sometimes wonder if that is such a bad thing.

One day last week, while watching a river charging down a set of falls, I thought about all that power going to waste. I have the same feeling when I’m by the sea witnessing waves crashing against the shore. There are many examples of how we’ve tried to harness such power, and indeed, further up the same river there a small community scheme which uses some of the river’s strength to create electricity for a few homes. Along the drive to the falls I passed a set of wind turbines which on this day were motionless despite winds gusting at between 40 to 50 mph. I got home to find the electricity was off in part of the village because a power line had been damaged by the weather. In the shop the following morning I overheard a farmer who relies on oil to generate power for his home and outbuildings saying that he hadn’t any electricity because the delivery tanker had broken down! Not quite found the perfect solution to the question of power, have we?

PS the structure in last week’s photo is a beautiful grade II listed five-arch road bridge stretching across a wide part of the river Wharfe at Burnsall.