Origins of war and HS2!

Donald

Thanks so much for replying - and for your truly brilliant, heroic, giant of a grandfather.  So very few reply, to even argue back, as you have done so well!

I have the paperback edition and read part of it.  I've also read part of AJP Taylor, 'The Origins of the Second World War' but not 'The Peacemakers'.  I must get it.  I remember AJP as a boy in the 60s on black and white TV, with his amazing, spell-binding monologues for 30 minutes!  That is why I wrote, "after decades of peace between the European nations."  I also prick my ears up when I hear Margaret MacMillan on Radio 4.  Even Max Hastings called the 1914 War a European "catastrophe".  On the back cover, "a peaceful continent descended into a chaos that was far from inevitable."  In the July 1914 Cabinet, Churchill, far too much in a hurry, argued for war and won all the others over.  Disgraceful.

I think I'm right in saying that we would never have won either war without the help of Russia and many lives were lost as we sought to supply them with all the essentials of war.  It is the men and women of violence who go to war and then end up killing my friends, family and me.  I would never dream of killing  - from my Christian discipleship and from my belief that we either live in peaceful co-existence or, we perish as fools.  We have gone for the latter in the most destructive and evil century that humanity has ever seen.  All thanks to the supposedly, civilised, democratic Western nations that supposedly had the Bible at the heart of their governance and culture and in every British Coronation for centuries.

The scam of HS2 lies in the deception that you mentioned.  All the existing intercity services must remain for all the stations that HS2 is far too fast to stop at.  Therefore, it cannot "free up more capacity on the West Coast main line in order to get more freight off the roads and onto rail."  Unless, the present intercity service is considerably slowed or services cut to make room for more capacity of other kinds, like slow freight trains.  Some intercity travellers will have to use the MegaBus or their cars!

It does give extra mileage to the network but that was offset by the destruction of the Great Central Railway up the backbone of England and our own 120 Kms Black Country Railway.  It does give the choice to plane passengers to either fly through the air on their usual plane or, to have a change of scenery, and to fly through the air on land on HS2.