a minor rant

As I sat at my desk this morning I noticed I had a meeting at the other office, I'm there less these days as all my team are under one roof. I guess I should really claim for the mileage but I never have, the 10 mile round trip doesn't bother me since even if I am paying for the pleasure I get to listen to Classic FM and some good music.

I always take my MP3 as at least I get 10 minutes of music walking between the office and the car park and let me say there is something a bit surreal about walking through an eastend town centre listening to Allegri's Misere!

I read today that Middle England are up in arms about the proposed high speed rail link between London and Birmingham. Apparently they were originally opposing it on the grounds of Not In MY Backyard but now looking at the project in detail, they have found that the economic and environmental cases for the new route simply do not stack up.

I'll stop laughing in a mo.

Now of course I do feel a lot of sympathy that people will be forced to move but may I ask what are the alternatives? Build more roads? Build an airport in the Thames?

Yes I am sure that green and verdant land will be lost and I regret that a damn sight more than someone seeing 20% wiped of their property value - but I do genuinely sympathise with that as well!

It's just I bet many of those denizens of middle England will be happy to use the M40 and not give a hoot about the impact of that or pop down to Heathrow and fly out to that nice little restaurant in Capri.

My annoyance though is that its Middle England the most pampered bunch in the country. If these proposals were in the South West, East Anglia, Wales the North the amount of time given by the likes of the Telegraph would be considerably less. But as its Middle England, the residents of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Warwickshire, we are told about how beautiful it is (it is I might add) and blah de blah

Now let us all chill after that rant.