Quite the moral dilemma.

If the Manchester arm of HS2 is cancelled, then that means that very few trains should come past on the viaduct being erected high in the sky on massive pillars to the West of Coleshill. Instead, other than a few trains going North to the maintenance yard at Kingsbury, the others would all stop at the Birmingham Interchange. That is on the Southern side of the M6 and so about a mile to the South of Coleshill.

So then, good news for us.

Not such good news for the good folk of Manchester.

Having had the hassle of the massive infrastructure works around here, can I claim to be able to bank some moral high ground to offset my very selfish wish that Manchester is not served by HS2? Or should I instead, being the good altruist that I am (??), write to my MP and ask him to oppose the proposed cancellation?

But then again I’m more a believer in a vague form of reciprocal altruism, rather than martyrdom for its own sake. So then, a bit of a nimby.

What to do? I'm sure Mr Tracey would be delighted to hear from me again...

Paul Buckingham

25 September 2023