Throwing oneself at the feet of the transport secretary at a posh lunch is not a dignified thing to do. I realise that. But since my parents found out that the HS2 rail link is going past the end of their garden — though just a few metres far enough to mean they won’t get compensation — I have not been feeling very dignified. And before some Lib Dem blogger reports me to the Standards Commissioner for lobbying, I didn’t lobby. I begged. On my knees. There’s a difference.
Poor Patrick McLoughlin didn’t know where to put himself. There he was, having a perfectly nice time at the Savoy, when a suicidal woman in a bright red dress threw herself in front of him like he was an oncoming train. I felt, perhaps with some justification, that I had nothing to lose.
My family has tried all the other channels. They’ve queued up at meetings, sent letters, begged David Cameron to listen to their desperate pleas not to be completely financially ruined in their old age. But they just keep getting told to stop being such tiresome Nimbys. What of it, if the value is being wiped off their home? How small-minded! Can they not just buy another one, using a bit of dosh in a family trust fund, or do some dodge to do with capital gains? Can they not see that HS2 is vital infrastructure to reduce the north south divide?
‘Er, yes,’ say Mr and Mrs Kite, ‘but you’re actually taking our train station away from us in the process so we won’t actually be able to get to London from the Midlands as easily as we used to.’
‘Silence, Nimbys! Don’t be so impertinent, or we’ll stick a hundred eco-homes for key workers at the end of your front garden!’
I had, perhaps unfairly, assumed that not many women throw themselves at Mr McLoughlin.
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