• “CLEAN air is a human right”, is a quote from an air quality report debate, in the House of Commons, on June 28. And a new Clean Air Bill has just been tabled by Jenny Jones, of the Green Party.

The debate made it patently clear that every man woman and child is in danger, and that we are in the grip of fatally toxic air pollution, which is a threat to the health and safety of everyone up and down the country, and already damaging and shortening lives.

Yet the government is bypassing legal requirements to combat this illegal toxic soup, while, at the same time, the same government’s company, HS2, is perversely continuing to contribute towards this pollution, through demolitions, construction, traffic chaos, mass deforestation, and destroying wildlife all over England.

There is destruction of irreplaceable ecosystems and the theft of our public parks and open spaces (where at least we could have breathed cleaner air). All for the building and construction of HS2, the most expensive train on Earth, and already obsolete!

They have no regard for the human suffering they are causing or the long-term, unknown, effect of pollution on our children’s health.

And with the government’s lack of compliance in tackling these dangerous levels of pollution (as ordered three times by the High Court, and recently in the EU’s highest court where the government lost every case) they are creating an environment where it is impossible to live, breath, and thrive.

If you are not already frightened for yourself, and your family, just look at the destruction and devastation HS2 has already caused, with 17 more years set to carry out further pollution, and devastation.

Having rushed ahead with all of this destruction, without proper plans, it appears that HS2’s latest masterplan for Euston is yet to be approved, and is apparently dependent on an “Environmental Impact Assessment”.

How can this impact assessment have a hope in Hell of being approved, when it is blatantly obvious that allowing HS2 to proceed, and add to this pollution, would surely be illegal.

Who at Camden Council will be responsible for assessing the HS2 environmental impact report?

This procedure must be open to the public, above board, and carried out with the utmost honesty and integrity, whether or not, it means the end of HS2. The council unfairly favours building developers’ and property investors’ plans (a cause of much of this illegal pollution, anyway) over its own citizens’ needs.

If HS2’s plans are approved, people really need to unite and join forces to question and investigate HS2, and challenge its unethical and underhand practices that are hurting so many. HS2 is unjust, unwanted, and unnecessary. Scrap it now!

MIMI ROMILLY
Address supplied