Could I just ask (as someone from afar who is interested in this project) that people might just stop posting so vehemently and attacking each other's politics here - it's really detracting from what is an interesting subject, i.e. the new Chiltern service to Oxford.
We all have different political views and perhaps elsewhere might be a better place to express them?
Just a thought.
I have not attacked anyone's politics at any stage - I have no idea what route oxford's politics are, though he seems to think he knows all about mine - what I have been doing is pointing out that councillors, of whatever party or none, are supposed to represent people and have opinions on issues, such as how Network Rail goes about projects in their area.
And just because someone doesn't like the some of the views of a certain group of councillors does not give them the right to constantly misrepresent the actual position of those councillors here as being anti-rail - as would be patently obvious to anyone who cares to look at the reports and letters on the Oxford Mail website, where the member of Railfuture referred to above - who I have met on occasion - is also an enthusiastic correspondent and perfectly capable of sticking up for himself, without someone on here trying to make out he is some sort of martyr who we should all be rushing to defend against nasty 'anti-rail' people, who are nothing of the sort anyway. One of them is a former chairman of the Cotswold Line Promotion Group, for goodness sake!
Put the councillors and Railfuture in a room together and I think you would find that agree on far more than they disagree about when it comes to railways.
And since I disagree with Railfuture's opposition to HS2 and find their enthusiasm for reopening the Great Central route baffling, does that make me anti-rail too?
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Thanks for the clarification about OBRAG's position on the latest iteration of the timetable and the website link. Interesting too to read some of your other thoughts on the topic.
On your other point, a reasonable definition here would be a group of people who express strongly held opinions about a particular cause: in their case passenger rail services on this line. And, yes looking through their website, most of the concerns they express most strongly are about service provision to/from Islip - itself a perfectly reasonable issue to have strongly held opinions about.
So, yes, the term "vociferous lobby group" is most certainly accurate, but I am sorry if you don't like it.
It's just that I know some of the people involved with Obrag and think they see themselves as a bit more than a one-issue 'lobby group'. That they focused heavily on getting a better deal for Islip was hardly surprising. There wasn't anything to find fault with in terms of future services between Oxford and Bicester, whereas Islip, where traffic effectively doubled after the enhanced timetable began in 2009, was going to see the clock turned back under Chiltern's initial proposals, with a sparse service scattered across the day.
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