Don't Frighten the Horses

Daveybloke's father-in-law has very considerately given the proposed HS2 rail network a boost, after the fashion of Daveybloke's own recent propaganda coups in favour of Scottish independence. As chair of the Old Berkshire Hunt, the fourth Viscount Astor blathers that the new railway is supported mainly by "northern Labour MPs who relish the thought of the beauty of the Chilterns being destroyed", and who persist in their proletarian vandalism despite the availability of cheaper and more beauteous alternatives. In what may well be the first recorded instance of a Conservative peer living in a science fiction novel rather than a pseudo-Victorian bodice-ripper, the noble Viscount suggests that transport enthusiasts instead use "Skype and the internet", the freight capacity of which has hitherto been severely under-utilised.