HOW on earth can anyone possibly justify spending £32 billion on a high speed rail link that will permanently destroy hundreds of thousands of acres of England’s most beautiful countryside – merely to shorten the rail journey between London and Birmingham by 25 minutes?

Oscar Wilde could well have been referring to this government when he wrote , “They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing”.

This high-speed rail link is nothing less than an act of state-sponsored environmental vandalism.

ROBERT READMAN, Norwich Avenue West, Bournemouth