Christian Says
Jan 25th 2012
Jan 25th 2012
Panorama a sad shadow of its former self
Looking at Monday's Panorama programme again was a dispiriting experience. It had all the faults of modern TV documentaries with much emphasis on personal stories and nice pictures but very little substance. The message was incredibly muddled and anyone not versed in the issues would have struggled to understand what on earth was going on. It failed to explain propely the background, merely allowing numerous passengers to moan rather, as they are wont to do.
The choice of heroes and villains was arbitrary. For example, the portrayal of Chiltern Rail as a beacon of private enteprise fail to mention the fact ...
Rail 686: Another momentous year on the tracks – and mystic Wolmar
At the beginning of 2011 I wrote that it would be a momentous year. I’m not sure that it has actually quite lived up to that billing. Although there’s been no shortage of drama and excitement, the weakness of the McNulty report, hijacked by a minister who delved deep into the detail of what interested him – and railway finances certainly did – means that in essence it is ‘steady ...Cycle deaths becoming political issue
The issue of cycling deaths has soared up the political agenda in recent months, especially in London where every fatality is covered extensively on regional TV news, the Evening Standard and local papers. No longer are these deaths simply accepted as an inevitable consequence of the imbalance between motor vehicles weighing several tons and the unprotected bodies of unlucky cyclists.
Instead, cycling accidents are now understood to be a direct consequence ...January 16th, 2012
Robert Horton obit (add)
: Robert Horton played a crucial and controversial role in the privatisation of Britain’s railways in the mid 1990s and can be characterised to some extent as the villain of the piece. The largely ‘back of an envelope’ privatisation scheme put forward hastily by the Tories after their surprise 1992 election victory envisaged Railtrack, responsible for the track and infrastructure of the railways, remaining in public ownership at least until ...
January 11th, 2012
HS2 case based on dodgy methodology
Given the scale and cost of HS2, the case to build the line rests on remarkably shaky foundations.
The government relies very strongly on what it calls the “business case” which is, in fact, a complex and fairly flaky methodology that tries to assess the wider long-term costs and benefits of the project and ascribes monetary values to aspects such as environmental degradation and business.
A complex equation ...
