Rail 477: End this crazy game that makes rail so complex
The soon to depart rail regulator has performed an incisive dissection of Network Rail's costs, but the whole access charge regime is a legacy of the discredited Mk 1 model of privatisation, contends Christian Wolmar, who also makes some bold predictions for the railway in 2004.
So Tom Winsor has pronounced. After almost a year's endeavour on an access charge review which initially Network Rail said it would not need, he ...
Rail 476: Railways up for grabs as politicians struggle with debt
Network Rail's debts are far in excess of BR's. Christian Wolmar says there will come a point when government says 'enough is enough'.
With the announcement of the regulator’s announcement on Network Rail’s access charges the railways will enter a world of never-never economics which poses the gravest ever threat to their future. A leaked report by the National Audit Office has revealed that it cost between £21m and £35m extra ...
Is a local income tax on the cards?
Suddenly local taxation is in the news and protestors are on the streets. The doddery old couples from Devon lining Parliament Square may seem far removed to their brick throwing predecessors with their Mohican hair cuts of fifteen years ago in Trafalgar Square, but the issue is the same - the unfairness of local taxation.
The council tax was really an emergency stop gap measure introduced in haste when the Tories ...
