Rail 681: 80mph motorway policy will harm railways
Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, clearly sought to please the crowd at the Tory party conference by repeating the commitment to move to increase the speed limit on motorways from 70 mph to 80 mph. Certainly it seemed to have gone down well among those who believe there really was a ‘war on the motorist’ conducted by the Labour government, but actually Hammond has opened up a can of worms ...
Greening’s dilemma over HS2
Justine Greening, the new transport secretary, faces a daunting learning curve on the complexities of the rail industry as she prepares to make decisions on a range of railway projects that involve spending hundreds of millions, and even billions, of pounds. The most difficult will be keeping the biggest rail project this country has ever seen, the construction of a high speed line between London and Birmingham on track, in ...
Rail 680: Hammond’s rich man’s toy revealed his true feelings
It’s amazing how much goodwill one can lose with just one quote but Philip Hammond’s remark about the railway being a ‘rich man’s toy’ will make the rail industry for ever suspicious of the Transport Secretary. Hammond must be feeling a bit like Gerald Ratner who destroyed his jewellery business with a bit of careless talk when he suggested a sherry decanter and glasses his shops sold for a fiver ...
Shaky basis for the 80mph limit
The ‘war on the motorist’ is still raging among the Tory faithful. Or rather, the war against the war on the motorist is the dominant theme of Tory transport policy. Ending the war was the first announcement Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, made when he started the job last May and to the last, right up to his enforced move to Defence, he seemed still to be working hard to ...
Hammond accounting methods did not make sense
The conventional wisdom on Philip Hammond was the overused political cliche that he was a "safe pair of hands". The reality was rather different and the agenda he has left for his successor, Justine Greening, is fraught with difficulties.
Hammond played a canny game, by keeping both the railway and car ...
Will Greening be Greener
It was always likely that Philip Hammond, clearly seen as a Tory rising star, would get the first big job going but nevertheless, he must have been surprised himself that he managed to get out of Transport so quickly. He was seen as a safe pair of hands, but I think he was beginning to lose the plot with several recent decisions and, competent though he might have been, he ...
