Rapid responses January 9, 2013 Commuting reality [Re: Further efficiencies are critical to making London’s railways thrive, yesterday] The current proposals for rail improvements are distinctly short sighted. Britain’s railways were built in Victorian times to take travellers from one city centre to another. But this no longer reflects the travel pattern of today’s rail users. The figures reveal a [...]
Rapid responses January 8, 2013 Planning inflation [Re: Daft planning rules are pushing up the price of food in shops, yesterday] While it is always good for an article about planning policy to focus on commercial property rather than housing, and while the academics cited may have delivered interesting papers, let’s not use this work to justify more fiddling with [...]
A hostile US Supreme Court risks trapping Obama in a political nightmare June 27, 2012 ALEXANDER Hamilton, the US Founding Father, described the judicial branch of government as the “least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution,” because it “has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society.” With the Supreme Court expected to rule [...]
London Tube workers vote to strike April 17, 2012 London Underground staff are set to walk out for 72 hours next week after they voted “four to one” in favour of strike action. The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT) said its workers would cease work at 4pm on 24 April and not return until after 4pm on 27 April. The dispute is [...]
Kinect Star Wars fails to deliver fireworks April 4, 2012 GAMES KINECT STAR WARS Cert: 12A ** Remember that bit in Return of the Jedi when Princess Leah sings a version of Christina Aguilera’s Genie in a Bottle entitled Princess in a Battle? No? What about the bit when Han Solo busts out his disco moves? It didn’t happen, did it? Well, it does in [...]
Political risk is a global threat to recovery March 25, 2012 IN a tentative recovery, everyone always looks for the next nasty shock that could spring up and derail growth. The answer this time is political risk – all over the world. We all know about the geo-political tensions in the Middle East that sent Brent over $126 earlier this month. But in a year heavy [...]
Tube workers to reject Games offer March 18, 2012 TUBE workers are set to reject yet another Olympics bonus offer this week, leaving transport bosses scrambling to avoid strikes during the Games, which are now just over four months away. Almost 150 reps for the RMT will today call on the union to turn down the latest £850 overtime and bonus package. The reps [...]
NEW STRIKES BUT FEWER DELAYS ON UK TRAINS February 16, 2012 Despite an ongoing strike by station cleaners, Network Rail gave commuters a reason to be cheerful yesterday when it revealed record punctuality figures for some routes last month. Overall, 91.4 per cent of trains ran on time in January, Network Rail claimed, up from 90.3 per cent a year ago. Passengers on c2c routes such [...]
Life isn’t just – but self-belief works January 11, 2012 SOMETIMES, willing something to happen actually works. If you are young and want to make lots of money when you grow up, you are actually much more likely to end up richer than those of your peers with a more relaxed attitude to wealth. The first prerequisite to becoming rich is to want to become [...]
RAPID RESPONSES January 11, 2012 Capacity challenge The real issue facing the UK is how to increase capacity in our public transport system. Few transport professionals would support the newly approved High Speed Rail 2 project (HS2) compared to Rod Eddington’s highly regarded policy proposals from December 2006, which would make a genuine difference to public transport. These are all [...]