Directions and guidance

This from Mini-me in the House of Commons on the 4th March:

Paul Clark (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Gillingham, Labour) | Hansard source:

As for bonuses, let me say again that that is a matter for Network Rail.

However, I am sure that hon. Members would expect Network Rail's remuneration committee to be mindful of the public mood and not to award bonuses that the travelling public would consider unjustified by their own experiences of Network Rail's performance.

I am referring here to the hundreds of thousands of commuters on the West Coast Main Line whose services were cancelled and massively disrupted in the new year due to the poor maintenance of overhead wires.

Reprinted here, just in case the Remuneration Committee didn't hear it the first time...

UPDATE: This just in from Network Rail...

First with the news as ever! I'm sure I don't need to remind tfc that Network Rail's management incentive plan is calculated by using three main performance indicators agreed with the regulator - train performance, financial efficiency and asset stewardship.

Influential that you are, it is those factors that the remuneration committee will take into account when the year is over and the numbers have been crunched.

The minister's comments in Hansard two weeks ago mentions the travelling public's own experiences of Network Rail's performance on West Coast. Yes we had a some teething problems on West Coast, not helped of course by a plane crash in addition to the unrelated series of overhead line equipment failures.

Today, the real story on West Coast is that over 1,000 extra trains every week run and journey times slashed by up to 30%. Freight users enjoy a 70% increase in capacity while weekend passengers travelling to places such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham benefit with shorter journey times and more services.

I'd gently also remind this blog's reader(s) that the latest Passenger Focus survey shows that 83% of passengers are satisfied - the highest number yet recorded.

Isn't this called shooting the messenger?

UPDATE: Captain Deltic harrumphs...

If 17% of readers were dissatisfied with Eye it wouldn't have become the dominant force in the railway blogsphere that makes even Network Rail sit up and engage with the real world.

Lies, damned lies, etc... etc...