First Secretary!

Goodness me!

Behind the Water Tower says it better than Eye ever could.

Gulp!

Commuters friend?

Telegrammed by our Independent Expert
No danger of Paul Clark, the Medway MP tipped to take over from Adonis as rail minister, being lynched by passengers.

Rather than join the great unwashed on the daily commute from Gillingham he decided to rent a London flat, using £1,200 a month of our money.

He told the Daily Telegraph: "I have nothing to hide".

Who speaks for the Railway?

This from the Grauniad...

"Geoff Hoon showed realism in understanding the importance of road transport and road safety and will be missed," said Edmund King, the president of the AA.

Nothing yet from ATOC or Network Rail.

Anyone out there?

Lord Adonis as Secretary of State!

The Eye offers its congratulations to the noble Lord.

There will be many in the industry (but not treasury) who welcome this appointment and the continuity it brings.

But... a peer.

Sitting in the House of Lords.

Unaccountable to the tax raising House.

Welcome back to the 19th Century.

Hoon gone

Industry devastated


BBC report here.

Germany calling # 4

Telegrammed by Leo Pink
I spit on Lord Tee Hee's 75 min late.

When DB fahrt gegen Engeland (in the form of DB Schenker) has just one train failure it shuts down the entire railway for hours and hours and hours.

Yesterday's 02.30 from Birch Coppice to Ipswich failed closing most of the West Coast main line for half the day until it was finally hauled into Bletchley Yard at 13.53.

But restoring national pride, Network Rail then demonstrated its new HIPS (Highly Interruptible Power Supply) at the Bletchley control centre.

This shut down the WCML for the rest of the afternoon.

Virgin's PPM for the day was 21.8%.

Still ORR should have received the NR recovery plan for WCML performance by close of play today, so that's all right then.

How effing much?

More good news for the beleaguered Prime Minister.

The NAO report on the collapse of Metronet says it has cost the taxpayer £410m (this figure of course excludes the millions paid to consultants to set up the deeply flawed part privatisation of the Tube).

Caroline Pidgeon, quoted in the Grauniad, tells it like it is...

"This is simply a devastating report for the architect of the public private partnership contract – Gordon Brown. It is unforgivable that as much as £410m of taxpayers' money has been wasted. The PPP deal that was forced on Londoners by Gordon Brown has been totally exposed as a bad deal for taxpayers and for passengers."

Sadly it's not worth pointing out that had Brown and Vadera presided over such a monumental balls-up in the private sector they would have been out the door so fast their arses wouldn't have touched the ground.

UPDATE: This from Accountancy Magazine...

Ernst & Young was paid £33m in fees for handling the administration of Metronet, the firm set up to modernise the London Underground, a report by the National Audit Office reveals.

Why?

Germany calling #3

Telegrammed by Lord Tee Hee
Well, DB certainly do things well - including delays.

They don't mess about with a mere 10-15 minutes, they go the whole hog.

I'm looking up at the indicator board at Karlsruhe at the moment and my train to Rastatt is 60 minutes late - as is the next one! IC2270 to Stralsund is 50mins down and so is ICE 508 to Koln.

Still, its better than yesterday, when one of the ICEs to Switzerland was 75 late...