Now that we have a new government it is time for a brief word on the former Secretary of State for Transport.
Eye subscribes to the view espoused in a recent edition of Railnews by Adrian Lyons, the former Director General of the Railway Forum:
Surviving and overcoming bad times means that getting the right message over is even more important.
The railway industry is not doing this.
To some extent this does not matter while Lord Adonis is Secretary of State as he is the most effective Railway Forum there has ever been.
Indeed.
Alas, he is now gone.
Eye hopes not for too long...
UPDATE: This just in from Ithuriel...
Can we stop this mindless adulation of Lord Adonis.
Just because he was pro-railways and a bit of a crank doesn't mean that we should mourn his being cut off in his pomp.
Oblivious to an emerging economic crisis and his Deprtment's warning that at current costs the railway is unsustainable, he happily dumped over a billion on the Network Rail credit card for a long overdue but ill thought out politically driven electrification programme totally unrelated to the realities of resignalling and rolling stock availability.
Why Great Western and not the more straightforward and financially more attractive Midland Main Line?
On high speed, it could be said that his promotion of HS1 provided a beacon to see the industry through a grim decade ahead. And at the worst he imposed second thoughts on his department's Gadarene rush to IEP. At best, he binned it.
He was the right-minded man at the wrong time. In 1997 he would have been in his element.
Now we have a Transport Secretary in tune with the times.
Sweating the assets is the order of the day.
Farewell Prince Rupert, Hello Oliver Cromwell.
Grimsby and Back
3 years ago
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