This from Dr Syphon...
While
the Virgin West Coast supporting e-petition powers away at 163,000+ votes, have
you spotted the plucky underdog?
It's the one lauding the decision to award First the West Coast franchise?
It’s been going for 3 days and now has a mighty err... 60
signatures.
At
least that’s more than 3 times as many as one calling for a Pacer to be preserved by the NRM!
This from a Mr Pernickety-Nitpicker, senior partner with Messrs Sue, Grabbitt & Run...
There is a precedent for legal challenges to government decisions on franchising.
In June 2003, the then incumbent operator of the Great Eastern franchise failed to make the shortlist for the replacement Greater Anglia franchise.
Lawyers were dispatched to the High Court which instructed the then Strategic Rail Authority to release the application form scores for the franchise.
With this information, the incumbent said that it now understood the pre-qualification 'more clearly' and could see 'in detail' the reasoning behind SRA’s decision to exclude it from the Greater Anglia bidding.
The statement continued: ‘We are clearly still disappointed that, as the best performing operator in East Anglia delivering the best value for money for the taxpayer, we have not been given an opportunity to bid. However, we have decided that it is not in our interests to proceed any further with our legal challenge and, accordingly, we have withdrawn’.
So who was this litigious incumbent?
Why our friends at First Group.
Clearly, and without prejudice, what goes around, comes around.
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