Eye was lamenting the silence from Andrew Adonis earlier this week, when Ed Balls put the boot into HS2.
Where was Lord Adonis, our very own High Speed Evangelist?
Now the truth can be told!
Pictured on Brighton seafront...
Like her namesake Eddie, Labour's Shadow Transport Secretary is going downhill fast!
This from Maria the Eagle, in the Evening Standard...
"The Tory-led government has delayed the completion of vital rail projects including Crossrail and Thameslink in London, cut new carriages planned by Labour and hit commuters with massive fare increases.
"At the same time they plan to only spend £750million of the £17.5billion cost of the proposed new high-speed line to Birmingham. Labour will next month launch a root and branch review of our transport policy with nothing ruled in or out.
"It would be irresponsible to make cast-iron spending commitments for beyond 2015 before we have listened to the public and come to conclusions about our future priorities."
Where is the Noble Lord when you need him?
UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic...
Could you avoid repeating Maria the Eagle's utterances on new train orders as it raises my blood pressure?
The 1300 HLOS vehicles promised in the 2007 White Paper shrank relentlessly under the last administration, to the point that the Coalition inherited live bids for only a handful of EMUs for London Midland and the putative Manchester Scotland Franchise which, come to think of it, sounds more like an Alliance Rail proposal than Government Policy.
Meanwhile 670 days and counting!
UPDATE: This from the Worlds Greatest Living Transport Correspondent...
Shameless bit of self-marketing...
I’m organising one of my Wolmar Transport Lunches on March 7th with Ms Eagle, where leading lights of the industry can try to influence her thinking!
Details from me at christian.wolmar@gmail.com
Eye hears that ATOC members are planning a dinner to say a formal farewell to Lord Adonis.
And quite right too!
After all the Noble Lord was the most pro-rail Secretary of State we've had for ages (with due deference to the late Baron Ridley of Liddersdale).
Sadly, the Fact Compiler will be too busy to attend.
However, Eye would like to send a gift to the High Speed Evangelist.
Readers are invited to suggest what that should be?
UPDATE: This from Billy Connections...
A suitable present for Adonis would be the latest National Fares Manual.
He can practice falling off his chair in shock when he sees how much his Pilgrimage of Grice would have cost if he'd bought separate tickets on the day.
UPDATE: This from Charles Atlas...
Perhaps "dinner for two with Stuart Baker" so he can have one last chat with the Bi-Mode Evangelist before he is put out to grass? (Who, Adonis or Baker? Ed)
UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic...
Perhaps an All Line Rover before ATOC have another go at restricting its use on InterCity services until after 10:00?
UPDATE: This from a Mr Shipley of CSRE...
How about a scale model of a Chinese built HLOS type DMU, pushing a failed Class 319 EMU!
UPDATE: This from Steve Strong..
What about a tandem so that he and Wolmar can explore the delights of London together?
UPDATE: This from railway writer Peter Marshall...
The least he should get is a late night cuppa at Southampton (times is hard y'know).
Sadly as the Better Stations programme has been caped he may have a long wait... Ed
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.
So the Tories have killed the consensus on High Speed 2.
Shadow Transport Secretary Theresa Villiers has declined to "give a political blank cheque to Labour" by refusing an advance view of the Noble Lord's HS2 White Paper.
Villiers also made clear that the Tories reserved the right to look at alternative routes.
Whilst this will raise a collective groan from the railway industry it makes sound political sense.
With sources suggesting Adonis' plan for HS2 will show the proposed route with a margin of error of as little as 25 yards there would have been howls of anguish from Tory constituencies in the Chilterns; None of which would actually gain any benefit from the new line whilst suffering all the pain of planning blight and construction works.
The other political benefit is that it hangs the Noble Lord out to dry. Non consensus allows the plans for HS2 to be kicked into the long grass for at least another Parliament, which with the current parlous state of the country's finances makes fiscal as well as political sense.
That said the Tories will need to come up with something else chunky if they are not to enter the election 'transport lite'.
UPDATE: This from Lobby Fodder...
I wonder if the decision by the Tories to pour cold water on Lord Adonis HS2 White Paper is in anyway connected with this story in today's FT?
The transport secretary has told London’s mayor that it is “not acceptable” for the capital to seek extra money to fund improvements on three underground lines, in a sharply worded reply to the mayor’s request.
Just asking that's all.
UPDATE: This, surprisingly enough, from Niccolo Machiavelli...
Labour would seem to have the Tories in a fianchetto if they publish the route of HS2 between London and the West Midlands before the election.
If the Tories support the route they alienate their own voters in home counties constituencies where Labour cannot prevail whilst merely sharing the credit in West Midlands constituencies where Labour is likely to win.
If the Tories criticise the route they can be portrayed as home counties toffs prepared to put their golf clubs ahead of the transport needs of the West Midlands
But with Adrian Shooter allegedly advising Theresa Villiers, the vision of Evergreen 5 could provide an effective counter.
And the Tories also have IEP up their sleeve (shome mishtake, shurely? Ed).
As I say in my book 'The Prince' (available as a Penguin Classic for only £2.99 from Amazon):
"The wise ruler does not overlook the cunning of ex British Rail engineers risen to high office".
UPDATE: This from Sun Tzu...
Can I support Signor Niccolo's comments on IEP being a Tory asset?
As I say in my book 'The art of war' (available from Amazon in paperback price £3.00):
"A highly expensive chariot fails to terrorise fleet footed infantry fighting in a swamp'.
That's enough dead psuedo management philosophy gurus. Ed
UPDATE: This just in from Will' Shakespeare...
I'faith, i know not what these men from foreign parts know about a railway of Puck like speed cutting through this realm of kings.
But as I say in my play Hamlet "for tis the sport to have the gricer Lord hoist by his own petard".
And the same goes for dead bards. Ed
UPDATE: This from Alfred Lord Tennyson...
Might I perchance inject a note of practicality into this discussion and ask what the Whig view is on noise issuing forth from this new rail way?
It was indeed I who conjured the phrase "The ringing grooves of change" and at the promised speed of 400 of those radical kilometres in the hour the ringing would indeed be loud.
UPDATE This from Mr Walt Whitman...
Might I...(Absolutely not. Literary Ed)
No more dead poets, bards and management gurus - please! Ed.
This extraordinary suggestion from the Grauniad today...
The shadow transport minister, Theresa Villiers, lacks clout... So step forward, Lord Heseltine. Britain's transport revolution could be your lasting monument.
Hezza, one of the Tory Big Beasts, announced in December that he would surrender the day to day running of his Haymarket publishing empire to his son Rupert this month.
With second jobs outside Parliament now out of favour this would free him to take up a chunky role in any new Tory administration.
The Daily Mail had already predicted the return of Tarzan to the front bench last October:
Lord Heseltine, 76 – nicknamed ‘Tarzan’ after swinging the Commons mace at Labour MPs in the Seventies – would serve for the first year of a Tory administration as an unpaid Minister without Portfolio in the Lords.
And of course there is no longer any obstacle to an unelected peer running transport - this precedent was established by no less a person than the High Speed Evangelist himself!
The big loser, were such an appointment to be made, would be shadow transport minister Stephen Hammond, who has made no secret of his desire for the top job.
Of course the Guardian leader piece might have been influenced by media savvy Lord Adonis himself - keen to safeguard his High Speed legacy or merely create mischief for the opposition?
Either way 2010 promises to turn up several more surprises as we head towards the General Election.
(With a bowler tip to the latest edition of New Transit magazine...)
The Noble Lord reveals the following on his blog...
I've just been speaking on the train to rail journalists Roger Ford and Phil Haig - who know the rail industry backwards.
Can it be long before Captain Deltic's 'InterCity Manifesto' receives the Adonis Imprimatur?
Lord Adonis is blogging as he inspects shabby stations.
Updates are being posted here.
Whilst not quite up to the standard of Tom Harris MP or the twitterings of Sadiq Khan it's a noble effort (geddit!).
For the first time in living memory a Transport Secretary has won an award!
And not just any award, but one of the coveted Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards which were presented by Mayor BoJo this afternoon.
So stand up Lord Adonis the High Speed Evangelist... you are the "Minister to Watch"!
Telegrammed by The Fashionista
All Ministers are accompanied on trips outside Westminster by a junior bag carrier cum minder.
We certainly can't have Minsters of the Crown carrying their own sandwiches in non-biodegradable plastic sacks like a certain Captain of Industry we could mention.
The Electrification Evangelist's bag carrier has a nice line in attache cases to heft.
Made by Prada, no less.
Probably hand stitched by Miuccia herself for Milord Inglese.
Must dash. Ciao. Mwah, Mwah.
Exciting news from the High Speed Evangelist.
The Noble Lord is planning to release the proposed route for HS2 in the New Year and with cross party support!
So convinced is Lord Adonis of overwhelming backing for High Speed rail that he confidently predicts a transformation in Middle England's mindset from Nimby to Pimby.
Please in my back yard!
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