The Age of Austerity beckons

This from the BBC's Nick Robinson...

The American economist David Hale says that the governor of the Bank of England has told him that the next British government will need to launch an austerity drive so tough that it will threaten its political survival, potentially leaving that party out of power for a generation.

Farewell electrification, Crossrail, a new Thameslink fleet, add your own pet project here, etc...

Cut the cr@p - tell us about the cuts.

According to @PoliticsHomeUK the Labour Party is calling on broadcasters to focus on policy.

Labour is trying to get the LibDems and Tories to sign up to a draft letter saying:

We are writing to broadcasting organisations with a public service remit to ask you all to ensure that during the last ten days of the campaign your programmes analyse our policy proposals to the same level of detail as at previous election campaigns.

What a splendid initiative.

Despite the parlous state of the economy not a word from any of the major parties on where post election transport cuts will be made.

We all know they are coming so surely its time to end the equivocation and spin.

Brown, Cameron and Clegg don't take us for fools - it's time to tell us where the cuts will fall.

Just not cricket!

The Vulcan has been ruminating about the railways again.

Latest to feel his ire is London Underground for having the audacity to close St John's Wood station (and the entire Jubilee line) when the cricket is on.

Fortunately our alien friend has a solution to this problem:

Public transport is meant to serve us, not wind us up. Why can’t they do better? Why can’t we bust more of these monopolies, so the managers have to try a bit harder to keep their jobs?

Well John it's like this.

After your lot ballsed up the railways the current lot ballsed up the Underground.

So it was not London Underground that decided to spoil your enjoyment of the cricket but the private sector contractors (Tubelines & Bechtel) who required access to complete the upgrade of the Jubilee line.

The good news is that these paragons of private sector virtue have just demanded more Jubilee line closures so that they can show quite how fabulously efficient the private sector is (Is this right? Ed).

No matter.

At least there is one thing on which we can agree.

John is surely right to insist that managers should try harder to retain their jobs.

Perhaps something our political class might consider as well?

The disastrous privatisations of BR and the Underground have saddled the taxpayer with billions of pounds in additional costs each year.

And not one of the political geniuses behind these hare-brained schemes has paid for these costly failures with their careers.

Eh John, Shriti, Gordon, etc...?

A muesli muncher writes...

This just in from a frustrated reader...

The Fact Compiler is quite right to have a go at the Lib Dems and their whining about Britain's (actually rather good) railways.

But at least one can simply ignore their press releases.

The Tories are far worse.

Barely a day goes by without a Jeremiad from Theresa Villiers about some cooked-up railway scandal, often based on utterly misleading newspaper stories.

It obscures their two half-decent points - that the government is micro-managing the railways and Network Rail needs better governance. It also makes them look like they want more micro-management, not less.

Now it's also dragging in the government - I saw the DfT put out a pointless press release today on a £2.5m study which will examine whether to redouble the Swindon-Gloucester route.

All this hysteria creates the deceptive impression that the railways are still the shambles they were five years ago.

It also prevents sensible debate about real issues such as safety standards, capacity, the proportion of farebox and freight customer revenue funding for the railway versus the proportion of government support and many others.

All that said, there's nothing wrong with eating muesli. I have it for breakfast every day.