ASA says railway not screwed - Official

This from the Mail on Sunday...

Former Tory Minister Edwina Currie has defended a rail union banned from publishing an 'offensive' advertisement which uses her affair with John Major to mark the 20th anniversary of the then Prime Minister's decision to sell off Britain's railways.

The advert shows a cartoon of Mrs Currie and Sir John with the slogan: 'It wasn't just Edwina who John Major screwed. He also screwed our railway and millions of passengers.'

The Advertising Standards Authority is refusing to allow the TSSA rail union to publish the adverts this week to commemorate Sir John's rail sell-off in 1993, unless it removes the 'offensive' word 'screwed'.

Seems fair enough to Eye, although perhaps a little prolix...

UPDATE: This from Dr Trumpet...

Hmmm... another bright decision from the ASA. 

You can call a clothing store “FCUK” and get it past the advertising regulators, but not apparently use “screwed” in conjunction with the railways.

UPDATE: This from Captain Delitc... 

This gives me the opportunity to air my theory that rail privatisation is all the fault of the News of the World and Private Eye.

Had they been doing their job properly, they would have exposed the affaire, John Major would not have become Prime Minister and the destruction of 'deeply inefficient' British Rail would not have become a virility symbol.

The downside would be that we wouldn't have Railway Eye. (Hmmm... a tuppenny-ha'penny blog versus an integrated railway... Not that hard a choice Deltic! Ed)

Just fancy that! All in it together...

This from The Inchworm...

The new year has seen the publication of some interesting statistics on the costs of Britain's railway.

Eye readers may wish to file these under 'Just Fancy That!'.

• Annual cost of Simon Burn's government chauffeur - £80,000
• 7 day season ticket from Chelmsford to London - £88.50

• Average cap on regulated fares - 4.3%
• Average cap on freight track access charges for CP5 - 23%

• Network Rail's future annual contribution to ORR's costs - £18m
• Network Rail's future annual contribution to RDG's costs - £1.4m

• Expected annual revenue from increased charges for coal trains - £22m
• Transport Committee's estimate of cost of WCML fiasco - 'well in excess of £40m'

And finally, the funding gap between Network Rail's Strategic Business Plan and Government SoFA is a massive £4.9bn!

McNulty is dead! Long live McNulty!

UPDATE: This from a Dr Calculus...

I wonder if this reflects the biggest disparity in numbers since the 'Victorian Era'?

UPDATE: This from Network Rail...

Inchworm says the difference between our Strategic Business Plan (SBP) and the Statement of Funds Available (SoFA) was £4.9bn, suggesting that there is a funding gap.

This is not the case, although given the complexity of the financing structure, I can understand the error.

We have said we can deliver the plans from the funds available and we will.

The reason the SoFA and SBP are different is they talk about different things.

For instance, the SoFA does NOT include enhancements and the SBP contains £12bn of them. Similarly, the SBP does not include debt servicing, but the SoFA does.

And just to be clear I'm not trying to pull any wool over Inchworm's eyes, even if you build those factors in to the calculations, the SBP still comes out well under the SoFA.

In fact, the SBP is (very roughly) one third ops/maintenance, one third renewals and one third enhancements.

I've done a fag packet calculation and I still can't reach a £4.9bn gap, even theoretically.

For more information I commend you to pages 80 to 83 in the Strategic Business Plan.

UPDATE: Inchworm responds:  

These numbers come from p58 of the same document (bottom para, summary):

This quotes the SoFA as £28.5bn and the SBP costing £33.4bn, hence the gap of £4.9bn.

Brown Review - Radical evolution?

Some thoughts on the Brown Review from Eye's man in the Hot Seat..

Brown clearly identifies the key elements that matter, many of which are neither sexy nor political, but which have the capacity to make a significant difference. Eg staff investment and ensuring that all franchise employees are committed to the long-term future of the companies they work for, etc...

The proposals on franchise length with potential extensions for good work are sensible

Chapter 6 is very good and perhaps for the first time gives a clear answer to the 'Wolmar Question' ("What are franchises for?").

Therefore, in summary, an evolution, but a fairly big one and contains solutions as radical as anything we have seen since franchises started.

Overall - 9 out of 10!

TUC exposes reward for Brown Review

This from the TUC's Action for Rail campaign...

Brown Review into railways a missed opportunity, says the TUC

Lord Brown’s Review into rail franchising, published today (Thursday), has missed the opportunity to improve the UK’s rail system, says the TUC.

Lord Brown concludes in his report that rail franchising is ‘not broken’ but the TUC has expressed disappointment that he appears to have joined the government in turning a blind eye to the problems of rail privatisation.
 
Remember, you saw Richard Brown elevated to the peerage here first!

Harrogate, Huddersfield, whatever...

This from the BBC...

Network Rail has apologised after it wrongly announced it was investing millions on a North Yorkshire station.

Revealing its spending plans for the next five years earlier in the week, the company said it would spend £10m to improve capacity at Harrogate station.

It later said the money was actually being spent 36 miles away in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, and apologised for "genuine human error".

Oooops!

News from Upside Down Land

Sources suggesting that the Brain Drain to the southern hemisphere continues.

Eye gives you - Rail 'chuck-another-prawn-on-the' Barbie!

Any Antipodean readers know more?

Eye chastised over Big Jigs Toys - Shocker

The Fact Compiler has been spanked by loads of readers for not running anything on the fantastic Big Jigs Toys bid for the #ICWC franchise.

Clearly not enough Eye readers followed  @thefactcompiler on Twitter over Christmas and the New Year!

No matter.

Headline: Mark Reach, the Secretary of State's Private Secretary, did more on Christmas Eve to bolster the reputation of the beleaguered DfT than any number of enquiries or reviews.

Read the full story on the Big Jigs Toys blog here.

Meanwhile...

Eye says: Oi Patrick - Mark Reach deserves his Christmas bonus!

Wales SBP - It's brains you want

This from Castle Coch...

BBC Wales' report yesterday on the Strategic Business Plan was followed by some Vox Pop interviews conducted with passengers arriving at Swansea. 

First up - none other than Mr. John  Davies, British Rail's esteemed former Passenger Manager for Wales, who politely pointed out that the proposed 20 minute acceleration to journey times would merely restore what had been the norm in the mid 1970s.

When the camera turned to Mark Langman, NR's Route MD for Wales, he appeared blissfully unaware that better journey times were available to passengers back in the dark days of BR.

In a media operation where nothing was left to chance perhaps he was counting the seconds until he could offer the obligatory comparison with investment in the Victorian Era?

UPDATE: This from Button Moon...

And what about the erstwhile Sunday evening non-stop Paddington to Bath Spa, timetabled 66 minutes, known to arrive a couple of minutes early with an average speed of over 100mph? People don’t believe me but I’ve been on it.

Progress? That’s the last thing we need.

UPDATE: This from Fen Boy...

Oh that we had a John Davies on hand to advise one of our local BBC reporters last night who, in a similar programme, on Look East, dismissively informed viewers that the flyover currently under construction over the East Coast Main Line at Hitchin, would "take local services away"!

The fact that these "local" services are, of course, FCC's jam packed Cambridge and King's Lynn trains was completely lost on this particular chap.

Additionally this irony was not appreciated when the next reporter popped up outside Cambridge station telling us all how very busy it was and how much more rail capacity was needed.

Beeb joined up? Not!

Brief words on NR's SBP

The launch of NR Strategic Business Plan yesterday was pretty well received, despite Fleet Street media fixating on fares, shedding more heat than light.

No matter.

With such a vast suite of documents supporting the SBP it was perhaps inevitable that one or two howlers would slip through the editing process.

So here for readers delectation and delight are some of the best ones...

From the London North Western section of Network Rail's Strategic Business Plan:

Quite so.

And this from p28 of the London North Eastern section, which initially showed 'track changes'...

Indeed.

And finally an example of smart-alec Visual Management tools that actually conflict with the experience of those on the sharp end of the operational railway...

 Traffic lights instead of signals? Could do better.

Despite this carping, an impressive set of docos that shows quite how far the railway has come in recent years. Now let's hope the ORR says it is all affordable...

Eye salutes all those involved. 

UPDATE: This from Steve Strong...

You missed the endless repetition of the DafT (?) inspired guff that this is the biggest investment in the railways since the 'Victorian era'.

Frankly this is dishonest!

Am I alone in being not amused?

Crow Bar earns his salary!

This from the RMT...

Membership figures released by the union today show that RMT has put on a net gain of 1456 members through 2012, taking the total to 77,549 – an annual growth of nearly 2% in the most challenging circumstances.

The union has increased its membership year-on-year from the 59,277 total when General Secretary Bob Crow was elected in 2002

Who says that playing to the gallery doesn't work?

UPDATE: This from Captain Deltic... 

The RMT missed a trick here.

In the Spirit of the New Spin  they should have led with the following headline:

"Canny Crow delivers highest RMT numbers since Victorian Era!"

Pointless signs - Ffairfach

This from Bobby Mc...

Only one of the three signs at this station on the Heart of Wales line is readable at anything other than myopic distances.

I didn't have time to photograph all three, as there is a four hour wait for the next train.

Closure by stealth or is there another war coming?

Pointless signs - Berkhamstead

TSC confirms foresight wonderous thing

This from a Mr Lergy Fee...

My delight at reading the Rail 2020 report was tempered by their inability to get the publication year right.  

Perhaps McLoughlin should ask Ellman & co if they can help DfT catch up with delivery?

Transport missing from Mid-Term Review

The only interesting thing in a very dull document was the complete omission of transport as a heading.

In happier news it allowed CamClegg to re-re-re-announce one or two rail projects.

Page 11 of the Together in the National Interest document offered the following tidbits:

We will further invest in infrastructure by:

• expanding our railway programme to create an ‘electric spine’ from Southampton to Yorkshire, electrify the South Wales Valleys railways, establish a western rail link to Heathrow, invest in the Northern Hub and create enough capacity for 140,000 extra daily commutes at peak times by the end of 2019;

• moving as rapidly as possible towards a national high speed rail network by carrying forward legislation for the first phase between London and Birmingham;

• upgrading transport in the capital city through Crossrail, Thameslink and by supporting an extension of the Northern Line to Battersea Power Station;

The flavour of the document was perhaps best given by the front cover which appeared to show some rail workers turning their backs on the country.

Or were they perhaps preparing to moon, in response to the Coalition's thin document?

UPDATE: This from Globetrotter...

Am I the only person to be intrigued by the commitment to providing ‘enough capacity for 140,000 extra daily commutes’ without saying where or when, or over what distance? 

With this degree of vagueness, one might envisage delivering a vast increase in capacity by re-doubling and resignalling for 12-car trains at 2 min headways between Grosmont and Whitby, for example.

 

Given the Westminster village focus, one might presume that Dave ‘n’ Nick mean journeys in and out of London, although Crossrail and Thameslink won’t be ready in the life of this coalition, and our northern friends could legitimately argue that their need is greater in the short term. 

A rough estimate suggests it is equivalent to around 4% more passenger journeys per day across the network, which is barely enough to keep up with recent growth in demand.

 

And of course, grammatically-literate historians might argue that they are talking about increasing booking office capacity to sell that number of season tickets. Or perhaps not?

Sheriff rides into town to sort DfT comms

This from PR Week...
 
David Cameron's deputy official spokeswoman Vickie Sheriff is to become director of group comms at the Department for Transport.

Sheriff, who is also head of news at Number 10, will take on the role within the next few weeks.

Interesting!

Mystic Eye exposed in Dead Tree Media!

In the latest issue of Passenger Transport, published on the 4th January, the Fact Compiler consults his crystal ball...

The next edition of Passenger Transport will be published on the 18th January.

ASLEF behind the curve?

This from a Mr Anthony Kilometer...

As the new year starts no doubt ASLEF members will be consulting their union's website to see when their employer's franchises are up for renewal...

And these are just highlights.

Come on chaps - it's not that difficult to update one web page is it?

Lookalike - 'Poop poop!' edition

Telegraph story here...

January - a time to look forward, not back!

So. The Transport Select Committee has opined on the future of the railway.

Please read our Legislators' thoughts - Here.

Meanwhile we look forward to the 8th January when NR publishes its business plan (HLOS in old money).

And on 10th January we can apparently anticipate a Ministerial Statement on the Brown Review.

In all this excitement there is only one message that the industry needs to put across:

"Move the wheel closer to the rail and structure for the customer!", whether passenger or freight (thank you Sir Robert).

That is all.

Durham celebrates first Railway Garden of 2013!

This from the Long Reach of the Law...

Is it too late for an entry to the festive railway garden competition?

Certainly not.

Wishing all readers on the North Eastern an happy Epiphany!