Wednesday 2 October 2013

World's Greatest Living Transport Correspondent bests Beardie

The results of this year's Ipsos MORI Survey of Transport Journalists have just been released.

73 hacks were polled, and amongst a wealth of data on just how rubbish they perceive transport policy to be, is the following gem:


So amongst the Street of Shame's brightest and best our very own Wolmar is seen as more impressive than both Beardie and Baker!

Poor old LibDems, last again.

Now if Wolmayor can just prevent Adonis from standing, this sort of polling might yet secure him Labour's mayoral nomination!

Silver Stump Watch - King's Cross Square

This from White Throat...

I knew it was too good to last!

The beautiful new King's Cross Square is the latest railway space to be blighted by expensive and apparently pointless Silver Stumps!


Note how they are even placed slap bang in the middle of what is clearly meant to be a designated walk way!



Their relentless march continues - even in the narrowest of passageways workers busy away squeezing in a double dose.



Perfectly positioned to damage the vulnerable appendages of the visually impaired and those with 20:20 vision alike!

DfT officials study their briefs... or something

In between designing exciting new trains and micro-managing franchises officials at the DfT certainly like to keep their fingers on the pulse...

Or so it would appear.

According to HuffPo:

Pornographic sites including Playboy, "Perfect Asians" and "Big Boobs Tight Blouse" were attempted to be accessed by staff at the Department for Transport almost every day last month, official figures obtained by The Huffington Post UK reveal.

Following a Freedom of Information request, the DfT disclosed that since the start of September, pornography websites received 47 hits via the department's network.

The DfT's announcement this week on high speed mobile broadband now makes perfect sense...

UPDATE: This from a Fillipe Muttman... 

As anyone who regularly uses the internet knows, there is usually an innocent explanation for these web site visits.  

Web searches frequently throw up inappropriate sites which were far from what the searcher intended.

'Perfect Asians' obviously came up as part of a recent internal DfT desk study of the reliability of Korean rolling stock. 

Where as 'Playboy' is a clear case of an entirely innocent search to discover the editor of Railway Eye. 


And the other site looks like the response to a query concerned with the design of body shells for maximum seating capacity within the constraints of the UK loading gauge, where a staff member was seeking information on 'Big tubes tight clearances'.

An unfortunate error but one that was made with the very best of intentions doggy style.