Police Five reduced to two fingered salute?

Further mutterings from the Boys in Blue over Eye favourite Tom Winsor.

Observers of the political scene will have noted that Tom, the last of the Ozymandean Rail Regulators, has been put forward by Theresa May as the new Chief Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales.

As @captain_deltic dryly tweeted this morning:

I wonder whether the Home Office has asked DfT for a reference :))

Eye suggests Stephen 'Cab for Hire' Byers might be quicker off the rank...

The Great Detractor?

Telegrammed by Bulldog Drummond
Tom 'pile of bile' Winsor ranted away in The Times on Friday that Buy-us is responsible for the threatened railway strike.

Not sure that, however alluring the honey trap, even Stephen would claim this.

Most of the article is the predictable Groundhog Day stuff about Railtrack going into administration and the 2003 settlement and it not being Tom's fault etc... etc... etc...

But in a new development Buy-Us, Ali D and The Thin Controller are described as the Marx Brothers of national rail policy.

If this is the case step forward Tom as Charlie Chaplin.

Not because of looks, Harry Potter is still our favourite, but because in every Chaplin movie the hero causes absolute chaos and he doesn't notice.

But is there another motive in all this Labour bashing?

Is the one-time LP card holding member turning into... Tory Boy?

M' learned friend

Tom Winsor, former Rail Regulator, has an article in today's Times on the role of industry regulators.

Tom writes:

"Regulation is not the dryly technocratic function that it sometimes appears, practised by robotic economists and pernickety lawyers with an over-keen interest in the minutiae of compliance handbooks."

Err... if you say so Tom.