Osborne in Tokyo Playing on the Trains
George Osborne wants the private sector to build a Japanese-style 360mph "maglev" railway. "There are plenty of links I can think of - a link between Liverpool and Manchester, or Glasgow and Edinburgh, or London and its airports - which would bring huge benefits to Britain." He plans to make it viable by taxing all other forms of transport to the point of bankruptcy.
George is in Japan and will ride the magnetic levitation train tomorrow. Not the first time he will have got high on a long line methinks.
Hat-tip : Kinnerly [sort of]
George is in Japan and will ride the magnetic levitation train tomorrow. Not the first time he will have got high on a long line methinks.
Hat-tip : Kinnerly [sort of]
81 comments:
I don't know about an all-Labour A list - the front bench seems to be half filled with them already - not least Boy George|
His green credentials are looking rocky.
Why fly all the way to Japan (while trying to imagine a super-express down-sized to a commuter chuffer) when there's been a maglev between B'ham International rail station and the Exhibition Centre for years.
More un-necessary (and polluting) freebies at the public's expense, IMO.
Sack him.
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Forget maglev - expensive white elephant. Electrification of the whole rail network would at least bring us up to the standard of the rest of Europe. Then TGV routes between London and the major cities. And for goodness' sake wake up to the fact that infrastructure can't be built or maintained on the cheap.
Oh, and while you're at it, Mr Osborne, talk 'Dave' round to a massive increase in nuclear electricity generation, and resurrection of our coal industry to enable generation of gas from coal. Otherwise everyone's lights and central heating will all go out when Putin et al start playing rough.
No, no. Labour is well to the right of Dave and George's wonderful new fantasy Tory Party.
What these clowns (sorry, leaders) want is an honest name for the party that truly reflects their stance.
How about 'European People's Party'?
(Memo to Boy George: the very same people who tell us the world is going to melt down over this century because of CO2, also forecast at the end of July that August would be even hotter. So why should we believe their forecast for 2100? Do tell. We're all ears.)
2br02b is correct. Cabana Boy - he of the Brazilian chest wax job - and Boy George are to the left of the socialist/commie party.
Soylent Green is People
CO2 is plant food.
Fuck playing trains. You will be judged on how you deal with Brown. Do your homework, watch Rocky 1 to V and start landing some blows. If necessary get coaching from Fat Boy Clark. Destroy the myth and the man. Do this and No 10 will be yours. Its the waste and incompetence, stupid.
Crackers - you said it. Brown has led with his ample chin for 9 years, and a succession of shadow chancellors have yet to land a punch. Complete failure, starting with P.Lilley who was offered the open goal (swift change of sporting metaphor) of the Pensions grab. At least Lilley had the honesty to admit this when Hague axed him.
And now on George's watch, Tax Credits and VAT fraud... Get stuck in.
Boy George is a tad wet behind the ears. I can hear "The sums don't add up" echoing from the bloated PR machine at Downing Street.
Can't believe that wally nicky campbell on five live this morning failed to ask him how much Dave's new trainset would cost.
George Osborne will prove the undoing of the New Model Tory party. The public may fall for Cameron but a thirtysomething nutcase with an obsession for magic trains is never going to cut it as Chancellor.
Has Cameron got the balls to axe his best friend?
Or has Osborne got something on him?
We'll see.
Osbourne is right. What we need is a large network of Mag Lev trains across Europe. This could be one part of a large public works programme, complete with stunning architecture and unique public-private financing deals, that could dynamise the European economies and provide a shared vision for the European project.
Just joking. Still, the UK rail network is crap and talking about these wonder trains is cheap and only serves to highlight how Labour's done nothing but add to the misery on the railways. Alastair Darling is Transport Secretary, in case you didn't know. What does he do all day?
What about buying Tim Harford's new book, The Undercover Economist? An FT economics correspondent, I think he's right in calling for taxes to be moved away from being based on income (ie it's a disincentive to earn money) and on to areas that cause what economists call "exernalities", in this case pollution. So increasing taxes on pollution or congestion could be an efficient idea if done properly, and income taxes can go down at the same time...
The midlothian question will do for Brown. No one wants another sweaty sock in the oval office.
No. The world depends on manufacturing. It pollutes. So what?
Congestion results from lots of people wanting to travel at the same time - often for the same reason, i.e., getting to work. Taxing it is stupid.
Flat rate tax is the answer - 10% with people earning less than £18,000 a year excused.
The key to balancing the budget is, get rid of most public expenditure, including around 80% of the public sector. The "taxes" they pay are not real because they're not based on wealth created. Get the government out of the health provision industry.
You need radical thinking, not sewing little frills on failed programmes.
Does Osborne ever think of the late-Professor Eric Laithwaite (1927-1997) who invented the linear induction motor and could get noone in Britain to develop his MagLev idea - and instead Thyssen worked on the concept in Germany ?
Anonymous said...The midlothian question will do for Brown. No one wants another sweaty sock in the oval office.6:16 PM
Is this the Tony luvs Gordy thing re-surfacing or am I being too freudian?
anonymous 6:16--
The Eton question will be like the Midlothian question squared.
At least Scots have some sort of reputation, justified or not, for competence; against a shadow cabinet including about a dozen upper class twits from Eton--like Boy George--Brown will walk it.
It's not just coincidence that until the Boy David, the last Etonian Tory leader was Sir Alex Douglas Home over 40 years ago: it's a sure-fire election loser.
As long as "we" keep looking toward these f***wits for the solution to all our problems we will forever be in trouble and eventually return to serfdom (not so far off)
Vote for whom you like nothing will change, Labour/libdems/conservative they are all the same time serving unemployable in the real world stains on a tramps blanket.
So we are now looking at building Maglev trains. Great.
These wastes of space don't do corners very well and require huge land takes as well as mile after mile of concrete track, most of which on viaducts. Doesn't really play well with all this environmental stuff that the Nottinghill Mob are spewing forth.
Come on - why is the Party not kicking this Labour lot to death? Its time to start talking about the economy. For those of poor sods who have been candidates know, people vote depending upon how much cash is in their pockets and who they can trust with it. Start ripping into Brown on his record for God's sake!
drewit said...Crackers - you said it. Brown has led with his ample chin for 9 years, and a succession of shadow chancellors have yet to land a punch.
And now on George's watch, Tax Credits and VAT fraud... Get stuck in.5:54 PM
It`s always amazed me how often the Tories have failed totally to home in on this governments ongoing cock-ups.The only real opposition right now seems to be from Labour`s back-benches while chin-less wonders on the Tory benches hoot and bray like the vacuous fuck-wits they are.Often just one telling remark,one incisive question would make all the difference but they appear to have no-one capable of doing any damage.At PMQs Blair just gets more and more gay as things progress while Dave has the combative qualities of the average nun.
"blah, blah, blah...
forged in the white heat of technology
blah, blah, blah ..."
Just wait for house prices in the UK to take a lead from the US, where they've just gone into a tailspin after a long boom. Gordon Brown will become very unpopular regardless of what Osbourne does.
BTW, taxing congestion and pollution is a good idea. The external costs of people actions need to be accounted for as Harford (and any cod economist) suggests.
The Tories did have someone capable of doing damage, William Hague. However he was leader when no one was listening to the Tories and then he resigned before being "done in" by the modernisers after the 2001 Election.
I agree. William Hague's hour will come.
"The Eton question will be like the Midlothian question squared."
Go back to mordor, labour spin-doctor. The electorate is sick of your sleaze.
I really, really wish the Tories would forget about green energy (look at the Drax protesters today -- does any 'normal' person identify with them?) and get to grips with what the country needs.
Thatcher was about as visionary as Beeching. Although in his favour, he wasn't (I think) motivated by political revenge or begrudgery -- it was down to (albeit short-sighted and deeply talentless) planning for the future.
Fact is, Margaret has left us beholden to whatever autocrat happens to be in power somewhere East. We've got hundreds of years of coal but have been hamstrung by a stupid old bugger who was obsessed by Scargill.
It doesn't matter a damn to the Drax protesters who all live in caravans powered by LPG. But for the rest of us, who aren't convinced by Tony's sudden conversion to nuclear, coal has always been The Way Of The Future.
Heard "Flip" Cameron commenting on what he described as the BBC "package" this morning.
Now that he appears to have found an even more expensive way of "flying" and we appear to have an emerging policy on Transport (did shadow transport know about this?)I was wondering if he was going to say anything on his own brief-even if for novelty value!
PS-exactly when did a report become a package?
I guess this is a ploy to get the Northern vote. Surely a flat cap and some whippets would be more cost-effective?
It's wrong to associate numbskull hippies outside Drax with green taxes. Green taxes should encourage Drax since Drax is a very efficient power station that doesn't pollute much on a Megawatt produced basis and it makes cheap electricity too. Green taxes would hit the inefficient polluting power stations. The protesters should have been lobbying for emissions trading licences or lurking outside a bad power plant. Pollution isn't good but it is a by product of industrial inefficiency. Even California is moving to tax it now. Maybe it is better to tax pollution instead of taxing people who work (income tax) or taxing sales (VAT).
As for the rail, Osbourne has not committed to build a Mag Lev train has he? Wilson's "white heat of technology" speech was silly but he sadly poured Government money into it. Osbourne's just point out how rubbish the UK rail network is and from the easy position as an opposition MP, can talk about things. Besides, he stole the headlines today. As someone said above, if UK house prices follow the US, Brown will be doomed. All those "no more Tory boom and bust" speeches will be replayed.
The Eton question will be like the Midlothian question squared.
Doesn't really matter where people went to school any more, does it? Witness Blair, public school and Oxonian though he be, always looking slightly more in touch (then, I stress, then) than Howard did. Or Hague. Or Major. The whole anti-etonian thing smacks of VAST BLADDERFULS OF labour trying simply anything to smear the shadow front bench. More than a little snobbish really (If 'snobbery' means 'prejudice based on nothing more than someone's background or socio-economic status')
If that's all they've got left in the magazine then next season's colour will surely be blue-for-a-boy.
I'm afraid it does matter that Cabana Boy is an OE, because he is laughably out of touch with Conservative voters. They don't care about green. They don't care about the windmill on his roof. They think he is bonkers to have had his chest waxed and then present himself for photographs. But Dave thinks all of this is winning him the election. He hasn't a clue. He's silly and empty and doesn't have the faintest interest in what drives the worries of Conservatives and conservative thinkers.
To this day the British experiment in a hover train track lies rotting beside the Cambridge trainline coming in from Peterborough.Then there was Eric Laithwaite. Clearly BG was not brought up on Thrusday night BBC editions of Tomorrow's World - bracketed by Top of the Pops and the Man from Uncle. The glory days indeed.
Does anyone believe the party that brought us the awful mess of the destruction of British Rail is going to give us a high speed anything. They gave us Beeching for fuxake sake.
"The Eton question will be like the Midlothian question squared."
The fact that Dave went to Eton's an irrelevance. The fact that he's an unprincipled tosser, with an alarming lack of Conservative policies, hopefully WILL do for him. So far he's had an easy ride; a few years ago, the BBC would have massacred a Tory leader for the PR gaffs he's made. However, they're now so anti-Blair that up to now they've been nauseatingly gentle with Dave. It won't last. I hope....
mr gisoad, the Eton thing is not 'labour trying simply anything'; it's the Tory setting themselves up for a pratfall of the first order. Labour needs to do very little about this; the soaraway Sun & its rivals will sink the Eton Twit Gang for them.
As for Blair: firstly, he did not go to the emblematic Eton so he could get away with it. But secondly, and worse, he's queered the pitch for young upper-class twit candidates for PM -- like Cameron. The Tory Party has just got itself the ideal candidate (apart from the Eton bit) for the 1997 general election; trouble is, it's now 2006 and that candidate profile is now a well and truly busted flush.
I'm not a Labour spinner; I'm desperate for a Tory win. But that's not the way we're heading right now, despite the temporary dead-cat-bounce-like opinion poll boost from Blair's unpopularity.
You don't win elections by deluding yourself.
Speaking as a chartered engineer, forget the “white hot heat…” carp, just point the naïve to Concorde and the mess that it left the UK industry in when the fantasists got carried away with naff ideas.
There is one liberating possibility for maglev however, you can fire a lump of plain metal down a track as well as a train, in fact if it can get a train to 400 mph, a failed asylum seeker laid on the track could be propelled to quite a speed as he was dragged behind his handcuffs – would he hit 400mph, just how far over the channel could this launch system propel him? It’s the one expulsion flight where you would not need to worry about hijacking.
How about draining the canals and putting Maglev's in them instead? The Manchester Ship Canal would be an obvious site for GG's answer to the East Lancs Road. Time to think outside the box, push the envelope and go to hell in a handcart.
Careful Guido... you're starting to sound like those "Lifestyle Police"... ;¬)
Glasgow firemen sentenced to brainwashing
Where to the Tories stand on this?
I have Tamsin, Ear said...
The Tories did have someone capable of doing damage, William Hague. However he was leader when no one was listening to the Tories and then he resigned before being "done in" by the modernisers after the 2001 Election.7:12 PM
Actually I liked Hague,despite being a Labour voter back then(but no more).You`d have thought Dave would have learned from the infamous "Baseball Cap" picture about the terminally untrendy trying to fool anyone.Blair`s like Custer right now and I really dont understand Dave`s apparent inability to wipe the floor with him at every PMQs,Hague or Howard would have chewed him up and spat him out once a week in present circumstances.
Perhaps now the Brazilian wax job is growing out, Dave's new little hairs are pulling on his shirt. Oh! Ouch!
Being a Brazilian waxed up cabana boy is not all roses. There is a price to pay!
I like Hague too, but he is holding his fire. Maybe going to let Cabana Boy sink without a trace. Oooh! Ouch! It itches!
I'd be happy with Hague or David Davis. Both adults, and clever.
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I thought that the Natural Law Party cornered the market in "floating" voters year ago.
Moko @ 6.38pm: At PMQs Blair just gets more and more gay as things progress while Dave has the combative qualities of the average nun.
You obviously haven't met many nuns.
Another Tory born with a silver spoon in his mouth
Just saw a repeat on the British Space Programme - Blue Streak and all that. Elegant simplicity killed by political spinelessness.
I remember the Fairey Rotodyne. Killed by NIH at Westland becuase Fairey was forced to merge as some numbnut only wanted one helicopter supplier - IDIOT.
Maglev? We should do it so we can sell shedloads abroad once we have. As for "it doesn't do corners" etc...well, I pity such people who give up so easily. They are the cause of all this decline, capitulation and abdication you see about you. And they have the nerve to complain about the Tories?
Verity - I'll give you odds that Hague and Davis are planning a pincer job on Dave and Boy George.
pedant -- if only...
No. Hague, etc., will do nothing until the Boys David & George and all their little upper class twit school friends are turned into road kill by Gordon at the next election.
Birmingham Airport does not use a MagLev system. They decided it was expensive and unnecessary and use a cable system instead.
Devil's Advocate - The canal to Maglev option is not the soundest idea.
Manchester Ship Canal too short to be viable - these babies need distance to take advantage of warp-speed.
Other canals - too bendy and Maglevs don't do sudden changes in vertical alignment (locks) too well.
But I saw an Eric Laithwaite lecture / demo back in the early 70's and I've been sold on them ever since.
2br02b - Hague perhaps. I just don't think David Davis has got that much time. Remember where their seats are. Broadacres.
OK, Vervet, if not the canals how about the Roman roads?
Good God gentlemen! Did your ancesters set about the Spinning Jenny with a pick axe handle? Did you say once, "Computers - nah they are just a wanking machine for nerds"?
Maglev trains are an idea, merely an idea. (good ol' Eric Laithewaite) It does not matter how viable they are, it matters though that GO is prepared not only to think about them but risk a verbal buggering by mentioning them.
We were once a nation who was proud of creating superlatives; Concord, Rolls Royce, The Titanic (ok not the Titanic then, but you get the idea).
In the old days, engineers with imagination would be given a sheet of graph paper and told to jot down a few ideas. That's how we got Concord. These days some dreadful PFI shysters try and work out how many safety features they can leave out without anybody discovering them.
My point is, we have to go forward as a country and we have to be imaginative. If the knee-jerk reaction is as cynical as most of the above, you are always going to drive Rover Cars, wear jeans made in Beijing and travel in trains that smell of someone else's arse.
As a train fan who no longer travels on trains, I recommend that you would do well to travel on them in the rest of Europe where trains are clean, punctual and cheap. Then you might understand why George Osborne could just have the right idea.
anonymous 9:34 PM.
There is one liberating possibility for maglev however, you can fire a lump of plain metal down a track as well as a train, in fact if it can get a train to 400 mph, a failed asylum seeker laid on the track could be propelled to quite a speed as he was dragged behind his handcuffs – would he hit 400mph, just how far over the channel could this launch system propel him? It’s the one expulsion flight where you would not need to worry about hijacking.
What an excellent idea! Trouble is, we would have to get rid of the EUrocrats and the human rights lawyers first. Why not point it straight up and use it to launch things into space? Just think: Cherie Booth QC could be Britain's first self-launched satellite!
Mr Fruning Graplecard. Enjoyed your brief resume of our industrial successes. Nothing against MagLev, efficient railways or pocket atom splitters. My rant is that Osborne should stop playing with fucking trains and get on with his real job which is to sort Brown and our imploding economy. We are up shit street with growth in size of Govt, incompetence and corruption. He and Cameron must stop fucking about on the non issues and deal with the country as we find it.
But ms Crackers
that would mean them actually doing something rather than posturing , get it into your head most politicians are idiots who havent a clue about anything other than greasing, that is why so few of them have ever had a real job george/dave
gordon/tony
Just about all of them.they spend so much of their time using their limited mental capacity thinking about their careers and whose arse to kiss next that they havent the time to worry about actually solving some of this countries very real and soon to be disasterous problems.
with you on that one, Prawn
The last time we built a Japanese-style railway was in Burma
Mr Graplecard
In case it has escaped your attention we longer live in that kind of country , free thought and practical creativity is discouraged not encouraged.
Just look at the punishment handed out to 9 Glasgow firemen who didnt want to be forced to attend the scottish gay pride march, sent on a diversity training course to correct their error of thought and one demoted, losing £5000 a year in salary ( a lot to a fire officer)This country needs a lot more than higher petrol taxes and higher aviation taxes to fix it, neither of which will bother that pair of c***** cameron and osbourne as they get free petrol paid for by you and I plus free flights on private jets.
I write this from a charming set of rooms in Calais.
Mr. Hitchens. I never thought I would, but I am beginning to see why certain military coups have proved so popular at the time. At least to start with the military are straight (honest), fairly efficient and like order.
"Where to the Tories stand on this?"
I suspect the leadership and the membership will stand very far apart. I wonder what would have happened if those firemen (or should that be firepersons?) were Muslims?
"Glasgow firemen sentenced to brainwashing
Where to the Tories stand on this?"
I suspect the membership will stand far apart from the leadership.
I wonder what would have happened if those firemen had been Muslims?
pedant, I thought 'Broadacres' was a garden of remembrance?
------
As for maglev trains -- the Germans abandoned them two years ago. And at 400 mph, I'm afraid they'd only propel Cherie about 2/3rds of a mile out across the Channel, still well within territorial waters. And that's with a following wind.
2br02b - OK. Fair enough. I'm not an engineer. But while she was being propelled out that 2/3rds of a mile, would she be underwater? If so, this would help.
If not, could be be propelled backwards, by her ankles? Wouldn't this result in vast volumes of water flowing into her nose and preventing breathing, creating a sadly dangerous situation for her?
Who pays for this? The Conservative Party? His own vast inherited fortune?
2br02b. Oh dear! The county of "Broadacres" is God's own county - Yorkshire.
Im surprised B-Liar hasn't thought of this for his legacy.
Pedant,
why do think they keep taking away our firearms?
The first firearm legislation in this country was brought in for one reason, to keep weapons out of the hands of disaffected peasents returning from the trenches, and just like everywhere else in the world they keep chipping away at the weaponry held by citizens and the right to defend yourself, your amily and your property all while arming the police with lots of nice new kit that make our soldiers green with envy.
Be afraid, government is not your friend.
verity -- I had imagined an aerial voyage for our intrepid chatelaine of 10 Downing Street. Under water--as a human torpedo--I doubt she'd get 23 yards, never mind 2/3rds of a mile.
Of course, at least to start, she'd be breaking the world underwater speed record, but do we want her name preserved for posterity in the Guinness Book of Records? On the other hand, it would do her health no good whatsoever...
2br02b - I was thinking you had envisaged some sort of water propelled machine that could work projectiles up to a certain velocity that might be dangerous if tried in jest. As in, just as an example, being propelled rapidly for a mile or so underwater. I thought you had some inside skinny, so to speak, on this maglev deal. I was just innocently envisioning different uses for it is all.
Funny this isn't it? We Brits love our heritage to the extent that we're prepared to sacrifice any hope of a decent public transport system. The French have an attitude of "the State knows best" and this applies to all manner of public initiatives. If the French wish to run a TGV line through a mediaeval town or a site of special scientific interest, they do it. When the state has decided that the TGV line is what France needs then... oh wait... it's built. No argument. It doesn't hurt this French system to have a society where engineers are actively promoted and respected.
The Brits don't have the same attitude. Look how long it took to get the Eurostar lines through Kent upgraded. First time I came back from a trip to Europe on Eurostar, I thought the poor train had bust a lung on reaching the English side of the tunnel.
Since a magnetic rail system (like all railways) works best in a nice unimpeded line, which postal codes will be getting the chop? If we're looking for a large area of brown field site through which to route new development, may I recommend a moderately sized area in North London (near Wembley tube station) which is still waiting for some serious development to take place?
Look how long it took to get the Eurostar lines through Kent upgraded. ????????
They only attach the wheels once we are in France, this side of the channel there are attachable wooden handles with union members manfully shouldering each carriage and running along the tracks.
There is a move in Scotland to get a Glasgow/Edinburgh maglev - a snip at £3 billion which I calculated would mean each ticket subsidised to the tune of £200, assuming a 10% return. I assume all other such would cost the same.
The sensible option would be to merely get all trains run by a computer - having no driver would actually bring prices down.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2006/07/bullet-train-from-glasgow-to-edinburgh.html
The first firearm legislation in this country was brought in for one reason, to keep weapons out of the hands of disaffected peasents
Not so - 1871 it was brought in to raise a licence fee
Examples of engineering to be proud of.. Concorde? Well, I don't doubt the technical achievement. Doesn't stop it being an uneconomic waste of money which should never have been built.
Same as that bottomless money pit which goes by the name of Eurostar. Thank god we didn't waste another umpteen million razing the Kent countryside just so some trains which can't pay their way, could not pay their way a bit faster.
rick
indeed ,the 10 shilling gun license, however, I was referring to the first license that required state approval, the former was merely a tax, just like the 1934 national firearms act in the USA that taxed fully automatic weapons at $200 each, incidentally the same tax applies now however only to weapons registered pre may 1986, post may 1986 it is illegal to transfer a full auto to an individual or corporation not approved by the BATF as a class 3 dealer
Maglev London to Scotland may cost £(2.5-3.2)billion annually. To cover costs fares would have to range up to £900 return - see transport-watch news - clearly a project that is a must for any Govenment that does not do its sums. Meanwhile national rail will have cost the equiv of £2000 per household over the decade at a time when most of us use rail less than once a year.
People quoting fearsome figures above are being silly billys. We are the measliest contributors to the rail network, per capita, in Europe. Our investment in this form of transport is derisory compared to ludicrous road building projects. Sadly, the insurmountable problem is the attitude of railway workers in this country, many of whom are lazy, dishonest and for some reason think that time is a social construct.
Subsidy to rail, including loans and capital never to be repaid from the fair box, will amount to £50 billion for the decade, equivalent to £2,000 for every household in the land at a time when (A) half of us use a train less than once a year and (B) those from households in the top quitile of income travel 4 times as far by rail as do those from either of the botton two. Why on earth should we subsidise the rich? Instead - if we can find a set of deserving would be travellers - pay them the money and let them decide how to spend it.
It's not about subsidising the rich, Paul W. What about underpaid public sector workers who must necessarily travel on cramped commuter trains everyday because they cannot afford to live where they work?
I don't travel on trains either because they are crap, but that is not the point. I defend the right of those who need to.
It may entertain you to know that there are 250,000 crushed surface rail commuters entering central London in the AM peak hour. There are 25 pairs of tracks, hence 10,000 commuters per track. They could all find seats to spare in 150 75-seat express coaches. Those coaches would occupy one seventh of the capacity of the network if it were paved. Costs would be cut by a factor of at least four, the death rate by a factor of 2, fuel consumption by 20-25% and carbon emissisions by 15%. Meanwhile countless lorries and other vehicles could divert from the unsuitable city streets that they now clog. Failure to act in the light of the simple arithmetic that underlies the above is why we have spent hundreds of billions over the decades on a system that is worthless in the market place. See transport-watch.co.uk
Paul w is pursuading me. Help!
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