Friday, October 2, 2009

KHOODEELAAR! Putting in context the latest admission of setback in Crossrail propaganda. Berkeley Homes WILL DISAPPOINT the CRASS role players.

0900 [0740] Hrs GMT London Friday 02 October 2009:

Editor © Muhammad Haque. Khoodeelaar! Told Alistair Darling so!

On 24 March 2006, we published our final statement on the court application that we were making on Monday 27 March 2006 alleging amongst other things that “he made a false statement to parliament in asserting that the contents of the CrossRail Bill were compatible with the European Human Rights Convention”. We published that action plan on our web sites including on an external web site at lunchtime on Friday 24 March 2006. Within an hour of that, we got a message asking us to get in touch with the ‘local’ ‘East London Advertiser’. We heard that Ken Livingstone, very much in post then ‘as the mayor’ in the name of London, had established contact with the paper and given them an alleged exclusive to the effect that the Crossrail hole would NOT be dug in the Brick Lane London E1 area…If true, that would have meant that one of our key demands would have been met in that about turn.. There were frantic communications reaching Khoodeelaar! From sources seeking our comment. We also learnt over a couple of hours that there was nothing on the London Assembly’s own web site. Or indeed on the web site of the London local paper the EVENING STANDARD. Livingstone, the KHOODEELAAR! Campaign investigation discovered, had staged the stunt in collusion with Darling and as part of the defence against the KHOODEELAAR! Campaign programme of legal action set to begin on 27 March 2006. We shall be reporting exclusively as usual and in the course of the next few days on the events of that fortnight. Here is one version of our campaign statement that we published on the UK INDYMEDIA web site on 24 March 2006:


“Crossrail Bill breaches Human rights Convention -Court action 27 March 2006
East London Against Crossrail hole Bill- | 24.03.2006 13:17 | Indymedia | Social Struggles | London
A group of campaigners in the East End of London, in the Brick Lane E1 area, are taking court action against Alistair Darling MP, the CrossRail Bill minister. They are also seeking court orders against the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council over that Council’s breaches of the law and over its abuses of public cash in promoting the CrossRail hole plan
Claims in court against Alistair Darling include the allegation that he made a false statement to parliament in asserting that the contents of the CROSSrail Bill were compatible with the European Human Rights
East London Against Crossrail hole Bill”

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Crossrail tunnel tender setback
1 October 2009 | By Alexandra Wynne

Invitations to tender for Crossrail’s third and final tunnelling contract have been delayed because of ongoing negotiations with project sponsor and developer Berkeley Homes.

The contract is for the tunnel under the river Thames from the Royal Docks to south east London via the Woolwich Station box which is expected to be funded by Berkeley Homes.

Crossrail tunnelling boss Bill Tucker told a conference in London that plans to publish the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) notice for the complex river tunnel at the same time as those for the first station build contracts have been ditched.

“We’ve got to balance sponsor commitment against review points.”

Bill Tucker, Crossrail Central
“We’ve got to balance sponsor commitment against review points to ratify that we can build to schedule and cost,” said Tucker, Crossrail Central’s director for tunnels, portals and shafts.

“We now know that [the notices for the Thames Tunnel drive] won’t be with the first station contracts as we initially thought.”

Developer Berkeley Homes has responsibility for delivering the station box at Woolwich − which sits within the tunnel drive − but it is understood that detailed negotiations over funding are ongoing. Until these are resolved, the full scope of works cannot be confirmed.

Tucker said that OJEU notices for the first station contracts at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road would be published “imminently”. Invitations to tender are expected to follow in December with contract awards due to take place in mid-2010.

He added that contractors will be able to bid for the two stations separately and if they can offer a competitive joint bid for both it is possible that the two stations could go to one bidder.

www.nce.co.uk/crossrail

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