KHOODEELAAR! Told UK CON Cameron so. Stop imitating the OTT-lying 'spin' of the G Brown - T Bliar 'years'. Start telling the truth. Face the facts and quit lying yourself. If EVERYTHING must be cut, how is it that you are in effect ring-fencing Crossrail? What is the evidence that Crossrail is so sacrosanct? What [if any at all] is the evidence that Crossrail can be correlated to the actual daily experience of economic beings? What is the justification for your CONDEM following the lies for Crossrail? Why carry on with the mess caused by successive decision-makers on London transport?Scrap Crossrail. Start afresh and prioritise the Tube and also the standard of service on existing infrastructure in London. Get P Hammond to get off that fake bike that Barclays gave to Boris to flaunt as a sneaky advertisement for the banks. Give him a brief that is straight and not faked. [To be continued]
IMF issues warning on Britain's debt
Britain must do more to control spiralling debts, say the IMF
The screw is tightening in the ongoing row over phone hacking at News of the World, with Alan Johnson suggesting an inspection of the original police investigation may be necessary.
We'd better get used to the arguments used in George Osborne's first truly defensive speech as chancellor, for they will be repeated many times in the months to come.
Britain is among those countries needing to tighten their fiscal policies in order to stem the growth of ballooning debts, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The organisation warned that the UK's debt in relation to its GDP could rise to 90.6pc by the end of this parliament, more than doubling the levels of 2007 before the financial crisis.
"Fiscal policy will need to react more strongly to debt than past behaviour would suggest, and governments will need to engage in reforms that place debt on a sustainable footing," the IMF said.
The Fund's report would appear to support the government's aggressive stance on reducing spending.
The report continued: "In the last three and a half decades, public debt has been the shock absorber in advanced economies - going up in bad times and not coming down in good times."
Britain is in a better position than other countries in regards to debt, particularly those in Southern Europe and Japan, but remains "constrained in their degree of fiscal maneuver".
The IMF concluded: "Timely policy measures are needed to increase the probability that public debt will remain on a sustainable path and convince markets that fiscal policy is not proceeding on a 'business as usual' basis."
The report comes as the coalition spending review, to take place in October, begins to loom large on the political horizon.
David Cameron's government will likely use reports such as these as support for their arguments on spending cuts and debt reduction, in what is likely to be a politically contentious period as the full scale of George Osborne's economic plans come to light.
Labour, although in the midst of a leadership election, has regularly attacked the speed and scale of government spending cuts as unnecessary.
KHOODEELAAR! Telling the 'Guardian Grin' touting for Big Bizness touts for Crossrail scam, to start the overdue task of including the facts in his touting...For if the facts are looked at, the 'case' for Crossrail agenda will evaporate. And the real transport priorities begin to be shown the attention that they deserve. So we tell the 'Guardian Grin': Quit the gormless grin, get going with dealing with the facts...
Khoodeelaar! Contextual evidential diagnostics originally published in 2006 is being republished today to show that we had correctly diagnosed the crassness of Big Business Crossrail and we had correctly predicted the economic and financial flaws in the Big Biz agenda scam...[To be continued]
Crossrail-hole-Minister Alistair Darling's ‘plea’ to Khoodeelaar!
UK Transport Secretary Alistair Darling MP has had his Department for Transport [DfT] write to the Khoodeelaar! Campaign in the East End of London against the Crassrail hole Bill as part of a strategy to salvage the careers of the controlling Blairite Tower Hamlets Council. Khoodeelaar! held another powerful demonstration against that Council on Wednesday 1 March 2006.
The 1 March 2006 Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole Council demo was supported by RESPECT coalition MP George Galloway and by the main Opposition on Tower Hamlets Council, the Liberal Democrats. At the Council meeting that followed the same evening, Lib Dem councillor Louise Alexander sought to have Tower Hamlets show recognition to the community and to identify with the community in opposing the Crassrail hole plan attacks Bill.
The controlling clique failed to recognize the momentous importance of the motion and they even jeered at Councillor Alexander part of the time that she was presenting her arguments in support of the motion.
The only other non-Lib Dem councillor who supporter Louise Alexander was the RESPECT councillor Oliur Rahman
In his speech at the Khoodeelaar! demonstration earlier in the evening, Oliur Rahman described the controlling clique on Tower Hamlets Council as crooks and vowed to do everything he and his colleagues could do to remove them from office at the scheduled 4 May 2006 council elections.
What Alistair Darling, the UK Crossrail hole {Transport] Minister, is doing to ‘help’ salvage the sinking careers of the controlling clique on Tower Hamlets Council facing the wrath of the people determined to stop the Crossrail hole attacks on the East End of London
A khoodeelaaronline report 1420 Hrs GMT Saturday 4 March 2006
UK Transport [Crossrail hole-Bill] Minister Alistair Darling, MP, makes another lame plea to Khoodeelaar! on behalf of Tower Hamlets Council !
Alistair Darling’s Department for Transport ahs sent a letter by email on Friday 3 March 2006 to Khoodeelaar organiser Muhammad Haque.
Crossrail-hole-Bill promoter Alistair Darling MP has not yet cottoned on to the fact that the East End community opposition to our area being devastated is not a temporary affair.
This opposition will continue and will grow. The only solution to this is for Darling to drop the whole Crossrail hole plot. To scarp the Crossrail hole Bill and to start again. Without a hole against our community. Without a hole in our community.
Nor has Alistair Darling understood the fact that he cannot get away with breaking the very laws on whose existence in the UK statute book he relies for his legitimacy as a bona fide member of a bona fide ‘democratic’ Government with claims to expect the community to abide by decisions that that Government makes.
Darling had his Department for Transport [DfT] write to Khoodeelaar! Organiser Muhammad Haque in February 2006.
In that communication the DfT made the plea that the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council had been in touch with the DfT and that the DfT was listening to the Council over concerns on the Crossrail hole problems.
That communication was intended to ‘reassure’ the Khoodeelaar! Campaign organisation that Tower Hamlets Council was ‘indeed’ representing the concerns and the opposition of the local community against the Crossrail hole.
There cannot be any ‘reassurance’ on that at all unless there is incontrovertible, categorical and unconditional resolution by the full Council saying No to Crossrail hole attacks on the East End.
And that evidence could have been produced by the ruling clique on Tower Hamlets Council on Wednesday 1 March 2006.
The Council ignored the opportunity.
The ruling clique on Tower Hamlets Council squandered that opportunity.
The ruling clique on Tower Hamlets Council showed contempt to that opportunity.
Tower Hamlets Council ‘leadership’ of Michael Keith is so contemptuous of the people in the Borough that it fabricated a bureaucratic scenario which it then used to waste as long as three hours of vital council meeting time.
They did that to defuse the power of the argument typified in the motion formally put to the council by [Lib Dem] councillor Louise Alexander asking for the Council to show that it had woken up to the dangers posed by the Crossrail hole to the East End community.
That Alistair Darling ploy will not work because there is nothing in the hundreds of A4 pages of ‘statements’ ‘positions’ and ‘explanations’ so far published about the Crossrail plan by or in the name of or at the behest of the controlling clique on the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Council which shows any sign that Tower Hamlets Council is being ‘led’ or ‘controlled’ by tellers of the truth.
Those who have been in control of the Tower Hamlets Council do not tell the truth and they do not recognise the truth when we in the community tell it.
And nothing has been more staggering as a confirmation of the Tower Hamlets Council’s illegitimate but actual ‘leadership’s inability to tell the truth than their behaviour on Crossrail hole over the past three years.
Tower Hamlets Council’s ‘controlling clique’ has lied to the community in the past three years and falsely claimed that the Crossrail hole plan would ‘bring benefits’ to the community.
How could the Crossrail hole plan bring ‘benefits’ unless the controlling clique had taken total leave of its senses!
Digging a hole in the Brick Lane London E1` area could not bring any benefits
Digging a hole could also trigger off all kinds of unforeseeable but possible environmental disasters linked with remains of devises that might be lying buried there from the 1940s war time bombing in the East End.
Digging a hole in the Woodseer street is no different at all from digging a hole in the Hanbury Street or in the Princelet street.
Digging a hole entails a thousand other assaults that will be made on the lives of thousands of people in the East End.
For no reason.
There is no economic reason for doing that.
There is no social reason for doing that.
There is no environmental reason for doing that.
There is no justification whatever for doing or wanting to do any of the Crossrail-hole things in any part of the London borough of Tower Hamlets.
So why are the Tower Hamlets Council so adamant that they openly lie to the community?
Alistair Darling’s DfT letter to Muhammad Haque on Friday 3 March 2006 repeats essentially the same line that the DfT has been in receipt of information from the London borough of Tower Hamlets Council.
But nothing about the allegations that Khoodeelaar! had been making against the lying clique on Tower Hamlets Council and including the serious allegation supported by documentary evidence that that clique had abused its control over the constitutional and the elected entity of Tower Hamlets Council.
Alistair Darling’s DfT letter to Khoodeelaar on Friday 3 March 2006 does not deal with the Khoodeelaar! demand for action by the DfT against the liars over the Crossrail hole plan.
The DfT [constitutionally responsible MP is Alistair Darling] letter to Khoodeelaar contains further pretence of its ignorance of the Khoodeelaar representations of the past 26 months about the lying clique in control of the Council in their bid to promote the agenda of the Crossrail promoting vested interests.
The key facts contained in the past 26 months of the Khoodeelaar representations to both the DfT and to the offices of the UK Prime Minister and the UK Finance Minister [Chancellor of the Exchequer] have been about the role of the identified members of the controlling clique on Tower Hamlets Council.
The key role and the key culpable conduct – misconduct - by those identified members of that clique on Tower Hamlets Council has been the brazen lies that the clique have told to local people in the Brick Lane London E1 area.
They lied in that they never told the community that a Crossrail hole plan was even being discussed by the Council for YEARS.
They lied when the community got to know about that and the Khoodeelaar! movement against the hole plan began to take form in January 2004.
They lied when they then said that they did not know what the plan was.
They lied when they said that the campaign against the hole was doing nothing but spreading unnecessary scares
They lied when they then claimed that the Khoodeelaar! Campaign against the Crossrail hole was not dealing with ‘regeneration’ ‘benefits’ that the Crossrail hole would bring to the Brick Lane London E1 area..
They lied when they stayed silent to questions that khoodeelaar! put to them.
They lied when they then contrived with the employees of the Tower Hamlets Council including Christine Gilbert the Council’s chief Executive, to arrange to block emails being sent from the campaign against the Crossrail hole.
This commentary is being updated with additional facts and campaign information throughout the day Saturday 4 March 2006 on the Khoodeelaar web site
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Timely stance by community against Crossrail hole Council
04.03.2006 20:45
One of the speakers at the Khoodeelaar Demonstration against the Crossrail at the Mulberry Place, Town hall, and Tower Hamlets Council on Wednesday was Carole Swords.
She spoke as an activist who has only very recently joined the campaign against the Council.
Her fresh perspective is the sort of resource that will serve the community well in the future.
She spoke with passion against the Council’s behaviour.
Carole has been active in Bow West ward.
The bow west campaigners against the stock transfer of tower hamlets council housing have expressed solidarity with the Khoodeelaar! Campaign against Crossrail hole. This is a timely move in defence of the community and bears signs that the best way to defend the people ion tower hamlets against the market agents now on tower hamlets council is by people working in concert and with a clear objective.
We need to make this the normal practice in every ward in Tower Hamlets
For the 3,000 passengers sweltering in the tunnel at Oxford Circus on Monday, it was just another rush-hour delay on the Victoria line. For the future of the Tube, it was more frustrating.
The broken-down train was one of the 10 spanking new, fully automatic, £10 million machines central to the Victoria line's £900 million upgrade.
Already they have been tested on the line for a year. Still they suffer computer software problems. And this is just the leading edge of the dramatic upgrades planned for almost the whole network.
New kit always causes problems: trains introduced on the Northern line in 1996 broke down for years, justifying the “misery line” nickname. The Victoria line upgrades are on schedule and on budget. But today Tube users are facing the reality of state-of-the art trains and signalling systems being tested live on the world's oldest underground railway system.
Combined with the threat of savage Government cuts, such challenges suggest we may have much longer to wait for the new Tube we were promised in 2003, when the first of the Public Private Partnership (PPP) deals for the network was signed and control of London Underground passed to the Mayor.
That we need a new Tube is beyond doubt. Never mind the delays and crumbling stations suffered by passengers: go behind the scenes and it's clear that this is a network in desperate need of investment.
At the Earl's Court control room on the District line, most of the technology is stuck in 1961, when it was built. “I first came here in 1977,” jokes Howard Collins, LU's chief operating officer, “and you still can't stick anything into the wall because of the asbestos.”
I'm down in the interlocking machine room, the guts of the District line's signaling system — effectively the brain of the line. The technology is mechanical levers powered by air pressure, directed by hole-punch reels driven by Hewlett Packard HP1000s, a 1960s computer system discontinued a decade ago. It looks like the traffic-control computer sabotaged in The Italian Job (1969) — only scruffier and with household fans rigged up to keep the heat down.
Transport Commissioner Peter Hendy is more pithy: “The signaling is all clapped out.”
This is the heart of the problem, and it's a big job — roughly like rewiring your whole house, only without stopping anything running. On Monday the Metropolitan line will get the first of the “sub-surface” lines' 191 new trains, complete with air conditioning. But as Collins admits: “It's like taking the poshest car imaginable and then driving it down a farm track.” Without new signalling and track, the new trains will make little difference to journey times.
The PPP, a mind-bendingly complex 30-year deal contracting out maintenance and upgrading, was supposed to fix all this. The plan was to increase the Tube's capacity to serve a bigger, more prosperous London, as well as making the Tube more pleasant to use. Instead of about 24 trains an hour at peak times, there would be nearer 36.
You could be forgiven if you hadn't noticed — despite nearly £12 billion being spent since 2003. Many of the improvements have been peripheral — new track on outlying sections, spruced-up stations — or else add-ons such as the Oyster system.
The major work fell rapidly behind and costs ballooned. The two consortia of engineering contractors involved, Tube Lines and Metronet, argued bitterly with Transport for London.
Metronet collapsed in May 2007 under a mountain of debt and uncontrolled costs. It had been responsible for the Victoria, Bakerloo, Waterloo and City and Central and “sub-surface” lines (the earliest, shallow Underground lines — Circle, District, Hammersmith and City, Metropolitan and East London). In May 2008, it was transferred to TfL.
Then last year the other contractor, Tube Lines, responsible for the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, started to wobble, after admitting that the Jubilee line upgrade was far behind schedule.
A major stand-off developed with TfL over the costs of the next stage of the work, starting next year — although the PPP's arbiter conceded that the cost was £400 million more than TfL claimed. Faced with collapse, Tube Lines was bought out for £310 million by TfL last month. Imperial College's Professor Stephen Glaister, a former board member of TfL and a director of Tube Lines, blames Gordon Brown, who forced the PPP model on Mayor Ken Livingstone. “Brown thought PPP was a cost-reducing way of getting the work done,” recalls Glaister. “That simply was not realistic.”
A TfL report last week warned of serious new delays to both the Jubilee and Northern lines (see box). One Jubilee line driver told me: “There's a general lack of confidence among drivers. When we test it at weekends, we'll have a good afternoon when it runs fine and then the system falls over and we have hours of delays.”
The Mayor has promised that line closures on the Jubilee and Northern lines will be kept to a minimum — but that will prolong the job.
Meanwhile, there are serious doubts whether the lines that were always further along in the schedule — such as the Piccadilly and Bakerloo — will ever now get their upgrade.
Then there's the money. It was already questionable whether TfL could afford the job.
Glaister warns: “There is a big black hole and TfL are either going to have to find the money elsewhere or slow down the whole programme.”
And there is the prospect of the Department for Transport passing on cuts of up to 40 per cent.
There is also competition for funds from separate Crossrail projects. The LSE's Tony Travers is pessimistic: “The Treasury just don't trust London Underground any more.”
Hendy concedes that “in extremis” a 40 per cent cut in funding would mean not being able to upgrade signalling on the sub-surface lines. He warns: “The risk then is that the system falls over more and more.” Glaister adds: “I'm really concerned that the Northern line is going to become dreadfully unreliable.”
Business leaders are clear, though: without a revamped Tube, London will start to grind to a halt. Passenger numbers have risen steadily since the mid-1980s: there are now 3.5 million journeys each weekday and sometimes more than four million. London's projected future growth will push it past breaking point.
Peter Hendy is defiant: “The Mayor will go down fighting for this.”
Prepare for a battle royal between Boris Johnson and the Chancellor over the future of the rails beneath our feet. Victoria Line
Still scheduled for completion in spring 2012. A new signalling system is ready to go live, while most of the work on renewing track and ventilation systems is complete. The main hold-up now is the wait for the rest of the 47 new trains, arriving at a rate of about one a fortnight from engineers Bombardier. Jubilee Line
Originally contracted to Tube Lines, the main part of the upgrade to the Jubilee line is to its signalling system, designed by French electronics group Thales. Originally scheduled for completion in December 2009, it fell badly behind: Tube Lines underestimated the difficulty of developing the system software. Extra weekend closures — 146 to date, which have led to all sorts of problems for the O2 arena at Greenwich, for example — have still not anywhere near ironed out the bugs in the system. A recent TfL report says that it is unlikely to be complete before February 2011. Circle, District, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan Lines
These sub-surface lines are the focus for the next major tranche of investment, £4.5 billion over seven years. From next week, new trains will start to run here, starting with the Metropolitan line. By 2015 all these lines will have the new trains (cost: £1.5 billion) although some platforms will need lengthening to accommodate them. Work on new signalling will begin next year. Expected completion of the whole upgrade: 2017. Northern Line
New signalling for the Northern line was originally contracted to Tube Lines and scheduled for completion by December 2011. By this month, work was supposed to be 72 per cent complete — in fact, only 10-12 per cent has been done. A report for TfL this month by contractors Serco notes that “slippage experienced to date suggests that if this programme were to proceed then it is likely that the upgrade would not be complete until late 2013” and that “even this estimate may be optimistic”. Piccadilly Line
New trains and signalling were originally scheduled for completion by 2014. Future now very uncertain: TfL are cagey about the timetable and even 2017 is now seen as optimistic by insiders. By then its existing trains will be 40 years old. Bakerloo Line
The last line to be upgraded: new trains and signalling originally scheduled for 2020. When it gets done is now anyone's guess.
I love this ironic comment from Tony Travers: “The Treasury just don't trust London Underground any more.”
The Treasury's record on transport over the years is unbelievably bad.
The disastrous PPP was cooked up in the Treasury. But their greatest transport crime was the crazy industry structure forced on the railway industry at privatisation, completely against the advice of all the experts who knew anything about railways. This almost lead to the complete collapse of the network in 2000, and has resulted in a tripling in the subsidy without anything like a tripling in the quality. Our railway is now very expensive by European standards, but nothing like European quality. Have we ever has an apology from Sir Steve Robson, former deputy permanent secretary to the Treasury, who Christian Wolmar says "pushed through the structure of rail privatisation...that is at root of so many of the railway’s problems"?
There are many other examples.
More generally, the Treasury (and the ex-treasury hacks who dominate the upper reaches of the DfT) has an obsession with competition, which just doesn't work with public transport. See for example the book by Paul Mees.
London desperately devolved control over tax and spending. We need to wrest control of the purse strings from the dead hand of the Treasury, and allocate the money according to local priorities, and not according to Treasury prejudices and dubious cost/benefit models.
The problem is that the tube is run for the benefit of greedy union employees and private contractors with the paying customer only an afterthought. Its fairly simple
We told you so! For coming on to seven years now! That CRASSrail is a crassly conceived, crassly peddled, crassly over-the-top-funded scam for big business interests that is being touted for by stooges in the uk parliament as well as in the 'mainstream' 'British media' at the behest of the military industrial complex which owns the ‘big decision making apparatuses’ in the uk. This has been demonstrated, proven, again and again over the past years since the then ‘transport ‘secretary’ Alistair darling formally tabled the [‘then] ‘CRASSrail bill’ in the uk house of commons in February 2005.All attempts to extract evidence from the stooges and the touts about the economic rustication of the CRASSrail cam have been foiled by the stooges and their controllers. All evidential criteria, auditing criteria, ethical criteria have been suspended when it came to the examination of CRASSrail. All allegedly party political differences have been suspended by the three main numerically [so far] largest parties in the UK parliament and outside through their agencies, employees and canvassers. So we find that when the NHS, the schools, the colleges, the rest of the transport funding are being cut, when the over the top-misrepresented welfare programme is being subjected to further misrepresentation and curtailment, when even the UK's over the top glorious sub-imperialistic programmes are being treated with increasing scepticism, the one name, the one tile that is being fiercely shielded by cult-like dedication by agents of all three parties is CRASSrail! Why? Because all three ‘numerically largest’ parties are made up of stooges whose souls are owned by big business, military industrial complex. And these stooges dare not apply the starboards of ordinary economic, financial accountability and cost-benefit analyses to CRASSrail. They play their crass roles as the CRASSrail causes wastes and abuses the UK public’s constantly maintained [by the targetters the BBC, ITV, SKY and assorted other outlets of powerful broadcasters and couriers of Big Biz agenda items and messages direct, subliminal and otherwise] zombie-status in relation to the mainstream media of propaganda including the propaganda networks of the BBC.
Cheap, clean, reliable minicabs. 10 minutes service to E14, E16, E1
The number of six-figure salaries at Crossrail has almost trebled in a year and its chief executive has become the biggest earner within the Transport for London empire.
Rob Holden took home £554,495 in pay and benefits, more than £160,000 above the pay package received by TfL commissioner Peter Hendy, who has refused to take his £132,409 bonus.
The number of staff earning £100,000 or more at Crossrail — the long-delayed £15.9 billion project that is not due to be completed for seven years — has risen from eight to 23.
Crossrail, a subsidiary of TfL, is facing an anxious wait to see if it is targeted as the Government imposes major cuts across Whitehall.
Before the election, Chancellor George Osborne refused to safeguard it from cuts, saying he wanted to have a close look at the books.
The Transport Department is contributing £5.1 billion to the project and Network Railis paying £2.3 billion, while the Mayor and TfL are providing £7.7 billion, of which £3.5 billion comes from an extra levy on business rates.
Mr Holden joined Crossrail in April last year after successfully overseeing the Channel Tunnel Rail Link to St Pancras. Neither he nor Crossrail chairman Terry Morgan, who earned £209,598, received a bonus.
A Crossrail spokesman said the organisation, which is also funded by the City of London Corporation, BAA and the Canary Wharf Group, had to pay market rates for the best staff.
He said: “The scale of the operation has gone from birth through adolescence and into the state of adulthood. To do that, and to meet the very challenging targets that Crossrail has been set, we have got to find the best resources available in terms of infrastructure and leadership. We are competing directly with the private sector for project management expertise. If we don't compete and don't get the resources we need, the project won't be completed on time and to budget.”
TfL appoints only one member of Crossrail's independent board and does not control its salary structure, except the pay of the chairman. Mr Hendy declined to comment directly on Mr Holden's earnings but said it was right the public sector directly employed the best available people rather than having to rely on consultants.
Mr Hendy said: “It's probably the biggest construction project in the world, certainly in Europe, and it ought not to be a surprise that we have got to recruit people with sufficient calibre... and the experience and clout to manage it.
“If we didn't have these people, the likelihood is that we would be having consultants — whose salaries you wouldn't see.” The figures emerge in TfL's annual accounts for the financial year 2009/10, which detail in full for the first time the names, positions and earnings of those on £150,000 or more.
A DfT spokesman said: “Crossrail Limited is a 100 per cent subsidiary of the Transport for London Group. As such the salary and bonuses paid to the executive and non-executive directors are a matter for the Mayor.”
Crossrail will run from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, linking Oxford Street, the City and Canary Wharf via twin underground tunnels through central London. It is intended to boost rail capacity by 10 per cent and ease crowding on the Central line.
As someone who truly knows believe me you would be amazed if you knew the base salary of many of the people in CrossRail and TfL, the specialists rail and transport designers are worth their premium as they are sought all over the world but the back office functional staff are grossly overpaid 9-5 ers, just stand outside the building at 5 you will get killed in the rush and the concept of working in the evening or taking work home - not on your life
Terry, the wages paid to some of the people working on it may be absurd, (as may the cost of the project and length of time it's taking) but why is the line itself a white elephant?
It's a hugely necessary increase and improvement to the tube's infrastructure.
scrap it--a white elephant in the making. boris do it!!!!!!
- terry sullivan, morden england, 02/07/2010 14:14 Report abuse
I suspect that the amount they've spent farting about on this project, so far, could have paid for and built one or two tube lines by now.
The Piccadilly, Bakerloo and Northern line middle sections were all built within about 5 years. Without any huge machines, or modern technology.
Progress eh?
- Alex Mckenna, South Woodford, 02/07/2010 13:04 Report abuse
Mr Hendy needs to explain why they are paying senior management six figure salaries AND employing so many consultants to manage the project!
Two delivery partner (management) contracts were awarded by TfL during the recession for £500m when all those consultants had no other work in the UK and could have been employed directly for one third of the cost to we taxpayers.
With PPP falures and over spending on projects like CrossRail, TfL are in danger of rivaling some of the banks in terms of putting taxpayers money at risk.
KHOODEELAAR! to ‘Bethnal Green South’ & Stepney wards IN PARTICULAR to Say No to Crossrail hole
1300 GMT London Sunday 15 November 2009: In this Muhammad Haque picture of KHOODEELAAR! Campaign supporters seen next to the “No Xrail Hole” sign on the wall in the Hanbury Street London E1 in April 2009, marking the occasion of the CRASSrail holes being abandoned. The holes that had been scheduled to be dug in Hanbury Street and at points to the west had been abandoned under the pressure of our campaign. [To be continued]
Stupidity of the CRASSrole-playing Mr S POUND MP is further exposed by today’s news.
BBC London 'joins' call for ditching WASTEFUL Crossrail
2130 GMT London Sunday 01 November 2009: Now EVEN the BBC, albeit via 'London' slot, floats the IDEA: SCRAP Crossrail! Why? 'Cos it is one BIG WASTE!
Khoodeelaar! caught Cable CRASSLY transformed into Mr Bean!
0845 GMT London Sunday 01 November 2009: This Muhammad Haque/AADHIKARonline picture was taken at the exact moment when Vince Cable transformed himself into Mr Bean. It happened as Cable exposed his ignorance about the place he was actually in as he faked a presentation as a Political heavyweight... He had no clue that Crossrail 'came through here' too! The 'here' was the 'Bethnal Green and Bow constituency' to put the full bureaucratic description. And Cable was making an appearance at a Tower Hamlets Lib Dems 'Party' 'political' do staged at the 'Oxford' [!!!!] House, off the Bethnal Green Road. He had, a bare three weeks earlier DISSED the same Crossrail as being of no real priority to his Party! At the ‘Bethnal Green’ transformation, Cable said that ‘Crossrail’ was a VERY GOOD scam [Oops! ‘scheme’] as long as ‘Vince Cable got the recognition as still being suitable as the true successor to Gordon Brown at No 11 Downing Street’ [Oops! Must get back with a correction to that tail end, in a bit] [To be continued]
Even the ITV London News 'presenter' had trouble saying 'Tony'
0100 Hrs GMT London Friday 30 October 2009: KHOODEELAAR! Had told the ITV London So. About Tony McNulty’s role. And about the role of other CRASSrail-agenda peddlers in place in the Brown-fronted, Blair-fronted Blaired regimes in the UK in the past 12 years. But ITV London news NEVER told the truth on any occasions about Crassrail. They have now realised that the truth is somewhat impossible. Because of the undeniable wave of evidence about just how corrupt the UK Parliament is, some of the truth about that has become irrepressible. At least on aspects of the roles played by some of those. So, in the past 2 hours they have carried the ‘news’ that only in principle sheds light on the dishonourable roles played by the peddlers…. ITV London News bulletin, as read out by their presenter [shown in the picture here] after the ‘News at Ten’ main bulletin had this: “. Parliamentary watchdog has ruled Harrow East MP T’ [sic] Tony McNulty was wrong to use public cash, EFFECTIVELY subsidised [sic] his parents’ living costs. He’s been ordered to pay back more than £13,000 and apologise to fellow MPs…” [To be continued]
Even the DAILY MAIL, not a really ethical organ, mocks McNulty
1950 GMT London Thursday 29 October 2009: Khoodeelaar! told Gordon Brown so! We had even warned Tony Blair against unethical conduct in the name of 'parliament' via Parliament.. And we did warn BOTH [Blair and Brown] about allowing Tony McNulty to appear to be beyond the reach of the minimal moral reproach that 'still' 'just about' existed and ‘still’ ‘exists’ [albeit very marginally] in the UK... What a crass response we have seen from all three.. Not surprising then that ALL three have been peddling the agenda of the CrossRail scam one way or another.. What we had observed about the mechanical, motor-mouth utterances and appearances by Tony McNulty on all aspects of the discredited, deficit-begetting regimes of Blair and Brown was the irrationality of his media-disseminated disposition and his apparently, visually contemptuous demeanor towards the ordinary public and viewing members of the community. On the evidence IN CONTEXT of those appearances and utterances, McNulty was not aware of the callousness that he was increasingly personifying in his defiance on all issues that he was being floated to flog… Whether McNulty’s apology as staged in the UK House of Commons today [Thursday 29 October 2009] will change the culture of complicity with sleaze and corruption that dominates the Palace of Stooges at Westminster is another matter altogether. We know and record the fact that McNulty was one of the ones in the Crossrail, Big Business scam-cooking Department for Daft [Ooops! ‘Department for Transport’] when the CRASS Crossrail Bill was in fact cooked… Is there any surprise that the Crossrail scam is so crass, that it has turned out to be interminably crass as each day’s utterances by McNulty’s ‘related’ co-utterers typify ?! [To be continued]
CRASSRole-player Ken Livingstione's ex 'aide' admits CRASS end...
Lib Dem MP Kramer fakes a No to Big Business. She says YES to Crossrail
2330 GMT London Thursday 17 September 2009: Susan Kramer is seen here carrying a bold NO leaflet. But she is not saying No to Crossrail. She is in political disguise. As most of her fellow MPs are exposed to be in. Kramer thus gives succour to the violators of democracy …[TO BE CONTINUED]
SEARCH this AADHIKARonlione blog
London NEWS OF THE WORLD echoes KHOODEELAAR! No to Big Business ploys 2012 Hosting
2140 Hrs GMT London Sunday 30 August 2009: KHOODEELAAR! Original analysis and commentary on the UK economics, politics and degeneration by Big Business Crossrail agenda-peddling forces…and their touts…Now even the Rupert Murdoch ‘News of the ******” has no option but to admit the truth. So overwhelming is the evidence that they have to, if they are to retain any credibility to James Murdoch’s claims that his ‘news’ organisation has any relationship with the facts on the ground! So we read in the print edition and on their web site [before Murdoch makes it inaccessible again as part of his prosperity and regeneration tactics] that the 2012 Games ‘work’ in East London is not ‘working for people in the East End of London’ after all….
DAISY Sampson has just admitted on ITV: Govt debt is too large.
1800 Hrs GMT London Thursday 27 August 2009: Even the ITV news reporter DAISY Sampson has just admitted that Govt debt is too large. So the 'recovery' from the current recession will be long and painful! Indeed!
The BBC News Channel facilitates time-serving C Wolmer.. It is all fake!
0210 Hrs GMT London Thursday 27 August 2009: KHOODEELAAR! noting the latest shallowness of the self-styled foremost railways expert C Wolmer: He is a tout & a peddler for Adonis lately of UK DafT.......
Even the Crossrail scam-peddling BBC admits! Bechtel doesn't deliver!
1440 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 25 August 2009 KHOODEELAAR! Told you so! That the Military Industrial Complex, that the Crossrail-imposing BECHTEL has typified in the UK in the job it has done of stooging the UK Houses of parliament out of their depths and their roles, is not intended to serve the people of London. Nor indeed the people of ordinary USA either. That Boris Johnson is now, at last, caught out as having peddled the BECHTEL-scam Crossrail far too eagerly, is not an incidental matter at all. Boris Johnson has to come of the intellectual inertia and grasp the truth and disown his touting role NOW. Start funding and SORTING the EXISTING London transport network, Boris. Quit being a tout for Corporate louts! Especially when EVEN Chris Grayling – who had been failing the people as he touted for CRASSrail from the Tory Front BEND! – is now waking up and uttering against crime and touting in inner cities England….. It is time that ALL manner of touting is exposed and condemned. And disowned…Start with scrapping the touting for BECHTEL-Crossrail [To be continued]
When the 'East London Advertiser' managed to recognise the truth, a historic event! January 2006
0418 [0358] Hrs GMT London Monday 24 August 2009: the dishonestly-‘edited’ ‘local’ paper the ‘East London Advertiser’ has been failing to apologise to the community in general and to KHOODEELAAR! in particular for publishing lying spin for the Tower Hamlets Council corrupt clique that has been backing the CRASSrail hole scam and agenda…The ‘ELA’ which the KHOODEELAAR! Movement has been describing as the ‘East London IDIOTISER’ following its dissection by CBRUK in the 1990s, has failed to recognise, let alone publish the truth of the campaign against the CrossRail hole scam-inviting clique on Tower Hamlets Council. There was an exception. The exception was in addition to the two items the IDIOTISER published on 21 October 2004 and 28 October 2004. Those two items were in the Idiotiser’s editions on the day before the first ever KHOODEELAAR! street action against the Crossrail hole scam-inviting Tower Hamlets CORRUPT Council ‘leadership’. The ‘historic’ occasion apart from those two pieces [21 and 28 October 2004] was in January 2006. The item is from the print edition of the ‘ELA’ dated 5 January 2006. We do this for evidential purposes and for references in the future. Those references may well include long overdue but pragmatically postponed legal action against the IDIOTISER. [To be continued]
Lest the crass role-playing East London IDIOTISER should lie again and 'forget' the campaigns news.
0245 Hrs GMT London Monday 24 August 2009 [2050 Hrs GMT London Sunday 16] August 2009: The 'East London Idiotiser' is the only rag that has peddled crass role-player 'minister' [!!!!] Sadiq Khan who has been stooged into post to try his 'ethnicity-linked' image as a vehicle to legitimise lying to the public. The IDIOTISER has failed to publish the Khoodeelaar! rebuttal of their promotion of the crass role-playing 'ethnicity linking' 'insulter' of the community, Sadiq Khan... The IDIOTISER is not only losing circulation because of idiocies it publishes but it is also exposing stark signs that its ‘decision making’ ‘editorial’ ‘executives’ [One and a bit] are fast losing whatever claim they used to have to being involved in a responsible publication…KHOODEELAAR! Here contextually updates the Idiotiser’s role and comments on the diabolical, malign role being played by the E L IDIOTISER against the interests of the people and communities across the East End of London [To be contin
ANGER OF the COMMUNITY in 2004 against Crossrail is echoed in the Docklands in August 2009....
2340 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 04 August 2009. Anger of a community’, was the front page splash [left] as carried by the then weekly TOWER HAMLETS RECORDER October [2004] KHOODEELAAR! No to Crossrail hole-inviter Tower Hamlets Council, demonstration held Greatorex Street, Off Hanbury Street in the Brick Lane London E1 area on Friday 22 October 2004....FIVE years on...STILL ANGER at crassrail...this time, it is anger of the business ‘community’ at the current crass role player in the name of the people of london, Boris Johnson.…..this front page splash [image on the right above] recording the anger against Crossrail penalty being imposed by Boris Johnson on London businesses, was featured on the 6 O’clock bulletin of the itv london news programme on Tuesday 4 August 2009. Evidentially and contextually, that was a very rare item to be featured on the ITV London NEWS programme at all. For years, they have peddled CRASSrail and totally suppressed all news from the community against CRASSrail scam....In suppressing the news of all activities and campaign evidence against Crossrail, ITV London News has behaved as LIE-TV for the past five years and seven months.. LIE-TV has aided and abetted the forces of greed, corruption, sleaze that have been among the main touts for CrAssrail at the expense of London...[To be continued]
ITV London at last admits that Crossrail Boris is Crass
2045 Hrs GMT London Tuesday 4 August 2009:Odd indeed that the same publisher which owns the crassly-edited and crassrail-peddling ‘East London Idiotiser’ has now published a totally contradictory item: "Anger over Boris' tax hike to fund Crossrail"...see below] the texts of the KHOODEELAAR! dissection of ARCHANT, East London Idiotiser, that was sent this afternoon [Tuesday 04 August 2009] to the ARChant Crassrail touting ‘east london local newspaper’ ‘title ’…….[to be continued]
CRASS-role.Boris.bragging.of.Barclays.benefit
DAILY.Mirror:...Boris: £250k I earn is just chicken feed'
Crossrail.peddler.Ken.Livingstone.indulges.....
1530 Hrs GMT London Wednesday 08 July 2009: KHOODEELAAR! Told you so! Only earlier today we updated our evidential commentary on the corrupting role that Ken Lyinsgtone had been playing as he was peddling the Military Industrial Complex’s agenda in the shape of the Crossrail scam. ..
Who is keeping London East Enders poor?
0520 Hrs GMT London Monday 6 July 2009:KHOODEELAAR! told you so! KHOODEELAAR! did so in February 2006 at the “Mulberry Place” remote ‘HQ” of the poverty-imposing Tower Hamlets Council, That particular demonstration was organised at 24 hour notice when KHOODEELAAR! learnt that the then ’mayor' [='chair'] of Tower Hamlets Council’ had refused to let a number of opposition councillors convene a special meeting of the Council to scrutinsie the controlling clique’s role in inviting the Crossrail hole agenda attack on the East End of London....[To be continued]
KHOODEELAAR! demo outside Parliament 12 noon Tues 6 June 2006
ACTION.archive.published27June.2009
Marching in East London against Crossrail hole agenda
1638 Hrs GMT London Thursday 28 May 2009: KHOODEELAAR! marched in the streets of East London on 17 January 2006 to register the opposition to the 'Crossrail Bill Select Committee' in the UK House of Commons. That stooged select committee was officially starting its stooging business for Big Business-agenda-ed, Blairing regime on that day. Khoodeelaar! marked the event by holding the march and reiterating NO to Crossrail hole Big Business agenda...... On that same occasion, KHOODEELAAR! also began a subsidiary campaign to aid George Galloway who was then coming under severe political fire both from the Blairing regime and from assorted others who also despised him but who were using the pretext at that ti,me given to them by George Galloway’s appearance on the Channel 4 Big Brother House [To be continued]
Scrap wasteful, diversionary Crossrail, says Simon Jenkins 28 April 2009
Crossrail will eat money. Kill it, Boris, and save the bankrupt Tube instead. says Simon Jenkins in the LONDON EVENING STANDARD
KHOODEELAAR! telling the truth on grim economic performance for years.. We told it in 2004...
CROSSRAIL costs a threat to London's tube system, starved of cash... THE ECONOMIST magazine PLUS
2340 Hrs GMT London Saturday 23 May 2009: The ECONOMIST magazine admits, " CROSSRAIL, a planned cross-London train service that would link Maidenhead in the west with Shenfield in the north-east, relieving the city’s crammed underground-railway lines, is a standing joke."
UK Parliament has been a corrupt and sleazy place, it is now clear: Martin Bell
0755 Hrs GMT London Monday 18 May 2009: KHOODEELAAR! will be updating on our campaign against CORRUPTING CROSSRAIL AGENDA.... follow the updates on twitter later today
KHOODEELAAR! demo Princelet Street, Feb 2005 No to “Crossrail Bill”
KHOODEELAAR! NO to CRASS role by Stooged UK Parliament - campaign commentary 24.7 on twitter
Cooper conceals CRASness of Crossrail as she causes Timms to smile with her staged act...
1535 Hrs GMT London Thursday 7 May 2009: UK Treasury Ministers Yevette Cooper and Stephen Timms appeared in the House of commons on Wednesday. It was another finance Bill event. In the course of the appearance, Yvette Cooper exchanged ‘statements’ with her opposition counterpart Phillip Hammond.. Unlike her normal presentation of being a controlled, composed persona, Ms Cooper was in a fighting mode.. Especially as she played what looked like a scripted act, heavily based on her ability to look opposed to Thatcherism..What a contrast that was. To the acts OF Thatcherism that she and her fellow ministers had been implementing in the almost 11 years that had gone by since the brigade took up the crusade for Thatcherism... Yes. That word, Crusade, is intended to be here... Back to Ms Cooper’s dramatic performance..She caused a historic event. Sh made Stephen timms sitting not far from her, actually look as if he was smiling! Not a mean achievement, that. As a diversion. What nobody could even want to smile about is the the behaviour in power that Ns Cooper is party to and part of. What does she know about Crossrail that we don’t? Apparently she was 'berating' Hammond for his failure to give a clear undertaking to BACK Crossrail.. We are challenging Yvette Cooper to substantiate any of her assertions about and for CRASSrail... We shall publish in the next hours the full texts of our challenge to Yvette Cooper being sent to her this afternoon..[To be continued]
FT looks as if the interference is not active at the moment 0425 GMT 7 May 2009
0425 Hrs GMT London Thursday 7 may 2009: KHOODEELAAR! can confirm that an article on the FT web site that reports on the Government's ban on London businesses having a say on Crossrail funding, has been the subject of cyber and legal pressures on the FT.. Resulting in the removal of the piece from the FT's web site... KHOODEELAAR! has retrieved the article from another site and will be updating in due course on our web sites and blogs on that significant interference with the FT....[To be continued]
TWITTER carries 24.7 KHOODEELAAR! Action diagnostics against Crossrail agenda
Muhammad Haque told UK rail trade journal that Crossrail was CRASS
0345 Hrs GMT London Thursday 7 May 2009: KHOODEELAAR! campaign against Crossrail hole Agenda began on 31 January 2004, at a meeting held at the 'Montefiore Centre' situated at the corner of Hanbury Street and Deal Street... The action mobilised by KHOODEELAAR! over the past 5 years and 4 months has involved undertaking high speed research on all key aspects of the Crossrail scam: Transport. Modes of transport. Business. Commercial. Economic. Technical. Engineering. Environmental. Not to even begin to talk about the legal and the constitutional implications. Or the linguistic. Or the historic. Or about the ‘East India Company’ and the encounter of June 1757 near today’s Kolkata.... In this picture taken at an action meeting against the Crossrail hole scam.., the Khoodeelaar! organizer is holding up one set of documents that bore evidence of the corruption of the Crossrail hole-inviter clique on Tower Hamlets Council...[To be continued]
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The Treasury's record on transport over the years is unbelievably bad.
The disastrous PPP was cooked up in the Treasury. But their greatest transport crime was the crazy industry structure forced on the railway industry at privatisation, completely against the advice of all the experts who knew anything about railways. This almost lead to the complete collapse of the network in 2000, and has resulted in a tripling in the subsidy without anything like a tripling in the quality. Our railway is now very expensive by European standards, but nothing like European quality. Have we ever has an apology from Sir Steve Robson, former deputy permanent secretary to the Treasury, who Christian Wolmar says "pushed through the structure of rail privatisation...that is at root of so many of the railway’s problems"?
There are many other examples.
More generally, the Treasury (and the ex-treasury hacks who dominate the upper reaches of the DfT) has an obsession with competition, which just doesn't work with public transport. See for example the book by Paul Mees.
London desperately devolved control over tax and spending. We need to wrest control of the purse strings from the dead hand of the Treasury, and allocate the money according to local priorities, and not according to Treasury prejudices and dubious cost/benefit models.
- Kev, Bromley, 29/07/2010 14:41
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