KHOODEELAAR! Action replay: Muhammad Haque told HARROW Times on 25 October 2007

By © Muhammad Haque
2150 Hrs GMT
Thursday 25 October 2007

Khoodeelaar! The East End of London campaign against the CrossRail hole Bill notes the unconstitutional attitude as expressed by the transport minister Tom Harris in your report.

Mr Harris is showing undemocratic contempt for the principles and the practice of the sovereignty of parliament by expressing the presumption that he does nit believe _that anyone wants the bill to be infinitely delayed or, worse still, cancelled_

Where, in any of the recorded contributions from any MP was there any suggestion of infinite delay?

Mr Harris is using stock phrases so typical of machine placemen in regimes that abhor democratic scrutiny of executive plots.

The particular Crossrail hole plot is linked with Big Business lobby of regional and UK central executive careerists and time-servers typified by the likes of the _Undone mayor_ Ken Livingstone.

Livingstone has hogged most of the limelight around Gordon Brown’s recent and unconvincing subscription to the mysterious merits of this scheme as the answer to the pressing transport needs of the people of London.

The various promotional utterances by the Gordon Brown entourage during the first week of October 2007 around the CrossRail hole plot were all staged as part of the now-thwarted snap election that Brown was almost ready to call.

That snap poll alone was Brown’s reason for staging the stunt about _CrossRail_. Fur the best part of the previous decade, as the UK Finance Minister, Gordon Brown and Ken Livingstone had not agreed on any of the substantive issues especially about matters to d with the public finance of private infrastructure projects.

How significant therefore that these very two adversaries suddenly found themselves behaving - for rather pretending en stages that had been specially set up in and metaphorically] around Bournemouth in September 2007- as if they had been inseparable twins for as long as memory served!

And just days before Brown was poised to call a snap election!

It is already emerging that Livingstone was 'perhaps' a tad too hasty to celebrate the _deal_ by claiming that he had _delivered_ CrossRail, thus showing up any tangible opponent to his ambition to remain the occupant of the ego-boosting office of _Undone mayor_ forever!

A democratic debate and scrutiny in any legitimate forum, far from being a tendency towards delaying an appropriate and sound plan, can ensure that any serious drawbacks that are found in or that remain in any plan that is supposed to be backed by several £Billions of public cash are dealt with thus sparing the public and the public purse avoidable wastes and losses in the future.

However, even if there were evidence to support the demand for a thorough review and examination of the transport needs in London in the context of the Uk economy including the central factor of the choice of the optimum mode of transport to meet the present and the mid term needs, such as Khoodeelaar! has been making for nearly 4 years of opposition to the current CrossRail hole plot, the likes of Tom Harris do not seem disposed to tolerate the emergence of such a rational answer to the transport problems.

Instead, they have gone for the fanatical short cut: they utter the mantra of Crossrail rather than talk about addressing the huge transport needs that the UK economy must see met and the capacity of the economy.

They have been behaving like a cult that has been recruited to the secret Crossrail plan which they insist must be supported by £Billions of public money but without parliamentary or democratic scrutiny!

Those who have been placed as the current UK Govt front men and women to tout for the CrossRail plot _ as distinctly different from arguing for the democratically arrived at solution/s to the transport needs such as a mode that best suits the given regional and strategic needs, the demands and the sustainable capacity of the UK public purse have been discrediting their own claims to be respecters of the democratic process of decision-making by undermining even the most tokenistic of debates, the most pliant of scrutinies by exaggerating the adverse effects of upholding democracy!

During the Second Reading held in the House of Commons in July 2005, the then CrossRail hole plot Bill minister Alistair Darling led the insertion into the terms of reference for the _CrossRail Bill select committee of MPs_ of a BARRIER, a ban
Thus preventing that select committee from scrutiny the _Crossrail Bill_!

So the utterances by Tom Harris must be to do with the fact that even he knows that when the same Bill goes to the currently constituted Upper Chamber and is subjected to the corresponding select committee procedures, it may actually be scrutinized in an unpredictable way, so unpredictably that the truth about the fundamentally flawed nature of the plot may come out!

Is that what Tom Harris is aware of and is _career wise_ _worried_ about?

If it is, he is right to be worried!

Because no honest, informed and responsible scrutiny of the _Crossrail Bill_ as it is, can support it in the context of the economy, the society, the environment and the finance.