Boris has still not accounted for his servitude to Big Biz agenda Crossrail scam pushers. Nor has he explained why he is touting for the Nuclear lobby. Nor why he has been so miserable in addressing the biggest issue that London public has faced for 80 years: the oppressive lack of civil liberties in London today..!

AADHIKARonline ©Muhammad Haque London Commentary
0550  Hrs GMT
London Friday 01 April 2011.
Boris takes a risky step to unsettle Cameron AND [Boris hopes] stop Ken Livingstone in HIS tracks
Boris Johnson’s comments staged on the BBC Question Time last night could be  just a stunt. It could be. In context, however, it is hardly a stunt. It is most likely a calculated step by Boris Johnson  to strike when the rod is still red hot and can burn where it needs to: Cameron’s complacent careerist hind site!
This weekend domestically seems set now to include Boris Johnson, badly shaken by last weekend’s poll findings showing him staring at defeat by Ken Livingstone.
However strategically useful the stunt may turn out to be, the fact still remains that Boris Johnson is no Michael Moore! Contrary to his opportunistic suggestions that he was an American by birth, Boris Johnson remains quintessentially calculating and therefore a very very sheepish politico. He will not tell the truth any more than Complacent complicit Cameron or the pernicious Nick Clegg.
The truth is that Boris has failed to address the economic, social,environmental issues facing people in the East End of London. In that failure, Boris Johnson has been as irrelevant and contemptuous to the people as had been Ken Livingstone! No wonder Boris is increasingly looking like the capricious courtier of the “Muzzle-em” votes! “Muzzle ‘em” as in KEEP THE MUZZLEMS a peg or pegs below par and keep them looking up to me [Boris]. Just the way Livingstone did. And with this diabolically unfunny intervention in which Boris successfully APPEARS to almost identify with the people of the Muslim [Arabic speaking] countries. Given that this is at the height of the ‘West’s latest war on yet another defiant ‘Arab’ head of state,  Boris has cultivated quite a lot of votes already!
Contemptible!
Crass!
Boris has still not accounted for his servitude to Big Biz agenda Crossrail scam pushers. Nor has he explained why he is touting for the Nuclear lobby. Nor why he has been so miserable in addressing the biggest issue that London public has faced for 80 years: the oppressive lack of civil liberties in London today..!  [To be continued]

KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! The 2012 Games Hosting stunts, staged by all the peddlers of the BiG Business interests that have been controlling the agenda, have been fraudulent and most importantly NOT really of benefit to ordinary people of and in the East End of London.

KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! The 2012 Games Hosting stunts, staged by all the peddlers of the BiG Business interests that have been controlling the agenda, have been fraudulent and most importantly NOT really of benefit to ordinary people of and in the East End of London.

2145 Hrs GMT

London

Tuesday

15 March 2011

By © Muhammad Haque

KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! The 2012 Games Hosting stunts, staged by all the peddlers of the BiG Business interests that have been controlling the agenda, have been fraudulent and most importantly NOT really of benefit to ordinary people of and in the East End of London.

This is about Boris Johnson and Sebastian Coe. And even before them, about Ken Livingstone.

These are the ones that have been relevant to the continuing non-recognition of the rights of so many people in London’s East End today, Tuesday.

To begin with the Games web site about Tickets proved to be another mini disaster. And Boris Johnson made matters worse by uttering even more offensive untruths in justifying the exclusion of the majority of Londoners from having the tickets. And Ken Livingstone did not make it in the main bulletins showing any opposition  to Boris Johnson over the tickets.

[To be continued]

CONTEXTUALLY diagnosing the role of "Fleet Street" in continuing poverty-creation and in adding new poverty in the East End of London.

1225 Hrs GMT
London
Saturday
12 February 2011
Editor © Muhammad Haque
CONTEXTUALLY diagnosing the role of "Fleet Street" in  continuing poverty-creation and in adding new poverty in the East End of London.
Here we are running the BHANGEELAAR! Campaign's first comment published on the Guardian web site [this morning] in response to the GUARDIAN's online London Blog, as by-lined to Dave Hill of that news organisation. These diagnostic updates are in the context of the various policy decisions that are being taken by the UK CONDEMN regime to shore up the image of Crossrail, one of this century’s most unsustainable and scandalously wasteful “infrastructure p[projects’ that has been conjured up and forced on the UK public by the stooged regimes in UK that carries out the agenda set by secretive and unaccountable forces of Big Business.
The BHANGEELAAR! campaign in 2010 began to diagnose the role of the Guardian and in context that of the DAILY TELEGRAPH and a handful of other ‘Fleet Street’ ‘mainstream’ ‘media’ ‘organs’ in creating a new and an aggressive image of the people in Tower Hamlets. That image had been inaugurated in 2010 via Channel 4 TV and its notoriously falsifying “dispatches’ programme in the intense way that has now been evidentially associated with one of the myth-makers and propaganda stooges, Andrew Gilligan. Although the GUARDIAN’s counterpart to Gilligan’s DAILY TELEGRAPH London Blog pretends to be less biased and less belligerent as compared to Gilligan, the editorial line that Dave Hill inserts in his texts leave no doubt in the objective student's mind that Dave Hill is as politically programmed as Gilligan to undermine the community in Tower Hamlets.
[Which is where we raise the question about the “star” - word used by one of Gilligan's and Dave Hill’s alleged colleagues, Ted Jeory now employed on Richard Desmond “Express” outlets “in” “Fleet Street” - “personalities” that keep being referred to, plugged and  mentioned in the two “Fleet Street” blogs about Tower Hamlets. ]



The role of the GUARDIAN, mostly in the days before it went online, in covering the East End of London has been just as misleading as that of the DAILY TELEGRAPH. So what the Gilligan 'blog' and the Dave Hill 'blog' have been doing in the current situation is in fact the continuation of the same agenda that dates back to pre-internet years.
One of the DAILY TELEGRAPH's pernicious spreader of untruths about Tower Hamlets in the last decades of the 20th century  has been a Bombay-linked self-advertising 'expert' about all things "Asian" called Mihir Bose. Bose has been a recipient of the propaganda platforms via the BBC in recent years. Earlier this week, he even appeared on the BBC News Channel's slot that is dedicated to promoting the "Fleet Street" front pages.
Bose was allowed to publish  a number of untruths, insults and downright fabrications and pernicious lies against the UK Bangladeshis generally and against the Seelotees in particular.
We shall in the coming week,s months and beyond  examine Mihir Bose and his "crusade" in the service of the racist interest in the UK who have also used and employed less confusing and instantly identifiable  racist myth-makers, inciters and propagandists  like Matthew Parris.



[To be continued]


BHANGEELAAR! first diagnstic commdent today on teh GUARDIAN London web site  Saturday 12 February 2011:

Quoting Dave Hill’s concluding paragraph [11 February 2011]:
“In the end, the only solution for Labour may be to take its leader Ed Miliband resolutely at his word and rebuild the local party from the ground up, broadening its base and listening to all those it wants to serve more carefully than ever before. That's an easy thing for a hack in Hackney to write and a much, much harder thing for a politician in Tower Hamlets to do. But it sounds rather like democracy.”
Unquoting Dave Hill [with emphases added by the commenter below].
We are commenting here to correct some of the misleading contents and insinuations.
We shall come back to deal with any other that we find appropriate in due course.
We here concentrate on Dave Hill’s “discussion” on the spelling of particular last name and we examine some other aspects of the Dave Hill’s London Blog in perpetuating the discriminatory myths about “local expertise’ by a “colleague” of Dave Hill’s.
We start by examine Mr Hill’s statement: “the only solution for Labour may be to take its leader Ed Miliband resolutely at his word and rebuild the local party from the ground up”.
What is Ed Miliband? Is he a magician or is a super human? He is neither. As for “rebuilding” of the former Labour Party, Miliband is even less. He has neither the knowledge nor the interest nor the commitment to rebuild democratic accountability anywhere. He is a machine leader of a machine bureaucracy that is banking for his ‘aim to reach the shore of power’ on the bankruptcy of the British political vessel as it is evident via the democracy-denying, democrat deficit Houses of Parliament Whatever Ed Miliband may have puffed on, he is no different on the evidence so far from any of his predecessors in that post when it comes to the fundamental purpose of the Party bureaucracy. When that purpose is ‘relaunched’ in areas like Tower Hamlets during routine ‘periods of elections’, it is as dull, dishonest and unjust and undemocratic as it ever has been. So what secret are you alluding to when you invest all; your rhetorical hopes on Ed Miliband doing the undoable? Do tell. As for us ordinary folk in Tower Hamlets, we see no evidence now and we have found none in their records of the past half century, of the former Labour Party being anything other than a machine vehicle for time-servers, petty careerists and several brazen liars. The same conclusion applies to what is now the “Tower Hamlets Lib Dems”. The several ‘names’ that you have now ‘introduced’ and or promoted about the former Labour Party in Tower Hamlets are as contaminated on their records as could be found in any of the past five decades. Our Movement has drawn attention to those during the past fifty years and demanded action against the crooked behaviour of so many time-serving place men and women in the former Labour Party that the list of the perpetrators and the allegations against them alone would take up more space than is available on your blog comment slot. The former Labour Party has persisted in failing to take action. Why? Because the entire bureaucracy has been itself corrupt. Let any of that bureaucracy's key decision-making obstructors come out and declare themselves and we shall read them the details of their perpetration with ample updater diagnostics.

The only thing that is ‘new’ about your promotion of those is your name and your blog, Dave! You are now doing what decades of “Fleet Street” media has done for the corrupotocrcay that is the former Labour Party.

About the rest of your concluding Comment, you have not qualified the phrase “a politician in Tower Hamlets”. Without qualification, that phrase is full of misleading and vacuous potential. For the sake of democratic accountability, we shall attempt a working qualification as always in context here. Perhaps by a politician in Tower Hamlets you are referring to those who seek or occupy “elected” posts. Examples include local Tower Hamlets Borough council posts or the London Assembly post/s or the posts of MPs for any of the two Parliamentary constituencies. Secondly you must be meaning the post or position seekers and the postholders in the former Labour Party that is still floated in Tower Hamlets as a bureaucratic version of its former form at the present time. Finally you must be meaning the couriers of the various sub-candidates and sub-post-seekers that make up the number that also serves as ‘the organisation’ of the former Labour Party. On the facts of the contens of your blog, you could not be meaning people in the ordinary population in Tower Hamlets. Had you meant any of us, you would have said something about the Movement that has actually been working to defend the key universal values from which the time-serving opportunists you DO recognise have benefited [personally and in terms of their own careerists factions] without a shadow of a doubt.

[continued]
You also refer to the Conservative Councillors’ group ‘leader’ Peter Golds who has been doing business fort his cause by parading as a ‘Tower Hamlets politician’ although he has yet to come on the record ANYWHERE as representing the concerns and the demands of the ordinary democratically conscious people in Tower Hamlets. We have pointed this out before about Peter Golds and we do so again here, in context. We also point out that you have not expressly examined poverty of any description in your blog. Indeed, you have not even mentioned the word poverty once. In our knowledge of the ordinary lives of the overwhelming majority of ordinary people in Tower Hamlets, there are three types of poverty currently affecting the quality of life for ordinary people in Tower Hamlets. Poverty as experienced and felt and as measurable by income, earnings or none. Secondly poverty as evident in the absence of accountably, transparently democratic representation at any of the local state levels as linked to ‘electoral’ processes. The third type of poverty is in the absence of delivery of the promised or the purported standard of democracy in accordance with ordinary expectations as defined by ethics, morality or due process in most of the state and local agencies and institutions as operating in Tower Hamlets.
Although you appear reserved about Peter Golds, you perform a telling act of excusing him. You let Mr Golds off the hook by deciding to not scrutinise him on the allegations that he had INSINUATED. You say (“) Golds’ letter claimed that the Brick Lane restauranteur Shiraj Haque had, "stated to a number of local politicians that he funded the legal action" and that, "This is a reportable donation that has not been reported [to the Electoral Commission] within the [legal] time limit." (”). Who are the “number of local politicians”? We ask because we know [as defined above again] for a fact that there is no such thing as “local politicians” without links, strings and careerist negotiations and or deals. So whatever “local politicians” is supposed to refer to in relation to Peter Golds’ own promotion of his “party'-linked business would be someone [or more than one] who would be found to be already compromised by some other relevant factors vitiating any attempt to bring about an ethical and a democratically accountable atmosphere in Tower Hamlets. That would mean that you should have demonstrably queried Peter Golds’ assertion. Had you done that, you would have found ON THE EVIDENCE that a true investigative examination of his c,aims would have to reveal that Peter Golds was basing HIS bit of the allegations as much on partisan and untenably non-democratic ground as any of his implied Party political opponents would be doing given the same observed and non-democratic and or antidemocratic objective. Your reference to “the Brick Lane restauranteur Shiraj Haque” is also inaccurate and in context significantly misleading. The person you name as “Shiraj Haque” is in fact known in the community simply as Shiraj. This is true of today as it has been since the end of the 1970s when he was first listed in the public domain as an active member of the community in Tower Hamlets. One of the original validators for Shiraj getting INTO the public domain as an active member of the local community in the late 1970s was the campaign that our Movement was conducting at that time in defence of the community following the racist murder of Altab Ali on Thursday 4 May 1978. So the question that arises now , 32 years on, is this: who has been responsible for moderating or altering or amending the community-based persona of Shiraj? Has there been a legal reason why the spelling of his stated last name was or has been changed? If so, what was that legal reason? If none then why haven’t you or to be more practical your ‘local expert’ [‘colleague’] [promoted by you in the past few months as ‘the’ de facto ‘expert’ on “Tower Hamlets”] explained that change in the spelling of the stated last name cited about Shiraj? This is also important in view of the many references to Abbas Uddin “Helal” as made by you and by at least three others in or about “Fleet Street”. One of those, David Cohen, the self-described ‘rescuer of the dispossessed of London’ as promoted via the London EVENING STANDARD, invaded a democratic accountability forum that had been organised by the Spitalfields Small Business Association [SSBA] on 18 October 2010. The SSBA’s Director Kay Jordan, who sat on a chair next to where David Cohen had been sitting before he stood up to launch his invasion, wondered to our campaign within minutes of David Cohen’s invasion, what would have been the best way of stopping Cohen from violating that meeting. And what was his violating act?

Why a personal insinuation against Lutfur Rahman and as retailed on behalf of the interests that were promoting Abbas Uddin “Helal” as their chosen courier of the Blaired party band. David Cohen abused the entire local, SSBA-organised meeting, by standing up and demanding to know from Lutfur Rahman why Lutfur Rahman’s alleged supporters had been spreading an allegation about Abbas Uddin “Helal” abusing or beating his [“Abbas Uddin “Helal”:] wife. Abbas Uddin “Helal” himself was absent from the event. And there was no legal, constitutional law, ethical or democratic or electoral reason why Lutfur Rahman had to even comment on that utterance by the invader David Cohen. But Lutfur Rahman did. And ion making a comment “denying” Cohen’s invasive utterance, Lutfur Rahman confounded the Cohen-contrived confusion even further! He proceeded to deny having abused HIS wife! And a suitably timed supportive sounding woman stood up in a row behind where David Cohen was sitting [and or standing, depending on what moment of his invasion he was engaged in] in the audience and stated words to the effect that she supported her husband Lutfur Rahman totally! In his ‘response’ on the same occasion, Lutfur Rahman also said that he would sue anyone who said what Cohen was saying! This part was in fact triggered by the Lib Dems’ John Griffiths whose own utterance [to Lutfur Rahman’s mind and to observers present] represented a repetition in effect of what Cohen had done earlier in the invasive disruption of the proceedings of the SSBA-organised meeting that had been intended to offer local people a say on what the local Tower Hamlets Council should be doing to support the local small businesses and similar initiatives. Considering the fact that David Cohen VIA the London EVENING STANDARD played a promotional part in propping up the campaign propaganda and image for the Lib Dems and the Conservatives in the run up to the 06 May 2010 elections on the alleged basis that Cohen had been “helping” the “DISPOSSESSED” in London [ played as a “counter” to the then Gordon Brown-fronted regime that was, so the “DISPOSSESSED” theme suggested, causing the DISPOSSESSION to areas typified by the East End Borough of Tower Hamlets], his violation of the people who were attending the SSBA-organised meeting on 18 October 2010 showed just how irrational Cohen was, how contemptuous he was of the rights of the people in the East End and how indifferent he was to what we had to say on that day about our “local Council Cohen on that occasion dispossessed us from our democratic say! Our campaign intervened at the right time to ensure that Cohen was not able to carry with him any pretext that he could later retail for the delectation of the likes of Peter Golds in another exaggerated, untrue and untruthful attack on the invented image of our community portraying it as not only being intolerant to “journalists” but also to “free speech”! Cohen abused the kindness and generosity of the meeting and in his abuse he denied that meeting the freedom to exchange views and information about matters to do with the local Council’s financial and democratic conduct. It is clear that in your “accessible” and “sympathetic” “style”, you too are engaged in doing the same.
Why else is it that you promote Peter Golds and then fail to show why his alleged allegation to the Metropolitan Police did not go anywhere? Why is it that you refer to everything else about the various allegations about corruption over the Blaired Party's bureaucracy and its handling or mishandling of the selection etc, but fail to even recognise that there has been a fully active campaign against the very constitutional change to Tower Hamlets being lumbered with a post called executive mayor that is the persistent topic of your particular blog posts. Given that two fifths of the stated votes cast in the alleged referendum were in favour of the NO option, how can you treat 40,000 voters as if they did not record their rejection of the bid to change the Council’s particular structure? Given also the fact that Abbas Uddin “Helal” was himself a “campaigner against an elected mayor system” for MONTHS, how is it that you leave that fact out as if it was not the central feature of the evidence of active contempt for ethics and honesty that the Bliared party bureaucracy has been exhibiting at every level over the matter? You state that you had spoken to Joshua Peck but then you do not include any substance. Why mention him then? If you had asked us, we could tell you that the same Joshua Peck had appeared along with our Campaign organiser on at least four platforms at “public” meetings held across Tower Hamlets between 06 February 2010 and 06 May 2010 “speaking and uttering arguments against” a directly elected executive mayor.

[continuing 3]
We could add that without making any noticeable let alone substantiated apology to the Tower Hamlets community and the public the aforesaid Joshua Peck then began to make appearances on the Bliared Party promotional events in the Borough SUPPORTING an elected executive mayor system! He has remained silent on the fact that Bliared party candidates for Council ward votes on 06 May 2010 received far more votes than the NO question got. The significance of this is in the fact that JOSHUA PECK and other such Bliared Party candidates had been claiming that they were “campaigning against an elected mayor system” and that they were claiming that they had been ALSO asking their canvassed voters to vote NO in the allotted box on the referendum/ballot paper [held on the same day, 06 May 2010] as the general election and the London local council elections. All the evidence that we have obtained of the voters behaviour on that day in the in the run up to polling [and referendum on the mayor] day has shown that those who were actually genuinely approached about the serious flaws and the pitfalls of installing a directly elected executive mayor in fact voted NO. That raises the almost certain possibility that those, like Joshua Peck who were claiming to be campaigning for s NO vote on the referendum were doing less to secure a NO outcome than they were doing to get their personal election as councillor guaranteed. This discrepancy was deliberately created as admitted to our campaign organiser by one of Joshua Peck’s co-candidates in February-April 2010. According that candidate for a Council ward in Mile End, their priority was to get elected as councillors! Yet that ‘NO’ campaign ‘speaker at platforms’ kept on making appearances, even though she knew perfectly well that she was not campaigning for NO outcome as much as she was claiming to be when on the platform. Given the fact that that ‘No’ campaign ‘speaker’ was soon doing the “YES FOR candidate X as mayor” routine in Tower Hamlets during July-October 2010, the claims that anything any of them said at any time was based on ethics, principle or honesty is very difficult to accept. This is the real problem in the former Labour Party.
As it is with the PRESENT Tower Hamlets Council, with or without a directly elected executive mayor installed.
Contrary to the prejudiced references you make to Tower Hamlets as a whole, the behaviour of the ‘elected councillors’ and their likes is the real problem as against a truly really actually actively democracy-delivering Council. For the reasons we have shown in this detailed factually revealing comment,. the same finding applies to Lutfur Rahman as it does to his alleged detractors.
0750 Hrs
Saturday
12 February 2011
BHANGEELAAR! The Campaign against an elected executive mayor in Tower Hamlets

ACTION UPDATE on the KHOODEELAAR! Manifesto 2005: its impact on Tower Hamlets politics was admitted by the "East London Advertiser" on 5 January 2006

1030 Hrs GMT
London
Monday
31 January 2011.
By © Muhammad Haque
In December 2005, a document was published in and from the East End of London that caused political  shock waves in the East End of London. What was that document? Who published it? What evidence is there that there was a political shock wave - let alone ‘shock waves’- caused by that document?   [To be continued]

Has the UK Parliament become a parliament for the telling of the truth about what the people have to say about how ‘they’ are ‘ruled’, what the people want from parliamentarians, or has the Parliament reverted to the state it was in before 6 May 2010: an anti-democratic wasteful pretext for the many [of the ‘elected’] to carry on against accountability, transparency and against honesty?

0805 Hrs GMT

London

Friday

24 September 2010

By © Muhammad Haque

Constitutional law commentary about the UK CONDEM and the implications for a democratic constitutional UK

CONTEXTUAL flashback to our commentary of 17 October 2009 with particular focus on the UK Lib Dems Party.

We are doing so in preparation of our diagnostic review of the Lib Dems' role as a part of the CONDEM Collusion in the UK CONDaved phase [there it is! Another coinage of another CON-linked word! There is no avoiding of a double meaning even here, such is the unreliability of the CONDEMNABLE entente!!]

What we are looking at is this:

Has the Clegged Collusion produced the change from sleaze-ball careerism to transparency, democracy, accountability, honesty and universality?

Has the UK Parliament become a parliament for the telling of the truth about what the people have to say about how ‘they’ are ‘ruled’, what the people want from parliamentarians, or has the Parliament reverted to the state it was in before 6 May 2010: an anti-democratic wasteful pretext for the many [of the ‘elected’] to carry on against accountability, transparency and against honesty?

"Saturday, October 17, 2009

KHOODEELAAR! Updating evidence against CRASSrail and also against the crass ignorance of 'mainstream Political parties' about London: Vince Cable [4]

2358 Hrs GMT

London

Saturday

17 October 2009

By © Muhammad Haque

A word of update on why Khoodeelaar! has been calling the Big Business London CrossRail scheme a CRASSrail scam.

This update is caused by the behaviour of the UK Lib Dems’ Party’s Vince Cable in Bethnal Green on Wednesday 15 October 2009.

And secondly by the behaviour of Boris Johnson who coincidentally on that day confirmed his own crass role in muttering in all directions as ‘justification’ of his announcement of the week of drastically raising bus fares and tube fares in London.

We [the KHOODEELAAR! Campaign against the “CRASSrail Big Business scam agenda….”] have been using the word “Crass” in the same sense as is still contained in all the major English language dictionaries in circulation and use in the world right now.

We have added our own evidential components to upgrade the definition of the word CRASS in context.

We have said for over five years now that Crossrail is crass because, amongst other things, it was crassly conceived, it is crassly peddled and it has been crassly promoted.

In different orders, we have used the same qualifiers.

We have done so as we have reported the various manifestations of crassness, illogicality, ignorance, stupidity and sheer callousness on the parts of those who have been doing the peddling and the promoting. These activities and exhibitions are to be found across the so-called divides between the three main Parties as recognised by the numbers of Mps they have in the UK House of Commons.

The Lib Dems’ Vince Cable first:

When someone from the Lib Dems Party ‘public’ meeting [Oxford House, 15 October 2009] included a slight reference to Crossrail in a question in the overly-bureaucratically treated [in the sense of=suppressed, stifled.. and so on] ‘Question time’ following Cable’s set-piece presentation lasting well under an hour, Cable was caught out on the facts.

He admitted to the ignorance that Khoodeelaar! Campaign noted.

Cable looked at the two persons sitting alongside him on the notional podium and facing the audience in the Oxford House in a side street off the Bethnal Green Road in Tower Hamlets and asked in their direction if Crossrail ran through Tower Hamlets.

Having seen their body language saying yes it did, Cable then hurled a most banal pack of rubbish in the even more banal and thoughtless direction of the captive audience.

That was rubbish because he contradicted his previous comment on CRASSrail as published MOST PROIMINEWNTLY on 21 September 2009 and said [on 15 October 2009] that he and his Party supported Crossrail.

And then he said that IF the costs were managed acceptably then they would still support it.

Gone were the flourish that had been attached to his REJECTION of CrossRail in the news that was carried during 21 September 2009. In that REJECTION, the headlines included the one published by the London EVENING STANBDARD. It said that to Vince Cable, CrossRail was NOT A PRIORITY!

KHOODEELAAR! Campaign had noted that at the time last month [September 2009] and we published the full EVENING STANDARD piece along with an image of Cable on that occasion. It is still accessible on this very blog site.

Had the audience at the Oxford House, Derbyshire Street off Bethnal Green Road London E2 on Wednesday 15 October 2009 been made up of people who had come there to actually hear an independent, original, political speech from a genuinely influential political personality in Britain today, that piece of ignorance as uttered by Cable there would have caused a swift and disapproving reaction. Derision even. But the audience was tame and timid. It was an in-house event. Although staged at the officially non-Party political Oxford House, the meeting was intended to be and went down as a ‘reassurance exercise’ for the small number of listed members of the Party in Tower Hamlets.

Most of those present and apparently listening to him did not even notice that Vince Cable had made such a major error.

Not one member of the audience stood up or raised their hand to quiz Cable on his crass question about when CrossRail went through the borough that he was allegedly there to offer his expertise about.

Tower Hamlets, for those who are not in the UK, is also the ‘main’ area associated with the East End of London. And Bethnal Green, where Vince Cable was sitting when he exhibited his ignorance and nervousness, is in Tower Hamlets.

And Crossrail has been THE most cited word in relation to a campaign that has been going on in Tower Hamlets for the past now almost six years.

All of these are facts beyond dispute.

How?

Some of the Lib Dems party’s undeniable ‘leaders’ in Tower Hamlets who were present in that same audience, had themselves been present and speaking at demonstrations held by Khoodeelaar! AGAIUNST the fundamental impact that Crossrail would have on TOWER HAMNLETS.

More than one of those sat at the very back in the audience.

One was Janet Ludlow.

Sitting next to her was Stephanie Eaton.

Janet Ludlow actually spoke at two Khoodeelaar! Demonstrations, in February 2006 and March 2006. Both held outside the main entrance to the Mulberry Place town hall, the official address of Tower Hamlets Borough Council.

Stephanie Eaton, the 'leader' of the 4-member group of Lib Dems councillors in Tower Hamlets Council, has not spoken at a demonstration but has attended campaign events that we organised. Especially in Bethnal Green South, an area she was not familiar with until we offered her the objective and non-party-political introduction to it in the context of our campaign against the Crossrail hole agenda attacks.

And sitting somewhere in the middle of the audience at the Oxford House was Louise Alexander.

Although Ms Alexander is currently not a Lib Dems Party [or any sort of] councillor in Tower Hamlets Borough Council, she actually was the councillor who put her name to a motion tabled for debate at the Tower Hamlets Council ‘full council’ meeting held on Wednesday 1 March 2006.

That motion came closest, for a motion as put forward by any councillor in their name, to the contents of the Khoodeelaar! Campaign demands on Crossrail.

And having been a member of the so-called all-party MPs’ committee on CRASSrail dating back at least 18 months before the then UK Transport minister Alistair Darling [now in post as Gordon Brown’s successor as UK Finance minister] formally tabled the “CrossRail Bill” in the UK House of Commons [the lower camber in the two-chamber Parliament] in February 2005, Vince Cable would have been expected to know what the scam was about.

And the basic facts that he would have been reasonably expected to know about the Crossrail scam would include the one about the parts of London that the scam would affect directly and go through directly as a proposed ‘London ‘rail line’.

Yet Cable staggered non-party observers present as he paused in the middle of his ‘answer’ and asked: does Crossrail go through Tower Hamlets?

The Lib Dems’ Party’s own published records show that Cable has been involved in what the Party has advertised as the highest level ‘activities’ in the name of their Party about Crossrail.

Those activities go back to 2003 when the then MP for the same party for the Richmond area in south west London, Jenny Tonge, took part in a Lib Dems Party promotional exchange staged within the official boundaries and limits of the House of Commons.

[To be continued]

Posted by AADHIKARonline London UK at 4:58 PM

KHOODEELAAR! Putting on the record the fact that the Guardian Grin has peddled BBC's 'London Debate’, which was a farce. The Guardian Grin then failed to follow up with an examination of the empty 'Debate' that was broadcast with the VERY VAIN Jeremy Vine as the over-hyped fronter of the overly empty slot.

1100 Hrs GMT

London

Friday

17 September 2010

Editor © Muhammad Haque

KHOODEELAAR! Putting on the record the fact that the Guardian Grin has peddled BBC's 'London Debate’, which was a farce. The Guardian Grin then failed to follow up with an examination of the empty 'Debate' that was broadcast with the VERY VAIN Jeremy Vine as the over-hyped fronter of the overly empty slot.

Going on the actual contents of the Vine Vanity slot called a London debate, the question arises: is it EVER possible to examine and tell the truth about the evidence in a ‘debate’ conducted on the BBC?

And when was the last time that the BBC took any initiative of universally understood objective journalism to tell the people the truth about wasteful publicly funded agencies, scams, and decisions?

And why is the BBC satisfied with the collusion it gets from the likes of the Guardian Grin which has just peddled the Big Business lie retailed by the over-paid Crossrail-promoter as ‘transport commissioner' Peter Hendy?

Why didn’t the BBC ADD that the so-called private part of the Crossrail funding is the part that REMAINS undelivered? And that the TAXES that Boris Johnson has invented at the expense of ordinary London businesses [as opposed to BIG Business] will cost many times the base rate and will encumber those businesses for decades? Why hasn’t the BBC told the truth that it is a lie to cite £Billions and claim the sums as “economic benefit” when the Crossrail scam is still a fantasy and there is no factual basis for linking ANY sum as any benefit arising from it?

[To be continued]

0835 Hrs GMT London Sunday 05 September 2010-09-05 Editor © Muhammad Haque 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]

0835 Hrs GMT

London

Sunday

05 September 2010-09-05

Editor © Muhammad Haque

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

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Thursday, 02, Sep 2010 10:36

by Peter Wozniak

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...

1150 Hrs GMT
London
Tuesday
10 August 2010

Editor © Muhammad Haque

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! Correctly extensively foresaw in 2006 Alistair Darling's crisis and told him so then. Darling was also caught out over the crass tactics he had engaged in as part of his touting role for Big Biz agenda scam Crossrail. Darling got it wrong then. Hammond is wrong now. Crass! Crass! Scrap Crassrail.

2125 [2105] Hrs GMT

London

Tuesday

03 August 2010.

Editor © Muhammad Haque. 

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!

© The Author / Khoodeelaar / CBRUK /lawmedia 2006 | 04.03.2006 14:49 | Analysis | Indymedia | Social Struggles | London | World

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

 http://www.khoodeelaar.com

© The Author / Khoodeelaar / CBRUK /lawmedia 2006

- e-mail: lawmedia@hotmail.com

- Homepage: http://www.khoodeelaar.com

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Comments

Hide the following comment

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

Bethnal Green and Bow Constituent

mail e-mail: bgbcache@yahoo.co.uk

Underground is in Deep Trouble

Andrew Neather
29.07.10

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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.

Reader views (2)

 Add your view

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.

- Kev, Bromley, 29/07/2010 14:41
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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

- George, London, 29/07/2010 14:21
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