A wonderful image of Gloucestershire cheeserolling taken by Mike Warren. During this fine annual Whitsun bank holiday tradition people from all over the world chase (roll) in pursuit of a rather large Gloucester cheeses down Coopers Hill, Gloucestershire. See more cheeserolling photos here.
News stories seem more concerned with how many people get hurt than the amazing event it is.
In the response to a recent e-petition against levels of Inheritance Tax, 10 Downing Street reasoned that if they did not have this tax in place, revenue for public spending would have to be found from elsewhere to the tune of £4 billion.
That would be like adding about 18p on petrol duty.
I’d pay it for a fantastic rail service and £4 billion ought to cover it.
Here is the reply from Alison Forster, Managing Director of First Great Western to my letter of concern regarding the decimation of the services provided on the TransWilts line. The reply is dated 17 May 2007. A superb bit of verbal engineering in the second paragraph. And also note that although my concern was for the communication route that links south and north Wiltshire, it is addressed as a Melksham issue (I am Salisbury-based).
Dear Tehmina
Thank you for your email. I appreciate that you are disappointed with the current timetable for Melksham.
The new timetable was based on the one specified in the Greater Western franchise bid. During the bid process and subsequently we made over 200 changes to the original draft proposals many of which came as a direct result of customer feedback in our consultation. (more…)
Here is the response to my letter of concern regarding the decimation of services on the TransWilts line from a representative of Wiltshire County Council, dated 15 May 2007. At least two other campaigners received the same reply (word for word) though from different people in the council.
Dear Tehmina
George Batten has asked me to reply to your e-mail below.
Wiltshire County Council is in agreement with your assessment of the value of the rail service at Melksham. However the Council has no powers to direct the rail industry. Decisions about what service to provide are made by First Great Western (FGW) acting under its franchise contract with the Department for Transport. (more…)
In December 2006, many First Great Western services in the South West were cut. This was, of course, due to franchise agreements that passenger provision would be cut by well over 7000 seats by December 2007. The new May 2007 timetable does not re-instate the decimated services on the TransWilts line that connects north and south Wiltshire via Melksham. Currently, to travel from Salisbury to Chippenham, you can either leave the county and change at Bath and add almost an hour to your journey or take the one-a-day direct service in the evening, without one coming back. Wiltshire County Council in the meantime have submitted a bid to become a Unitary Authority, wanting to run the county and its districts centrally. Here is the letter I wrote to rail bosses, FGW bosses, Wiltshire CC bosses and copied to my MP Robert Key: (more…)
Network Rail are using convicts who are still serving time to help fix the railways. Apparently they are not involved in any safety-critical work and helps rehabilitate prisoners. Union bosses say this is at the expense of industry workers as prisoners are paid less. I’m not sure what I think about this. On the one hand I think most prisoners should work while serving time and earn their keep while in prison. On the other, with increasing over-crowding, perhaps cons will be another cheap solution to plugging the manual work labour-gap rather than utilising the long-term unemployed and getting them off benefits?
This story comes at a time when Network Rail have been criticised by the Prison Service for proposing to build an Engineering Yard right next to a Category A prison Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire. Prison officers are concerned about the noise irritation to the prisoners (many of whom are highly unstable) and the potential for them to cause serious problems if they were to get access to the yard. Presumably in a year or two they’ll all be employed to build it anyway.
Now why are they going building a new yard when several working yards such Eastleigh have recently closed? Eastleight Women’s Prison isn’t far.
