TweetIn her infinite knowledge and wisdom, Hazel Blears, the Secretary of State who decrees on such matters decided to approve Wiltshire County Council’s bid to become a unitary authority, abolishing the five districts of Wiltshire. Apparently they put foward a very good case. I’m sure of course having been in teh job less than a [...]
Early Day Motion on First Great Western train services
TweetDavid Drew, MP for Stroud (Lab and Co-operative), has tabled an Early Day Motion calling for First Group’s Greater Western’s train services to be returned to the public sector. This motion is being supported by passenger groups and rail unions.
TravelWatch South West criticise FGW
TweetA short article in the Avon Advertiser (p. 7, 4 July) headlined: “Service is just not the ticket – rail users” covers the response of TravelWatch South West to the National Passenger Survey. The survey revealed a drop in passenger satisfaction with FGW performance on the ex-Wessex network. TravelWatch have said they want to see [...]
Robert Key wins FGW tickets
TweetDuring yesterday’s Commons debate, Robert Key, MP (Cons) for Salisbury contributing the following:- Oral Answers to Questions – Wales: Train Services (4 Jul 2007) Robert Key: The fourth prize in a recent charity auction in my constituency was a pair of First Great Western first class return tickets to London. I do not think that [...]
Other Tehminas
TweetQuite by chance, I happened upon this string of comments about the meaning of Tehmina on an (old?) blog called Tam’s Diaries. There were suggestions of all descriptions from people called Tehmina across the world. Some suggestions were: ‘true witness’, ‘shred’ or ‘scintilla’, ‘healthy’ or ‘insurance’ in Arabic, ‘honest’ in Hebrew, ‘precious of heart’ and [...]
Give us this day our daily bread
TweetLast year, during the FA World Cup, I bought a sandwich which came with its own thought for the day. Today I find myself buying the same sandwich made by Daily Bread: shaved cheddar and pickle. It still comes with its daily motto which today is: If God wanted us to fly, He would have [...]
Campaign Against New Beeching Report
TweetThe Campaign Against New Beeching Report is headed by a fellow rail campaigner Lee Fletcher. He has been and continues to be one of the more active campaigners whose inspired project to propose an alternative plan for a railway in south west England, Gateway to the Future, I commented upon recently. This campaign, which is [...]
Service Cancelled: due to Glastonbury Festival?
Tweet Last week and today, First Great Western organised some 60 extra services on its network to ferry festival-goers to and from Castle Cary for Glastonbury 2007. The question is: did other regular services suffer?
Congestion is not the only issue
TweetThis Guardian article about the ‘here-to-stay’ above-inflation rail fare increases raises some important issues about how the Government intend to tackle the capacity problems on the rail network in Britain. Statements about the way forward for the railways will come in the High Level Output Statement (HLOS). The two major projects for consideration are a [...]
Response from Department for Transport
TweetOn 12 June, I received the following response from Judith Shepherd of the DfT to my letter concerning the lack of services on the TransWilts (Salisbury – Westbury – Chippenham – Swindon) line. I was reliably informed that a large amount of the text of the letter was copied from DfT responses sent to concerned [...]
