Trying to Stop Inevitable Decline
There are two related stories today about improving the lot of rail passengers and improving the Royal Mail.
The Royal Mail is probably past saving especially if they raise prices, as people will not be prepared to spend more to get letters delivered, when e-mail and the telephone is there. After all phone charges are dropping because of competition and the Royal Mail will only compete by dropping prices.
As to improving trains, we need to replace some old stock like the Pacers, but many are saying they’ve had enough with commuting five days a week and are using the Internet to cut some of those journeys. We are also getting to a point, where people won’t pay more to commute, if stories about low-ridership on the fast commute lines to St. Pancras are true. So perhaps we might see some strategic spending on the worst parts of the network, but the grandiose plans of some are surely dead in these austere times.
Pink Elephants
There is an old joke about four men sitting in a compartment of a train. You can tell how old it is, as when did we last have compartments in a train? Three are just sitting there watching in astonishment as every time the forth man finishes a page of the Daily Telegraph, he shreds it to pieces , opens the window and throws the paper out with a determined throw.
Intrigued one of the others, asks what he is doing?
‘It’s to keep the pink elephants away!’ the paper-shredder replies.
‘But there aren’t any pink elephants!’ was the reply he got from the other three.
‘Effective! Isn’t it?’
It would appear that Dubya’s defence of waterboarding is very much on the same lines. He justifies it because there were no attacks after they tortured Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind behind the 9/11 attack.
Am I alone in believing that there would have been no 9/11 or at least a much more restricted atrocity, if the United States had employed some basic security at airports in line with what we had in place in the UK and Europe at the time? After all they had had a car bomb atack on the World Trade Centre in 1994 and the bombing in Oklahoma in 1995. So America can’t say it wasn’t warned!
I think Dubya is getting his strike in early with his book, which will go to the bottom of the worst seller lists.
Remember, the Mad Hatters are all for fiscal prudence and which President was not very prudent? Some will say stand up Dubya and be counted!
The Anonymous Widower 