Friday, April 30, 2010

KHOODEELAAR! Tells Boris Johnson to show that he can be truthful on the powers that he already has. How about starting by telling the people of London why Boris Johnson persists in touting for Big Business agenda CrossRail scam while at the same time letting the tube networks starve of vital funds? Whatever happened to transparency? Why is it that the already totally servile London Assembly too is unimpressed by BoJo’s use or rather abuses of many of his EXISTING powers? What role did Boris play in getting that CRASS part included in the CRASSrail-‘peddling ‘LONDON manifesto’ issued in such a rush earlier this week? What amount of as yet unpublicised pressure did he personally bring to bear on Justine Greening?



1328 [1315] [1312] Hrs GMT
London
Friday
30 April 2010.
Editor © Muhammad Haque.
More power for the mayor! 
Really, Boris! 
Whatever for? 
What power haven’t you got that would transform you from being all over the place to a competent, dutiful, honest and accountable representative for all the people in London? 
You can’t say anything. 
Why? 
Because you have not delivered on most of your promises and you have not accounted for the powers that you do have. 

What about showing some real genuine honest respect for the people of London and actually answering questions that are raised by the London Assembly? 
In fact why not go one better and actually answer questions that people of London have been putting to you for the past two years?  

How about making a start and showing the evidence that on objective criteria and standards justifies £Billions being pout into Crossrail while starving the various parts of the Lon don underground of urgent funds that they need and have needed for years? 

[To be continued]



Boris Johnson to get 'superpowers' if Tories win election

Pippa Crerar, City Hall Editor
30.04.10

Sponsored links

Ads by Google

Find out why you should vote Conservative in the election!

Get Cash for Your 10+ Year Old Car! We Buy Any Car

1841 to 1901 census. Fast and easy to use with detailed information.

Who would get your vote if the election was held tomorrow ?
Boris Johnson is set to be handed sweeping powers if the Tories win the general election, the Standard has learned.
His new remit would put him on course to be the world's second most powerful mayor after New York's Michael Bloomberg.
Mr Johnson could be the beneficiary of the biggest devolution of power to the capital since the Greater London Authority was created a decade ago.
The Mayor would be responsible for a £16 billion budget for areas including the capital's transport network, policing and economic regeneration. He would also take control of housing, the Olympic legacy, the Thames and the Royal Parks from central government.
Mr Bloomberg has a £33 billion budget and runs all New York's public services while the Mayor of Paris, Bernard Delanoe, has powers over transport, planning, housing and primary schools with a budget of £6 billion.
The policy paper proposals could be in David Cameron's first Queen's Speech as part of a devolution Bill, which might also hand more power to Scotland and Wales.
Tory policy chief Oliver Letwin and Mr Johnson's head of policy Anthony Browne have spent months thrashing out the details, which have now been signed off by the
party leader.
The plans are at an early stage and could eventually include replacing theMetropolitan Police Authority with an executive reporting directly to the Mayor and scrutiny by the London Assembly. The new powers would significantly impact upon Londoners but were not included in the Tory manifesto. Former mayor Ken Livingstone today welcomed the proposals but said the Tories should have gone further by devolving financial powers.
He said: “Clearly any devolution of more powers to the Mayor is welcome. But unless the Mayor has some independence financially they're still really in hock to the Government as that's where the majority of the Mayor's budget comes from.
“It's sad that they haven't given the Mayor power to run recycling because London has the worst record in Britain.”
Mr Johnson would face the prospect of deep cuts in his new transport and housing budgets as a future Tory government struggled to reduce the deficit.
Tony Blair first devolved power to London in 2000 when he set up the GLA and Mr Livingstone was elected.
Commentators felt he would have handed over additional responsibilities if he had more faith in the first occupant of City Hall. Mr Johnson was elected with more than one million votes, the largest personal mandate of any politician in British history.
Shadow London minister Justine Greening said: “An important part of our Big Societyagenda is to give more power to locally-elected representatives of the people. So we have been discussing very carefully with the Mayor's office what additional powers could usefully be transferred from central government to the Mayor.
This paper is the product of these discussions and will be implemented by a Conservative government.” The Tories have said they would abolish the Government Office for London, currently headed by Tessa Jowell.
Bookmark and Share 

    at No comments:

    KHOODEELAAR! Told the LONDON EVENING STANDARD SO for six years and three months. Now the Evening Standard is beginning to see the truth and tell some of it! It is about the fact that Crossrail was ill conceived, ill-promoted and totally unaccountably funded at the expense of existing London transport infrastructure needs....

    Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000003456 StartFragment:0000002168 EndFragment:0000003420

    1215 Hrs GMT

    London
    Friday

    30 April; 2010

    Editor © Muhammad Haque

    KHOODEELAAR! Told the LONDON EVENING STANDARD SO for six years and three months. Now the Evening Standard is beginning to see the truth and tell some of it! It is about the fact that Crossrail was ill conceived, ill-promoted and totally unaccountably funded at the expense of existing London transport infrastructure needs....

    [To be continued]
    at No comments:

    KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO! As echoed in this item on the London EVENING STANDARD web site where it was posted 50 minutes ago, as researches suggest.


      Goldman Sachs hotties
      Stiff competition: Goldman's Josh Birnbaum, Fab Tourre and Daniel Sparks

      City Spy: Fear of funding cuts for Crossrail


      30.04.10

      Sponsored links

      Ads by Google

      Invest Thames Gateway Gateway to London Gateway to Europe

      50-90% Off Top London Spas Restaurants & More. New Each Day!

      The Conservative Approach to Transport

      PhD Vacancies Available For a September 2010 start.
      Much depression in the Crossrail camp as they fail to get any steer whatsoever from the Tory high command that the project will go ahead, should David Cameronbecome Prime Minister.
      It's looking more and more gloomy for the rail link — as it seems increasingly likely to feature highly on the list of government cuts that could be made quickly and painlessly and only affect the City (hardly top of the hit parade at the moment) and not have any national repercussions. Those involved have been trying to obtain any positive nod and a wink from the Toriesin the past few days, without success...
      One of the problems with the rail link is that the case for it has never properly been made. Politicians are able to point to the existing Central line as a substitute for the proposed East-West London line.
      Some of those involved are beginning to wonder if they missed a trick by taking Crossrail out to Reading in the west and Colchester in the east — and played down the City aspect.
      At the same time, Toby Courtauld, the Great Portland Estates CEO, has written to some of London's biggest landlords to form a coalition to achieve higher prices for properties affected by compulsory purchase orders should Crossrail proceed. He disputes the Crossrail figure put on a Great Portland block, 18/19 Hanover Square.Transport for London says it's £35.9 million, Great Portland reckons closer to £60 million.
      City Spy understands that Courtauld has been in touch with other property owners, among then Great Portland's rivals Pearl & Coutts and Cardinal Lysander, with a view to creating a “developers alliance for fair valuations”.follow me on Twitter
      at No comments:

      KHOODEELAAR! challenging the BBC to let the over-hyped Jeremy Paxman interview contain the truth about the crassness of the big infrastructure project called CrossRail. Will the BBC tell the UK public the truth about the transport mess? Will the BBC tell viewers and listeners about Rod Eddington’s railways study and explain WHY Eddington refused to endorse Crossrail? Will they admit that Gordon Brown made a real mistake in giving the go-ahead to funding Crossrail at the expense of the more important transport investment and upgrade and maintenance priorities which he neglected? Will the BBC allow the Paxman interview to be accompanied by facts and will the BBC answer the allegation 0- no the assertion- made by PRIVATE EYE magazine that a ‘former’ aide to Douglas Alexander [who was the Crossrail plugger at the DfT after Darling was transferred by Tony Blair away from that Department] had been the key tool used by BECHTEL to get the ‘Crossrail Bill’ through? [To be continued]



      0845 Hrs GMT
      London
      Friday
      30 April 2010

      Editor © Muhammad Haque


      KHOODEELAAR! challenging the BBC to let the over-hyped Jeremy Paxman interview contain the truth about the crassness of the big infrastructure project called CrossRail. 


      Will the BBC tell the UK public the truth about the transport mess? 


      Will the BBC tell viewers and listeners about Rod Eddington’s railways study and explain WHY Eddington refused to endorse Crossrail? Will they admit that Gordon Brown made a real mistake in giving the go-ahead to funding Crossrail at the expense of the more important transport investment and upgrade and maintenance priorities which he neglected?  Will the BBC allow the Paxman interview to be accompanied by facts and will the BBC answer the allegation - no, the assertion- made by PRIVATE EYE magazine that a ‘former’ aide to Douglas Alexander [who was the Crossrail plugger at the DfT after Darling was transferred by Tony Blair away from that Department]  had been the key tool used by BECHTEL to get the ‘Crossrail Bill’ through? [To be continued]

      [To be continued]

      A year ago this week, the London EVENING STANDARD published a comment by Simon Jenkins that read as follows:   

       “Crossrail will eat money. Kill it, Boris, and save the bankrupt Tube instead
      Simon Jenkins
      28.04.09
      Kill Crossrail. Kill it now. Offer it up as London's gift to public sector sanity, while there is still time to avoid millions of pounds climbing into billions on a project that London does not need. What London needs is a fully working, modernised Tube. So kill Crossrail to save the Tube.

      Crossrail, with a completely new rail tunnel from Paddington to Liverpool Street, has few friends. It has been stopped and restarted too many times to count over the past quarter-century. When Gordon Brown said in 2007 that "it will definitely proceed", sceptics sensed the cold hand of death grip its throat.

      When Whitehall set out a tripartite funding package for the line in 2008, the caveats and qualifications grew in number. In an interview in February the transport minister, Lord Adonis, warned the world that, if Londoners do not raise their two-thirds share, "the Mayor understands that Crossrail will collapse ... ".

      Mention Crossrail to Boris Johnson and his normally open, cheerful visage changes to that of a parent just told his kids are on drugs. He starts to shake. When reminded that he once said Crossrail was "one of those times you have to say, get in that hole and keep digging" the look becomes a rictus.

      At a farewell dinner at City Hall earlier this month, the outgoing head of Transport for London, Tim O'Toole, hinted at his known private view that Crossrail is capital madness. He pleaded with his colleagues to fight instead for the existing Tube, now teetering on the brink of insolvency. TfL executives know that continuing with Crossrail will eat money and distract management for a decade.

      It would yield nothing but bad news stories, while severely disrupting traffic in central London just when it will be recovering from the water mains chaos. Test drilling is already upheaving St Giles.

      Crossrail is no longer a railway that makes sense. Back in the Eighties it was way behind the Jubilee line and the then (and now) top priority, a new northeast/southwest line from Hackney to Chelsea and beyond. Lines were needed to fill the Tube-less no-man's-lands of Greenwich and Chelsea/Fulham.

      It took Margaret Thatcher to force through the Jubilee line to help the Reichman brothers build Canary Wharf. Chelsea/Hackney has no such power backers.

      This project's only real friends have been in the City, eager to fend off the "threat" from Docklands and garner the bulk of the 900,000 extra office jobs predicted for London a decade ago. Nobody expects that need now. The Central line's parallel capacity can easily be increased by station improvements and better management.

      Crossrail's backers have duly fallen back on that catch-all for any extravagant project, "urban regeneration". But that involves taking the line far out to the east, at further cost. For all the efforts of consultants to prove otherwise, this line is neither profitable nor a priority for economic renewal.

      Boris Johnson now has a golden chance. He knows the capital must tighten its belt somehow - especially after he failed to curb the gargantuan appetite of the Olympics (costing more than half the £16billion total for Crossrail).

      Johnson has already had to end his predecessor's costly fantasies, the Thames Gateway bridge, the Cross-river tram and the Dagenham light railway extension.

      The Government has offered £5.6billion to the Crossrail budget. The rest must come from a raised London business rate (£3.5billion), borrowing against so-called train access charges (£2.3billion) and £2.7billion from TfL, this time borrowing against future fares.

      Given the recent history of Tube finances, these figures are wholly unreal. TfL is close to technical bankruptcy. Borrowing against future revenue is mad, especially when it has already been assigned to meet Crossrail's running costs. Has London learned nothing about dodgy accounting from the past five years of such projects?

      Meanwhile the City Corporation is offering a meagre £200million, on top of which is budgeted £150million from City businesses and, once upon a time, £230million from the airports authority, BAA. Lord Adonis claims this amounts to a further £750million, which is inconceivable. The truth is that Crossrail is another financial pig in a poke.

      The Government has already poured £2billion in extra guilt money into the Tube to finance its public-private partnership (PPP), the sunk cost of this now largely aborted scheme. No minister or official has ever taken responsibility for it - indeed the official, Shriti Vadera, has been rewarded with both a peerage and a ministry.

      In addition, the Government has pledged a huge £39billion to TfL over the next decade, a sum higher than anything conceived during nationalisation. This, it says, will have to embrace the completion of the PPP scheme and Crossrail. But the latter is not formally ring-fenced.

      This is the Mayor's great opportunity. He has a £1.4billion hole in his transport budget already and must somehow fund £3billion of debt left over from the Treasury's collapsed Metronet infrastructure company.

      Adonis said last November that there was no way he would plug this hole, despite it being one of the Government's own creation. He could hardly have given a more direct indication of his willingness to see Crossrail crash.

      Johnson could now argue that the £5.6billion for Crossrail be switched to other Tube projects, such as resignalling the Bakerloo and Piccadilly lines and replacing Metropolitan line stock, projects that may anyway have to be postponed to meet the cost of Crossrail. Cancelling the latter would relieve the Tube budget of a tidal wave of uncertain costs now advancing down the track.

      This would enable Johnson to declare himself the saviour of London's Underground railway, after a decade of mismanagement and financial chaos.

      By liberating himself from Crossrail and demanding that London be allowed to keep its transport grant, he could begin to reconstruct TfL's finances and meet its voracious appetite for new signals, stations and rolling stock. He could declare a clean slate.

      Johnson need not fear the Government on this: if ministers wanted Crossrail they would have paid for it. He need not fear the City.

      He can use the recession as an excuse to put this white elephant to sleep while garnering the popularity of restoring London's transport system to sanity. But first he must kill Crossrail.”

      follow me on Twitter
      at No comments:

      Why has the BBC posted this online [see texts below] plug for Crossrail? We asked the BBC specially to tell the truth. But the BBC has posted another plug. Empty of the substance that only the truth would contain. But the BBC cannot tell the truth. Not when it is following the Big Business agenda. Had the BBC told the truth or wanted to tell the truth, it would have mentioned Rod Eddington. And if it had mentioned Rod Eddington, it would also have had to admit the reservations that Eddington had about CRASSrail.....

      0810 [0755] Hrs GMT
      London
      Friday
      30 April 2010

      Editor © Muhammad Haque

      Why has the BBC posted this online [see texts below] plug for Crossrail? We asked the BBC specially to tell the truth. But the BBC has posted another plug. Empty of the substance that only the truth would contain. But the BBC cannot tell the truth. Not when it is following the Big Business agenda. Had the BBC told the truth or wanted to tell the truth, it would have mentioned Rod Eddington. And if it had mentioned Rod Eddington, it would also have had to admit the reservations that Eddington had about CRASSrail. And if the BBC could bring itself [or whoever wrote their latest Big Biz agenda CRASSrail plug THEMSELVES] to admit the truth then they would also show – the truth would compel them to have to show - the economic case AGAINST Crossrail and the truth that the existing transport network in and around London was much more important than the Big Biz agenda. And if the BBC did publish the truth and the contextual report that alone will do then it would have to say that the EXISTING transport budget in London is in deficit by SEVERAL £ Billion and that in this context the £16 Billion for CrossRail was a wasteful, debts-causing, debts-adding irresponsibility.

      And this is even before the full ‘transport’ case for Crossrail is exposed. Which a truthful account of the adventure would have to show and wills how.

      We shall be taking part the BBC’s Party-plugs one by one, starting with the item next.





      ____________________________________________

      The BBC online plug for Crossrail dated 1740 GMT  London Thursday 29 April 2010


      How a fast rail link to London could affect Maidenhead

      Crossrail could transform the fortunes of Maidenhead

      Maidenhead residents are hoping their town will be transformed by a £16bn high-speed rail link to East London.
      However, the Conservatives have said that although they support Crossrail they can offer no guarantee to the project.
      Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have condemned the Conservative stance towards a "vital project".
      Due for completion in 2017 Crossrail will link Maidenhead to the West End, the City of London and Canary Wharf.

      Labour and the Lib Dems criticised the Conservatives over Crossrail

      Mike Miller, President of the Maidenhead and District Chamber of Commerce said the project was "extremely important" for commuters and businesses.
      "Without Crossrail economic development will be curtailed," he said.
      "At the moment the train service to London isn't bad, but it basically takes you to Paddington and it's basically quite a mission to get elsewhere in London.
      "It's very important."
      Mr Miller said he believed that Crossrail would go ahead whatever the result was of the election because so much money has already been spent on it.
      Crossrail and Politics
      CONSERVATIVES: Their manifesto says they support Crossrail but in a recent radio interview the Shadow London Minister Justine Greening said 'I cannot give a guarantee that it will continue', sparking a row over whether they will indeed see the project through.
      LABOUR: They gave the go-ahead in 2007 to £16 billion project and say they still plan to finish it on schedule.
      LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: They also say they are committed to delivering Crossrail, stressing they would deliver it on budget. They would prefer to get more businesses involved to reduce the funding burden on the taxpayer.
      History of Crossrail
      1980s
      Plans for Crossrail have existed since the late 1980s, as it became clear that existing tracks were reaching the limits of capacity. The Government then commissioned a study to investigate how this problem could be solved.
      The Central London Rail Study of 1989 proposed three projects, East-West Crossrail (now 'Crossrail'), a new Underground line to link Wimbledon and Hackney (now Crossrail Line 2) and an extension of the Jubilee line.
      1990s
      In 1991, a Bill was submitted to Parliament for the East-West scheme. Unfortunately, in 1994 the bill was rejected as the then recession temporarily depressed passenger journeys into and through the capital.
      2000s
      In 2000, with both the Underground and National Rail networks now suffering record levels of congestion and a resulting decline in service reliability, the Government asked the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) to study the requirements for extra passenger capacity to and through London.
      Hundreds of millions have already been spent on the £16bn project to link the east and west of London by rail.
      at No comments: