What Has Happened to our Public Services?

On the even of one of the largest and potentially dangerous influx of economic migrants arrving from Rumania and Bulgaria we got a glimpse of the future following a few December storms. It is clear that already the public utility services cannot cope in emergency.

Threre appears to be no continency plans set for unusual weather.  Airports close, trains are cancelled, electricity companies cannot be contacted, roads are cluttered with fallen trees and accident and emergency wards are creaking at the seams with the elderly waiting hours for attention.

Everywhere you look we have incompetence and an inability to cope.  It is Christmas so they all run away and hide.  In the meantime families have been left withour essential services and are just offered apologies and compensation.  That compensation comes from us the, rest of the general public, who got away with it this time! 

But why are so many houses being regularly flooded?  The simple reason is that in their desperation to cope with the wave of economic migration they have been quietly building on flood plains.  They are called 'flood plains' because they bloody flood!

My serious complaints are however, always reserved for the transport industry.  The lack of planning, the lack of essential resources, the filth, the overcrowding, excessive prices and a total lack of empathy for the paying customer would be challenged by any politician with an ounce of integrity.

They continue to fatuously argue about HS2 and a third airport when what they should be doing is modernising our existing railways, cancelling franchises and cleaning up disgusting airports like Gatwick!

So who represents the Worker?

We have had a miserable week in this country. Our politicians have, once again, proven that they have no idea about what happens down on planet Earth. Purely for political reasons they created a fuel panic which was inexplicable. For a modern day Cabinet Minister to stand on the steps of Downing Street and urge the public to panic buy fuel and even store it in jerry cans speaks volumes for his competence and even more for the common sense of the public.


As a consequence everybody went mad and for days there has been queues at every filling station in the countrry. So I began to ask myself what is the background of these leading politicians who frequently  appear to be out of touch with the working class. Even I was astonished when I began to research their backgrounds. Almost without exception they attended a fee paying private school, followed by a period at Oxford and then further education either in the United States or Europe. None of them have actually had to work for a living. Most were indulged by rich parents who could afford them to play at politics.


David Cameron    Eton and Oxford
Ed Miliband         Oxford, London School of Econmics and Harvard
Nick Clegg           Westminster School, Cambridge, Univ of Minnesota and College of Europe
Ed Balls                Nottm High School, Oxford and Harvard
Yvette Cooper      Oxford and Harvard
George Osborne   St Pauls, Oxford and Davidson College N Carolina
William Hague     Oxford and INSEAD
David Miliband    Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Danny Alexander  Oxford and later The European Movement.


Clearly they are just a selection of our leading politicians but they all have one thing in common. They have never had to be concerned about money.  Real life has no concerns for them. Doors were opened for them because of who they were. This is the reason that all of them are 'modernisers'. They want to change the country because it is part of an academic exercise thought up by professors at Oxford, Harvard and elsewhere in the States. They are all playing a political game because they have never done anything else!

A Budget for the Working Class?

In order to work in this day and age most people must travel. Yesterday in Westmonster George Osbourne concluded his budget speech by declaring that this was the budget to get Britain working again and then he put fuel up by three pence.


We have the highest fuel charges in Europe. We are fast approaching £1.50 a litre which is ridiculous and most of it is the tax imposed by the government. This comes on top of huge increases in Road Tax most of which is not spent on the roads and accelerated MOT costs. In addition insurance prices are going through the roof because the driving test is not fit for purpose and 17 year olds today do not have the same sense of responsibility that we had in yesteryear.


So let's sell the car and take to public transport? The appalling rail service is a joke and once again it costs a fortune. The government allows them to increase prices way above inflation so that the commuter has to fork out a small fortune just to get to work. I have a niece who has just had to finish work because the travel and child care costs do not make it viable!


They are not helping people to work. They are in fact preventing people from working. They are still rewarding the feckless and rewarding young girls for producing babies which will become a social problem in the future. Nothing is changing it is just being spun in a different way. The 'modernisers' will not loosen their grip on our society until you force them out.


Please remember that NoLab (my old name for the Labour party because they did not have any socialist principles) who are led by Red Ed (I stabbed my brother in the back) Miliband is not an alternative because he too is a 'moderniser' not batting for Britain. They had 13 years to put their stamp on the UK and they did it! They did everything that the EU wanted them to do and we, the indigenous population, will never recover from their calumny!


They don't want future generations to work they just want them to be prisoners of the state!

Trans European Network (TEN-T)

 

A few years ago I visited a friend who lived high in the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountains. While I was there I drove on a brand new motorway which was being constructed to carry traffic through the Sierra Nevada's down to the southern Mediterranean coast.  It was very spectacular but the most spectacular aspect was that the European Union (us!) had paid for it.


Yesterday Mr Slippery (sorry I meant David Cameron) announced that he was considering toll roads as some crucial roads were 'not fit for purpose' and he specifically mentioned the A14. I have got to the point that whenever any of these 'modernising' politicians make an announcement I immediately suspect skulduggery.


Why the A14? Well it leads from the port of Felixstowe to the M1/M6. What is beyond Felixstowe except the EU? Now I had read recently that the High Speed Rail project had been ordered by the EU and even if most of us found it a pointless and destructive exercise they were determined to complete a high speed rail link across Europe. That is why we will spend 32 billion pounds to reach Birmingham 15 minutes quicker. 


Surely I thought...this is not another EU project? So I looked it up and there it was TEN-T (Trans European Network). So, far from being our government running our country they are once again spending our money (on top of what we send annually to the EU) to complete yet another demand from the EU. 


What are the point of our politicians? What is left for them to decide? If Spain can get the EU to pay for their transport network then why can't we get some of our money back? Mr Slippery should just wring his hands and tell us that there is nothing that he can do. At least that would be the truth.

The Annual Snow Farce!

The race to the bottom is hotting up! Last week we got almost a week's warning that come Saturday evening we would be under a great heap of snow. Everyone knew it was coming and for once the forecasts were right on target!

Prior to that, amidst a blaze of publicity, Heathrow announced huge sums of money spent on modern snow removing equipment. This was after all the apologies for the chaos they created last year when one of the largest airports in the world could not function because it had snowed.

Now we do have cold snaps in this country but let's be honest this is not Scandanavia, it is not Russia and conditions recently right across Europe have been far worse than they have been at Heathrow. So to cancel flights in two consecutive years because of a snowfall smacks of incompetence.

If the people who run Heathrow cannot cope even though they have had ample warning then may I suggest that they step aside and let someone else try. This country is rapidly becoming a laughing stock across Europe. They are making jokes at our expense. These management boards claim huge salaries so it about time that the government insisted upon competence and regulated to ensure it!

Just to emphasise the point I wrote this last year (and other posts) so I guess nothing much has changed. Are we really surprised?

Are they trying to stop the public travelling?

At my age it never ceases to amaze me how much the British public will accept from a morally bereft government. It does not matter what government we elect the assault on our standard of living continues. For example the cost of travel is escalating at an unsustainable rate. I have just legally repeated the annual robbery which allows me to tax and insure my car.

Somehow the government has quietly raised road tax from a few pounds to a few hundred pounds. Somehow the government has increased the MOT fee many times above the inflation rate. The scandal regarding 'whiplash' injuries and false claims which pass undefended by insurance companies continues unabated. The slightest 'knock' results in thousands of pounds in 'compensation' and a subsequent huge rise in premiums.

Then we have the spiralling cost of fuel which should be the responsibility of government but is used as a stick to beat the public. The tax on fuel is a disgrace to a modern society but the real disgrace is the lack of regulation on the fuel providers. If you allow them every advantage they will take it.

So let's get rid of our motor vehicle and travel by public transport! Well at one point in our history we had a wonderful rail network which served us all and for a few pence we could board a tram or trolley bus. Today? Well thanks to one Doctor Beeching in the nineteen sixties many of the local rail stations disappeared. Many rural areas do not have public transport because the routes are not profitable. The costs are becoming prohibitive. Rail fares increase annually to the point where annual season tickets must be taken into account before offers of employment can be accepted.

Quite often it is cheaper to fly than to travel by rail but then someone in government invented airport tax and 'green' fuel charges to ensure that you had to think twice before lifting off.

I have a relative who recently had to give up her job because the cost of travel had overcome  her desire to work. She was better off staying at home! Now this really is a national scandal. There has been a huge debate recently about a 'cap' on benefits and some lunatic suggested that the national average for a working family was £26000! What planet are they on? £500 a week is not a cap it is a luxury! They are rewarding the feckless with a decent salary.

So the 'modernisers' continue their evil work and eventually only the rich will be allowed to travel. The working poor will be better off on benefits so they will stay at home. As ever we will sit in our homes watching the destruction of our nation and the loss of our values and shrug our shoulders. Meanwhile in Syria.....oh never mind!

Useless Britain (continued)

This is far worse than anything that even I could envisage. You may realise that I have often held our Political Class to be particularly useless when it comes to future planning. Now (whoopee) the head of the AA has decided that our government may have to plan for the future and prepare for bad winters. That leads me to question what they have been doing so far?

In the meantime the best that the airport authorities at Heathrow can do to help their customers is to ban the SKY news cameras. I heard that Gatwick bought two new snowploughs which has helped keep things going.

It has been left to members of the public to organise accommodation for those stranded at Heathrow and suddenly something is happening to relieve the misery and suffering. The airport authority is apparently doing nothing and saying even less. There appears still to be no information being relayed to passengers who are having to chase and pay for everything themselves.

It is an utter outrage and a national disgrace that we should treat our people like this but it is an indictment on The Political Class. They have allowed the planning, which used to take for granted, to evaporate while they massaged their own egos and fed off the public purse.

We only have ourselves to blame. We allow them to lie, deceive and prosper. If anyone opposes them like UKIP and the BNP we swallow the propaganda and continue to vote for the sleazemongers. I have long thought that in comparison to the BNP the mainstream politicians have far less integrity.

It is in their interest to retain this three party system and maintain a charade of opposition but no matter who forms a government nothing ever changes,

The snow will disappear, spring will arrive and we will continue supporting people who frankly don't give a tuppenny damn about the British people. Only those who had their Christmas ruined by neglect and incompetence will remember this period. One of the reasons that I write this blog is to jog my memory of events as they happen. Looking back now The Political Class has run the country into the ground and it is now beginning to bite!

Useless Britain

Five days ago I posted a warning about the prospect of bad weather arriving in the country over the Christmas period. I had a pretty good idea that as usual we would grind to a standstill but I thought that just possibly somebody would regard it as a duty if not a challenge to keep the sirports and railways operating.

Thousands travel prior to Christmas to link up with loved ones across the world and as usual our transport managers have let them down. Now I know that in some places the snow was quite fierce for short periods but that should only delay flights not stop them completely.

If some planes can leave then they can all leave but I get the impression that the highly paid airline executives head to the hills at the first sign of trouble. Perhaps that is the reason that airlines just ignore their customers who repeatedly claim that they cannot prise information out of them.

The real scandal however lies in the fact that our international airports have no emergency contingency plans for stranded travellers. Surely they could open a hangar somewhere with warm drinks and some dossing accommodation?
At least it would give people the impression that they cared but at the moment their attitude is 'tough luck you're on your own'!

It really isn't good enough and perhaps it is time that people stopped travelling with British companies until they learned lessons. I have posted before that if places like Gander Newfoundland can stay open then the technology is out there. Perhaps it is just the will which is absent.

The Winter Wonderland - a laughing stock...

As our transport infrastructure crumbles at the first sight of snow, the media is beginning to reflect the astonishment emanating from the rest of the world. In Yakutsk, Siberia where the temperatures regularly drop to -40 degrees a duty airport officer ironically offered to give advice to Gatwick Airport.

In the really cold countries where snow falls heavily and regularly they shake their heads sadly at the sight of inept travellers not being able to cope. How can we design trains for example that can't cope with snow? Why does Southern Rail just pack it in whenever the snow arrives? How come a major airport like Gatwick does not have the equipment to keep the runways clear when Gander, Newfoundland, continues in far worse conditions.

The local councils are claiming that they gritted the roads and yet it really is not apparent in many of the southern counties. Despite that, it still comes down to driving standards. What this cold snap has proven is that driving standards in this country are very poor. The driving test does not prepare people for adverse conditions or even ensures that they can handle their car under normal circumstances.

When one witnesses drivers (most of the outstanding examples I have to say are female) who cannot reverse, cannot park and have little practical knowledge of the highway code then it is hardly surprising that they cannot alter their style of driving in the snow. The driving test in Germany is much tougher and encompasses motorway and night driving and we should seriously look at following their example.

There should be a far reaching government enquiry into what has happened in the past few days and then we must take action. The airports and railways just cannot be allowed to quit so easily without incurring huge penalties and councils who fail to cope must also be held to account.

The British public deserve a better transport system. It has been allowed under the NoLab government to drift into chaotic disarray and The Coalition must get it back in line again.