THE UK RAIL RIP-OFF: PART 3 – NEGATIVE REDISTRIBUTION RIDES THE RAILS

A Northern Rail Class 156 Sprinter, calls at Castleton Moor on the Esk Valley Railway with a Whitby to Middlesbrough service. This line was saved quite arbitrarily from the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, and yet for 20 years since privatisation has seen only a couple of trains per day in each direction. Unforgivably, none of these services are suitable for commuting to either of the line's termini. This railway awaits an imaginative and innovative operator who will maximise its undoubted potential at the heart of the North Yorkshire Moors National Park.

In last week's post Privatisation Profiteers Ride the Rails (at your expense), ANDY FLEMING examined the Tories'

half baked, inefficient, horrendously expensive and disastrous privatisation experiment with our railways. 

In the last post in this series he examines why Britain's rail network now the most fragmented and expensive in Western Europe to both passenger and tax payer alike, has become a cash cow to train operating companies who reap the profits, while you and I pay the losses.

Following the botched privatisation of British Rail in 1994, hopes were high that a change to a New Labour government in 1997 would see re-nationalisation of this strategic national asset in a country crying out for an affordable, reliable, safe and fully integrated environmentally-friendly public transport system.

But of course we didn’t see any such change. The key was in the word ‘New’. What we received was just a continuation of Major’s full-baked policies in railways and elsewhere, just different cronies enacting them. Sure there was the odd left winger full of bluster who was ready to drop all of their principals, in order to give the impression that there may be a little socialisation of the economy but of course it was a mirage. As would become clear following Tony Blair and George Bush’s illegal Iraq War of 2003, the petroleum industry was still pulling the strings despite the environmental rhetoric and run-ins with hard working truck drivers.

This phoney environmentalism was however a deceitful and duplicitous way of launching a full scale assault on the motorist with crippling petrol taxes, while simultaneously John Prescott was announcing an investment in railways so grand that the Victorians would have been jealous. It was of course all lies. Most of the £30 billion funding for the network announced in early 1999 wasn’t new money at all, just recycled promises from the last days of Major’s corrupt and sleazy administration. New Labour were of course masters of lies, dishonesty and deceit (these grotesque human traits were of course spun as ‘spin’ to the gullible).

It was brought home to me one night when BBC Look North carried a visit by Tony Blair to a primary school in Ferryhill, part of his Sedgefield constituency. One little girl asked the Prime Minister a fantastic question that deserved a fully honest answer.

“Please can you re-open Ferryhill station as there are a lot of people here who can’t afford cars”, she said.

His answer would be the reason why I wouldn’t vote Labour ever again,

“I’d love to be in a position to do it, but it would be just far too expensive”.

It was clear where this charlatan’s loyalties lay and they certainly weren’t with his constituents’ needs in a civilised society for even a basic public transport system. And he certainly couldn’t care less about the environment.

BAKER'S DOESN'T

David Christopher Kelly, CMG was a British scientist and expert on biological warfare, employed by the British Ministry of Defence, and formerly a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

How come MP and author has stopped asking questions about death of Dr David Kelly?

 byHARRY BLACKWOOD

When I was sacked eleven years ago as editor of the Hartlepool Mail after political interference from Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson. I received support from a very unlikely source - a Liberal Democrat MP.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker and
author of the book The Strange Death of
David Kelly. Since being appointed
Minister of State for the Home Office
 in October, 2013, his research on Dr
Kelly's highly suspicious death has
been inexplicably discontinued.

Norman Baker didn't strike me as much better than the average MP, but the old saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend" sprang to mind and in fairness to Baker he asked a few very pertinent questions.

For reasons that will become apparent I was very interested when Baker was appointed Minister of State for the Home Office last October. You see this is the sort of government position that allows access to some of the most sensitive material in the government's secret files.

So, as Baker is the author of the only book ever to be written about the death of Iraq weapons inspector David Kelly, I was hopeful that he might delve into the vaults at the Home Office and answer some of the questions that were left unanswered in his book. I mean, how could he not?

Well six months has passed and nothing. This proving that Baker has the same level of integrity of the rest of them - zero.

I've always been convinced that Kelly was killed. Reading Baker's book made me more certain.

It's ten years since Kelly's death and there's hardly been a month gone by that I haven't read something in a newspaper or magazine about the mystery. I'm now more sure than ever that he was 'got'.

It astonishes me that there are people who believe the official bullshit about this case. To use an old song "there are more questions than answers". Norman Baker has obviously given up asking any questions so here's a few that really bug me.

BLAIR'S BIGGEST LIE CONDEMNS A GENERATION TO SLAVERY

Tony Blair's education policies represent the biggest con trick in political history.The gullible, who went along with his deceit are now realising just how cruel this charlatan's lies actually were. Because there are few jobs for graduates or anyone else, just unemployment and mountains of tuition fee debt.

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

WHENEVER I hear Labour Party supporters discussing Tony Blair, I always think of that fantastic scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian; "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The man who Labour Party members thought of as a Messiah is now treated like a foul fart in a lift. So reviled is Blair that Labourites are pretty much trying to airbrush him from history. And no bloody wonder. The Labour imposter achieved less than zero and those who were taken in by him know it.

But it's not the Iraq war or the other heinous stuff that Blair did that I really take exception to. No, his big crime as far as I am concerned is when he mouthed those immortal three words: EDUCATION. EDUCATION. EDUCATION. The biggest con trick in political history.

Blair pressed all the right buttons and used all the right language. He wanted all kids to have access to good schools. He wanted all kids to go to university. He wanted kids from council estates to go to the top universities. He wanted working class kids to become barristers and surgeons and nuclear physicists. Everything was possible in his new Labour dream. It was all bullshit to hide the truth.

BEER, FOOTBALL AND FISH AND CHIPS

Peter Mandelson, Prince of Darkness (left) and former Prime Minister and War Criminal Tony Blair (right).

How Blair and Mandelson Hijacked the Labour Party.

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

I'm a man with a very good constitution, so there's not very much that makes me feel nauseous. But if I cast my mind back to the victory celebrations following Labour's 1997 election success, I'm guaranteed to come over all bilious.

The sight of Podgy Prescott dancing with his tarty wife was nauseating enough and the sight of Mandy, Prince of Darkness singing along to "Things Can Only Get Better" had me reaching for the sick bucket. But what really did it for me was all of those 'genuine, ordinary hardworking' Labour supporters worshipping at the feet of Blair like he was some sort of Messiah. Oh yeah Messiah, at criminal, murderer and money grabbing con man.

It still boils my piss to this day thinking back how smarmy Blair arrived in the former mining village of Trimdon (just a few miles from my front door) and started glad handing local party members as he laid on his best acting to ingratiate his way into getting one of the safest Labour seats in the country.

It was truly sickening to hear local party chairman John Burton regaling people with the story about how Blair had turned up at his house one night and there was European football on the television "Tony sat and watched the match with a can of beer and we didn't talk politics" or some such bollocks was what Burton used to tell people ad nauseum. What Burton failed to realise was that Blair would have drunk horse piss filtered through a shitty sock and watched reruns of Crossroads if it meant he'd secure the nomination.