Lord Adonis. Phwoar.
The contradiction in terms that is the unelected Lord Adonis has been speaking out in the last few days about electrifying the rail lines in the north west, namely between Preston, Manchester and Liverpool.
When this scheme was initially hinted at by Alistair Darling, the track between Preston and Blackpool was not included in this plan, indeed Lord Adonis already announced the electrification of the line between Liverpool and Manchester in July this year at a cost of £100million.
But a week or so after the Chancellor’s comments, miraculously the whole plan is revealed to encompass the Blackpool-Preston rail line as well: something many of us have been asking for for a long time.
Speaking at Blackpool North Station, which he described as “one of the best in the North West” because of its tidiness and cleanliness, Lord Adonis said: “It will improve the quality of the rail service – it’s fundamental for the Blackpool economy and a good deal for rail passengers.”
The plan states that this will be completed in 2016 at a cost of £200million.
Skipton-born Joan “4.5% Swing and I’m Out” Humble has been desperately associating herself with this project and had probably been begging Adonis to include it in this press release plan. Nice bit of electioneering eh? Announce everything that everyone wants just before an election in the hope that people will save your bacon.
I’m a little amused by the way this story has come out. Adonis has been actively trying to sell us the concept of electric rail. We know it’s faster. We know it’s greener. It’s as though electric rail is a new thing, but it’s not. It’s like when we were sold that the Pendolino tilting trains a few years ago were the latest best thing ever. They might be, but the Deutsche-Bundesbahn has been using them in one form or other since the 1970′s. And even now they are deployed in the UK we can’t run them at full speed because the West Coast Main Line doesn’t support in-cab signalling.
We need to cut the crap. Our lines should have been electrified a long time ago – lack of investment in infrastructure from Labour, again.
I was in Berlin a few years ago and their railway system basically runs itself. You don’t see any staff, but you know that if you don’t buy a ticket and you’re unlucky enough to meet one of the few inspectors, you get an immense fine and a tough looking blonde in Lederhosen ramming the butt of an assault rifle up your arse. The amount of unnecessary staff at Blackpool North alone is enough to build the pyramids of Giza in a week. What is the fucking point in having those automatic turnstiles if it requires a member of staff per turnstile to supervise because it fucks up all the time?
Back to the point. Of course, electrification of the railways is a boost to the town, but far from ideal for the 7000 new middle and high income homes that are to be built on the former green belt with only a motorway and some car dealerships for company. Imagine for a second, though, if it were possible to run a light rail or tram service from the end of the motorway into Blackpool North. Or even better, central.
It seems a shame that we get this yet Blackpool North remains the same and cuts are planned for the south line. It seems a shame that we get this yet our £100million trams project doesn’t bother to link to the station or anywhere of any residential density. It seems a shame that this is announced now as a blatent electioneering ploy and probably won’t happen.
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A good point somebody made on the LEP site the other day suggested ‘funny how these are all strong Labour areas’ and indeed they are Preston, Manchester and Liverpool are all solid Labour turf and as usual they get the investment while Blackpool is left to rot.
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This scheme is an election bribe, I would love it to happen butI doubt it.Blackpool has been in need of this for nearly 50 years!
Whoever is in next year will cancel it: twats!
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Exactly I would love it to actually happen but I don’t believe a word from anyone in the Labour Party. They have lied, cheated and destroyed this country for 12 miserable years. What makes me laugh is people are gullible enough to believe them when all they’ve done is lie. They always say ‘one more chance’, that was 8 fucking years ago when they didn’t keep any of the promises they made in 1997 yet they got re-elected in 2001.
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nulabour =nuliebour
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Precisely, but don’t say that on the Gazette, the stupid word filter has blocked ‘Liebour’, I also noticed the other day a rant (aka letter) by Jack Croysdrew was left out, it was published in the paper but not on the website. Typical pro-Liebour censorship.
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now that guy is an anal wart
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Too true, he even looks a bit like Victor Meldrew (I saw a photo of him when he was moaning about the Illumination ‘prison bars’) which is quite ironic as they both provide side-splitting laughs. Victor with his unique brand of surrealness and bizzare situations in One Foot in the Grave and Croysdill with those ridiculously unfounded rants in the Gazette. Every letter he writes has to be political no matter what the subject. He could write a letter saying how wonderful it was to have the Royal Variety in Blackpool and then he would find some way of turning it political. He would say something like; just a shame I had to dodge buses and taxes in St Johns Square because Peter Callow failed to plan ahead. Eventhough Labour supporters are always quick to claim credit for any existing regeneration works until something goes wrong. Like the college, when it was moving to Central Drive, the Labour supporters were smugly muttering another triumph for the Labour Government investing in Blackpool. Then when the funding fell through they suddenly decide ‘The Tories lost the funding’ no they fucking didn’t Born and Bread Blackpool lad and frustrated of blackpool (and I know you read this site, so bite me!) so get your facts straight for once and accept your beloved Labour has fucked Blackpool up the wrong way again.
I swear when I mention Jack Croysdill I suddenly take on his personality and go into rant mode.
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Labour are human excrement.
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That’s certainly what they treat the British public like.
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Do you really need to print letter were readers use the F word. I think you should have a po0licy not to use letters using such language.
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I’m sorry but what gives you the right to tell Phil how to run his website? This is a blog, we come on here because the Gazette website has become nothing short of a joke, it has a distinct pro-Labour bias and comments are being maliciously deleted or deleted for no reason and the Gazette is not being very proactive on it. We come on here to sometimes have a rant and if we want to use the F word when we are angry we will and nobody can stop us.
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Out of interest, what are your views on your new MP for Blackpool North and Cleveleys seeing as you had a bit of a campaign against Mr Maynard in some of your Gazette letters?
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The election is over. perhaps you hadn’t noticed
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I know the election is over, all I asked was what your views on Mr Maynard were. You had a smear campaign against him ever since he was selected in Blackpool North criticising him because he moved to the area after selection and wasn’t originally from Blackpool. I might remind you Marsden and Humble are not from Blackpool either and Marsden still doesn’t reside in the area after 13 years. Mr Maynard is already proving to be an excellent MP and I am glad Humble is gone, I am just extremely disappointed for Blackpool that Marsden stayed in.
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Lets hope labour vote in Diane Abott as leader shes the best person to keep em out for decades;total cretin that it is.
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That sick and vile John McDonnell would have been an even better candidate. He said the other day ‘If I could go back to the 80s I would assassinate Margaret Thatcher myself’. It sickens me that he has not been forced to resign for such disgusting and vile remarks. I think this appalling man should not be allowed to be hold public office.
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hes a typical labour piss stained toerag, the same party that spawned a generation of freak producing,sponging,leeching machines like the Pollitts;who defecate freaks to avoid having to work.
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looks like tuition fees are gonna go up now
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10278662.stm
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They should not even be considering putting them up, fees are high enough already. I think fees are unfair and hypocritical as it stands. Justify fees to me Croysdill, it was your beloved Liebour Government that took away free education. Now students are facing massive debts to get a good career. Marsden however came from a very privileged background and paid nothing for his prestigious education.
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” Good old Tories hey TB
Soon be just the elite rich able to go to university. Thats what you voted for wan`t it.
PS
this is just the start of a Tory class war they don`t beleive working class people deserve a chance.
Fox hunting repeal next ” TALLY HO “
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Don’t be so ridiculous; You need to get your facts right. It was LABOUR who waged war on the working classes introducing tuition fees and abolishing the 10p tax band. Also it was LABOUR who commissioned the review of tuition fees, so don’t you blame the Tories. Universities will not just be for the rich. Under a Conservative Government in the past you got FREE EDUCATION. It was Liebour that ended free education. Also I think you will find this is a right-leaning/Conservative blog, so please take your left-wing baiting somewhere else and leave me alone.
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Lord adonis has a phallus for a nose, cos he likes nasal sex……..whats that you may ask? Fuck knows is the reply, lol
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I quite like Adonis. He seems to be genuinely interested in his portfolio and I think he was probably one of the few Labour (even though he’s a Lib Dem, really) apparatchiks in the Blair administration to have an ounce of integrity.
Despite Brown’s bitter heel-dragging, Adonis was behind one of Labour’s few reforms that have seen marked progress, notably academies and trust schools, going as far as he could in a Labour government to advance quality of choice in education.
He seems to keep out of hot-air politics – preferring to leave that sort of thing to the likes of Humble.
I’m not against electrification of the track at all – I very much welcome it. But it should not be done at a time when we really are sinking in debt. It’s abhorrent that Humble chooses to use our money as an electioneering weapon to save her own political life, although I doubt that her lobbying made a single bit of difference to any decision taken on the matter.
It would be fantastic if the project is self-financing, but there is no sign of that being the case here. So far as I can see, I have not read of any detail that mentions that Network Rail money will be ring-fenced to pay back the costs of this over time.
People have mentioned about how electrification will mean that Virgin can come back to serve the resort with a London link, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. If there’s a demand for a Blackpool-London service – and I mean actual demand with actual money, not the ‘demand’ where people post on The Gazette site and say “I want a Virgin Blackpool to London service and I want the streets to be paved with gold!” – then I can’t see any reason why such a service shouldn’t be looked in to again. But it needs to be commercially viable: there’s no point doing it if the trains run empty, even if it soothes the egoes of some locals. You can’t blame train operators for not wanting to do something that won’t work.
Beyond that however, I can think of few major advantages that will contribute to our local economy.
The biggest difference will be in an upgrade of rolling stock, however that has more to do with Northern Rail being shite. First Transpennine run some great trains, yet are still diesel-powered.
Services might be a bit quicker, but it only takes around 20-25 minutes to get to Preston from Blackpool North, anyway. They’ll still have to stop at places like Poulton, Kirkham and Layton. Still, if it could get commuters to Preston in 15 minutes or so, I’d be impressed.
They might be a bit quieter… But it’s never really made a difference to me. Especially not compared to having to sit in the same carriage as some twat with his mobile playing gangsta on speakerphone. Will electrification fix that?
And as for greener… So what? This might upset a few people, but I’ve never really had energy sources for trains at the top of my list of priorities.
If anything, this is a big win for Preston. Anything that makes it more comfortable and quicker for commuters getting out of Blackpool to go to work there has got to be good for their economy, right? At a time when Labour will be looking to bolster their core vote, I’m sure this will be spun as a ‘Preston project’ in central Lancashire constituencies.
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Also very true if anybody benefits it is Pretend City, I am not a commuter so the only way I’ll benefit is a quicker journey to Manchester and Liverpool the North West’s true cities. Sorry I’m in Jack Croysdill mode tonight.
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He may have some integrity but he is also one of Blair’s architects of my biggest bugbear; tuition fees, he is widely seen as the creator of that unfair hypocritical policy that has taken free education away. So as you can imagine he is not exactly top of my Xmas card list.
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I bet Terry Bennett isnt either, lol!
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Of course not, you know I forgot all about him, he has been very quiet in recent months, not seen one of his hilariously deluded letters for ages, not that I’m complaining though. Well as you’d expect nobody with any association to Liebour is on my list this year. Not until they apologise for the damage Labour has done to Britain, to Blackpool and to every hard working person
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Theres a great letter from my WBC councillor here:
http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/letters/Letters–December-16.5916636.jp
It sums up the whole rail thing, perfectly.
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It is a great letter he can see through her superficial political pointscoring like the rest of us. No doubt Clive Gruntshaw or some other Labour lackey will be writing in blasting the letter and praising what a ‘hard working and dedicated’ MP she is. I also agree they should get the Poulton-Fleetwood line up and running again, most of the lines are still there it just needs a bit of work. Putting Fleetwood back on the railway network would give the town a big boost.
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I think Don MacNaughton is an absolute tosser. However, on this occasion he has hit the nail on the head!
I was at a meeting on the 7th December in Manchester with Liz Meek, Regional Director – Government Office for the North West, Phil Woolas MP – Minister for the North West, Sir Howard Bernstein, Chief Executive – Manchester City Council and there was a good discussion about electrification and not once was the Blackpool – Preston line mentioned, except by me!
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Very interesting, although not surprising Blackpool always seems to be left out. Out of curiosity how did you get to attend such a meeting?
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It was a civil service event. It was an opportunity for managers to question senior civil servants and Govt officials. I specifically asked Bernstein what the chances were of securing funding for the electrification of Blackpool to Preston but all I got was non-answers from him and Woolas. They were a bit more forthcoming on other questions regarding the North West economy though, all in all pretty positive!
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Thanks I was just curious, sounds like an interesting meeting.
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Don is my council, I will be voting for him again.Councillors must write more letters on these issues to show that they are in touch.
Clive Gruntshaw is a waste of space, I would vote for Paul Maynard to keep him out.
If the conservatives become more like proper conservatives I would join them.
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