Joined: Sep 06, 2004 Posts: 5315 Location: Smalltown New Zealand
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 6:47 pm Post subject: Re: UK Tories admit BR privatisation a crap idea
ubercynicmeister wrote:
NO: the Falklands War darn near neded in complete disaster for the Brits.
To quote Wellington, "A damned close run thing.".
Also the Admiral in charge was livid when he heard the BBC announcing his next movements, similarly when the govt announced major ops just prior to Goose Green.
Was this the first reality-TV war? _________________ "Complex problems have simple, easy to understand, wrong answers." - Henry Louis Mencken
(To be fair, some however say that Beeching was a nice chap. Paul McCartney even asked Dr Beeching to sort out Apple’s finances!)
My father (who came from Glasgow) talked extensively about Dr Beeching, who was put in place to do one thing: destroy Britain's rail network and drive business onto Road.
Apparently Dr Beeching had been given the task of refurbishing Glasgow's trams went onto British Rail, and he made an utter stuff up of that, too. Before Dr Beeching, Glasgow had a well-run, well organised system that was easy to use and cheap.
After Dr Beeching they had no trams at all but break-down prone trolley busses, which didn't last for very long and eventually were retired to be replaced by diesel busses.
So, after the utter stuff-up of the Glasgow Trams, in which Dr Beeching had been shown to be firmly in the pocket of the road lobby, he was given the job of wrecking British Rail.
And BOY did he do a good job, too! More route-miles abandoned, just as they could be made into profit-making...and strangely the stuff that was abandoned was the stuff that anyone could see would be needed by industry a few years after the closure of the rail line.
So, given the then-expanding industry didn't have access to rail, they used road instead. And thus the Road Lobby were really happy with their disciple, Beeching.
James Kunstler refers to this period as "brutal". In Australia, it's known as the Great Industrial Vandalism of the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's. of course they at least put something in the place of that which they destroyed - albiet not as good.
Starting in the 1980's, they downsized that idea, and just demolished industry without bothering to build ANYTHING in it's place. We thus do not have the locallised industry to replace that which we're about to lose access to because of Peak Oil.
This is why I believe we're screwed, and royally. _________________ .
"To Get Rich you have to:
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