And another thing…

Let me reiterate: there are no plans to remove Glasgow from the timetable.

At the moment!

Ministers will, at some point in the future, be asked to approve the structure of future services for the East Coast Mainline franchise.

And that’s when it will all change.

Sorry Tom, but I seem to remember cast iron promises by Labour being conveniently forgotten about previously . . . Reform of FPTP voting system springs to mind.

Your party certainly has “form” when it comes to the veracity of their statements.

Why should we believe anything Labour politicians say after the “Dodgy Dossier” which lead us into an illegal war?

Or “No more Boom & Bust”. LOL

Bit of a daft stunt by the new MP travelling to the airport on bus though. All he did, was show it’s possible to do so and a train wasn’t needed.

Actually feel sorry for the people of GNE now. SNP bigots, John Smeaton, Leftie loonballs and some Big Brother wannabe all standing for election.

Any chance of Labour actually doing something for the people of that area now?

Its good so see the clans so happy with one another. Now that the English have been removed from Scottish politics it just what I expected, no common cause at all just back stabbing and vitriol to each other.
The scotts have been spoilt for so long as soon as you attempt to stand on your own two feet it all gets nasty.

So when you run out of money again having ruined England you will have to go elswhere.

The scotts are very difficult people and the wall needs re building.

Well that’s good news, Tom, if the potential adverse publicity has closed down any thoughts of taking the option of stopping the link to Glasgow.

Really enjoying watching Labour and the racist Nats, tear each other apart at the moment. All the empty rhetoric and promises by both are beyong comparison though.

Johhny Norfolk can I say something, which may come in handy when you next go off on a mad rants?

It’s “Scots” and as for being spoiled…Did your Mother never tell you not to smoke Crack?

Johnny Norfolk
The scotts have been spoilt for so long as soon as you attempt to stand on your own two feet it all gets nasty
********************************************

Stand on their own two feet?

When did that happen?

I must have blinked.

cf the Times article which suggested that 249,000 Scots are net taxpayers. (I’m amazed there’s that many).

Tommy, can we please bury the nonsense about the SNP being a party of racists?

We have a party in the UK that *IS* full of racists, namely the BNP. Despite the slight similarity of names, there is NOTHING in common betwixt the two, and the SNP is in no way condoning, full of or even slightly racist.
They’re certainly not racist to the ethnic minorities in Scotland, since we can lay claim to the fact that Scotland’s first asian MSP was an SNP member (although sadly Bashir Achmad has passed on, and our Parliament now lacks any asians amongst it’s ranks)…
But that’s not the racism the SNP are being accused of here. For some, the absurd logic goes that because the SNP wish Scotland to be run from Scotland, by Scots, and not from England by the English that therefore the SNP hate the English. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I myself hail from southern climbs, and I have never once detected any note of distaste or anything else for my position due to my upbringing.

Moving onto the GARL, I do have to congratulate Labour that they have managed to swing the media et al into position where the SNP are being attacked for somehow being “anti-Glasgow” (despite Glasgow getting more money per capita than anywhere else in Scotland) because we had to cancel a hugely expensive project that may well have overran it’s budgets by hundreds of millions.
Of course, Labour have nothing to do with that, because it’s not Labour that have cut £500 million from our budget. It’s not Labour that are stopping us having borrowing powers so we can build the Forth road bridge now but pay over time, instead of having to use almost the entire capital projects fund to pay for it up-front.
Nope, nothing to do with Labour that at all. Gotta hand it to you Tom, good spinning done there.

Labour seem to have taken the Große Lüge to heart here. Let the people swallow a lie so huge and preposterous that it can’t help but be true. Except it’s not of course. But since when have the truth and Labour been bedfellows?

“Tommy, can we please bury the nonsense about the SNP being a party of racists?”

Sure, so long as you stop calling me “Tommy”…

Off-topic but…

in his response to Cameron’s response to the Queen’s speech Captain Insensible said that The New Deal had got two million people back into work.

Two million!!!!!

The man needs help – truly he does.

Oh come on lets get real. By next December there will be a double track electric railway via Airdrie and Bathgate from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Sure you can not run through to London from the low level stations but as services get better the running of Big Expensive East coast trains to Glasgow, the long way via Carstairs, just looks moreand more silly.

I believe there are plans to electrify via Falkirk. Maybe then a through train would be worthwhile.

Failed Maths O Level Campbell
It’s not Labour that are stopping us having borrowing powers so we can build the Forth road bridge now but pay over time, instead of having to use almost the entire capital projects fund to pay for it up-front.
*****************************************

Pssst I think we’ve got quite enough borrowing in the economy already, don’t you.

Particularly of the off-balance sheet pretend-it-doesn’t-exist variety.

(anyway isn’t one Forth Road Bridge enough?)

Last time I was in Scotland it looked like a giant council estate. Jobs provided, houses provided, tax credits provided, better health care than England provided. The list just goes on and on. So as always Labour just picks a fight with everyone instead of working with the SNP who want Scotland to stand on its own 2 feet.Labour should be supporting the SNP in trying to achieve this. But no it just wants to cause trouble as usual.It wants a dependant Scotland grateful for all its people are given. They blamed England when all the time the problem was the Labour party who only keeps support by keeping people down and beholden to the party.

The boy who beat you up at school was Scottish, wasn’t he, Johnny?

This is the point in the thread where I say that the railways should be re-nationalised and that there is no longer a cocktail bar on the Coronation Scot.

However, as for GARL (the acronym sounds like a Dr Who monster..”Doctor, we are being attacked by the Garl, we are going to have to immanentize the eshcaton”.)lest we forget, it was Labour, who at the outset of their refulgent and utterly mindblowing crack at running the country, as one of its first acts of vandalism, cancelled the Nightstar project.

For those who don’t know, Nightstar was going to be the flagship through sleeper train service from Glasgow to Paris. Yes, Glasgow to fecking PARIS! Can you imagine that!

We are not talking about plans on the back of a fag packet here, the carriages had been designed, built and were ready to be commissioned! And they cancelled it! At a cost of millions to the taxpayer. The redundant, state of the art, rolling stock ended up in Canada.

So let’s not get all worked up about the SNP canceling a drawing board project during the worst financial crisis since the cavemen discovered the price of mammoth oil had plummeted to less than one wife per barrel.

As a Mac Donald we used to search out the English for ” special treatment”.

Some of my best friends are Scotts.

did you like that one Tom– Scotts.

Its never been right up there since John Major let you have that stone thing back.
I would return it if I were you and piece and harmony will return to your land. You can then unite against the English with renewed vigor.
We could have Mr Salmond as The Prince of Scotland so he could stand in for The Queen most times.

Tom The Scots hate Labour and so do the English and the Welch. Dont let it get you down it will all be over soon. Oh and by the way what are you going to cut to pay for all this home health care in England.

Thanks to Pendolino for a useful contribution, and didn’t know about the Nightstar project WW, that is depressing.

Math, are your ’southern climbs’ in the Lake District? Sorry!

@TomThe boy who beat you up at school was Scottish, wasn’t he, Johnny?

…and it’s about time you apologised, Tom.

only very slightly off topic but is anyone else reminded of the great days of the race to the north in which two great victorian railway companies competed to see who could hold the record for the fastest time london to scotland.in the end it was stopped when it became known that locomotive crews were going through restricted sections well in excess of speed limits

Johnny, as a “Scott” (not a “scot”) I resent being portrayed as a Scotsman. I was going to let it lie after Tommy’s comment but you’ve repeated it.

Scottish people are “Scots” not “Scotts”!!

Sure, so long as you stop calling me “Tommy”…

LOL

Oh, and Sammy, a couple of points:
a) My name is Math, stop with the “cute” puns, guaranteed to get me raging.
b) Despite the massive problems in London, Scotland isn’t too bad off, and I can’t swear to it but I do recall reading something about Scotland’s budget actually being in surplus overall. Of course come independence we’ll no doubt have to assume some of Gordon’s Great Bank Buyout scheme (even though HBOS’s bad debts was all Halifax related. I’ll give you RBS though), but even so, you have to borrow money for big schemes like this, else you can’t do many; that money stimulates the economy AND we get a new bridge..
c) Apparently the old bridge is, well, old. It could be patched up, but it’d only be hedging the problem for a later Government which unlike London Labour, we intend to be us, so we’ve got some long-term thoughts on this. Not to mention that closing the forth road bridge for over a year would cause absolute chaos. It may actually cost the local economy more that the difference between a patch-up and a new bridge.
Either way we do it (and it looks like being up-front since the dictators in the Treasury aren’t doing as our Government is asking) we’ll be paying for it. Difference is, if it’s done over a decade or two, it’s nice and gentle. Up front, well, no other capital projects then. If the people in Glasgow want to blame someone for GARL, may I suggest the list starts at 11 Downing Street….

Apparently Nightstar was regarded as not a viable proposition because of its being in competition with low-cost air fares.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Eurostar

Remember that it was Major’s government which privatised the railways – which lined the pockets of the shareholders, but created a worse service and chronic underfunding. Oh, and the taxpayer was well and truly ripped off as well.

did you like that one Tom– Scotts.

Ground control to Major Tom – we seem to have strayed into the parallel universe of Planet Johnny Norfolk.

It is a waste of time challenging people who accuse the SNP of being racists/bigots/a Scottish version of the BNP etc.

No-one in Scotland thinks that and no-one with any interest in UK politics outside of Scotland thinks that.

When someone makes that kind of accusation they are either genuinely ignorant or just trying to wind people up.

When someone posts such comments on a political blog it’s a safe bet that it is the latter.

@Nicky

The taxpayer should never have owned the railways in the first place.

Why is any government, who should have a pretty narrow mandate, in the business of business? Who said that digging up coal or oil, or transporting people round the country, should have anything to do with elected officials. If you want an efficient business you start with hard-nosed businessmen, not some MP who happened to win a local popularity contest.

On a more related not, why the heck does the east coast line go to Glasgow? There is a frequent and fast service from Edinburgh to Glasgow that people could change to.

And why is the M8 not a four or five lane motorway in both directions for the 40-50 mile distance between Scotland’s two main cities? Why does the ‘express’ train stop in stupid little towns when a half hourly true express would get from on to the other in under 30 minutes, which is less than most people’s trips into the city centre from the suburbs.

Once again, there is no link between the release of the Lockerbie bomber and the West Coast High Speed Rail link being funded by the UK taxpayer (yet to be announced).

It is a very entertaining interview with Elaine Holt. I particularly like this bit.

She said: “It is an option to not run the east-coast services over to Glasgow, and if the service is taken away then another operator will step in and do those services.

“There are only six services a day (on the Glasgow to Edinburgh route] and they are very lightly loaded. The decision is just about making best use of the railway.

“Scottish customers can expect to benefit from improved cleanliness in our toilets and improved food in first class, as well as the removal of the £2.50 per person seat reservation charge.”

Seamless. OK I have no doubt the Scotsman decided to remove all the bits in between cutting the six services a day and having cleaner cludgies.

Good to know there will be a better quality of grub in first class!

I once had the unfortunate task of sitting next to a table full of the nasty Nats top players at a bevvy session up near Glencoe.

All very pleasant and charming to begin with. However a few sherbets the true Nationalist came to the fore. Spewing anti English hatred was the norm and all the problem’s of society blamed on the English. Hence the reason I say they are racist. They were racists, they were bigots and odious little people dressed in tweed and woolen knitwear.

However I may have been mistaken. After reading Mr Norfolk’s comments, I’m starting to think Independence would be a good idea.

What anight it would have been In Aviemore, if Johhny Norfolk and tartan transvestites had got together.

Yeah I am sure we all believe the Nats top players go for regular bevvy sessions near Glencoe wearing tweed and woollen knitwear where they spew out anti English hatred.

It happens all the time. You just can’t keep Nicola Sturgeon away from the tweed and Salmond loves his woollen knitwear. And they all love a good piss up.

Anyway on the topic of the post, I haven’t really followed this debate to be honest but is the issue not so much about getting to London as the points in between? York for example, which is quite a popular destination for weegies.

I have been to York myself by train. In fact I had a bit of a fight with the ticket inspector as I had bought a ticket to London because it was cheaper than buying a ticket to York. He wanted to charge me the full fare to York because I wasn’t going all the way to London. It took some time to prevail but I eventually succeeded in persuading him that it was quite unreasonable to charge someone extra for travelling a shorter distance than they had paid for. It would be a shame to deprive future generations of that sort of fun.

Nicky,some web sites carry that myth about Nightstar being commercially unviable. All major capital projects seem to go through a “wobbly” stage whereby noises off mutter about it being cancelled. It happened to the entire channel tunnel project and God knows how many millions of taxpayer’s money was pumped into that. Nightstar was cancelled at a cost of hundreds of millions of pounds. The decision was political and spiteful.

As for the Easyjet argument, you could apply that to the East Coast Line and the crazy rail fares. Why should the government subsidise a service, let’s say from Bristol to Edinburgh, when the cost of a return trip by Easy Jet is about £60, and a walk on rail fare costs as much as a terraced house in the Rhondda Valley?

We are the only country in the civilised bits of Europe which has allowed our rail infrastructure to become moribund and fragmented and prohibitively expensive:

According to Christian Wolmar:

“Under British Rail, we didn’t get much subsidy into the rail system. Now we get an awful lot of subsidy into the rail system and yet the fares are still high,”

Until the rail system comes back under one umbrella, instead of this insane carve up by companies who outbid each other and then fail, we are heading for meltdown.

Indy

Did I mention Sturgoen or Salmond? Why wouldn’t Nats attend a function near Aviemore? I know this may be hard to grasp, when your entire purpose in life is to blame others for Scotland’s ills.

But many of us Scots, think of the Nats as anti English, hence the racist tag. In fact, if the evidence of my little night out was anything to go by, I’ll be moving out of the country if that lot ever get in power.

Should have said just for you Indy. It was a wee night out to celebrate the end of a general election.

Will you be condeming the Scotland fans for singing anti English songs in Cardiff at the weekend Indy?

Its not just the Nats. Tom is racist against Norfolk people. He calls them all sorts of names. He has never been here and has no idea.

I have been to Scotland many times so I know what it is like there. Its not easy to find many wearing kilts to work these days.
My first visit to glasgow I stayed in the North British Hotel. Menu in french only and very traditional. It was halloween and all the children had turned their jackets inside out, blackened their faces and were running all over the place.( do they still do that) Just thought I would share that piece of very interesting information with you. oh yes you could leave your shoes outside your room door and in the morning they had been cleaned.The staff were very good indeed I remember .It must be 40 yeras ago.

This may be hard for you to grasp Tommy but my entire purpose in life is not to blame others for Scotland’s ills. The only people responsible for Scotland’s ills – be it an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, poor housing, an underperforming economy or high levels of violence – are the Scots.

Some of those ills can be addressed through the devolved parliament, some I believe require the Scottish Parliament to have the full range of powers available to most other nations. That’s what independence would deliver.

There is a perfectly respectable case to be put for Scotland remaining within the Union; but if that is what you believe you should put that case instead of making up stories about “top Nats” clad in tweed suits and woolly jumpers drunkenly abusing the English. That’s just nonsense and we all know it.

Indy

Now I’m a reasonable sort of bloke and don’t take exception to differing political viewpoints. However I do take exception to being called a liar. Now grow up and stop acting like all Nats appear to do in times of debate – mudsling.

Are you honestly going to sit there and have the bare faced cheek to tell me yout party is not riddled with anti English racists?

I noticed you ignored my question about the tartan transvestites and their racist, some would sould bigoted songs about the English in Cardiff.

PS I don’t really have to make any arguement for remaining in the Union. The Scottish people have done this at every election since time began. SNP votes were a protest vote and it’s now time to start acting sensibly again.

PPS True about the highland racists.

Tom
Perhaps the story of London-Glasgow East Coast trains being cut came from this paragraph of a DfT letter dated November 2?
“Through services to/from Glasgow are required and DfT is discussing with Transport Scotland, NXEC, Arriva Cross Country and Network Rail whether they would be better provided by AXC instead of the ICEC operator. Glasgow – London flows are well-served by West Coast Main Line services following timetable improvements on that route, and the important markets between Glasgow, North East England and West Yorkshire would benefit from through services between Glasgow, Leeds and Sheffield that could be provided by AXC.”
It seems that there are plans to remove Glasgow but that nothing has yet been decided. I’m sure there’s enough of a reporter left in you to recognise a good story when you see one?

Are you honestly going to sit there and have the bare faced cheek to tell me yout party is not riddled with anti English racists?

Yip.

And unless you can put some names to the tweed and wollen clad people you described as ‘top nats’ then yes I am doubting your word.

After all, if you don’t know who they were how do you know they were ‘top nats’?

First Capital Connect – A sucess???????

Clearly the writer hasn’t has to rely on FCC’s services in London . A complete disaster. Yes we have a partly ‘refreshed’ gaudily painted pink set of trains but they are unreliable , slow , expensive , often cancelled or late and dirty ! Is this success? I suspect the wrath of london’s voters will affect the election result . Sadly the Conservatives offer nothing to suggest things will improve and the franchise idea was thier idea in the first place .