Alistair Darling has one last chance to expunge his unconstitutional role by scrapping CRASSrail hole plot NOW... on grounds of its being unsustainabl

Alistair Darling has one last chance to expunge his unconstitutional role by scrapping CRASSrail hole plot NOW... on grounds of its being unsustainable...


Gordon Brown must quash Treasury attempts to cut Crossrail
06.06.08

The politics of property, with Steven Norris


CRASS talk by CRASS rail plugging timeserving, lobbyists’ man Steve Norris PROVES how CRASS his plea for more wasteful Crossrail expenditure is....


By©Muhammad Haque
0120 Hrs GMT
London
Friday 6 June 2008


Of all people, STEVE NORRIS has come back in the form of a Ken Livingstone clone.... And suprise surprise, he appears to be ‘back’ as a promoter of Big Business lobbys!
Norris is ‘back’ to cry for £Billions of public money to be given o Big Business construction conglomerates who can pocket it and the overruns that they are set to make on it....

Steve Norris has been ‘revived’ via Boris Johnson. But I sense a subtle ploy by Boris Johnson here who may achieve more than he may have bargained for: discredit BOTH Norris and the CRASSly conceived Crossrail plot...

That is of course assuming that Boris has read the writings on the wall about the seriously wasteful, seriously flawed and ill-conceived Crossrail...

If the contents of what Norris has agreed to be his by-line in a piece I reproduce below [it has been published on the web site of a property conglomerate only in the past hour] is anything go by then Norris remains as undemocratic now as he ever was.

And he has not learnt anything about the basic facts of transport in London.

Crossrail is NOT the answer to the transport needs of London .

What will solve and significantly address the substantial transport needs and problems in and of London will be the overdue, comprehensive and caring attention to be paid to the EXISTING infrastructure in London and in the suburbs....

Alistair Darling must not pay any attention to Norris and he, Darling, has one way out of the constitutional law liabilities that he faces.

That is, by scrapping the CRASSrail hole scam [contained in the ‘Crossrail Bill’] now he can avoid being held liable in a court of law....

Khoodeelaar! will call Alistair Darling to give evidence in courts...REPEAT COURTS....... Unless of course he sees sense and drops the crass wasteful, diversionary, obsolete 'project' which is in fact an elaborate scam.....

NOW...

As we have been advising him since at least February 2005 when he introduced the CRASS bill in the UK House of Commons.....

[To be continued]

AADHIKARonline QUOTING the CRASSrail hole plot plug that has been published on a property conglomerate web site this morning [Friday 6 June 2008]


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By Steven Norris

If you visit my office you may well have your coffee served in a very special mug. It was a gift from business group London First, which has been a long-term campaigner for Crossrail, and is decorated with a copy of one of those Evening Standard screamer boards bearing the immortal words ‘Crossrail victory – Brown go ahead’.

It dates from 5 October last year when the capital’s only newspaper announced ‘a major victory for London’. That day, our new prime minister, Gordon Brown, said quite explicitly that ‘Crossrail will now proceed’.

The Standard, London First, then-mayor Ken Livingstone, who had worked tirelessly to promote the scheme, and a great many other long-term supporters were delighted. This was the announcement they had been waiting for for at least a decade. After all, even before it was elected, the then Labour opposition had pledged itself to revive a scheme inexplicably abandoned by the Tories in 1995.

Both administrations had managed to clock up nearly £1bn on planning and research between them without a single rail being laid. After almost 20 years of frustration it looked as if a scheme almost everyone wanted and successive leaders from John Major to Gordon Brown told us they approved of had finally been given the Green light.

Headline horrors

So why do I still believe that headline might still join such other curios as ‘Dewey defeats Truman‘ and ‘End to cold war heralds peace dividend‘?

Well, first, because I know how little that sort of statement, even from a prime minister, made to getting the Jubilee Line extension to Docklands off the ground. Right to the end, the Treasury did whatever it could to frustrate it.

As the minister whose job it was to push the scheme through, I know that John Major was frequently on record as supporting the line – but that cut no ice with his Downing Street neighbour.

The Crossrail bill does not – contrary to what you might imagine from listening to Brown – yet have royal assent. Nor do we know what the contribution to the cost from London businesses in the form of an addition to the national non-domestic rate will be, and whether some of those businesses in places such as Bromley or Barnet might object to paying for something in which they see no value at all.

Judicial review could easily add another year’s delay at the very least and the Treasury would be delighted, not least because the economy is now in crisis. Anything the Treasury can cut out of public spending it will – particularly where £16bn is concerned.

It hates big projects because they always come in horribly over budget, so that £16bn will probably be £25bn by the time we’re through.

London is already getting the East London Line, Thameslink and the Olympics.

There will be many in government, not just in the Treasury, who think that is more than enough.

This is not a classic Labour-v-Tory issue. It is the machinery of the government that is the enemy. London itself has to keep the pressure firmly on. The new mayor will no doubt be as active as his predecessor. Every opportunity must and will be taken to remind Brown and his transport secretary of their own words.

The price of peace is eternal vigilance.

The price of Crossrail is no less.
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