Is Gordon Brown at last doing the decent - 'prudent'- thing? SCRAPPING the obsolete, the wasteful the irrelevant CROSSRAIL? [161]

This page was last edited at 1340 GMT LONDON TUESDAY 7 OCTOBER 2008:



Is Gordon Brown at last doing the decent - 'prudent'- thing? SCRAPPING the obsolete, the wasteful the irrelevant CROSSRAIL? [161]



Has KHOODEELAAR! No to “CRASSrail hole plot...” CAMPAIGN an authoritative source inside the London EVENING STANDARD? Ooooooops! EVENING nostandards STANDARD! There must be, mustn’t there? For at 1030 GMT today Tuesday 7 October 2008 KHOODEELAAR! published on the AADHIKARonline a campaign commentary about an item which had this headline, “ KHOODEELAAR! 'anticipates' a headline like this ,' End of line for city’s Crossrail'' . That item was about a miniature ‘Crossrail’ at and around the Scottish town of Aberdeen......Within minutes of our publication, the London EVENING nostandards STANDARD, which has been THE propaganda organ for peddling the Big Business London CRASSrail for at least the past 6 years, published an item with the following headline, “Crisis puts the Crossrail sums on wrong lines”. And their story, PRINTED at page 34 [‘Business’ ‘City SPY’] of the early editions, read as follows: “ Anxious times for those involved in the Crossrail project, where key funding documents remain unsigned and the downturn and falling property values have put major question marks against some of the calculations.There are doubts about the predicted profits from the redevelopment of land at the bottom end of Tottenham Court Road belonging to Transport for London. Meanwhile, airports operator BAA and the City Corporation have yet to finally sign off their contributions towards the £17 billion bill.
TfL is also to raise a £2.7 billion contingency fund, secured against future fares — something that looks precarious in the current climate. Then there is the planned £3.5 billion levy from London businesses. It seems hardly the right moment to be asking small shops and firms for cash when they are struggling in the credit crunch.
Over and above all that, there is the suspicion that Gordon Brown may wish to delay the development. Building a new express-link for City banks, which are hardly popular in the country at present, could be the last thing he needs as he copes with public finances that are shot to bits.
The counter-argument says that the Prime Minister would not dare to lose face with the City by backtracking on Crossrail, and that a further postponement of the long-fought-for scheme would send a terrible signal about London's claim to be the world's leading financial centre. The last few weeks have shown, if nothing else, just how vital a dynamic City is to the economy and that therefore he will push ahead.
But Brown has also got an Olympic Games to contend with, which just happen to be in the same part of the UK as Crossrail. That too is suffering, with the financing of the 2012 Olympic Village provoking alarm in Whitehall.
City Spy would not be surprised at all if Crossrail was to slow... ”


[To be continued]