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NEWS
POLICE
£500m black hole as forces fail to find savings By Nigel Morris
Train leaving Plymouth Railway Station for London
RAIL
South West wants change as Great Western franchise is up for renewal outlined a list of wishes for the new franchise. The city is a unique case in the South West as it currently has no It’s only 8 months to go until the Great Western franchise is renewed, motorway, airport or high speed links - the fastest train to Plymouth from four companies are trying for the contract. Many councils in the Deep London is just over 3 hours long. South West are optimistic about the It is claimed that rail investment will bring £94m a year in economic upcoming changes. The franchise, benefits to Plymouth. currently operated by FirstGroup Business is virtually impossible opted to end their contract three years early in 2011, escaping £826m Wishlist in government payments. Companies that are in the running May 2012 for the franchise include: FirstGroup, Early morning trains to Plymouth Arriva, Stagecoach & National 2014 Express. If successful they will take Better phone signal & Wi-Fi on trains on thirteen branch lines with some 2019 of the fastest growing passenger More frequent trains, commitment to elecnumbers in the UK. trify the rail & New local mainline trains One of the cities pushing the 2024 government for a better deal is New High Speed Trains Plymouth; their city council has By Martin Price GUEST EDITOR
for most journeys in the region as there is no Wi-Fi connectivity and limited mobile phone signal. It is hopeful that by 2014 these services will be available on the Great Western mainline. Politicians are asking the government to consider the travelling culture of major cities – Alison Seabeck, Plymouth Moor View MP envisages a metro system for South Devon: “Travelling is not only about getting on a train and getting directly from A to B, but you can do hops between transport links, it is important that the franchise understands that and enables that.” i understands that 48% of every rail ticket is spent improving the track and that Plymouth does not physically see improvements from that money. Seabeck has assured i
£1 Split For every £1 spent on the railway: 48p: Maintainence 17p: Other 17p: Staff 11p: Leasing trains 4p: Fuel and energy 3p: Profit Source: ATOC
£
that work is spent on the mainline and that extensive work has been underway within the Reading area, speeding up times in and out of London. The new franchisee will be announced by the Transport Secretary in December later this year, they will then start in April 2013.
Opinion
Feeble excuses just don’t work, Slasher. In fact, they never did David Blanchflower
T
hat was a big surprise. Not! Yesterday’s figures came as no surprise to many of us who have warned these many months that a double-dip recession was coming. For example, I warned on 24 June 2010 that George Osborne’s austerity budget “Kills recovery at birth”.
I went on to argue that I am now convinced that as a result of this reckless Budget the UK will suffer a double-dip recession”. It isn’t as if our part-time Chancellor Slasher Osbourne wasn’t told. But he ignored the warnings by Robert Skidelsky, Paul Krugman, Martin Wolf, Ed Balls and others and even accused us of being “deficit deniers”. Keynes turned out to be right. The Shadow Chancellor has been vindicated. Take care of growth and the deficit will take care of itself. Sadly reducing the
deficit doesn’t fix growth. Firms can save money by firing all their sales staff but then they shouldn’t be surprised when sales fall. It seems that the coalition government were “growth deniers” and assumed that slashing public spending would lead to a resurgence in the private sector. There was never an empirical support for such a proposition. Blaming Europe doesn’t wash as the main driver down has been the construction and even the OBR warned when the coalition
Police forces face a £500m black hole as they struggle to cope with Government demands to cut their budgets, the spending watchdog warns today. The 43 forces in England and Wales need to save £1.5bn by 201415 between them through efficiency savings as a result of the four-year austerity drive. But they have still only identified savings of £1bn, according to the National Audit Office (NAO), with 26 forces facing a cash shortfall within three years. it said some forces had only planned for three years instead of four, while planning by others “simply did not yield sufficient savings”. Ministers insist the savings can be made without affecting frontline policing. But Labour claims the squeeze will lead to 12,000 police officers losing their jobs. Margaret Hodge, the chair of the Committee of Public Accounts committee, said she was “deeply concerned” by the finding. The NAO said the Home Office had improved its financial management, but warned it was having problems finding savings within the department. It has to save £1.1bn a year by 2014-15, but is still uncertain how one-third of that sum can be found, the NAO said.
took office that the Eurozone was a potentional basket case. Feeble excuses don’t wash any more. Growth in the UK has been -0.2 per cent over the last six quarters. It is time to give big incentives for firms to invest and hire plus implement an enormous programme of infrastructure spending. The coalition still has no plan for growth and now is the time for the competents to take over. At the very least it is time for a new Chancellor who has some clue about economics.
SCIENCE
Mobiles ‘do not damage your health’ By Chris Stevenson
There is still “no convincing evidence” that mobile phones can adversely affect human health, according to a major new report released today. The comprehensive review of scientific studies, by the Health Protection Agency’s Independent Advisory Group on Non-ionising Radiation (Agnir), states that despite the “substantial” amount of recent research the only established risk is using a mobile phone while driving. Having combed through hundreds of studies, the group found that while there had been a number of reports about the risk of cancer, none of these findings had been replicated. Professor Anthony Swerdlow, chairman of the of the advisory group and an epidemiologist at the Institute of Cancer Research, said: “We now have much firmer information than we had on several areas, for instance symptoms, cognitive effects and brain tumours.” He added that you “can’t prove negatives” in science but that there was accumalating reassurance” about a lack of adverse health effects.” John Walsh, page 16