It has been announced that no charges will be brought in respect of the accident in 2016 when a tram was derailed and overturned at Addiscombe, resulting in seven fatalities and 62 injuries. The tram was travelling at 45 mph on a curved section of line where the speed limit was 12 mph and overturned. Since the incident, safety measures have been introduced. The decision not to prosecute for corporate manslaughter is hard to understand, since the curve is situated in a cutting close to a tunnel, and should have been recognised as a potentially hazardous configuration even before the opening of the line in 2000. One also has to question the role of the Health and Safety Executive, successor to the Railways Inspectorate.
I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.
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