Private Island: Why Britian Now Belongs To Someone Else - Plot & Excerpts
Signal Failure Privatised railways On a mild, wet February morning, a work gang of ten men moved around a stretch of railway line near the village of Goostrey, between Crewe and Manchester airport. Against the extreme green of fields and the whipped grey of rainclouds their synthetic orange work suits shone out violently, like figures in a psychedelic episode. It was hard work. Using thick, weathered, metal-capped staves, they cranked jacks that raised a stretch of rail, along with its concrete sleepers, up off the bed of stone chips it rested on. A bulldozer on rail wheels purred up on the other line and pawed at the stones. The men were to pack fresh ballast in under the rails with hand shovels. The year was 2004, and the men were engaged in the single most expensive non-military task ever undertaken by Britain alone: the modernisation of the national rail network’s west coast main line. A project that was supposed to cost roughly £1.5 billion had, by the time a version was finished two years late in 2008, consumed £9 billion, much of it from the taxpayer.
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