Why Gordon Brown must scrap Crossrail hole plot and look at real solutions

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updated at 2200 Hrs GMT Saturday 23 June 2007
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AADHIKARonline
The 2nd edition of the day 0400 Hrs GMT on Tuesday 26.06.2007 – publishing from the Brick Lane, Whitechapel and Stepney London E1 Area in the UK


Publishing these editions of AADHIKARonline in specific support to the campaign against CrossRail hole Bill and in association with the movement for the defence of the community in the East End of London

Khoodeelaar ! No to Crossrail hole Bill – the campaign against CrossRail hole Bill Publishing programme during the next 48 hours


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– the fact that we quote an externally published article or statement does not of itself mean at all that we agree with the views or the arguments. The quotation is made simply as a reference and solely for the purpose of relevant information in the context of our publication programme

AADHIKARonline quoting at 0350 Hrs GMT on Tuesday 26 June 2007 the full texts of the ‘FT’ [Financial Times, London] article published on 21 June 2007 by-lined to Michael Schabas, a director of Superlink, an alternative to the CrossRail scheme:


The Stansted solution
By Michael Schabas Published: June 21 2007 19:24 | Last updated: June 21 2007 19:24



London’s business leaders are hoping that one of Gordon Brown’s first acts as prime minister will be to fund the long-debated Crossrail scheme, a new railway linking Heathrow, the City and Canary Wharf. Estimated to cost £16bn, Crossrail is not cheap. With 40 railways already into London, one more railway cannot do much to relieve crowding for commuters. So why does business think Crossrail is so important?

Mostly, because it will link Heathrow – London’s global gateway – to the City. Heathrow Express runs only to Paddington and, to finish the trip, visitors face a slow Tube or taxi ride. Heathrow may be vital to the London economy but it now compares pretty poorly with European rivals, where passengers arrive in spacious terminals with fast, direct rail links to the city centre and often direct to nearby cities.

Yet Crossrail plans are to operate only slow, all-stations trains from Heathrow to the City. BAA, the airport owner, has refused to integrate Heathrow Express into the scheme, fearing that it would be degraded into a crowded commuter railway. So Crossrail will take only a few minutes off the journey from the City to the airport, compared with using the existing railways. If it is built as planned, the business leaders backing it will probably be disappointed when it opens.

Terminal Five will open next year and BAA plans to rebuild Terminal Two in time for the Olympics. So the in-airport experience may improve a little. But Heathrow has another problem. It has only two runways, compared with three (or more) at Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris Charles de Gaulle. Whenever weather causes delays, flights are backed up, connections are missed, fuel is wasted and pollution is increased. BAA’s answer is to build a third runway and a sixth terminal. The proposition may stack up financially, at least to BAA, but its chance of getting through the planning process in our lifetime seems remote.

The answer must be to develop Stansted as a true international hub. Already Stansted has flights to more than 200 destinations, although most are with short-haul budget airlines. There is room for a second, third or even a fourth runway and the terminals to match. The planning hurdles are not trivial, but surmountable. There are two problems, both soluble. First, Stansted is remote and, although there is a rail link to the City, it is unreliable and overcrowded. Stansted needs faster, better links to the West End and west London if it is to attract the premium business and connecting passengers long-haul flights usually need to be profitable. Second, BAA, as owner of Heathrow and Stansted (as well as Gatwick) has little incentive to develop Stansted as a true rival.

Twenty years ago the City of London was bursting at the seams. International banks could not find space and the planning process meant new buildings were constructed at a glacial pace. The answer was to develop Canary Wharf. Enabled by the Docklands Development Corporation, the Canadian developer Paul Reichmann had a vision of a new central business district. He took the lead in creating not only large, high-quality buildings but also the transport infrastructure, in particular the Docklands Light Railway and the Jubilee Line Extension, which was needed if the development was to succeed. Initially the City opposed Canary Wharf, seeing it as a rival that would steal some of a fixed “pie”. Yet with Canary Wharf now home to several of the world’s largest banks and even its largest law firm, the City and the West End are as healthy as ever.

The London air travel market is similarly large. Current plans are for Crossrail to end in the east at Shenfield and Abbey Wood, both fully developed residential areas. If, instead, it were extended from Canary Wharf to Stansted, it could attract long-haul flights and become a comprehensive alternative to Heathrow. Superlink, a group of senior railway industry executives who played vital roles developing the Jubilee Extension, Channel Tunnel Rail Link and Heathrow Express, has shown that this might be done for about £2bn.

There is no reason to expect BAA, as a monopolist, to expand Heathrow to get ahead of demand or to invest in Stansted if this divides rather than grows its market. Now is the time to open the market, putting Stansted into independent ownership, which would encourage development of the airport and the transport links it needs, in the same way that Mr Reichmann created a second City at Canary Wharf.

The writer, a director of Superlink, was vice-president for transport at O&Y Canary Wharf Developments 1988-1991



AADHIKARonline unquoting at 0350 Hrs GMT on Tuesday 26 June 2007 the full texts of the ‘FT’ [Financial Times, London] article published on 21 June 2007 by-lined to Michael Schabas, a director of Superlink, an alternative to the CrossRail scheme:



Muhammad Haque again exposing the CrossRail hole plotters’ lie that the plot would amount to ‘benefits’ to the East End of London.


The lie is lethal. Because this is the one that they have used to get the controlling clique on Tower Hamlets Council to spin locally for Crossrail in the Council’s touting role for Crossrail hole plot.

Of the 1000+ documentary references [created and published by the promoters of Crossrail] that the Khoodeelaar! campaign against Crossrail has checked as to what Crossrail is, there is NOT ONE in which the Crossrail hole plan is mainly described as being about bringing ANY benefits to the East End of London or indeed to ANY other part of London affected by Crossrail plan.
The ONLY and the CORE description of the Crossrail hole plan that is given in the overwhelming number of statements [issued by Michael Snyder for the City of London Corporation, for instance or by Jo Valentine, baroness of the pro-Crossrail lobby outfit 'London First'... and similar others] is that it is intended to link Canary Wharf, the City of London with Heathrow.
Khoodeelaar! has established in the 42 months of our campaign [which we began on 31 January 2004] against Crossrail that the pathetic references to the East End have been deliberately ADDED as a sheer spin, which is not based on any substance that is corroborated by the contents of the CrossRail hole scheme Bill [‘the Crossrail Bill’, now in the UK House of Commons].
The reason why we have been asking Tower Hamlets Council to scrap their deal with the Crossrail hole plot promoters is to do with the undeniable fact that the East End will lose out more than it will ever gain, even when the Crossrail hole plot is generously interpreted.

All students of economics know that demand has got to be real if the sort of massive public expenditure being lobbied for to create the supply of the Crossrail line is to be justified..
Where in the daily experience of the East End ordinary population is there any demand for such a scheme? And this is exactly the question that Gordon Brown has been asked and which is why he has been forced to concede that the Crossrail hole plot is not an ECIONOMIC priority.
Even in his speech last week to the City of London, Gordon Brown was forced to rely on the spin he knew he had to deploy as part of the presentation. But he could not give the commitment that the City wants.
Just as Ed Balls could not give the commitment that Big Business agent Ken Livingstone wanted a few months back when they staged one of those interminable stunts for the uneconomic plan. Just as the former chief executive of British Airways, Rod Eddington [whip had been asked by Gordon Brown as chancellor to investigate the UK transport crisis] could not endorse Crossrail as an ordinary economic solution to the real transport crisis that fetters London and the South East. In fact the line that Crossrail will bring thousands of jobs to the areas affected generally and to the East End of London was made by their spokesperson who appeared on the BBC TV Politics Show as shown on Sunday 26 March last year.
That man was referring to Canary Wharf, which is where one of the world's largest banks has just confirmed the sacking of at least 4000 employees! The 'alternative' to the Crossrail plan, the Superlink, has been referred to in the Financial Times in the last four days. In his comment ion Crossrail, Michael Schabas says that the present Crossrail plan is far too uneconomic and far too costly. The Khoodeelaar! campaign wants the East End to be economically viable.
Our start must be made with the use of existing human resources in the optimum way possible. Tower Hamlets Council is not doing this as the Local Education Authority. As has been again confirmed, Tower Hamlets is producing well under 40 percent GCSE achievers as opposed to over 50 per cent elsewhere. And Tower Hamlets is far below the UK national average on per capita performance in the context of per capital expenditure on the formally recorded and assessed pupils.. Only because money is spent does not mean it is translated into sustained and creative human ability.
For that, the Local Education Authority as well as the locally elected 'representatives' of the area must show that when they act in our name and about our area, they do so by possessing the recognition of the value and the potential of human beings. In Tower Hamlets, there is no evidence so far that those are recognized by 'our elected' local Council.
On 22 January 2006, more than 1000 people turned up to attend the Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole Bill meeting at the Brady Centre in Hanbury Street [the street is the target of the Crossrail hole] .
There was no room to accommodate all who wanted to attend. Of those who did attend, ALL backed the motion that I put to the meeting demanding that Tower Hamlets Council pass at full Council an unequivocal motion saying No to Crossrail hole Bill.
The community is still waiting for the Council to carry out that very democratic and economically very sensible demand. The failure by the Council to date to pass that Motion shows the failure on the part of the controlling clique to recognize something very fundamental.
They do not behave with common sense and with ordinary rationality. That is why they are stuck on their backing for the crassly conceived Crossrail. And it shows in the crass way that the Council has failed to address the sustained evidence we have presented against the Council’s collusion with the Big Business Crossrail hole plot.



The Muhammad Haque daily world commentary against corruption and sleaze by holders of publicly paid for and publicly-legitimised positions of power at any level – as shown by the use of Christine Gilbert as tool for Big Business CrossRail hole plotters plan to displace the ordinary people of the East End of London borough of Tower Hamlets in London

0445 Hrs GMT London Monday 25 June 2007




Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole Bill campaign - For 42 months, the Khoodeelaar! campaign against Crossrail hole-inviter Tower Hamlets Council has pointed out the fact that Christine Gilbert, [ensconced at 'OFSTED, the 'England schools and assorted other education agencies formal inspectorate' [which in itself has a great need to be constantly inspected and held to account for its own abysmal failures] for the past few months by the Blairing regime which was forced to concede that their use of her as the 'chief executive' in Tower Hamlets Council was proving far more disastrous than they had anticipated when they placed her there to do the 'job' of bringing in Big Business and other attackers to destroy the East End of London ... Khoodeelaar! campaign against CrossRail hole-inviter Tower Hamlets Council devised a detailed questionnaire for Christine Gilbert in February 2004 and along with the Committee for Bangladeshis' Rights in the UK [CBRUK] put to Christine Gilbert the very serious questions about the ICNCREASING deprivation [environment. economic, sociable educational and health] that would hit the Bangladeshis in the area targeted for the CrossRail hole, as well as hitting the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community that existed in the area ... We showed that Christine Gilbert was part of a corrupt clique on the Council ... We showed that Christine Gilbert was 'advising' the rest of the clique top go ahead with the collusion with Big Business touts, agents and bribers who were operating the agenda of using 'CrossRail' as a thin end of the bigger wedge, that of physically displacing the main population in the Brick Lane, Whitechapel an d Stepney London E1 area ......We also showed that Christine Gilbert was failing in her legal duties to stop the corrupt clique..... All of the evidence linked with every single finding that we published was made known and pointed out...
Nobody, including the 'local paper' the 'East London Idiotiser' published any of that.
In fact, despite the fact that we gave all the contemporaneous and actual materials and documentation that had been put to Christine Gilbert, showing the fact and the extent of her central involvement in and her persistent and rampant collusion with the perpetrations of the illegalities and the undemocratic violations of the local community by Tower Hamlets Council, the decision-makers at the ‘East London Idiotiser’ went ahead and published as many as Four promotional profiles and pieces for Christine Gilbert.
They in effect praised her corruption and her cronyist operations . Khoodeelaar! campaign against Crossrail hole-backer Christine Gilbert filed the relevant complaints and analysis against the 'East London Idiotiser' and the evidence of that is still ready for formal progression to the courts – as we have pointed out and made clear at all stages.
Now, the ‘national’ ‘mainstream’ Daily Mail claims to be against cronyism and sleaze. So much so that they have published a number of pieces that amount to their calling Christine Gilbert corrupt!
We shall be extensively examining the contents and the 'reasons' and the implications of all the items as carried by the Daily Mail. Before we do so, we are asking viewers of our sites to look at what the main piece in the Daily Mail has said about the cronyist Christine Gilbert.
The Muhammad Haque daily world political commentary



0240 Hrs GMT London Monday 25 June 2007


Whoever gets to be the front person at the UK Treasury after the widely-expected move by Gordon Brown to the office of Prime Minister in two days’ time and following that whoever in fact gets to deliver the ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’ as scheduled to be published in a few weeks’ time, the fact remains that the ‘CSR’ will have been the product of Gordon Brown’s thinking [along with the usual teams of people that he would have used for the previous CSRs]. It follows therefore that the contents of that Review, which most of the Crossrail hole Bill touts are hyping up to include a clear commitment of public funding of the Big Business Looters’ charter [Crossrail Bill] – will be examined for clues and signs as to where Brown is taking the management and the direction of the UK society…. A reasonable enough picture was contained in a recent speech Brown delivered to or scripted for the ‘Green Alliance’. In the Brick Lane, Whitechapel and Stepney London E1 area and in the rest of ‘ordinary Tower Hamlets’, the script of that speech is quite relevant in context. In one part, Brown speaks of or in effect refers to all the key segments of the country – society, constitution, economy and the environment. Which is where the Khoodeelaar! Campaign against the Crossrail hole attacks on the East End has been active in… In months and even may be years to come, the campaign against Crossrail hole attacks is going to continue to have running and active relevance to all the segments and parts of the country … in fact and in principle…
It is utterly central to identify the words and the intentions of Gordon Brown, the so-called ‘Prime Minister in waiting’ before he ceases to be referred to in such a loaded way and gets the simpler style of being described just as the UK’s ‘Prime Minister’ – in order that we can stop his office being abused like Blair’s was with such horrendous long term and other terms of consequences for the worse for the world and for the society within the UKView Gordon Brown’s speech to the ‘Green Alliance’ by clicking on the web page link HERE
Khoodeelaar! No to Crossrail hole bill campaign exposing the continuing crassness of the Crossrail hole plotters’ sums – the cost of the CrossRail hole plot is being cited to be anything between £8.7 Billion to £16 Billion – all in the same week!
Harriet Harm-one! She WILL NOT bring good let alone do good to the inner cities- we begin the expose on Harriet Harman and her totally untruthful lines uttered by her in the past four weeks
What did Frank Field say about Blair’s lack of intellectual rigour and Blair’s crude demand to be shown how to ‘cut welfare’ – We show the Blairing poverty-creation agenda at work in the Crossrail hole plot and why Crossrail hole plotter ‘Undone mayor’ Ken Livingstone is totally discredited by his craze for the Crossrail hole -
Khoodeelaar! AGAIN shows the sums which leave Gordon Brown with no option but to scrap the present Crossrail hole |Bill – and start from the scratch on meeting the transport needs of the UK economy -