Nigel Pendse wrote:

I agree with most of what you say, but not this bit ...

I suspect the two recent derailments are almost certainly due
to standards that have been falling for some time and not as a
result of PFI.

True for Hammersmith, but there is no evidence that the Camden Town
derailment was due to falling standards. At present the cause looks like a
system design weakness not previously understood (where system = track +
train).
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)

Thanks all - interesting comments. I suspect cognitive dissonance (see
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/~jamesa/learning/dissonance.htm) has a big part to play
in the implementation of policies like the LUL PFI (and, for that, matter,
the decision to back the Bush invasion of Iraq). Once the powers that be
decided to adopt the policy, they screened out all the evidence that it
would probably be a bad decision in the long term, otherwise there's too
much 'dissonance'. The likes the SRA still maintain that rail privatisation
was a 'good thing'. I doubt, however, that anyone will ever get any kind of
fix on the overall real costs: indeed, the aforementioned cognitive
dissonance would virtually prevent them from doing so.

And no, I'm not connected with the industry in any way at all (apart from
being an occasional user) - just an interested observer.

Onwards and upwards!

Andrew