Former First Minister Rhodri Morgan wrote a hugely popular column for the Western Mail each Saturday between 2010 and 2016. To mark his passing, chief reporter Martin Shipton chose a selection which we have been running daily this week. Here, in the last
I had only previously seen a man dressed in a smoking jacket on the stage.
By the time he opened the door I had starting laughing so hard at myself as a Labour canvasser at this place of such grandeur I could only just get my words out.
Fair play to him. He started laughing himself and finally managed to get his words out roughly along the lines of “Well I’m obviously not of your persuasion myself, but you might have better luck if you try the basement flat down underneath.”
He was right, too.
DELAYS on the trains are nothing new and perhaps that explains why there are so many delays in making decisions on the future of the railways, especially our main-line services up to Paddington.
It is very frustrating when we hear that more than £5bn will be spent on the Thameslink service from Bedford to St Pancras, while the Great Western main line remains shunted in the sidings.
This is the government’s case for taking a bit more time.
Lord Adonis, the Labour Transport Minister, promised to deliver electrification to Swansea by 2017 at a cost of £1bn. He opted for hybrid electric and diesel-powered trains, capable of running on the branches off the main line, up to Gloucester and Cheltenham, or beyond Bristol to Somerset and Devon.
Railway engineers were not keen on the Adonis hybrid because you lose so much of the energy-saving advantage of electrification by adding the dead weight of the diesel engine. The alternative is to have two fleets, one all-electric and the other still High Speed Diesel (HSD), as we have had for more than 30 years.
Choosing to electrify the line all the way to Swansea is relatively simple compared to the difficult decisions on modernising the diesel fleet. How long can the present HSDs last, even with the very best of British patching and mending? Ten years at the most.
We in Wales are desperate to get the electrification all the way to Swansea, but the whole of the West of England, except for Reading, Swindon and Bristol, wants a castiron promise on a new diesel fleet by the time electric trains take over on the main line. Plymouth, Exeter, Cornwall, as well as Gloucester and Cheltenham, all want guarantees on new diesels, so as not to be stranded when the all-electric train comes in.
The two-separate-fleets solution will cost more than the Adonis hybrid, but makes more green common sense in the long run.
Well, it’s tough being a Minister of Transport, but taking tricky decisions is what you get paid for. So please, Mr Secretary of State Hammond, don’t take too long making your mind up and let’s go to work on electrifying that main line before hell freezes over.