Elsenham: A bear trap in the woods known as Network Rail

A friend asked me not so long ago, ‘what past event would you want to return to and change?’ This thought flashed across my mind this morning as I jostled in a media scrum outside Basildon Magistrates Court in a sleeting Essex chill. 
  Chris Bazlinton and Reg Thompson stood amidst the jostle. Their respective daughters, Olivia, aged 14, and Charlotte, 13, were struck and fatally killed by a train at a footpath level crossing at Elsenham station in December 2005.

  Six years later, inside the tiny magistrates court, with graffiti etched on the public seats, both men strained to hear a swish Network Rail lawyer sheepishly say the UK's rail infrastructure company was pleading guilty to criminal charges of breaching health and safety law – criminal breaches that had led to the girls’ death (See London Intelligence for details). 
  The Office of Rail Regulation had brought the criminal prosecution against Network Rail.

  Behind the guilty plea lies a sordid mix of incompetence, deceit and arrogance - and a  sickening trail of 'if onlys'. 
  If only...Network Rail had acted on respective warnings issued by its own staff in 2001 and 2002 saying Elsenham’s footpath level crossing was dangerous and life-threatening. 

 If only...the company had rendered Elsenham safe – via locking gates, a footbridge and effective audible warnings - then Network Rail could’ve prevented the girls from being killed on a Saturday morning that was brightened, from all accounts, by their cheerful, youthful exuberance. Let's not forget, although this was a rural station, the London-Liverpool Street-Stansted Airport route is very busy, with some trains, including the express that killed Olivia and Charlie, roaring through at speeds up to 110mph.

  If only Network Rail managers had admitted to the existence of these prior warnings to the Rail Accident Investigation Branch...
 If only Network Rail had told the Essex Coroner, Caroline Beasley-Murray, in January 2007...
 And, if only, Network Rail had admitted responsibility for failing to act on those previous warnings, the company could at least have accorded Chris, Reg, Tina and the rest of the girls’ families the honesty and dignity they surely ought to have received.

  Instead, Network Rail treated the families to a six-year cover-up that piled frustration and outrage upon the families' already unimaginable anguish. 
 Of course, even a substantial fine won't hurt Network Rail too much. After all, this not-for-profit eats up taxpayers' money, providing handsome salaries and bonuses for its top executives whilst cutting lower grade staff and jobs and humping its massive accumulated debt back onto the public purse. 

  The new man at the top of Network Rail – chief executive David Higgins – promises to be a new broom sweeping transparency and accountability through the company. “Nothing we can say or do will lessen the pain felt by Olivia and Charlotte’s families but I have promised them we are committed to making our railways as safe as possible,” said Higgins after today’s hearing.

 Give Higgins his due. He has earned Chris Bazlinton’s confidence but is cited as saying there is no evidence the prior risk assessments and warnings were wilfully witheld.
 Chris Bazlinton told the media pack outside the court this morning: “We shall be watching closely to make sure that changes Network Rail have promised to improve level crossing safety are carried out.

  Going back to my friend's question, sadly, there’s no way anyone can go back in time and whisper a warning to the girls – ‘Be careful. That level crossing at Elsenham is like a bear trap in the woods'.
That’s how Reg Thompson once poetically yet aptly described Elsenham station.

 By failing to act on those warnings several years before Olivia and Charlotte lost their lives – and for harbouring individuals who covered up their responsibility for that tragedy – ‘a bear trap in the woods’ seems an equally apt description for Network Rail itself. 

Paul Coleman, London, January 2012
www.londonintelligence.co.uk

Tottenham: The Riots, a play by Gillian Slovo, at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre

I saw The Riots in Tottenham last week (Wednesday, 4 January). This thoughtful play is the result of the Tricycle Theatre Company’s own investigation into last summer’s unrest in London and the rest of the UK.

  Writer Gillian Slovo* based The Riots on 56 hours of interviews with rioters, riot victims, police and politicians. For instance, well-known actor Cyril Nri plays both Superintendent Leroy Logan and Reverend Nims Obunge; and Michele Austin was superb as gushing Diane Abbott MP one minute and, after a rapid costume change, as flamboyant children’s advocate and charity leader, Camila Batmanghelidjh.

   The government refused to hold an inquiry into the August 6-10 unrest that claimed the lives of five people – Trevor Ellis, Haroon Jahan, Shahzad Ali, Abdul Musavir, and Richard Mannington Bowes.

  The Tricycle has transferred Slovo’s play from its Kilburn home to show to Tottenham audiences at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre until January 14. The riots kicked off in Tottenham following the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, a young father from the local area, during a police raid in Tottenham Hale on August 4.

  Senior politicians, such as Michael Gove MP and Iain Duncan Smith MP quickly condemned the rioters as criminals, arguing only criminality and nothing political motivated the violence and looting. Slovo interviewed both politicians. Actors representing their testimony in The Riots will allow Tottenham audiences this week to make up their own minds.

  Testimony also includes a letter written by Chelsea Ives from Holloway Prison. Ives, a former London Olympic Games ambassador, wrote to the Tricycle with her story and views. Ives is serving a two-year sentence for criminal damage and burglary. Her mother Adrienne contacted police after seeing CCTV footage on TV news of her daughter involved in a group attack on a police car in the north London suburb of Enfield.

  On stage, Ives (played by Clementine Marlowe-Hunt) expresses remorse for her actions but condemns a media witch-hunt for trashing her as the country’s most notorious and archetypal rioter.

 A passionate and informed Tottenham audience took part in an after-play discussion with Gillian Slovo and Stafford Scott, a ‘veteran’ Tottenham community advocate and interrogator of police tactics from the days of the Broadwater Farm riots in Tottenham in 1985. Scott’s insights into how police approach black people and communities will be considered in some detail at www.londonintelligence.co.uk
 * South African-born Slovo is the daughter of Joe Slovo, leader of the South African Communist Party, and of Ruth First, the anti-apartheid activist and journalist who was murdered by a parcel bomb in 1982.

The Riots plays in Tottenham until January 14. For tickets and info: www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk

Paul Coleman, London, January 2011

You Me On the 2012 Bum Bum Train?

This neon flash, advertising a temporary London theatre show on New Oxford Street, seemed to sum up the global crisis as 2012 dawned. 

 If you want to know how Londoners are coping with the crisis during 2012, visit www.londonintelligence.co.uk

Photo: Copyright Paul Coleman, London 2011

Paul Coleman, London, January 2012.

Crisis? What Crisis? City, St Paul's, Students, Tony Benn and Tea

Salvador Dali, the artist, might've liked how London turned surreal again last Wednesday (9 November).

At the Guildhall in the morning I listened to property developers, planners and architects ponder the City of London's office development pipeline.* 

  After a lunch attended by the outgoing Lord Mayor of London, I sauntered to St Paul's Cathedral to see if thousands of students marching against rising tuition fees and public spending cuts would link with Occupy London protesters camped outside the great church in protest against...well...er...everything (above photo).

  Police re-routed the marching students away from St Paul's. However, I did bump into one of Britain's great tea drinkers at the foot of the cathedral steps. Tony Benn, seemingly on his own, was sporting an anorak and bearing a rucksack on his back. 

   Tony Benn (below) entered the House of Commons in 1950 and left 51 years later. During that time he had held four cabinet posts and twice contested the leadership of the Labour Party.

  In his political heyday, Tony was reviled by the right and revered by the left as the darling of the Labour Party's left-wing. Supporters often say 'Tony Benn was the best Prime Minister Britain never had'.

   I watched Tony do a TV interview. He then listened intently to two young men giving him the benefit of their views.  Typically, he responded with "don't give up" and "don't let them get you down".

   I greeted Tony at the foot of the St Paul's steps and we shook hands. I reminded Tony of his calculation that he reckoned to have supped over 155,000 cups of tea in his lifetime. "I still drink a lot of tea," he replied, still smiling at a sprightly 86.

  We chatted briefly about the protest, wealth distribution and wireless communications. As we parted, others recognised Tony and approached him. 

I veered down Ludgate Hill away from St Paul's. Squads of clunking riot police thudded down Fleet Street to block traffic at Ludgate Circus. 

   Other clumps of coppers thumped up Farringdon Road to head off students on Holborn Viaduct. No less than four helicopters hovered over the wedding cake spire of St Bride's and incessantly hammered the air. In this moment, London's political economy began to look a little more like crisis-torn Athens. 

I looked back toward St Paul's but could no longer see Tony Benn who often told denigrators over many years: "If you don't want to talk about socialism, let's at least talk about capitalism."

  Few listened. Now, in 2011, three years after the banking collapse and in the middle of the sovereign debt crisis, everyone is talking about capitalism. 

  The students' clamour distracted my thoughts yet again. A gaggle of young girls in the middle of the march poetically chanted at riot officers. "Hello cop - You're so cute -Take off your riot suit!"

  A genteel banner proclaimed: "Down with this sort of thing". 

I looked at my watch. 

Four-fifteen in the afternoon in London in the middle of the world economic crisis. 

 Why am I so thirsty? 

Tea-time, of course.

* Guildhall City of London event hosted by New London Architecture.

Paul Coleman, London, November 2011

Photos: Copyright Paul Coleman, 2011. No re-use without permission.

Thames Hub hubbub, starring Lord Norman Foster and the City of London

Breakfast this morning proved expensive. £50 billion came up at one point.

  Early birds at the New London Architecture breakfast briefing heard Lord Norman Foster, architect behind the Gherkin and Wembley Stadium, stir up a hubbub about the Thames Hub -  a potential new airport and high speed rail terminal in the Thames Estuary, east of London.
  A carbon neutral Thames Hub would be powered by electricity generated by a second Thames Barrier. Initially, I thought this seems a great initiative.

 But Hub tea cups began to rattle in the meeting room when the £50bn cost surfaced. I sipped my tea and dwelt on a definition: 'an initiative - an idea going nowhere fast'.

  Hub advocates say it would revolutionise the UK's congested, creaking infrastructure. A freight rail hub would link the new London Gateway port with the rest of the UK. A new rail freight line would avoid central London by tracking the orbital M25 route.
   Of course, this would mean building on sacred 'Green Belt' land. But Britain would once again become a competitive trading nation. Did anyone venture what 'Made in Britain' exports would fly, rail or sail to the rest of the world via the hub? 'No' is the long answer.

I couldn't help but think some perspective was needed. Earlier this week, I'd heard some perspective offered to another NLA audience of developers, planners and architects in the Livery Hall at the Guildhall, home of the Corporation of London. 

   City Planning Officer Peter Rees began his entertaining presentation on 'The Future for Building Typologies in the City', by saying: "Here we are on the brink of possibly the world's worst economic crisis we'll see in our lifetimes. 

   "Thousands of the UK's disaffected youth are amassing in the west ready to march on us here in the City...and I've been told to speak about building typologies!"

   Soon after we were joined for lunch by the outgoing Lord Mayor of London, Alderman Michael Bear, (not to be confused with that younger man Boris Johnson, the ongoing loud Mayor of London).
Bear told a barely humourous joke about Einstein's driver.
Crisis? What crisis?
Aptly, lunch was taken in the undercroft or crypt.

Images: Foster & Partners


Paul Coleman, London, November 2011.

Meerkats fight Russian money battle in London court

I'm sure the £3.1 billion compensation High Court battle between Russian oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich - the owner of Chelsea Football Club - is all very entertaining but why is the case being heard in London and not in Moscow? 

   My eager legal beaver friends offer a couple of reasons. Firstly, Berezovsky apparently fell out with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin and fled to self-imposed exile in London in 2000. 

   Secondly, and more to the point, they tell me London law firms are keen to earn fat fees from putting the fairness of the English legal system at the disposal of Russia's many huge ‘commercial’ disputes.

    I wonder if fees paid to London lawyers delving into Russia's murky post-Communist era contribute to the United Kingdom's gross domestic product. 

  Compare the Mercs. Compare the meerkats.

Paul Coleman, London, November 2011.

Film of three jets circling over north London

Click on the link below and take a look at the short impromptu film I made earlier tonight (9 September, 2011) from the platform at Grange Park railway station in north London. 

   Here's the film; Jets over London. Sorry, it's a bit jerky as it's not edited. Just run it for a few seconds and the planes will soon appear.

   I'm not an aviation journo but planes and helicopters always intrigue me. I'd seen the large jet circling this part of north London earlier this week. On that occasion, the large jet was flying solo. 

   Tonight, the large jet was accompanied by two smaller jets. A third smaller jet appeared at one point but then disappeared.

   The one large and two smaller aircraft repeated at least six wide circles over a heavily populated part of north London during a thirty-minute period.

   Their presence in the sky - just two days before the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on New York - generated curiosity on the streets below and consternation on social media network Twitter. Many Tweeters assumed the two smaller aircraft were fighter jets escorting a larger passenger jet.

  But it seems the large jet - with the Union Jack visible on the tail fin - might be an RAF jet used to fly Royal Family, VIPs and military personnel. Apparently, there are two such planes, based at RAF Northolt in north-west London. 

   The two smaller aircraft look like private passenger jets used by rich folk. As I said at the top, I'm not much of a plane spotter but I was puzzled at the purpose of this flight tonight. 

   Perhaps the smaller planes were filming the larger plane, hence the need for repeated circles. Maybe it was practice for an air show or for next year's Olympics. 
   Whatever its purpose, I thought this flight tonight was strange given this weekend's significant global anniversary. 
   It also seemed somewhat insensitive. People in these post 9-11 times are still easily spooked by the sight of unusual plane formations flying low over their homes and streets.

Photos and Film copyright Paul Coleman. All Rights Reserved. No reuse without written permission.


Paul Coleman, London, September 2011.