backontrack
Established Member
It just wouldn't be 'fair' on the more recent candidates to include Marples. Utterly bent.
...and one of them's currently Chancellor of the Exchequer!
-
Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!
Let's put it to the forum: which has been the worst Secretary of State for Transport?
- Thread starter backontrack
- Start date
- Status
It just wouldn't be 'fair' on the more recent candidates to include Marples. Utterly bent.
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R
RailUK Forums
Chris Grayling's incompetence is matched only by how bent Ernest Marples was.
Honorable mentions also include Alistair Darling (for what he did to transport projects in the north) and Tom Fraser (for the spectacular u-turn on Labour's pledge to reverse the Beeching cuts)
So what about the Deansgate corridor works? That TWAO has been sitting on Grayling's desk for three years (and seven days) and has made one of the headline projects in the Northern Hub into a white elephant.
Honorable mentions also include Alistair Darling (for what he did to transport projects in the north) and Tom Fraser (for the spectacular u-turn on Labour's pledge to reverse the Beeching cuts)
So what about the Deansgate corridor works? That TWAO has been sitting on Grayling's desk for three years (and seven days) and has made one of the headline projects in the Northern Hub into a white elephant.
Killingworth
Established Member
That may clinch the vote!
Chris999999
Member
- Joined
- 22 Jun 2010
- Messages
- 238
The vote is not valid because so many candidates are missing. Even Steven Norris is missing. He may not have been the worst, but someone may want to do so purely on the basis of his autobiography. Isherwood may have wanted to
While no fan of Grayling at all, I think it's a little unfair to dump so much blame onto him personally. Most Sec of States aren't in the job long enough to understand their brief and fewer had any interest in the subject at all. Even those who seemed to care about it (remember Pescott's "integrated public transport" plans) achieved very little. There are whole systematic problems beyond who is the here today gone tomorrow minister.
Grayling knows enough to do a full 180 degree turn on things his predecessor agreed such as devolving suburban rail in London. Even London tories mostly want it but he's obsessed with petty games.
His ideology causes problems in every position he's been in - and it goes back before transport.
His ideology causes problems in every position he's been in - and it goes back before transport.
Busaholic
Veteran Member
- Joined
- 7 Jun 2014
- Messages
- 14,087
Ideology implies ideas, or ideals. I'm not sure I'd accuse him of ever having either. Idiotology perhaps!
LNW-GW Joint
Veteran Member
He just missed the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster (March 1987).
I think that event forced ferries to have accurate personal passenger lists and check-in, something that was bequeathed subsequently to Eurotunnel and Eurostar - no just hopping on the next train.
Malcolm Rifkind was a decent Transport Sec 1990-92, shook hands with the French at Channel Tunnel breakthrough, and was a regular Caledonian Sleeper customer as a Scottish MP (as many were then).
He was pro-privatisation, but opposed splitting operations from infrastructure, which was implemented after he left the post.
Castle introduced the breathalyser (how many lives has that saved?); IIRC created the PTEs; introduced line-specific subsidies.
She was also - most unusually - a non-driver SoS.
What's not to like?
transmanche
Established Member
- Joined
- 27 Feb 2011
- Messages
- 6,018
I'll jump in here to point out that this phrase ('bent as a nine-bob note') has two very different meanings.
- Dishonest
- Homosexual
Andrew Nelson
Member
- Joined
- 28 Jun 2010
- Messages
- 702
Andrew Nelson
Member
- Joined
- 28 Jun 2010
- Messages
- 702
I'll jump in here to point out that this phrase ('bent as a nine-bob note') has two very different meanings.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which of these definitions @James Heck means...
- Dishonest
- Homosexual
"His retirement was not particularly dignified; he was under intensive investigation by the Inland Revenue, who had become interested in the highly irregular financial web he had spun between Britain, France and Liechtenstein".
From: https://www.conservativehome.com/th...d-up-the-1950s-and-he-made-things-happen.html
DarloRich
Veteran Member
No one aspires to be transport secretary. It is either a staging post for a climb upwards, a storage post for a slide downwards or a post used to placate a supporter who needs a none job.
oh and the answer is Grayling
oh and the answer is Grayling
LOL The Irony
On Moderation
He also falls into the latter category
coppercapped
Established Member
She approved most of the line and station closures proposed in the first Beeching report although Labour's line for the 1964 General Election was that it would stop them.
Hypocrite.
Blatantly obvious who's going to win it. What surprises me is people picking Adonis, he's the one who got the OLE ball rolling. I'd be intrigued to know why anyone would would pick him, when the rather useless Ruth Kelly and Buff Hoon were in post as a comparison. Probably be fairer to pick one from each of the parties as there will be some bias to account for.
This list of secretarial failures does highlight one thing. Instead of electing "one size fits all" MP's. Maybe instead, we should vote to elect people to run departments . I'd sooner elect someone with a clear interest in the job, not someone climbing the greasy pole or falling back down .
This list of secretarial failures does highlight one thing. Instead of electing "one size fits all" MP's. Maybe instead, we should vote to elect people to run departments . I'd sooner elect someone with a clear interest in the job, not someone climbing the greasy pole or falling back down .
LOL The Irony
On Moderation
Because he keeps opening his gob and virtue signalling about how good he was (whilst convinently forgetting the NXEC debacle where he got the government a lot less money than National Express offered).
LOL The Irony
On Moderation
He's had quite a while in the post. It's fine to have a few screw ups in the first year but constantly for 3 years? Inexcusable IMO. Should've been sacked after the May timetable disaster.
That was Fraser. Castle approved closures too, but they started to go back down to the pre-Report mean under her.
Statto
Established Member
Has to be Grayling, not known as failing Grayling for nothing, he keeps his job as he's perfect stooge for the equally incompetent May, the latest bout of incompetence the awarding of a £13.8 million ferry contract to a company which had never run a ferry service and owned no ships tips the balance, plus he's been incompetent at every department he's been involved in. When he was Justice Secretary, ban on books, which was ruled illegal by the High Court, his proposed cuts to Legal Aid which saw barristers and solicitors strike for the first time in British history.
She did get rid of Beeching before he had a chance to implement his second report, which would have seen many of our most important secondary routes run down.
coppercapped
Established Member
Of course, you're right! Grey cells fading after half a century...
coppercapped
Established Member
So speaks the champion of lost causes...
Well, fortunately routes like Newcastle to Edinburgh and London to Banbury turned out not to be lost causes, but very robust causes instead.
Wrong, as it happens.
But at the time he did that, his coach was pelted with some eggs when he was visiting somewhere in Northants and the local plod took it upon themselves to prosecute said protesters. As someone rightly asked the then Chief Constable, it seems that throwing eggs is an offence whereas throwing a punch isn't, perhaps next time the protesters should have thrown a punch at the then deputy PM.
It seems senior Labour figures aren't beyond assaulting people -
"Simpson became a BBC reporter in 1970. On his very first day, the then-prime minister Harold Wilson, angered by what he saw as the sudden and impudent appearance of the novice's microphone, punched him in the stomach" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Simpson_(journalist)
Mutant Lemming
Established Member
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Marples - seems a pretty standard business character/celebrity . All he wanted to do was avoid paying taxes and bills
Andrew Nelson
Member
- Joined
- 28 Jun 2010
- Messages
- 702
Former director of Road Building Co. Involved in the closure of thousands of miles of Railways.
No, not bent at all.
- Status