Man in a Shed: Pack em in...its good for you.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Pack em in...its good for you.

Now Ed Vaizey sometimes strikes me as Boris Johnson's potential disciple. He'd be at the top of your list for a pint down the pub, and he can actually think and speak at the same time (which seems to slip up old Boris sometimes) , but I regret to say that the Rail Chiefs quoted at Conservative Home and The Sun are most likely to be right - see below:

"Rail chiefs yesterday told passengers to quit moaning about packed trains because standing up is SAFER. They said people crammed into “sardine specials” avoid injuries in a crash because they cushion each other.

Its just not a convenient truth - but I have to admire the PR employee in whatever train company who decided one morning - lets stop apologising for crowded commuter trains and play to the positives !

Update: It seems that Rail regulator Bill Emery is whom should get the, um, credit for this. If you see him on a crowded train - just move in a little closer ;-)

2 comments:

Jeff said...: I seem to remember a road safety campaign some time ago that advised against holding a child on your knee in a car. This we were told was because when involved in an accident at 30 mph the childs weight could increase upto 10 times making it impossible to hold on to it.

How then would being cushioned by one person when being hit by another weighing ten times more than he did whilst stationery be safe?; 5:17 pm
Bag said...: True enough but maybe they mean safer overall. For arguments sake 50% may be crushed when they are all packed in but 50% survivors compared with 60% if they are in seats. Even though the totals are different because you can pack more in. Statistics is a wonderful thing. This way more money and an impression of safety for the train company. How much better can they get than that?; 6:41 pm

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The pound in your pocket

"We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists." James Callaghan

“The trouble with theoretical economists is that they don't understand that when you have a deficit, you can only finance it by borrowing, and you've got to persuade people that it's worth lending money to you and that they'll get their money back... there's no way of escaping it.” Dennis Healey during the 1976 Stirling Crisis.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens ... Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of over-turning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose." John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

"To preserve [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude." Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States of America,1801-1809.

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