Potters Bar Rant

Those of you who have been watching the news, and live in the UK will know we had another fatal rail accident on Friday. Seven people died when London to Kings Lynn express derailed at 100mph.

Now the dust has settled, it seems the cause was a faulty set of points which moved under the train, and the cause of the fault looks like inadequate maintenance. And the cause of that seems to be the fragmentation of responsibility following privatisation, with a maze of contractors and subcontractors all passing the blame around.

To anyone on continental Europe reading this - Don't privatise your railways. Not only will services deteriorate, but it will cost lives as well

Of course, I do have to point out that despite all this, rail is still far safer than going by car. The sort of measures that would reduce the 3000-a-year death toll on the roads are politcally impossible, things like strict enforcement of speed limits, black boxes on all cars and not giving driving licences to those who are psychologically unfit to get behind the wheel of a White Van.