Afternoon:
10°c
Passengers struggling to get into work today on National Express services will no doubt be wishing that, rather than face the prospect of two days of strikes by rail unions, they had gone on holiday — though not, perhaps, from Stansted Airport, now that the Stansted Express has been reduced to an hourly service.
Handily for the strikers, the 48-hour stoppage on services to and from Liverpool Street falls today and tomorrow, just before the weekend. Two more stoppages are planned for holiday weekends on 13-14 August and 20-21 August.
But although passenger indignation may well be focused on the unions, this would not be altogether fair. Blame can be shared by both sides. National Express has shown itself to be inept in its relations with its employees as well as its customers.
But the unions, who are are vexed at the operator's offer of a 0.5 per cent pay rise this year, have to realise that workers in other parts of the economy are taking pay cuts in order to hold onto their jobs. The economic climate does not favour generous pay rises.
The unions are more justifiably concerned that the company has cut 750 jobs on two of its services, the East Coast mainline and the East Anglia service. That includes a customer call centre and ticket office staff; the management has also removed dining cars from long-distance routes. These cuts have had a damaging effect on customers as well as staff, an insult added to the injury that ticket costs rose by six per cent in January.
Undoubtedly, the company has financial difficulties in respect of the East Coast line, and that can be attributable to the inflated price it paid to the Government to renew its franchise. In other words, it would appear that passengers are paying the price for the incompetence of National Express management.
The strike is unjustified, because its consequences will fall on blameless travellers: both the rail company and the unions must avert the next one as a matter of urgency.
Crime must not pay
The dictum that crime does not pay is not borne out by the case of Raymond May. He is an organised crime boss who was alleged, in evidence disclosed to the Court of Appeal, to be a “massive” cocaine importer suspected of involvement in several murders.
Yet, as we report today, he has not, so far, lost any of his money or his extensive assets following a court confiscation order imposed seven years ago. Remarkably, he has received at least £411,000 in legal aid to fund successive, unsuccessful appeals.
This is preposterous. The Government's Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office is meant to bring criminals such as Mr May to account by hitting their assets. Yet it has signally failed to enforce a default order imposed after his conviction for VAT fraud.
The only payment the state has received is £150,000 from a third party and £5,000 from a court order — which should be set against the cost of the bureaucracy involved. But if the Office cannot seize the assets of criminals such as this, it is hard to know what it is for.
The lessons for other crime bosses is obvious: that it is possible to play the system in order to keep the profits of illegal activities. Mr May was enabled to do so through his successive appeals.
This case exposes wider weaknesses in the much-vaunted system for making criminals pay for their crimes. Confiscation orders must be enforced quickly to maintain the credibility of the justice system.
Intelligent radio
Radio is proving to be an extraordinarily resilient medium: figures released today show that the numbers of listeners is at an all-time high, 46.3 million of us.
And it is Radio 3 — the Sony station of the year —which has done particularly well, with more than two million listeners, partly as a result of the clever way it has packaged and marketed its composers of the year: Haydn, Handel and Mendelssohn. It probably helps that the composers are rather good too.
Reader views (1)
We seem to be getting nothing but strikes lately.
- Rosieinlondon, London UK, 06/08/2009 16:52
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