Network Rail fined £4m for Paddington rail crash - BBC News

On 30 Mar, 12:35, "The Good Doctor" <docnews2...@>
wrote:
> "Network Rail has been fined £4m for the breaches in health and safety
> that led to the 1999 Paddington rail disaster

Bearing in mind that Network Rail is a "not for profit company" will
this have any impact on the company or is it just a "paper exercise"
to appease public opinion as many of the public will interpret it as
Network Rail getting a kicking?

--
gordon

In article <1175260683.165005.3070@n76g2000hsh..c om>,
tshanazt@ <tshanazt@> writes
>On 30 Mar, 12:35, "The Good Doctor" <docnews2...@>
>wrote:
>> "Network Rail has been fined 0 >> that led to the 1999 Paddington rail disaster
>
>Bearing in mind that Network Rail is a "not for profit company" will
>this have any impact on the company or is it just a "paper exercise"
>to appease public opinion as many of the public will interpret it as
>Network Rail getting a kicking?
>
>--
>gordon
>

So the funds go out of one public pocket into another..


--
Tony Sayer

>
> It is absolutely ridiculous, in my opinion, that Network Rail is held
> responsible for this when they happened under Railtrack's stewardship.
> Fining a public organisation does nothing, they could use those funds
> to make infrastructure improvements to stop things like these
> happening again. It's like when they sue a hospital or a school, it's
> the patients and student's that suffer.
>

Yes a farce but it's a sop to the public and the relatives some of
whom were calling for corporate manslaughter charges.

It's a better alternative to the blame culture otherwise the next
chairman of Network Rail will take the job and any accident on his
watch go straight to jail - I mean who's going to take a job on those
terms.

As for the argument the money would be better spent of safety
improvements (suggested by ITN today), well I can't think of a safer
way to travel and it's fifteen times safer than in your car - perhaps
the money should be spent on road safety.

The real farce of course is that Network Rail and Railtrack are being
held to blame for ignoring concerns about that signal but it wasn't
just one signal was it, it was the whole layout at Paddington and
whose fault was that?

The fact remains that the layout at Paddington was designed on the
assumption (requirement of) of ATP which was later cancelled by Cecil
Parkinson. That's what caused the accident but no mention of this by
the enquiry.

In fact it was the flawed Clapham enquiry that called for the
introductiopn of ATP even though it had b**ger all to do with that
accident.

So I propose that the enquiry should have concluded that the previous
Clapham enquiry was to blame and fined them and also recommended no
more public enquiries because a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

On Mar 30, 3:47 pm, "allan tracy" <thunderbird57...@m>
wrote:

> The fact remains that the layout at Paddington was designed on the
> assumption (requirement of) of ATP which was later cancelled by Cecil
> Parkinson. That's what caused the accident but no mention of this by
> the enquiry.

Ah, so it's Labour's fault.

After all, they took over from the Tories .. like Network Rail took
over from Railtrack.

On 30 Mar 2007 08:38:03 -0700, "cmj" <chris.moose@> wrote:

>On Mar 30, 3:47 pm, "allan tracy" <thunderbird57...@m>
>wrote:
>
>> The fact remains that the layout at Paddington was designed on the
>> assumption (requirement of) of ATP which was later cancelled by Cecil
>> Parkinson. That's what caused the accident but no mention of this by
>> the enquiry.
>
>Ah, so it's Labour's fault.
>
>After all, they took over from the Tories ..
>
>like Network Rail took over from Railtrack.
>
As in just a change of name in both cases ?

>
> >Ah, so it's Labour's fault.
>
> >After all, they took over from the Tories ..
>
> >like Network Rail took over from Railtrack.
>
> As in just a change of name in both cases ?

Mmm... there are those of us who think that Gordon Brown is doing a
pretty good, albeit slower, impersonation of Old Labour. He's learn't
from their mistakes on how not to screw up an economy quickly but
unfortunately that's still left the slow way.

allan tracy wrote:
>
> Mmm... there are those of us who think that Gordon Brown is doing a
> pretty good, albeit slower, impersonation of Old Labour. He's learn't
> from their mistakes on how not to screw up an economy quickly but
> unfortunately that's still left the slow way.

Exactly - it's like Denis Healey on Mogadon.