Comment
LEO MCKINSTRY
From railways and roads to schools and hospitals… why does NOTHING in Britain work?
A new study indicated that average traffic speeds on our streets are at their slowest for a decade
THE punctuality of trains is taken seriously in Japan.
In 2017, the company which manages the express line between the capital Tokyo and the city of Tsukuba issued a formal apology when one of its trains left 20 seconds early.
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Similarly, in 2021 a driver was fined for turning up one minute late at the platform to take an empty train to Okayama station.
To most of us in Britain, immersed in a transport culture of chronic delays and institutionalised unreliability, these two incidents seem almost surreal.
In parts of our network, restricting lateness to just one minute would be a cause for celebration rather than reprimand.
If our operators had to apologise for every 20-second deviation from the scheduled timetable, the station loud-speakers would never be silent.
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The inadequacy of our railways was exposed again yesterday by official figures which revealed that more than 1,000 trains are being cancelled every day — a rise of 54 per cent on the middle months of 2023.
Deeper malaise
At Northern, one of the worst offenders, the average daily rate of withdrawn services is a shocking 170, compared to 140 between April and November last year.
Even the most high-profile routes are gripped by the inability to fulfil their commitments.
Avanti, the flagship operator of the West Coast mainline, is cancelling 31 trains a day on average, compared to 13 in the middle of last year.
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A host of different factors are held responsible for this breakdown in efficiency.
Predictably, the unions, campaigners and left-wing politicians blame under-funding, even though massive subsidies continue to be poured into the network and fares have just risen by 4.9 per cent.
Others point to ageing rolling stock — which means that around 2,600 trains will be at least 35 years old by 2030 — a huge backlog of repairs, and the ravenous appetite of the flawed HS2 project which has swallowed vast sums that could have been used for improvements elsewhere.
But there is a deeper malaise at work here, for the railways are hardly unique in their failings.
The truth is that so much of the civic infrastructure no longer works in modern Britain.
Our roads have become hopelessly congested, unable to cope with demand and riddled with potholes.
Yesterday, a new study indicated that average traffic speeds on our streets are at their slowest for a decade, partly because of the disruption caused by repairs.
Between 2022 and 2023, no fewer than 2.2million street and roadworks were carried out in England, while the time spent by motorists in traffic jams has risen by five per cent already this year.
It is the same story on so many other fronts.
It is outrageous that half of our young people now go to university yet there are such skills shortages in engineering, manufacturing and transport.
Leo McKinstry
We once had among the best-equipped armed forces in the world, but that reputation has been shattered by fiascos such as the failure of the Ajax armoured vehicle and the endless breakdowns in our two new aircraft carriers, built at a cost of £7billion.
Too many of our schools are crumbling because of poor build quality, our water companies pump sewage into our rivers, our airports lag behind Asia in quality and innovation, while technology in the NHS and the immigration service is hopelessly outdated — a prime reason why we have long hospital waiting lists and porous borders.
Britain used to be the workshop of the world.
We pioneered the industrial revolution and led the creation of the railways.
It was the British genius for invention that helped create the telephone, the television and the jet engine.
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Yet that dynamism seems to have evaporated completely as we sink into a quagmire of ineptitude and inertia. So what has gone wrong?
One problem is the crippling absence of firm political and democratic leadership.
Anxious to avoid blame, our politicians have shuffled off the responsibility for running much of the country to unelected quangos, such as the Highways Agency for our roads and Network Rail for trains.
Devoid of any commercial pressures or accountability at the ballot box, the senior staff at these bodies have proved adept at feathering their own nests, but far less successful at meeting the needs of the long-suffering public.
Andrew Haines, the chief executive of Network Rail was, according to its annual report, earning £589,000 last year, while Nick Harris, the head of the Highways Agency, was on £384,649, up from £355,000 — though it is hard to see what justified this huge rise.
Like so much of the public sector, these outfits are obsessed with promoting the fashionable woke creed.
Culture of division
“We’ve introduced inclusive leadership training for all our line managers” and are “growing our network of diversity and inclusion champions across all our teams,” boasts the Highways Agency.
It is a pity the same energy was not focused on presiding effectively over the road network.
The fixation with the inclusion dogma, far from building a harmonious, innovative workforce, actually feeds a culture of division, resentment and grievance, which helps to explain why so much of the public sector has low productivity, reflected in endless strikes and excessive sick leave.
In addition, our education system does not place anything like enough emphasis on practical and technical skills.
It is outrageous that half of our young people now go to university yet there are such skills shortages in engineering, manufacturing and transport.
Modern corporate Britain prizes the right opinions above creativity and innovation.
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Feather-bedded by welfare, constantly told we are in the midst of a mental health crisis, we are also losing the work ethic that once built our civilisation.
Only if we change such attitudes, and rediscover our resilience and ambition, will our nation move out of the slow lane.
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