East Midlands Railway cancels 20 fast services a day because of problems with its new trains

East Midlands Railways has admitted that its problems with its new trains have not all been caused by the recent hot weather.

BBC News reports:

A number of Intercity services, which run to and from London St Pancras, will be cancelled from Monday, while other services will have fewer carriages.

Will Rogers, managing director of EMR, said the performance of the Class 810 fleet had "fallen below the levels we and our customers expect" and that the timetable change was "necessary".

The Intercity services run between London and destinations including Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby and Sheffield.

EMR did not say how long the timetable changes would be in place for, but said in a statement they would remain in place while "EMR works with the manufacturer, Hitachi Rail, to resolve disruption for customers as soon as possible".

And the Guardian adds more detail:

EMR is cancelling about 20 fast trains a day between London, Sheffield and Nottingham, while others will also be short-formed and are likely to be crowded. Its new class 810 fleet, previously labelled Auroras when their launch was heralded less than a year ago, have suffered from what EMR has called “performance and reliability issues”.

The operator also criticised Hitachi’s maintenance of the existing fleet that the Auroras were due to replace, the class 222 trains, which it said had “significantly impacted upon EMR’s ability to run a consistent intercity service”.

Interestingly, BBC News ran a story only yesterday under the headline:

East Midlands Railway cancellations – is it really just the hot weather?

In it, my best friend from school, now secretary of the East Midlands branch of the passenger advocacy group Railfuture, said:

"a bit more transparency" around a recovery plan and the issues the operator was facing would be helpful for passengers.

We are not without influence.

The 810 trains are bi-modal – they're able to take power from overhead wires but also have their own diesel engines. They were ordered on Chris Grayling's watch after the Conservative government cancelled its plans to electrify the whole of the St Pancras main line. The wires run out at Wigston, a few miles south of Leicester.

But it's not all bad news. We're getting new taller ticket barriers at Market Harborough station to stop people without tickets boarding the trains that aren't running.

This is the blog that forecast turnips would replace tomatoes

I'm not the Wise Woman of Wing - and Chris Grayling has fallen by the wayside - but this post does date from 2017.

New hope of electrification from Market Harborough to Sheffield

Harborough FM, which these days provides the best local news service, reports that the government is again looking at the idea of electrifying the railway from Market Harborough to Sheffield.

A Department for Transport spokesperson has told the radio station:

"Enabling and design work is currently taking place to progress electrification of the Midland Mainline beyond Kettering to Market Harborough, as well as to enable the introduction of the new bi-mode trains to be introduced on the route in 2023.

"Further electrification of the MML to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield is currently being examined by the Department and Network Rail, and is at an early stage of development.

"This work will be subject to the development of a satisfactory business case."

And earlier this week Construction Enquirer had news of a "market engagement day" for potential contractors for this work.

The Conservatives said during the 2017 general election campaign that the wires would reach Sheffield, even though Chris Grayling had also taken the decision to scrap the project.

Visiting Derbyshire during the 2019 campaign, Boris Johnson suggested that it might go ahead after all.

Our prime minister has a well-established habit of saying whatever will get him through the next 10 seconds regardless of its truth, but maybe he was not lying here.

Lembit Opik has gone over to the dark side

Nation Cymru reports that Lembit Opik, former Liberal Democrat MP for Montgomeryshire and leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, has spoken at a meeting billed "How to Stop the Lib Dems with Lembit Opik."

The website says he was introduced by Chris Grayling: it's sad to see a man fall so low.

Over to Alison Alexander, the Lib Dem Senedd candidate in Montgomeryshire:

"Many people here have fond memories of the good Liberal and Liberal Democrat MPs and MSs did for the constituency and I think they’ll find his comments very sad. ...

"As for the Tories, they should be worried about stopping us. We are rebuilding rapidly ... and it’s only natural they see their Senedd and council seats under threat."

Lembit describes himself as gravitating "towards common sense and liberty". I'll give him liberty. Common sense, not so much.

Why it's a smart move for Hutchison Ports to pay Chris Grayling £100,000 a year

There's been a lot of adverse comment about the decision by Hutchison Ports to pay Chris Grayling £100,000 for seven hours' work a week for a year.

Critics point out that the firm with no ships that Grayling hired to run ferries in case of a no-deal Brexit has gone bust this week owing £2m. But they are missing the point.

What Hutchison Ports will undoubtedly be doing is listening to Grayling's advice and then doing the precise opposite of what he recommends.

So £100,000 represents excellent value for the company's shareholders. I may invest in it myself.

This is everything you always wanted to know about Once Upon a Time in the West and a great deal more besides

So says Mark Kermode - and he should know,

Christopher Grayling?

No, Christopher Frayling.

That's alright then.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Saucy Baroness Scott

With the cancellation of Seaborne Freight's contract yesterday, shares in Rutland Ferries will probably rise further when the Oakham Exchange opens on Monday morning. Did the old boy know something we didn't?

Thursday

A blowy day on Rutland Water as I join the crowds thronging Oakham Quay to watch the day’s ferry sail for the Hook of Holland. The Empress of Rutland is certainly a fine vessel, and it happens that my majority shareholding in Rutland Ferries has proved something of a goldmine of late.

I had a phone call from one Grayling (he managed to cut himself off twice during our conversation and sounded as though he had got his head stuck in the wastepaper basket at one point) asking if I had any ferries to spare. I told him I had, partly to stop him crying and partly because of the extraordinary sum he dropped into our conversation.

If I am honest, the Saucy Baroness Scott has been in dry dock for a couple of years, while the First Lady Bonkers has been grounded on the mudflats beyond the harbour bar for longer than that. Still, I did not get the impression that this Grayling is the sort who investigates the goods he buys too closely.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Remembering Sir Paddy Ashplant
• Curled up with the Wise Woman of Wing

What happens when mainstream politicians talk up the far right's prospects: A warning from the Isle of Dogs

Copyright © Mike Seaborne

Chris Grayling has been talking to the Daily Mail.

"It will open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe," Mr Grayling told the paper. 

"If MPs who represent seats that voted 70% to leave say 'sorry guys, we're still going to have freedom of movement', they will turn against the political mainstream," he added. 

"There's already a nastiness and unpleasantness in our politics, more people with extreme views, more people willing to behave in an uncivilised way," he said.

In other words, MPs must allow Brexit or the far right will benefit.

When a politician resorts to this argument, it is always a sign of desperation and can end badly. Let me give you a little history lesson.

Back in 1993 the Liberal Democrats ran the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. And the Labour opposition had a problem.

For the second time in less than a year one of their councillors in the Isle of Dogs had resigned, which had done nothing for Labour's popularity in the ward. They were worried about holding the by-election.

The strategy they hit upon was to talk up the threat the BNP posed. People were told they had to vote Labour or they would let the fascists in.

I don't know if this was meant to fight of the BNP or to prevent the Liberals get a foothold in a ward where they had never done very well. But, either way, it proved a disaster.

The voters were looking for a way to punish Labour, and the Liberals would not do as a protest vote as they ran the council.

And the message the voters heard was that if they wanted to punish Labour the way to do it was vote BNP.

With the result that the BNP won the by-election.

As soon as they had done so, the Labour Party - locally and nationally - launched an assault on the Liberals, blaming their racist campaigning for the BNP's success.

I spent a morning delivering in the by-election and there was nothing wrong with the leaflet I was given, but that is beside the point here.

Because it was Labour's tactic of talking them up that did much to help the BNP to victoryin an area of traditional Labour strength.

Similarly, what voters who are angry about the way Brexit has gone will hear today is Chris Grayling telling them that they should turn to the far right.

What they should do is turn their anger on the mainstream Conservatives who made them impossible promises in the referendum campaign and have continued to do so to this day.

Chris Grayling is a good example of such a politician.

Market Harborough will be the northern limit of electrification on the Midland main line

When Chris "Failing" Grayling finally announced his decision to scrap plans for the full electrification of the Midland main line, it was widely reported - not least by this blog - that the wires would stop at Kettering.

Today the government released the documents for those who wish to tender to run the service on the line and these show that the electrification will reach one station further north.

It will reach Market Harborough.

I would like to welcome this as recognition of my home town's growing importance as economic and cultural hub, but the reason for it may be more prosaic.

At Braybrooke, a couple of miles south of here, the electrification plans will see transformers built at the point high-voltage lines cross the railway.

So if you are electrifying the line to Braybrooke, you might as well electrify it to Market Harborough.

Leicester Conservatives fall out over promise of a tram system

Embed from Getty Images

It's quite something to have a split over your local election manifesto when you have only one councillor, but Leicester's Conservatives have managed it.

Last week I blogged about their election promise of a tram system from the city that would reach as far as Market Harborough.

Today, reports the Leicester Mercury, the city's only Tory councillor, Ross Grant, poured cold water on the idea:

“Nobody mentioned it to me. I wasn’t consulted at all. 

“If somebody had, they would have been told that I have been consistently against having a tram system in Leicester. 

“It would be horrifically expensive. 

“There are far less expensive ways of trying to deal with traffic and pollution problems. 

“You could get an entire fleet of hydrogen-fuelled buses which would have the advantage of taking people to where they actually want to go rather than just along a rail route. 

“Within my ward I don’t see how you could run a tram track down Welford Road. 

“The disruption would be immense.

It would be great to see trams back in Leicester, but I suspect this is the last we shall hear of the idea from the Tories for a while.

If they want to revive it one day, they will need to produce detailed plans. All we had from them this time is the report of a conversation at a photo opportunity with Chris Grayling.

Leicester Tories promise a tram to Market Harborough

Forget Daventry Conservatives and their canal. Leicester Tories are promising a tram to Market Harborough.

The Leicester Mercury quotes their chairman Jack Hickey:

“I discussed our ambitious plan with Transport Secretary Chris Grayling in Parliament recently, and he was enthusiastic about the benefits of light rail in Leicester and keen to listen to the business case for the project.”

Mind you, Mr Grayling doesn't look very enthusiastic in the accompanying photograph.

And you can understand it. Hickey was the man who complained that activists coming to Leicester West to campaign for his Labour opponent in last year's general election were trying to "skew the vote".

I would love to see trams return to Leicester just as I would love to see the Grand Union reach Daventry. But there would be many problems with the idea, even if the city could raise the capital to build a system.

Nottingham's trams - "I’m furious Nottingham has a tram and we do not" says Hickey - have been reported as losing almost £1m a week.

This at a time when the county Conservatives tell us they cannot afford a modest town bus service in Market Harborough.

Then there are the practicalities.

As the city's Labour mayor told the Mercury:

"We have done studies before and all parties have agreed the geography of the city – which is very different to Nottingham’s, is not suitable for a tram. 

"Weaving them out in and out of the city would be very, very difficult."

Still, full marks to the Tories for coming up with a startling idea to get some headlines.

They have to do that when, like the Liberal Democrats, they have only one councillor in Leicester.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Pelted with sharpened carrots

Knowing what a wise old bird Lord Bonkers is, I would not wager much against Boris Johnson's career ending just as he foretells.

Pelted with sharpened carrots

There is nothing the people of London enjoy more than a good Cabinet reshuffle. From early morning the crowds gather to see the fun: flower girls, costermongers (whatever they are) and scruffy urchins all assemble at the gates of Downing Street (in my young day you could walk into Number 10 and demand pot of tea, but times change and not for the better) to observe the comings and goings.

If a particularly juicy reshuffle is expected then temporary grandstands may be erected and, depending on the season, sellers of ice cream or hot roast chestnuts do a roaring trade.

I joined the throng this morning. How we laughed when we heard Grayling had been made Chairman of the Conservative Party! Then we laughed because it was announced when he had not been. The strange Gavin Williamson was pelted with sharpened carrots and Jeremy Hunt was roundly booed.

I did not spot Boris Johnson today, but I remain convinced that his career will end with his being running down Whitehall in polka-dot boxer shorts pursued by an angry mob.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• Mooning practice on the village green
• Defying the Sprout Police

Scenes from Brexit Britain 1

Embed from Getty Images

It's 2023 and members of the Grayling Youth are growing vegetables to save the need for expensive imports.

Government announces that the Midland main line will not be electrified north of Kettering

We will see more disappointing news like this around the country as HS2 eats up all the funding for rail investment.

That's what I wrote last December when it was announced that planned access improvement at Market Harborough station were to be postponed.

Reading between the lines of that post, it should already have been clear that today's announcement that there will be no electrification of the Midland main line north of Kettering was inevitable.

The transport minister Paul Maynard had declined to confirm that work north of Kettering would take place. 

And BBC News had quoted his boss Chris Grayling:

He said that rather than passengers from Northamptonshire having to board trains coming from the further north down to London, they would have a service originating from Corby and Kettering.

So services on the Midland will be operated by hybrid trains that use the overhead wires from St Pancras to Kettering and then switch to diesel to get to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.

The photograph below was taken in Kibworth Beauchamp (between Market Harborough and Leicester) and shows work being carried out to rebuild a road bridge to give room for overhead electrification to be installed on the railway.

This was done to numerous bridges north of Kettering and now turns out to have been a waste of money.

What appears to have happened is that the electrification of the Great Western line took too long and cost too much, with the result that the government felt it had to postpone the work on the Midland.

That in turn meant that the government was going to have to order hybrid diesel-electric trains to run on the Midland.

And if they had those, reasoned the government, then there was no need to electrify the line north of Kettering at all.

Note, incidentally, how intimately the government is involved in the running of our 'privatised' railways.

The railways had far more autonomy in the days of the nationalised British Rail.

Six of the Best 650

"For Trump as for Putin, reality is something that can be molded or outright dismissed when it would prove damning. It is now up to U.S. institutions, the media, and the American people to declare that a world in which facts don’t matter is not a reality we want to live in." Former Russia Today presenter Liz Wahl sees the hallmarks of Putin’s propaganda style in the way Trump is treating reality.

Chris Grayling is misleading Southern passengers, argues Paul.

Bradley L Garrett and Adam Fish decry the privatisation of urban airspace.

"That’s what characters in Dickens do: they step out of the novels and they roam the world." Jenny Hartley recommends five books on Charles Dickens.

Thomas Mallon reviews a new biography of Beryl Bainbridge.

Lynne About Loughborough looks at Swithland slate.

Is Chris Grayling going to reduce Market Harborough's train service for party advantage?

I fear the answer may well be yes.

Yesterday I blogged about the postponement of the access improvements at Market Harborough station.

In that post I went on to discuss the promise of better train services that Chris Grayling has made to Kettering and Corby,

When, earlier on yesterday, I asked on Twitter if this would mean poorer services for Market Harborough - and I suspect it will - someone replied that this was the price we pay for living in a safe seat.

I smiled at the time, but today it became clear that Grayling does make decisions on railway services based, not on the interests of passengers or the industry, but on what is good for the Conservative Party.

A letter he wrote to Boris Johnson, then the Mayor of London, explaining why he would not agree to Transport for London taking over suburban services said it was:

because I would like to keep suburban rail services out of the clutches of any future Labour Mayor. Obviously, similar concerns apply over a future Labour government as well...

All credit to the chairman of the transport select committee for his reaction:

Conservative MP Bob Neill ... said the views expressed in the letter - which was leaked to the Evening Standard - meant Mr Grayling was "unfit for office" and "acted for party political reasons". 

He also said the Transport Secretary had "compromised his position and should resign". 

Mr Neill added it was dishonest when Mr Grayling told MPs his decision was for financial reasons.

Kettering and Corby are seen as Conservative- Labour marginals. Labour gained both 1997, holding Kettering until 2005 and Corby until 2010.

Corby was even held briefly again by Labour after Louise Mensch walked out on the constituency in 2012.

Given that we now know that Grayling will used railway policy to boost the Conservative Party, it is no surprise to see those towns being given preferential treatment.

The answer in Harborough is for anti-Conservative voters to unite behind the Liberal Democrats and scare them as much as they are scared in Kettering and Corby.

It can be done. In 2005 we came within less than 4000 votes of winning Harborough.

Access improvements at Market Harborough station postponed

In November the transport minister Paul Maynard refused to confirm that the Midland main line will be electrified north of Kettering.

Today came news that as a result the long-promised access improvements at Market Harborough station have been postponed.

The news is contained in a letter from Maynard to Sir Edward Garnier, the Conservative MP for Harborough. You will find the letter on Sir Edward's website, though he has not been moved to offer a comment on it.

We will see more disappointing news like this around the country as HS2 eats up all the funding for rail investment.

What may be more bad news for Harborough travellers came today in the form of an answer from Chris Grayling.

According to BBC News:

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling is promising to launch what he calls a "proper, dedicated commuter" rail service linking Kettering, Corby and London by 2020 ... 

Transport Secretary Chris Grayling said change would start to come when the franchise - currently operated by East Midlands Trains - was renewed in 2018. 

He said that rather than passengers from Northamptonshire having to board trains coming from the further north down to London, they would have a service originating from Corby and Kettering.

Unless Grayling is going to pay for more trains and someone is going to conjure up more paths, that sounds to me like a recipe for fewer services going north of Kettering and calling at Market Harborough.

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Andrew Hickey is not impressed by the Stronger In campaign.

"Orwell was far more interested, as Corbyn has been far more interested, in speaking truth to power than in holding office. His loyalty was to the movement, or at least the idea of the movement, not to MPs or the front bench, which he rarely mentioned." Robert Colls (who taught me on my Masters course many years ago) on what Jeremy Corbyn can learn from George Orwell.

David Hencke explains how Chris Grayling's attempt to sell prison expertise to regimes with appalling judicial systems like Saudi Arabia and Oman cost the taxpayer over £1m. If he were a councillor he would be surcharged.

Mad to be Normal is a film on the radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing currently in production. Caron Lindsay finds a Lib Dem connection.

Peter Bebergal is interviewed by Dangerous Minds about his new book Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.

"“And Ukraine just wanted to be absolutely sure that the oil and the electricity rolls through." BuzzFeed remembers 19 Eurovision moments from Terry Wogan.

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"Had the campaign been, as it should have been, against the general principle rather than the specific example of books, then we might now be celebrating a real victory, rather than a Pyrrhic one which leaves prisoners without access to the most basic necessities, but allows them to read…" Andrew Hickey believes Chris Grayling has been allowed to get away with banning prisoners from receiving parcels.

Petra Schleiter explains why the Fixed-term Parliaments Act should not be repealed.

A new report shows why Cameron's flagship idea of the Big Society has foundered. The Barrow Cadbury blog introduces it.

Sam Brodey recalls the time that "badass feminist Queen Elizabeth II gave Saudi Arabia's king a lesson in power".

"When I first saw this movie, I woke up with the TV on and there it was. I watched a lot of it in this half-grogged, dream-wake-sleep state. I didn't know what the heck I was seeing; just had an overwhelming sense of wonderment at how things were unspooling. I watched it fully awake later, and realized the wonderment and joy was not a dream." CineMaven succumbs to the magic of A Canterbury Tale.

Tim Worthington celebrates some classic children's dramas of the 1970s.

Why did Lib Dem MPs back Chris Grayling on judicial review?

Ian Dunt writes about last night's Commons vote on judicial review:

Judicial review sounds boring but it is one of the most democratic legal mechanisms available to the British citizen. It allows us to challenge illegal government decisions, to fight government irrationality and to challenge the decisions made by authorities. In the words of one peer, it is "the British defence of freedom" and the means by which we avoid "elected dictatorship". 

Chris Grayling has lost several judicial review cases this year, for the simple reason that he keeps acting illegally and irrationally. So he has decided to try and eradicate it. That's not what it's called, of course. It’s called 'reform'. But his reform will make it impossible for anyone but the very rich to use it.

Grayling's proposals were mauled in the Lords, with Liberal Democrat peers playing a major role.

Yet last night Lib Dem MPs, with one exception, voted to reverse the Lords' amendments and restore Grayling's original proposals.

Dunt is damning about this:

Apart from Sarah Teather, who has shown herself to be the beating heart of the Liberal Democrat soul this parliament and is consequently leaving it at the earliest opportunity, no other Lib Dem MP rebelled.

No-one else. Of all the Lib Dem MPs who liked to get on their soap box about liberalism, or how they are the only party which still believes in civil liberties, or which opposed the authoritarian tendencies of Labour – no-one apart from Teather had the courage of their convictions.

This seems a bizarre decision by the Liberal Democrat leadership. Does anyone know why it was taken?

And does anyone know to whom Nick Clegg is now trying to appeal?