Friday 13 May 2011

I've Been Here Before

In case you missed it, we the tax payers have been fined £3 million for something we didn't do. This country prides it's self on it's sense of fair play but still allows this sort of thing to happen. We should be able to go to the European Court of Human Rights but we can't. At least I don't think we can. In the meanwhile we should all write to our MP and ask him/her to do all they can to stop this injustice happening again.

If you aren't sure what I am on about then I will give you a clue. Potters Bar rail crash. It happen nine years ago because a company called Jarvis, working as contractors for Railtrack couldn't be bothered with Health & Safety regulations. Because the rail maintenance section of Jarvis, which has since gone into administration were working for Railtrack, who were actually in administration at the time it's the company who took over from them when Railtrack went bust, Network Rail  who get the blame (I can't quiet work that one out) for not overseeing the work Railtrack's contractors were doing and have been fined the 3 million quid. So what has it got to do with us tax payers. Well Network Rail is basically kept going by tax payers money so on one hand the government are taking money from us and giving it to Network Rail who will use £3 million of that money to pay the fine. Surely the people who didn't do their jobs properly should be the ones who end up paying the fine, not you and me.

Write to your MP and ask him/her to end this nonsense ASAP.

A quote from the BBC news,

"It's offensive that I pay a fine for something that killed my father"

Perdita Kark,.

Daughter of crash victim

2 comments:

Cabbie J said...

Besides which, its taking money from the infrastructure operator, which ultimately means that not only does the tax payer lose out - but so does the rail user.

Network Rail is responsible for the maintenance of all rail infrastructure, and depriving them of £3m will undoubtedly affect rail performance in one way or another - perhaps even safety? Would be a touch ironic.

David said...

We also had to pay for the trial which could have cost million and in no way produced anything like justice.