Since the publication of my previous post, there has been an ongoing argument amongst British Government ministers, politicians of other parties and senior figures in the Armed Services about whether this country's front line soldiers in Afghanistan are adequately resourced. In fact, the problem is more likely to be one of misallocated resources : for as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman - and someone with whom I rarely agree - has pointed out, Britain's "defence" expenditure is the second largest in the world, presumably after the United States, in real terms.
This problem of resource misallocation is , I would suggest, as much a contemporary "British Disease" as lack of productivity was in earlier times, and, indeed, it may be argued that the two are closely allied. Take, for instance, "a little local difficulty", to quote former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, with which I have been wrestling in recent monthss.
I have been concerned for some time about the state of Worcester's iconic Foregate Street Railway bridge , which passes above a busy thoroughfare. It has been pointed out to me that basic lack of maintenance of this heritage-listed Victorian iron bridge is causing structural damage. As a consequence, I often visually inspect said structure when passing underneath. Last week, I noticed that a bracket attached to a horizontal metal beam was broken and the beam had started to sag. I drew this problem to the attention of staff at the adjoining railway station; and bracket and beam have since been secured with a (very high tech !) piece of wire. This is just as well because a bus stop is located immediately below.
Needless to say there are various stakeholders involved in the future of Foregate Street Railway Bridge : namely Network Rail (who own the structure) together with Worcestershire County Council, who have responsibility for sub-regional integrated transport planning. The lesser players are train operating company London Midland, who run Foregate Street Station, and the City Council, who are the local planning authority and responsible for heritage conservation. I think it's fair to say that these secondary stakeholders, who are most directly affected by the state of the bridge, would very much like to see this structure and the station regenerated.
By contrast, the main obstacles to such regeneration appear to be the infrastructure owner, Network Rail, and, in particular, Worcestershire County Council. The latter has for some years run a concerted campaign to have a strategic rail parkway station constructed to the south east of the current Worcester boundary, and takes little interest interest in the City's two existing railway stations, of which Foregate Street is one. The other, Shrub Hill, was placed on the English Heritage At Risk Register last year, but subsequent investment by the Railway Heritage Trust (part of Network Rail) has brought some respite for that station.
So what is Network Rail doing about Foregate Street Railway Bridge and Station ? I think it's a testimony to the apparent disinterest hitherto of this organisation that a sign on the wall immediately below the structure informs passers-by to contact - in the event of a problem -RailTrack, the deceased private sector company from which Network Rail took over ownership and operation of Britain's railway infrastructure in 2002. As far as I can make out, Network Rail is a sort of quango which means that it operates much of the time along mysterious lines. As regular media coverage also testifies, the company appears to have a strong preference - shared, incidentally, by Worcestershire County Council - for grand prestige projects which distract it from smaller, but nevertheless essential, resource allocations.
An all-too-familiar story, I suspect !
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