JOLLY RODGERED
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I see Bill Rodgers has been telling the Transport Salaried Staffs Association that there widespread determination that there will never be another Beeching. It could be that some somewhere, someday might be saying the same about Rodgers.
He's certainly doing a hard sell on his Transport Bill. Imagine anyone boasting about cutting back on a road-building programme. Imagine anyone boasting that he has approved a five-year rolling investment plan for freight locomotives and wagons, when he knows the railways are grossly overmanned but does nothing about that.
His boast that he has returned Freightliners to British Rail after their disastrous record in the late Sixties and in the face of NFC's undoubted success, possibly sums the man up best. These are political decisions, not commercial decisions, but it would be naive to think they would be otherwise because Bill Rodgers is politically and not commercially minded.
He claims all credit for -these piecemeal steps— his words not mine — but then that's easy to do. When the election comes along it is unlikely that Bill Rodgers will find himself back at
Transport. That's the wi
politicians, be -Beechings" or "Rodgi They make their insecure I cal way and leave the pra men to clear up behind.