Author Archives: Andrew Cook

Opinion: Bombardier – the end is nigh?‏

Just over a year ago, I wrote on Lib Dem Voice that the future for the Bombardier train building plant at Derby looked precarious. At that time, my fears were around the deep spending cuts that we were being forewarned of. Happily those cuts have not so far seriously affected transport spending. But last week, the same Derby Litchurch Lane Bombardier plant suffered a severe blow when the Department for Transport announced that the order for new trains to work the Thameslink service in London is likely to go to Siemens in Germany. Siemens builds fine trains (although, as …

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Opinion: What future for Bombardier?

We’ve begun to see how the cutbacks in the Transport Department’s budget are going to affect Britain’s railways. There were always going to be some projects that would need to be delayed, but we should be careful that Transport Secretary Philip Hammond doesn’t just look at the impact on his own budget but also the impact on the industry and communities that build and maintain Britain’s railway network. He should also look forward beyond the end of this Parliament.

At the moment, after years of cuts and rationalisation by the previous Conservative and Labour regimes, Britain is now down to one …

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    This is an interesting article. One Nation Toryism never got going until the demise of the Liberals in the 1920s (Disraeli certainly never practised it). To t...
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    In Latin it may be a gerund but in English it's a noun. If I were to object to the Government's referending of the public, that would be a gerund....
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    Except that "referendum" is not a Latin 2nd Declension Neuter noun. It's a gerundive; as such it is used in English differently from Latin so should take an Eng...
  • PM
    @ PM, It can be either. I do remember from my schooldays that the plural in Latin involved replacing the 'um' of a neuter noun by an 'a'. I must have managed...