Money could also be collected from London businesses to pay for improvements – a scheme used in Paris to fund the glittering Metro.The report also points out that studies show “congestion charging” could raise money for public transport as well as discourage the use of cars. Senior Tube managers claim the service needs pounds 150m [...]
Money could also be collected from London businesses to pay for improvements – a scheme used in Paris to fund the glittering Metro.The report also points out that studies show “congestion charging” could raise money for public transport as well as discourage the use of cars. Senior Tube managers claim the service needs pounds 150m immediately to prevent the present service from deteriorating.The report highlights other sources of income that could be tapped; the two academics say that a local levy in the Eighties raised nearly pounds 190m a year for public transport. The study, by Stephen Glaister and Tony Travers, from the London School of Economics, states that the “core Underground is a liability rather than an asset”. It adds that the Government would need to invest pounds 1.6bn in order to make the system attractive enough for the private sector to take the Tube off its hands.The real problem is thatLabour is committed to onerous public-spending targets as well as upgrading the Underground.
Other possible options included setting up a trust to guide investment, or modifying Treasury rules to enable modernisation to go ahead.
“I will find the money, other than from the Treasury, to see we modernise the Underground before it is flooded from all the water in the Thames,” he pledged on BBC radio.Any suggestion that the Tube could be privatised completely received a set back yesterday with the publication of a new report. By then the mammal’s English population had crashed and it was seriously threatened, partly due to hunting but mainly by organochlorine pesticides. The badger is also given full legal protection, although illegal baiting with dogs still continues.. John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, yesterday ruled out wholesale privatisation of the London Underground but admitted that the Government is looking at ways of bringing in private-sector investment to improve services on the cash-strapped network. Mr Prescott indicated this might involve “public-private partnerships”. Furthermore, the 1952 Cock-fighting Act made it illegal to posses any instrument or appliance that can be adapted for cock-fighting.Otter-hunting was only outlawed once the otter was given full protection from any kind of human persecution in a 1977 Government order.
But the legislation was not fully effective in ending cock-fighting, and the 1911 Protection of Animals Act made it illegal to keep a place for cock-fighting purposes. It was formally outlawed in 1835, thanks to a Bill introduced by South Durham MP Joseph Pease who was a member of the RSPCA committee.Cock-fighting and dog-fighting were also banned under Pease’s 1835 Act. It was fiercely debated, with the future prime minster George Canning declaring that “the amusement inspired courage and produced a nobleness of sentiment and elevation of mind”. The Bill was lost by two votes and The Times approved, saying that any law which interfered with how a man chose to spend his leisure was tyranny. Broadsheet columnists still take the same libertarian line today to defend fox-hunting with hounds.
Bull-baiting was eventually banned.
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