Great Western Coffee Shop

Can you spot the odd one(s) out?

Alastair Darling
Andrew Adonis
Ben Bradshaw
Chris Grayling
Derek Twigg
Douglas Alexander
Geoff Hoon
Justine Greening
Maria Eagle
Norman Baker
Patrick McLoughlin
Philip Hammond
Ruth Kelly
Stephen Byers
Theresa Villiers
Tom Harris

I know of multiple answers ... so there's no 'right' and 'wrong' answer here.

Edit to add back in a dropped e

Justin Greening is certainly the odd man out there ...  ;) :D ;D

Oops ... I think I've dropped an e on the floor.   Ah yes ... I'll put it back in.

Andrew Adonis was the only one who was any good at his job at 'Transport'  :P

Maria Eagle and Chris Grayling have only ever shadowed 'Transport'.

Ben Bradshaw has never had a 'Transport' brief, either in government or opposition. (I think  :-\)

I have a huge respect for Andrew Adonis.


Correct


Also correct ...

And it shows just *how many* answers there are ... there are four other things that I had picked up as I set this up which each applies only to one of the named people!

Me too. Although I'm not a fan of politicians who swap parties. That hints at opportunism rather than conviction. He was originally a Lib Dem, selected by them as a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Westbury Constituency in 1994. He resigned before fighting an election there.

I'm also not a fan of unelected ministers of state.

But those two negatives were greatly outweighed by just how damn good he was in the job as SoS for Transport.

Andrew Adonis is the only one who's not been elected as an MP.

Ben Bradshaw - correctly identified - is the only one never to have had a transport / shadow transport portfolio. He is also the only one to represent / have represented a constituency in the area served by First Great Western. We don't seem to grow transport secretaries in the South West, and I sometimes wonder if that makes any difference in how our railways are run / comparative decisions made, etc

Stephen Byers is the only one who's not been around the transport scene in the south west during the award and running of the current franchise (his involvement dates back a bit)

Patrick McLoughlin is the only one to have been appointed to a post at the Department for Transport twice; he was a junior minister there under a previous conservative government, as well as being back there now.

Ruth Kelly kicked butt at FGW and put them on the naughty step. Threatening to strip First Group of the Greater Western franchise if they didn't get their act together. That despite the fact that it was her department who had proscribed a tender that FGW were never going to meet. Class 158s (and other DMUs) in storage. Fare's strikes. No need for Adelantes, et seq. Alison Forster took the fall, but it wasn't really her fault.

Yes, FGW weren't totally blameless, massaging performance figures, but that was symptomatic of the situation they found themselves in following the amalgamation of HSS, Thames Valley and Wessex.

Ah ... you mean these scenes taken soon after the December 2006 timetable change

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/eastl1.jpg) (http://www.wellho.net/pix/eastl2.jpg)

We can discuss - years later - as to whether the service withdrawls, rescheduling for stock use rather than to meet passenger requirements, and formation cuts were the responsibility of the DfT (under previous ministers to Ruth Kelly), of First (who undertook to carry out the timetable changes and bid the number of trains they needed), or some of both. 

At the time, I looked at that picture of a line of 4 x 153 doing nothing, and thought "that's OUR train" ... the 07:30 Westbury to Swindon, the 16:47 Westbury to Swindon.   The 08:46 Swindon to Westbury.  The 17:44 Swindon to Wetsbury. The 22:11 Swindon to Westbury.  Our commuter service ... gone, leaving trains at just 06:20 and 18:44 from Swindon to Westbury and at 07:04 and 19:35 back to Swindon.  Our late evening service, gone.  And our daytime trips - not listed above - gone.   The remaining (actually new) trains timed to reduce stock needs, and to meet the DfT's "SLC2" spec, and not to meet the needs of the area that the service (interesting word  ;D) should have served.

I've learned a lot since those days, and I know many other have too. With a community hat on, I know that our community's eye wasn't on the ball as well as it should have been to say "oy!" earlier and more loudly. Local government, since reformed for much wider reasons, has changed dramatically; new constituency boundaries and Wiltshire MPs who look at all their stations and services, not just their local line stations to London. The DfT too - I know there are fears about the level of service not the minute detail in the new franchise, particularly raised for Bedwyn / Pewsey / Westbury in Wiltshire, but I also see the pieces coming into place for a proper linked network including (yes) the TransWilts, but also for the other lines with which it connects and where, in some cases, the investment for the future dwarfs what's needed (and may happen  ;) ) on the TransWilts.  First and the other bidders are commercial companies; they need to make their best profit - and this time they'll be far better informed and they'll also know that they'll be far better supported - certainly in Wiltshire - than they imagined that they would be last time around.  And - I hope - the system and the groundrules should / should have moved on somewhat so that the absurdity of "pulling" well loaded trains and then storing the stock in sidings will be seen as just a lesson of history.  But - certainly at my home station - the effects of that history are still very much with us.  I'm working out of my home town this week, and would have commuted by train if a service was available.  As it is, I drove and sat in traffic jams as I went. 

I've not really got a strong view on Ruth Kelly's decisions - I remain much more prickly about one of her predecessors who was asked on national radio about the TransWilts service.  He didn't answer the question at all - he chose instead to talk about railway investment and how fantastic that was in improving services for areas up the West Coast main line which (I happened to know) served his constituency.  I too was concerned when an unelected minister was appointed (Andrew Adonis), but I have to agree that - very quickly - I saw the merit in having a person who wasn't area-tied and who seemed to have so much else going for him too.

A lesson from history indeed grahame.

I was well aware that mentioning Ruth Kelly would draw a forthright response. The FGW tender from 2006 is a lesson that I hope all parties have learnt/will learn from. That is, how not to prescribe* a franchise.

*and not proscribe as I mistakenly said up thread. bignosemac only got a D in GCSE English Language.  :-[