Great Western Coffee Shop

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp9r15xxz3zo



We have been so concentrating on the new government that I don't think we've documented these two as spokespeople for the major opposition parties.   

Wera Hobhouse is MP for Bath and spoke for our campaign to retain the through services from her consituency (Oldfield Park and Bath) to London (Waterloo) that were culled in 2021 to thin out services along the route - since when new Bristol - Salisbury services have been introduced, and the local Salisbury - Basingstoke service has been re-extended to Waterloo ... with a "just miss" at Salisbury, and both often run with 158s. 

Helen Whately is the Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent, and has been an MP continually since 7 May 2015.   She represents a seat outside the area the Coffee Shop covers, and is not a person I have come across before; a great deal of history in parliament but nothing "prior" that suggests a transport interest, but I stand to be corrected.

Does calling for a price freeze on season tickets perhaps indicate a lack of awareness of recent changes in work travel for a lot of people who now work partly from home?  That in turn may point to a wider lack of interest in public transport.  Either way, she is of course likely to have little or no influence over what actually happens.

And yet ... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9le7vdw91o


Err ... a "secretary" and a "minister" ?

We need Sir Humphrey Appleby (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humphrey_Appleby) to clarify the distinction.  ;D

There is a Transport Secretary who is the Rail Minister's boss. And shadow varieties too.

The senior politician in a department is the Secretary of State and member of the Cabinet.  The Ministers of State are responsible for functions within the department.  The press may refer to them both as Ministers.

Thank you.  And both need to be shadowed? 

Opposition shadows are often seen as shadowing individuals (or their posts). However, officially they are their party's spokesperson for a department or topic. The Conservatives are the official opposition, and Helen Whately is Shadow Secretary of State for Transport and member of the shadow cabinet. There are three other, "junior", shadows for the DfT - Sir Alec Sherbrooke is Shadow Minister of Transport, and is likely to take over some topics from his SSoS. Greg Smith and Dr Kieran Mullen are Shadow Parliamentary Under Secretaries - a pretty lowly form of parliamentary life, really.

The Lib Dems are not part of the official opposition, and are too few in number to name shadows on a "man-for-man marking" basis. Some do get officially listed, per department, and Baroness Randerson is the one for transport. There has to be someone in each house, and Wera Hobhouse (née von Reden) covers not only transport but energy and climate change and is Shadow Leader of the House (so a member of Ed Davey's shadow cabinet). Precise titles are a bit irrelevant with so much multihattedness going on.