Monday, January 24, 2011

A little knowledge can be dangerous in the hands of the stupid

This nugget from Phil Wilson in Parliament on 21/12/10

The Hitachi trains are bimodal, which means that they can switch from diesel to electric and vice versa when the need arises. Southeastern operates such Hitachi high speed trains.

No Phil. SouthEastern does not.

The Javelins are not bi-modes, they are dual voltage allowing them to run under the wires and on third rail.

Furthermore he went on to say "Hitachi's investment would be the biggest investment in the north-east of England since Nissan back in the 1980s".

How soon they forget, what about the the small matter of Siemens' £1 billion silicon chip factory on Tyneside skipped his mind.

It was opened by HM the Queen in 1997 and closed two years later, with the loss of 1100 jobs, when the price of the DRAM chips it was set up to make dropped from $50 each to under $5.

If Hitachi (and I very much hope they) do come to the North East my one bit of advice would be get non union labour, if the RMT, UNITE or any other union get a foot hold the whole thing will crash.

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