James

Comment Threads

• Trottelreiner commented on Sitrep
  Err, in response to my previous comment, and repairing reply order and like... just back to normal sleep pattern after living la vida angela, btw... Make that "living la vida angelica". Yes, I speak no Spanish....
• Lusiphur commented on Sitrep
  I live in Edinburgh and have studied the tram project extensively for a postgraduate course I am doing. Some of the issues have already been touched on. Edinburgh trams suffered from being started when the PIC mania was at its highest. The rank incompetence of TiE should not be discounted. As part of the course I am doing I did some research into PFI for transport initiatives in the UK and I could not find one that had been considered a success by any reasonable standard. Further fun was had by the intransigence of businesses on Princes Street. They lobbied...
• Bellinghman commented on Sitrep
  PIC - the Population Investigation Committee? TiE - The Indus Entrepreneurs? (Yes, those are the most appropriate matches for someone using Wikipedia in an attempt to nail down their meanings) People from outside your particular small niche may not know what you're talking about, so could you be a little less cryptic? And oh, it's also quite possible that there may be people from outside the UK who do not know the meaning of PFI....
• guthrie commented on Sitrep
  TiE is Transport in Edinburgh, no idea what PiC means. PFI is an abomination with no use except to funnel taxpayers money to private companies at no risk to themselves. It was started by the previous Tory government as a way of borrowing off the books, the first one was the Skye bridge which, had it been done the normal way, would have cost 20 or 30 million. Instead by the time it was bought out by the Scottish government, it had cost taxpayers something like 60 million in money paid directly to the company and the tolls for the...
• frozenincarbonite commented on Sitrep
  "There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum — it's breathtaking ..."...