Prescott always stresses that safety is the priority! Who will he appoint to ensure this? Perhaps we can look at the newly-appointed Chairman of Railtrack, John Robinson!
Mr. Robinson and the rest of the newly-appointed Board members not only have no previous experience of railways, the Chairman, at Icast, has an uncavrabic record when it comes to sarciy He is chairman of the pharmaccuucas manuractur ers, Smith and Nephew. In fined £10,625 by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in three sample cases where they had failed to fill in accident reports properly. A total of 27 incidents in a year had not been reported.
Mr Robinson is also chairman of RIB Mining - he seems to be a collector of well-paid chairmanships.
In 1998, the HSE informed parliament that "towards the end of 1997, some cases of under-reporting of accidents at RTJB Mining have come to light."
In 1999, the HSE prosecuted RJB Mining because managers had made miners drive electric trains when "firedamp' gas made using these trains dangerous and illegal, and fined the company £62,000.
What better qualifications can there be for putting this man in charge of passengercartying trans!
Other directors of the failing company picked up golden handshakes of £2.75million. Marks & Spencer is not the only corporation where failure is rewarded. The share price of the privatised BT as dropped from E15 to £S.62. It has lost El billion on its corporate debt of As a reward for presiding over this, Sir Peter Bonhield, Chief Executive of Bi, is to receive a bonus of 5481,000 -this is in addition to his salary of £820,000 and share options worth twice that. The world's largest private Keepmoat to repair and renorate the Gipsyville Estate in the west of the city. Far from producing the at ton or the coun from land sales as predicted, scheme had to be given a cash injection of £ 1. 6milincreased to £2.2 million. recorded submission to Company House, in 19992000, the joint venture com£496,000. There is an excess of liabilities over assets of Keepmoat's liability is limited. It has only E8l shares in the limited company. Theoretically, the council's liabilities are also limited. It has only E19 shares.
But someone has to pay the private enterprises, a host of well paid lawycts and accountants will always financial failure, it is not the sharcholders who will be the