Upon picking up this book you would think that it would be just about the never ending political struggle of Labour versus Liberal. Upon actually reading it, it was not what I expected. For anyone who aspires to a career in politics it is a “must read” for the real struggle is battling forces from within your own party and then the battle to secure project funding and dealing with all the machinery of government for any given portfolio.
It is a read that is hard to put down once I started it, and for me the standout was how difficult it was to achieve funding for much needed infrastructure, or indeed the ongoing maintenance of infrastructure that we already have. This was no more revealing than the battle to run a railway system with the treasurers forced noose of ‘economic rationalism’ by breaking up the railway into compartments that must compete against each other. To separate rail infrastructure (RIC) and rail access (RAC) into corporations that only antagonised each other, as the fatally flawed British ‘Network Rail’ model ultimately proved, was never going to work. My rail industry associates look back that period with their usual cynical sense of humour as “RIC, RAC and Ruin”, upon reading Carls book, how true it turned out to be.
Then to experience the great success of the Sydney Olympics and highs like the M7 and M5 East certainly made for a career of mixed emotions, and to have motorways and railways cancelled by a supposed fellow colleague, would just break ones heart…. But wait! There’s more, read on, it’s hard to put down – a must read.
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