Brighton Council have announced they will award scarce places at good schools by lottery, to stop energetic and concerned parents doing better at getting their children in.

Many in Labour want to engineer a world where children from poorer backgrounds have a chance of a place at a better comprehensive miles away from their homes. The Brighton scheme does not do this, as many of the children from the poorer districts will be allocated places at their local school, whose results are often inferior to the schools in the richer parts of town.

What should we think of this idea?

It

We live in a snooper society. More and more cameras appear daily on our streets and in our stations, in our shopping centres and on the estates. Some may help the law abiding, but many have become ways

It is typical of the peurile level of so much British political debate, that David Cameron is accused of denigrating single parents because he has said he wishes to make it easier financially for two parents to be together.

Most young children want to know both their mother and their father. They are likely to have a relationship with both, whether the parents live together or not. Many single mothers have gone on record saying their children need good male role models, as well as good relationships with their Mums.

David Cameron is making a modest positive proposal - to make it a bit easier and more worthwhile for families to stay together. I have never heard him running down single mothers. The one does not follow from the other.

A more intelligent response to his comments would be to ask How much difference can a tax break really make? How big would it have to be? What about families where the father would be a very unsuitable role model? At what point does the state have to step in, if the home is disrupted by violence and drugs?

Politicians also have to take into account the growing unhappiness

Of course the railway industry needs to improve its performance in mending and maintaining track. It would also help if more level crossings were replaced by bridges and underpasses, to reduce possible conflict between trains and other vehicles.

It is sitll, however, likely that from time to time trains will derail. If passengers at Ufton Nervet had had seat belts, and if luggage had been properly restrained, there would have been far fewer serious casualties. Derailment is likely because the running speeds of trains are so high - in this case there should have been a severe speed limit imposed as the points had a stretcher missing.

Why do you think trains are so different to cars and planes, where luggage is restrained and seat belts are mandatory?

Many Councils still seem to think that we, the taxpayers, are keen for them to spend more. Most taxpayers I meet are worried about how high last year’s tax was, let alone how high it is going to go this year.

It’s true that some Councils have been given a poor settlement by the government. National tax still pays for more of our local services than the Council tax, so a low grant from government can make things difficult.

No, the FTA does not have a massive input into “Tory roads policy”. As one of those constructing a transport policy, we draw on a wide range of sources including the FTA.

My main conclusion is that we need more capacity of all kinds, including railways. I would love to find ways to divert much more freight onto trains - that requires the railways to want more freight. It means single waggon marshalling, more spur and branch lines into industrial parks, and a much more freight friendly approach by rail, which has only really been interested in train load traffic from the coal, aggregates,oil and other

I could not believe it when Bob Crowe of the rail Union told me on Sky that crashes were the result of privatisation. The figures show the privatised railway has been safer than its nationalised predecessor. This latest crash was most probably caused by track mistakes made by a government financed monopoly company which took the maintenance back in house.It was poor taste to try and turn a discussion about how we can make the railways safer into a spat over privatisation. It was foolish to do so when it is likely that a company that is effectively a nationalised concern is probably responsible for the tragic mistake.

Like many of you I would like the train to take more of the strain. Today only 6% of all passenegrs and 6% of all freight goes by rail.

We make life especially difficult for the railway in the UK by trying combine an express railway, a freight railway, a commuter railway and a cross country railway in the same tracks. These types of train have very different timetabling requirements. The very fast trains and the very heavy freight trains greatly increase the strains on the tracks, requiring much more maintenance with the associated downtime. It is very difficult to run high speed trains in the UK because there are many curves and gradients on the UK railway. It is difficult to sustain high speed with gradients and curves, given the lack of grip of steel on steel technology, and given the danger of derailment as the amount of wheel on a steel track when going round a curve is very small, increasing the likelihood of serious damage to the track.

There is a way of increasing the capacity of the commuter railway which could make a great difference. There are many more people who would like to use a good service into the main cities in the mornings, and out in the evenings, if the capacity was available. The present railway is trying to expand capacity modestly by a combination of lengthening platforms to lengthen trains, and improving signals to cut the gaps between the trains on the tracks (reducing the safety margin). At the moment typically only 24 trains an hour can use a given piece of track. These measures will increase that marginally, and will increase the number of passengers on a busy train by the number of extra carriages they can add.

The Paris Metro has grip problems on lines with gradients. They have placed some rubber wheeels

Several of you have sprung to the rescue of the trains - just think about it a bit more and cool down! I’m not anti train - I want them to be better, safer, and to take more people.

The main reason railways are safer than roads is the draconian regulation of trains.

1. No-one is allowed to walk or bicycle by a railway line, though they are on non motorway roads

2. They enforce large distances between each train on the same track - usually two miles - to make collisions difficult, whereas we allow bumper to bumper running on busy roads

3. Trains travelling in different directions have segregated track - like motorways, and unlike all single carriageway roads.

4. They have signals which set lights at red if there is any train too near to another on the system. Traffic lights do not perform a similar function on the roads, usually being timed but not traffic sensitive.

We accept much lighter regulation of the roads to avoid complete gridlock - we could not possibly segregate and slow up all the cars to conform to rail standards of safety. We also acknowledge that cars are better able to cope with more congestion than trains, because they have rubber wheels allowing faster braking, and they can be steered, giving chances of avoiding obstacles.

My two modest proposals for trains are the bare minimum to give people a better chance in a crash. I cannot understand why the government does not immediately order the restraint of luggage, which is done on all airplanes, cars, lorries and long distance coaches. It would not be very costly to put nets in across luggage racks. Of course high speed trains should make sure everyone has a seat with a belt, just as all cars and all planes have to provide seats with belts for all passengers.

I agree we need to have higher standards of track maintenance - and train driving as there have been

Yes, it would be sensible to turn VED into road pricing if you want to go that way - so we don’t pay twice, and we strengthen the pay as you drive part of vehicle tax.

Yes, I do want to see prosperity and business spread out better around the country. The reason why London and the south east contribute so much more and the rest of the country receives money from taxation is that London and south-east have so much more enterprise and business, with many more better paid jobs. it will require different atitudes by plannning authorities to new building and roads in the less favoured

How many more people have to die or be injured, before the government does the obvious and brings train safety closer to road safety? I called for action following the tragic crash in my constituency at Ufton Nervet. Still there has been no urgency to learn the lessons.

There should be an immediate requirement that all luggage on a train is secured behind luggage doors or nets, just as it is on an aircraft. Anyone sensible puts heavy luggage in the self contained boot of a car to avoid it injuring

If you look at the All Share Index you will see the point I was making about equities.

Over the last five years since the market decline the total return on the All Share Index has been 51%. The return on world government bonds (Citigroup index) has been a tiny 8.4%, and on UK property a massive 145% (EPRA/NAREIT total return commercial)

Of course pension funds and others would have done even better if they had sold their equities before 2000 and bought them back in 2002/3.

The Labour inclined media think they have done their cause good today by capturing a photo of a hoodie making a threatening hand gesture behind David Cameron. They will probably keep repeating it, believing it will damage

The regulatory system is helping destroy what remains of our once great pension fund system.

A pension fund is like a bath with both taps on and the plug out. In a healthy growing fund money is pouring in from the investment tap, as the investments produce income and gains, and money is pouring in from the contribution tap, as members and the employer make their payments each month for future pensions. Money is also going out of the plug hole, as members retire and need pension payments.

The art is to keep enough money in the bath so it does not run out, until

Pensions have become one of the most regulated areas of life. Over the last 10 years they have become much more heavily regulated, and at the same time many more people have lost out. It is true that heavy regulation of funds began under the last government post Maxwell, but it has got far worse since 1997. Some have been told their funds cannot pay the pensions they had been promised. Some have been told their funds are closing down so they cannot contribute in future. Many new employees have been told the pension fund enjoyed by older memebrs of staff is not open to them.

Bloggers to this site are right to draw attention to the relationship between poor parenting and yobbish behaviour.

The land of the ASBO has not been notably successful at being tough on crime, and Mr Blair is still trying to find out the causes of crime that he needs to tackle.

Labour thought that if they showered enough benefits

Labour’s road pricing proposal has been shot down in flames on the Downing Street website because it is same old Labour, same old extra tax.

People know they are already paying too much motoring tax, without being told the answer to congestion is to charge them some more.

The main objection is the fact that road charging is on top of everything else. People also dislike the lack of any improvements in the roads and transport system for all the money they are contributing. Some object to more spies in the sky - and on the street corners - with all the extra cameras road pricing will bring. Under Ken Livingstone only the rich can go by car.

Iain says I have changed my mind on an English Parliament in my latest Independent interview.

Not so Iain. “English votes for English issues” is shorthand for the proposal you first read on this site - Westminster MPs from English seats meet as the English Parliament some of the time, and meet with the rest of the MPs as the Union Parliament the rest of the time.

That puts the English parliament where it should be - at Westminster - and saves the taxpayers another load of salaries for extra representatives.

A recent poll showed that a large majority of British voters think City bonuses are too big. The poll then asked what should be done. There was no general agreement on that. Some people felt the bonuses should be shared with others either through taxation or through gifts to charity. Others favoured a cap on them.

The shootings in South London have shocked many because the people involved are so young. There is an undercurrent of casual violence and and crime

Today is a good morning for this technology. Not only do I have a working BT line again, but the server for this site is back after a long weekend break when it was impossible to post anything. It’s as if the technology is signed up to the Working Time Directive.

The BBC went into ectasies today because the world’s legislators - that’s the people without government jobs! - have met and said the world must now have a target to hit on carbon emissions.

What kind of planet do these people live on? Let us assume the governments also go in for this kind of gesture, it may well be just like Kyoto. Some of the EU countries who have been keenest on the target have been the ones likely to miss it by the most. It’s not what you say or what targets you set that will take the trick. It’s what you do and how you do it.

Our government is especially profligate with energy - just look at all the street lights left on long after most people are in bed, electric signs, lights burning in

The government says it wants to know the public’s views. It spends enough of our money on consultations and opinion research to have a very clear idea. Yet all too often it is a case of trying to find out if we agree with them, rather than listening to our well based and strong disagreements.

Some of us MPs, paid to tell the government what the public thinks, told them English people did not want regional government.

Many millions of pounds later they secured a thumping No vote to North Eastern regional government. Instead of accepting the No they have carried on with an unelected version, and are looking for ways to slip more reigonal government in everywhere else.

Now some of us MPs are telling the government the public do not want to have pay more to drive around, as they knwo they are alraedy taxed at very high levels for a rotten roads service.