Rail Privatisation: Financial Implications

INTRODUCTION My aim in this brief paper is not to argue the case for or against privatisation, but rather to comment on the likely financial implications of some of the options. Nevertheless, it does not seem possible to do this without briefly reviewing the advantages and disadvantages that are claimed to flow hm privatisation. I will then consider the existing organisation and financial performance of British Rail. Following this, I will discuss alternative ways of achieving the necessary level of profitability for private investors to be interested in owning and operating the railway system

Participants’ perceptions of groupwork in the management of cancer symptoms in older people

This paper explores groupwork within rehabilitative palliative care on three distressing cancer symptoms: pain, dyspnoea and fatigue. This was achieved through qualitative methodology using a phenomenological orientated psychological approach in a cohort with a median age of 66 years. Groupwork, which included: social, exercise and divertional therapy groups were seen as important components within rehabilitative palliative care. Through semi-structured interviews the participants’ perceptions of their symptoms, beliefs and attitudes towards their groupwork within rehabilitative palliative care were explored. The relevance and benefits of the groupwork were then identified using quality of life markers established during data analysis. The main factors uncovered and shown to contribute to the groupwork were: environmental factors, mobilisation and normalisation. However more research is required to comprehend how different forms of groupwork can help reduce pain, dyspnoea and fatigue in older people with cancer

Appraisal of Rail Projects.

This paper reviews the particular characteristics of rail investment projects, taking as a starting point four examples ranging from decisions on individual routes to national rail investment programmes. The motivation for rail investment, and the interdependence of projects are examined, before turning to the identification of base case and options and the measurement of costs and benefits. It is argued that the main problems in rail investment appraisal are not technical ones relating to measuring costs and benefits but are contextual ones relating to the interdependence between rail projects and with decisions in other sectors of the economy. For this reason it is essential that rail projects be appraised with an appropriate planning framework

Skeleton Islands of New Zealand and elsewhere

Skeleton Islands are a variety of the class of islands resulting from subsidence of dissected land, subcategory 4a of a classification of islands here offered. Such islands are characterised by development of a sprawling outline with a narrow axial ridge from which slender lateral spurs, or ribs, extend more or less at right angles. Extreme skeletonisation is associated with development before a final drowning, or redrowning, of amphitheatre heads in valleys already heading in the main divide. This may be a climatically induced change of the valley form related, in the case of the New Zealand example, Arapawa Island, to cryergic (periglacial) activity in the Pleistocene glacial ages. Kakeroma Island (Ryukyu Group), an example of a skeleton island described by W. M. Davis, has quite possibly a history different from that of Arapawa Island as regards both the development of the relief of the subsiding lands and. being in a low latitude, the possibly climatic process responsible for shaping its now submerged valley heads and thus emaciating the ribs of the island

Potentials for fisheries in the Niger Delta: Another green light for self sufficiency in regional food production

A discussion is presented on the potential for fishery development in the Niger Delta region, considering engineering activities and food production potentials of the freshwater zone and immediate hinterland, the brackishwater mangrove swamps and the estuaries. An examination of current trends in the environment indicates that a possible solution to improved exploitation of the region lies in hydraulic engineering, the manipulation of environmental conditions through varying freshwater and seawater inputs so as to increase aquatic and wetland productivit

Selection of elastomeric membranes for the removal of volatile organics from water

A wide range of homogeneous elastomeric membranes has been prepared using dicumylperoxide as a general cross-linking agent. The membranes have been used for both equilibrium sorption measurements and steady-state pervaporation experiments to study solution-diffusion phenomena in the removal of volatile organic components from aqueous solutions. Pervaporation experiments have been performed under identical hydrodynamic conditions in order to fix the boundary layer mass transfer coefficient at a constant and known value. For comparison of the permeabilities of different pervaporation membrane materials, this is of utmost importance. A wide range of selectivity factors up to a value of 100,000 are obtained, whereas usually the permeabilities for the organic component are in the range of 10-10-10-9m2/s and 10-14-10-12m2/s for water. The permeation and sorption data obtained for the various elastomers have been related to the chemical and physical nature of the elastomers through the solubility parameter and the glass transition temperature, respectively. Both diffusional and sorption effects seem to be important, determining the water-transport behavior in the elastomeric membranes. The solubility of the organic component appears to be independent of this combined solubility parameter. Differences in the permeabilities of the organic component can primarily be ascribed to structural parameters in the membrane material, like degree of unsaturation and presence of steric side groups

Weather modelling using a multivariate latent Gaussian model

We propose a vector autoregressive moving average process as a model for daily weather data. For the rainfall variable a monotonic transformation is applied to achieve marginal normality, thus defining a latent variable, with zero rainfall data corresponding to censored values below a threshold. Methodology is presented for model identification, estimation and validation, illustrated using data from Mynefield, Scotland. The new model, a VARMA(2,1) process, fits the data and produces more realistic simulated series than existing methods dur to Richardson (1981) and Peiris and McNicol (1996)

Factors Influencing the Propensity to Make Long Distance Trips by Rail

This paper discusses sane of the major results of the inter-urban rail trip generation models developed during the studentship of J M Rickard under the supervision of Drs C A Nash and A S Fowkes. The trip rates of distinct groups in the population are exmined and possible explanations for the differences discussed. It is found that rail business trip rates are explained by SEG, age and location - other variables such as sex and car ownership do not have an independent effect. Location in a major urban area increases use of rail for business travel by 50-100%, largely at the expense of car. For non-business travel, SEG, age, household type and whether the district has a main-line rail station are the principal determinants of rail trip rates. The highest trip rates are found for students, members of the armed forces and professional employees, particularly those aged 18-24 and living in one person or many adult households. Amongst pensioners, it is those living in 2-pensioner households who travel most: pensioners living alone make few journeys by any mode. Accessibility to a main line rail station appears to raise the use of rail by high-usage SEGs at the expense of car, but for other groups, effect is ambiguous