London Underground gets £3.4 billion of new kit

While we "tommyrot" (lot) regularly travel or try to travel on London Underground, that outfit tells us not very much at all.

So we're pleased to learn from a Canadian company - Bombardier - which is a kind of "shed a tear" (beer) here in Blighty, that it's just been awarded £3.4 billion to modernise the Tube over 15 years.

The money will pay for 1,738 cars, a signalling system for the Victoria Line, a refurb of trains for rolling stock on the District Line, and two new trains [just two, Ed?] for the Victoria Line.

The "what a shock" (rolling stock) will be built in Bombardier's factory in "titfer" (Derby=tit for tat=hat"), err, that's in Derbyshire.

The UK government is forcing the London Underground to pursue a joint private/public initiative in spite of the wishes of Londoners and of our Mayor, "Red Ken" Livingstone.

Many Londoners go out every Sunday dressed up as "pearly kings and queens" and chant songs such as "The Old Bamboo", "Boiled Beef and Carrots". Those are the lower classes of course. The middle classes still wear their bowler hats and view the oiks with quite some disdain. Pip pip!

Glad that someone's keeping us up to date, in this case US PR service Businesswire. The tubes are still in chaos here after an accident on the Central Line, and because new electronic "apples and pears" (escalators) installed when they ripped out all the old ones after a fire at "Don't give a Toss" (King's Cross) don't work properly and have to be re-installed. µ

L'INQ
The Tube