She never quite made the Transit Power 50 of the most powerful people in transport and that was a pity for her questioning style and appreciation made the redoubtable Gwyneth Dunwoody one of the country’s experts. And mavericks. As 11-year chair of the House of Commons’ transport select committee, power and influence she certainly held. She recently trounced the transport secretary Ruth Kelly, as she had many others. Perhaps her absence from the Power 50 was because she was less keen on a deregulated bus regime than ministers. Certainly as a result, she didn’t always endear herself to the main players in the bus industry.
Saturday, 19 April 2008
Gwyneth Dunwoody MP 1930–2008
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2 comments:
Wonderful woman, incredibly knowledgeable about transport, independent, last of her kind. Bus operators will think that they can get away with murder now. End of an era.
She was indeed, in an era of bland and boring politicians, a wonderful personality, and, of course, in a generalised way very knowledgeable.
However, expertise in publicly maintaining a particular position never fully convinced me that she possessed a fully rounded view of public transport...in many ways, as a conviction Old-Labour politician, she saw just what she expected to see...
Nonetheless we are all the poorer for her passing, (although I do not even begin to subscribe to the view that bus operators will somehow benefit from this event)
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