This short book argues that transport in Scotland is deep-fried unhealthy and is time-warped in the age of the car. Failure to address the issue has social, economic and ecological costs.

Yet there are solutions - and they are being applied elsewhere. Professor Harvie argues that developed rail, light rail and tramways are the progressive way for the future. But they require public awareness and popular pressure to be taken forward.

"It offers a vision of a first-class public rail network that really is well within our reach, if only we had the political will."

Tommy Sheridan

"...should be compulsory reading for all MSPs."

Scots Independent

"A refreshingly different view of Scotland's transport problems."

The Scots Magazine

From the Inside Flap

about Chris Harvie's previous books...

"articulate and irrepressible" Tom Nairn

"arguably the country's most brilliant contemporary thinker" Sunday Herald

"erudite and literate" Mail on Sunday

"stimulating" Times Literary Supplement

"written with great wit and style...makes Scottish history so accessible and stimulating" English Historical Review

"indispensable to anyone seeking to understand modern Scotland, and so well written that it will make the process of doing so a great pleasure" The Herald

About the Author

Chris Harvie is Professor of Scottish and Irish Studies at the University of Tubingen and has long been an active campaigner for the restoration of trains on the Waverley Route to the Scottish Borders.

Excerpted from Deep-fried Hillman Imp: Sorting Out Scotland's Transport by Chris Harvie. Copyright (c) 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Britain is now at the end of its technological rope. Of the equipment now used in our transport system, the overwhelming mass is of European or North American origin. Where rolling stock factories exist, these are multi-nationally owned, and the research and development is done abroad. Scotland's last locomotive works, Barclays of Kilmarnock, is a subsidiary of Jenbacherwerke.

The result of this galloping de-technologising of our society has been the fragmentation of control over the railway system. This has expressed itself in the failure to coordinate and ultimately, in late 2000, in the physical collapse of both the road and rail systems. Unobserved by anyone, a boardroom coup in 1999 at Wisconsin Central Transport removed Ed Burkhardt, whose 'can-do' spirit seemed to revolutionise freight prospects on Britain's railways. The man wasn't doing enough to boost 'shareholder value'. That said it all.

ISBN: 1902831306