Railways May Not Be Run Solely For Benefit of Passengers, Suspect MPs

Only sixteen years after British Rail was split up into over a hundred franchises and flogged off to anyone in a suit with a pocketful of fivers, the Commons transport committee is beginning to suspect that Britain's rail network may not be operating in the best interests of the travelling public.

Citing the example of "prohibitive" charges for seat reservations - which used to be free - as just one example of back-door fares rises, the committee wondered aloud whether the private companies which had carved the railways up between them might even be motivated by a strong desire to grab huge piles of cash while they can, rather than by the simple, child-like joy of playing with a real-life train set.

The MPs spent much of the thirteen years trying in vain to understand the hundreds of different ticket types on offer, only for the train operators to 'simplify' the fares structure by scrapping the lot and bringing in a completely different set of unfathomable fares just as they thought they might be starting to get the hang of it.

They also suspected that the country might not be getting the best possible value out of a system which extracted massive profits from long-suffering passengers when things were going well, and eye-watering subsidies out of the government when they weren't - despite the fact that, in its final years, publicly-owned British Rail was managing to provide a safe, efficient service with no state handouts.

The transport committee, however, decided that the best option for Britain's trains was to give them to greedy businesses like Stagecoach and FirstGroup for even longer periods - unless of course they weren't very profitable, in which case they could be sold back to the government after extracting suitably large subsidies before finally admitting they had fucked up and asking for a more rewarding part of the network.

"I'm thinking of renting myself a helicopter," commented one long-suffering cattle, with his face pressed up against the window of the 08:27 from Newbury. "It'll soon be cheaper than a sodding season ticket."