By ‘Use Green Taxes To Subsidise Public Transport’ We Mean ‘Cram Even More Cash Down Brian Souter’s Yawning Gullet’, Admit MPs

This is the age of the train - it's 35

Shamefaced MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee reluctantly admitted today that when they called on the government to use fuel duty to lower the cost of using public transport, what they actually meant was hurling yet more billions of taxpayers’ hard-earned cash into the black holes of Stagecoach and FirstGroup.

Green taxes "cannot be all stick and no carrots," said the MPs this morning, and called for simple links to be made between taxing your car to high heaven and cheerfully throwing the revenue at what they fondly imagine to be more environmentally friendly alternatives - such as the clapped-out vintage diesel HSTs which First Great Western still employs to belch black, choking clouds of exhaust fumes into the rolling green pastures of Somerset as they pointlessly drag empty carriages full of unaffordable seats back and forth to London every hour, or the equally decrepit Leyland horrors they pulled out of scrapyards to squeal and clank their way around Devon’s picturesque branch lines.

“Admittedly, eye-watering subsidies on a scale undreamt of in the days of British Rail have not yet persuaded franchisees like Brian Souter - who have striven hard to turn Britain’s railways into a third-world system with out-of-this-world fares - to make a thousand-seater train a sensibly-priced alternative to a fuel-guzzling 50-seat airliner,” said aptly-named committee chair Joan Walley. “So the only possible solution to this problem is even bigger subsidies.”

“Sadly, another issue that won’t be addressed by throwing good money after bad is that, on the whole, your typical motorist doesn’t have to endure a howling, farting troupe of simian piss-artists whenever he goes for a drive,” noted BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin. “Or, if he does, at least they’re family.”