OK, How About Every Ticket Costs £500, Suggest Train Companies

Britain’s railway thieves today responded to demands for clarity on ticket pricing from the Office Of Rail Regulation, the industry watchdog, by offering to scrap their byzantine labyrinth of unfathomable fares and replace them all with a crystal-clear price of £500 per journey.

"Tickets, please"

“It’s hardly our fault if the travelling public is too dim to steal our top-secret map of Britain’s rail network, identify each station along their route, enter them all into a spreadsheet, spend a day interrogating thetrainline.com, enter all the prices of all possible tickets along every alternative route, write a function to calculate every conceivable fare combination and thereby save - for example - over £20 on a day trip to Bristol from Plymouth simply by purchasing three consecutive tickets between Plymouth, Exeter, Taunton and Bristol for the same train,” complained an ATOC spokesman.

“Only a complete and utter passenger would fork out £51.50 for the Off-Peak Return simply because we say that’s the cheapest ticket,” he pointed out smugly. “You’ll notice that we don’t for a second suggest that it’s the cheapest journey, of course, because we don’t actually let you ask.”

He added that even undiscovered tribes in the Amazon rainforest knew instinctively that it costs six times as much to get from London to Birmingham New Street by 0915 and back in the evening if they travel from Euston station instead of nearby Marylebone.

Train Company Starts Laughing In Passengers’ Faces

That'll look nice rammed up his arse

Squashed paupers on Chiltern Railways’ hellish commuter services into London Marylebone will be relentlessly tormented by cackling staff, after the bloated train operating company capriciously decided to squander Christ knows how much of their victims’ eye-watering season ticket fees on paying pint-sized baldy Blairite grave-robber Tony Robinson to teach them the knack of professional piss-taking.

Human cattle will be openly mocked with scornful taunts, such as:

“You’re going to spend the next hour and a half with your face in some sweaty fat bastard’s armpit, shortarse”;

“See that smug wanker with the iPod? He’s screwing your wife on Friday afternoons”;

“While we’re parked here at West Ruislip just to annoy you, perhaps you’d like to pass the time by wondering whether you’d arrive on time if you had the balls to leg it over to platform 1 and board the tube train that’s been sitting there for the last ten minutes”;

“If you think London’s a shithole now, wait until the Olympics kick off!”

“We have a cunning plan, my lord,” chortled Chiltern’s comedy manager Chad Collins unhilariously, clutching his heaving sides as guffawing lackeys crammed another hapless sufferer onto the 0655 at Birmingham Moor Street.

Passengers Baffled By Concept Of ‘Worst Train Operator’

Thank you for travelling with First Great Western, suckers

A survey has confused long-suffering rail users by suggesting that one useless, thieving train operating company could somehow be even worse than the other useless, thieving train operating companies, it emerged today.

“As far as I’m aware, the only possible difference concerns the various garish colour schemes they inflict on their trains,” moaned a rail victim at Paddington, who was in a state of shock after being mugged for £264 for a cattle-class return ticket to Penzance on First Great Western’s ‘heritage’ line. “But all of them give me the same blinding headache.”

Meanwhile, at Euston, one of Richard Branson’s hapless prey was being kicked screaming onto the 0803 by fiendish minions after waving his tearful goodbyes to a hard-earned £158 for the dubious privilege of being dumped in a reeking Birmingham cave after considerably more than 84 minutes of nausea, punctuated by a persistent idiot with a trolley but no understanding of the basic principles of coffee.

Hornby Unveils Future Of Train Sets

Train sets are to be boosted into the 21st century and beyond with the announcement by Hornby that, by 2026, all curved track sections will be deleted from their catalogue.

“This will transform train sets as we know them,” said Hornby CEO Justine Greening. “The traditional oval-track design has been keeping speed down ever since train sets were invented.”

The ultra-modern train set, she explained, will whisk tiny plastic figures from the bathroom all the way to your dad’s smelly old shed at the far end of the back garden in half the time it would take today, if little people living in your toilet fancied a day out to take in the exciting scent of creosote. From the shed, the long-awaited CrossRockery line would connect your toy people with routes to your friends’ houses and beyond via the Hedgerow Tunnel, she added - and Hornby are also hoping to extend the route onward into your front garden later.

At last, your little plastic folk will finally have somewhere else to go

Scalextric fans, however, have pointed out that the sections you will have to buy to build your new layout are going up from £3.49 per Long Straight Track (R603) segment to £149.99, while your dad has also noticed that no model trains in the Hornby catalogue are actually capable of taking advantage of the speed potential of the curve-free route - meaning that you will have to import all your rolling stock from Lima or Märklin.

Meanwhile, your sister has raised vociferous objections to the route of your planned high speed model railway passing straight through her designated area of Outstanding Natural Shagging.

Trains Fantastically Good Value To Taxpayers, Claim Operators, As Long As They Only Pay Tax In France, Holland Or Germany

Britain’s cash-crammed train operators hit back at transport secretary Philip Hammond’s description of Britain’s trains as “rich men’s toys”, claiming that the services they run offered excellent value for the taxpayer, albeit only if the taxpayer in question should happen to be domiciled in France, the Netherlands or Germany for tax purposes.

It's fast, and it's full of happy taxpayers

“Monsieur ‘ammond, ‘e should look in ‘is underpants isn’t it, as your fonny liddle English saying ‘as it,” said a bloated Gallic spokesman for the Association of Train Exploiting Companies, as a waiter carefully lowered an after-eight mint covered in gold leaf into his gaping maw.

“Ze taxpayers of France, ‘olland and Germany, zey pay ‘ardly anyzing at all to subsidise zair glorious state-run ‘igh-speed rail systems,” he added, pausing only to vomit gallons of paté de foie gras into a platinum bucket. “Not since ze SNCF, NED and ze Deutsche Bahn came up wiz ze, ‘ow you say, ‘wizard wheeze’ of renting ze creaking buckets of rust off ze banks, sending zem on zair wobbly way along ze rickety British tracks, zen ‘itting ze ridiculous British commuters wiz zair silly bowler ‘ats an’ zair peculiar Times crosswords for all ze eye-watering fare increases an’ ‘uge government subsidies zey could get away wiz.”

“Ze glorious taxpayers of France, ‘olland an’ Germany ‘ave never ‘ad it so good,” he added, before exploding. “Zo shot op an’ cough op ze £120 for ze peak-time return from Birming’am to Euston, you stupeed liddle rosbif.”

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.”

Simplified Train Fares To Be Further Simplified Into One Price For All Tickets

This is the age of the train (36 years)

The government has announced another full review of train fares, with a view to simplifying them even more than a couple of years ago, when the last review of train fares was announced.

“The problem, in a nutshell, is that these bloody passengers will keep getting on trains all over the place and getting off wherever they damn well please,” complained transport secretary Richard Hammond. "Because of this, God only knows how many different tickets there are. More than ten, I reckon. Easily.”

“Not wishing to pre-empt the independent review’s findings, but I imagine some fares might have to go up, while others will probably go down,” he added. “By ‘some fares’ I mean singles, returns and season tickets, and by ‘others’ I mean the 14-day First Class All-Line Rail Rover.”

“Basically, all tickets will cost £989,” he concluded. “Unless you want to arrive at your destination in time to actually do anything, of course. I'm afraid that’s going to cost you.”

Potters Bar Rail Crash Was Taxpayers’ Fault

You irresponsible bastards, look what you did

British taxpayers have been ordered to cough up £3m in compensation, in recognition of the reckless part they played in the Potters Bar derailment in 2002 which killed seven people.

Although the crash was a direct result of the wanton negligence of Railtrack - a private company, which was in administration at the time of the crash after paying bigger bonuses to its directors than it could cover from the savings it had made by slashing maintenance – Judge Andrew Dim decided at the end of the hearing that, since Railtrack was effectively renationalised into Network Rail after the crash, justice would best be served by giving incompetent rail managers with blood on their hands a pat on the back and imposing a hefty fine of about 12p each on the taxpayers who bought the company whether they wanted to or not.

The public admitted that they had completely failed in their statutory, but impossible, duty to prioritise their own safety over somebody else’s sheer, naked greed in the aftermath of the Hatfield crash in 2000.

“I’d like to assure my fellow passengers that lessons will be learned by the management of private companies which are nothing to do with me,” promised a shame-faced taxpayer on the 17:45 Paddington-to-Bristol service. “In particular, the lesson that managers can carry on killing their customers and getting away with it.”

Nick Clegg, meanwhile, has announced that he has grave misgivings.

Underclass Terrified By Runaway Social Engineering Train

Underclass: service terminates here

People ran screaming in terror yesterday, as a social engineering vehicle careered down the Tube at reckless speed, with nobodies at the controls.

The machinery of social reform had been coupled to the back of a long train of right-wing thought which was being used to make radical alterations to the Underclass system, when it suddenly became completely unhinged and began to roll backwards, gaining momentum rapidly and causing chaos as it hurtled past people’s heads, threatening to suck them all into a dark, Victorian tunnel towards a dead end.

“I was looking down that tunnel only moments earlier,” said a shocked eyewitness, moments after the rattling juggernaut charged past. “There was no light at the end of it, and I’m sure there’s going to be one hell of a mess when it hits the buffers.”

“It’s a good job there were nobodies on board,” he added. “Apart from a lot of cheering Tories and several hapless Lib Dem passengers, of course.”

A spokesman for the Underclass later apologised for causing any inconvenience - but warned that unpleasant incidents were bound to become more commonplace, as profit-driven social engineers with no real experience tinkered more and more with a complex but essential system which had been delivering fewer and fewer benefits to its users for many years.

'3,000mph Trains? Sure, Why Not?' Shrugs Transport Secretary

Speaking from the top of his shiny head, Lord Adonis today announced an exciting futuristic vision in which everybody was whizzing round Britain at 3,000mph on special anti-gravity trains.

"In the future - either next week on in the year one billion - all trains will be ten miles long, carry a million passengers and draw their power from a star in a carbon-neutral pocket universe," declared the transport secretary brightly. "Here, hand me my crayons and I'll draw it for you."

As he scrawled, the visionary minister went on to explain that the rail network of the future could easily be financed by minting really big coins worth a hundred million thousand pounds each.

"As people travel longer and longer distances to work, they will think nothing of a daily commute from the Outer Hebrides," he gushed excitedly. "Because they will only just have settled into their hover-chair and downloaded the Daily Telepath directly into their second brains, and they'll be at the City of London Spaceport - where a teleport taxi will instantaneously whisk their molecules directly to their desk-podules."

"It's completely brilliant," he added. "Aren't I a clever boy? I need to go to the bathroom."

The Association of Train Operating Companies are said to be carefully studying Lord Adonis' mainly-orange plans on the walls of his play area, but have already issued a press statement declaring that they welcome any improvements to the infrastructure of the rail network, as long as they don't have to pay a penny towards them.

Furious French Demand To Know Why Part-French Company's French Trains Are Rubbish

With the French government angrily asking why Eurostar is complete shit (clue: it's part-owned by SNCF, and French power-station constructor Alstom designed and built its rolling stock), the deeply-embarrassed company announced it would be resuming services on Tuesday, by which time everybody's travel plans will have been comprehensively ruined.

As the useless company launched a probe to find out why it took so long to evacuate six immobilised trains (clue: it's part-owned by SNCF, and French power-station constructor Alstom designed and built its rolling stock), chief executive Richard Brown said he was "very, very sorry" that he was being made to look like a complete dick on national TV in Britain, France and Belgium. He insisted, however, that the problem was entirely due to fanatical suicide snow, and certainly nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Eurostar was part-owned by SNCF, or that its rolling stock was designed and built by French power-station constructor Alstom.

"The average pig-ignorant traveller might be tempted to think that a company which builds power stations might have grasped the basic notion that water and electricity don't mix," he told reporters today. "However, the problem seems to have been that snow somehow got inside the power units, possibly by deliberately targeting the huge ventilation gratings. When the trains passed from freezing cold air into the dank, humid environment of the tunnel, the evil snow cynically melted and got into the electrics, causing the train's fuse to blow.

"When our office staff got to work on Monday morning, somebody noticed that rather a lot of trains had apparently failed to arrive at their destinations," explained Mr Brown. "We immediately activated our emergency procedure, which was to send a temp down the tunnel on foot with a wind-up torch. When he found the broken-down trains, he returned promptly, collected some 13-amp fuses from our depot outside Paddington and strolled back down the tunnel to fix things. What's all the fuss about? The system works."

Eurostar (part-owned by SNCF) says it is working as fast as it can to fix the elementary schoolboy error in the basic design of its rolling stock (by French power-station constructor Alstom), by stuffing hundreds of bath-towels around the electric motors and installing vast banks of hairdryers - electric hairdryers - outside both ends of the Channel Tunnel.

Meanwhile, smug railway experts - who point out that Britain happened to make rather good trains, once upon a time - are waiting patiently for the French to shit themselves and gesticulate wildly once they remember that Alstom also built many of their nuclear power stations.

One Man In Britain Actually Surprised By £1000 Train Ticket

A Scottish hermit emerged blinking from a disused tin mine in Cornwall today, for the first time since British Rail was split up into over a hundred companies and given away to thieves, and was somewhat surprised to learn that a first-class return from the arse end of England to its Scottish equivalent now costs over a thousand pounds.

"Ma puir old nan's deid, an' the funeral's Friday," whimpered Wee Jimmy Bampot, as he sold himself to a Bulgarian pimp to raise the necessary funds.

Until today, nobody had ever bought the £1,002 ticket from scenic, vomit-stained Pewquay to picturesque, deserted Kyle of Locharse, according to a laughing spokesman for Cross Country Trains.

"If Mr Bampot's grandmother had taken the trouble to give a couple of weeks' advance warning of her imminent demise so he could book ahead, he would only have had to pay a very reasonable £561," he giggled. "That's less than a sixth of the cost of chartering yourself a twin-engined plane and pilot, you know."

Unrepentant Biggs Unleashes Second Rail Crime Spree

Railways in Britain are in chaos today, as freed train robber Ronnie Biggs celebrates his 80th birthday - and release from prison on compassionate grounds - by holding up trains all over Network South East.

Aided by a freshly-recruited cohort of evil doctors and nurses, Biggs has been parking his hospital bed on tracks in isolated areas, forcing oncoming trains to screech to an emergency halt. The stroke-crippled criminal then issues orders to his henchmen by slowly pointing to letters on a board, whereupon they swarm all over the halted train, beat the coachwork out of shape with iron bars and make their getaway in an unmarked ambulance.

"It's not even as if they're stealing anything this time," said a shocked British Transport Police inspector. "Biggs just seems to be holding up trains for the sheer fun of it. We knew he was a very sick man, but not this sick."

Horrified pensioner Tony Hastings, who spent eight years campaigning for a pardon for the Great Train Robber, has vowed to track down the evil villain and hand him over to the forces of law and order. He was the first to raise the alarm, when he turned up at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital with a bunch of grapes, only to be presented with an empty room on an unstaffed ward and an illegible note written by one of Bigg's doctor minions, which trained pharmacists are still struggling to decipher.

"I've been such a fool," said the red-faced do-gooder. "Biggs had me fooled completely. I thought he was a sick old man who just wanted to die at home with dignity. But the unpalatable truth is that he's a sick old man who intends to hold up a train for every single day of his captivity."

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."

Nationalised Express

Lord Adonis, the mythical god of transport, has announced that he will be taking direct control of the East Coast rail franchise, and is furiously trying to wrestle current operator Hornby Express away from a transformer with a big knob on the front.

As an ageing toy InterCity 125 grinds intermittently round the oval track - labouring under the weight of dozens of successive coats of paint, and emitting sparks from its rusty wheels - a glistening Lord Adonis put the franchisee in a headlock and told reporters that he was also seeking to take control of the railcars and puffing billies of Hornby Express' other franchises, East Anglia and c2c.

However, the purple-faced operator gasped that the East Coast franchise was in fact run by a completely separate Special Purpose Vehicle, set up under the relevant Department for Transport rules in order to provide the parent company with minimal financial liability and legal responsibility, and warned that if Lord Adonis tried to take any of its sister companies' rolling stock out of their sidings he would be up in front of the fat cat controller.

"You can keep your manky old East Coast line anyway," it huffed angrily as it broke free. "There's a dead connection in the tunnel, so you have to poke the train out with a ruler - and the curves still aren't nailed down, so if you take them at any sort of speed the track comes apart, the train falls off the table and the cat goes shooting up the curtains out of fright."

Lord Adonis carefully rearranged his flowing locks and pranced out of the attic to design what he promised would be "a dynamic new colour scheme fit for the train operating companies of the 21st century". Meanwhile the untended model train jumped the buffers at Edinburgh Waverley Station, sending sections of platform skidding across the bare board.

"I just want a train that goes as fast as they used to in the days of steam, arrives roughly when it's supposed to and doesn't require a sodding mortgage for the privilege of being wedged into cattle class with an intimate view of somebody else's dandruff," said one long-suffering passenger as he sat patiently on a platform bench." Or is that too much to ask?"

"I'd much sooner travel by Scalextric any day," he added crossly, "But some bastard appears to have glued me to my seat."

He was then eaten by the cat.

All Steamed Up Over Rail Disruption

Thanks to engineering works by Network Rail, the only train running this bank holiday weekend is a steam-hauled enthusiasts' excursion from London Victoria to Swanage in Dorset.

The one-off service celebrates the reopening of the Purbeck branch line, where volunteers on the Swanage Railway have spent years re-laying seven miles of track after the line was closed in 1972.

As the mighty Battle of Britain-class locomotive Tangmere thundered majestically westward, teams of Network Rail contractors feverishly ripped up the mainline track bed behind it as part of the traditional bank holiday plan to fuck up your weekend.

"It is essential that we rip up railway lines all over Britain on bank holiday weekends, check the rails for woodworm and put them back again," said a spokesman for publicly-owned Network Rail. "That way we can give the maximum amount of taxpayers' money to our subcontractors, to cover all the overtime we like to think they're paying their army of temps."

The train operating companies said they would be running rail replacement buses - their own rail replacement buses - over the weekend, enabling them to charge train fares for cramped, slow bus journeys. They would then be presenting Network Rail - i.e. the taxpayer - with the usual massive compensation claim for disruption to services, as their directors hadn't been to the Bahamas for nearly a month.

"If you want to enjoy trouble-free travel in Britain this weekend, come to Swanage," said a soot-covered spokesman for the heritage line. "But only if you happen to live pretty close to Norden Park & Ride, Corfe Castle, Harmans Cross or Herston Halt, obviously."

Rail Fares Now More Expensive Than Chartering Your Own Private 747, Probably, Warns Watchdog

Millions of Britons fell off their chairs in surprise today, on hearing the astounding news that UK train fares were a bit pricey.

The national rail-users' group Passenger Focus announced their astonishing discovery this morning, saying that annual season tickets for short journeys were up to 88% more expensive than in France - the second most expensive country in Europe. Some long-distance journeys were theoretically cheaper, admitted the watchdog - but only for one lucky passenger who happened to book at the exact moment when the affordable seat on the entire journey appeared unexpectedly in the booking system.

A three-ton ginger spokestom for the Association of Train Operating Companies explained the fares structure in unusually succinct terms, telling reporters to "Piss off." The same sentiment was also expressed by the Transport Secretary and stripper, Lord Adonis - although, when threatened with a wet towel, he pointed out that rail fares had actually gone down in relation to the cost of a loaf of bread.

Train to Gain

Britain’s railways may see their first major expansion since the 19th century, as Network Rail commissions a strategic review of five mainline routes to see if there is a case for building new lines. Passenger numbers have risen by 40% in the last ten years, with around 22,000 trains running on weekdays.

“By 2025 many lines will be full up, especially those running to and from the north and west of London,” said chief executive Iain Coucher. “The way things are going, we might as well park one enormous, stationary train with its front end in London and its rearmost carriage in Birmingham, book southbound passengers in the front carriage and north-bound passengers at the rear and let them walk along the 165km-long train to their seats. They’d probably get there quicker that way.”

The usual construction companies were rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of huge amounts of taxpayers’ money flowing into their coffers. “Back in the Victorian golden age of rail expansion, the tracks were laid by vast hordes of Irish navvies, whose lives were cheap and expendable,” said an industry spokesman. “Nowadays, with all the health and safety regulations and a shortage of skilled construction workers, the sky’s the limit. Or rather, the ground is.”

No Train, No Gain

Train fares are to be simplified down to just three ticket types over the coming months, according to an announcement by the Association of Train Operating Companies - which claimed the move was a response to passenger feedback.

From 7th September all pre-booked tickets bought in advance will be known as Rarities, while from 18th May walk-on fares purchased on the day will be reduced to two just two categories – Eye-Watering and Hi I’m Tony.

A rail industry spokesman said such hangovers from the days of steam such as the Cheap Day Return were no longer appropriate to Britain’s modern-day rail network.

“Train companies really don’t understand the old-fashioned concept of ‘cheap’,” he said, “It implies that we are offering some kind of third-rate rubbish service, when in fact third-rate is something we can only aspire to. And there’s no point calling it a Return, because after they’ve been through a 21st-century rail experience, we find a lot of customers don’t.”

The Eye-Watering ticket will be available to all passengers. However, for those who want to travel unhindered by any restrictions there is the new Hi I’m Tony ticket, which enables the holder to travel free of charge anywhere, at any time, if he happens to be the former Prime Minister.

All Roads Lead to Carbon Emissions

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has warned the UK government that there needs to be a “modal shift” from road to rail if the country is to meet targets for cutting emissions in the transport sector.

"We have ambitious government targets for transport emissions, but transport emissions are static," said Cliff Perry, vice president of the Institute's railway division. "Eighty-five percent of transport emissions come from roads, so if we are serious about doing something, we must hit road transport."

Comparisons between emissions from different modes of transport are not straightforward, as engine efficiency, passenger numbers and generation methods for electric trains need to be factored in. However, any idiot except a government minister can see that, on the whole, one 5000hp train carrying 1000 passengers ought to be generating about half the pollution of two hundred 50hp cars each carrying five – or indeed considerably less than a thousand cars containing just the driver, which is what usually happens at peak time.

However, an idiotic government minister pointed out that private rail operators were making an awful lot of money by providing unreliable, overcrowded services, and any attempt to encourage more people onto trains would require them to actually spend some of their huge piles of cash on improving their services - which for some reason they were all unaccountably reluctant to do.

Odd as it may seem, no mention was made of the almost complete abandonment of railfreight services - despite the huge number of lorries clogging up the roads by hauling goods from the four corners of Britain to centralised depots and then redistributing them all over the country again. But presumably that would upset the Road Haulage Association - and Shirley Williiams, the only Transport Secretary to upset the Road Haulage Association since the war, was sacked after calling a halt to Dr Beeching’s wholesale destruction of the rail network in the sixties.

Although that was no doubt a complete coincidence.