ECML electrification? Oh, big deal, Sapper82. Yes, we certainly had a worldclass railway after that. But go easy with the exclamation marks - you're getting a bit over-excited.

While you were swooning over ECML electrification, freight was moving from rail to road as never before, in direct consequence of Thatcher's policies - or "market forces" as they liked to say. I can't think of any country in the world that finished up with decent railways purely on the strength of "market forces."

I don't have much time for most Labour politicians, but the only one I would single out for a major contribution to the present mess is Robin Cook who could have thwarted privatisation Mk2 simply by saying that Labour would unravel the deal on compulsory-purchase terms once they they came into office in 1997. He fretted that they would not be able to find the money, but they would not have needed to. Such a pronouncement would have blighted all prospect of the sell-off in the first place. And the handful of people who made millions out of onselling what they had bought at minimal risk and knock-down prices would have had to turn to some other racket for their easy profits.