PRIVATE TRAIN GO AWAY, DON'T COME BACK ANOTHER DAY

Fabulous news about National Express losing the contract for the East Coast Main Line. I don't have a personal beef with National Express - they are as bad as the rest - but as happened when Network South East was briefly brought into public ownership some years ago the managers of this line have a chance to demonstrate that public ownership of our railways quite simply makes sense.

You cannot have competition where one company runs one service on one line. That's a monopoly.

Where trains do compete on lines the tickets are often not transferable, people using the service cannot get the best information on pricing and they need to book train tickets now for their new born children to ensure the best value fares. The whole system is a shambles. And who dreamt it up? That's right, the increasingly shambolic and desperate last Tory government. Go to the top of the class.

So fingers crossed that we can see a bit of magic out east over the next year and that someone, somewhere recognises that this experiment in devastating our public transport has failed miserably.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we got a transport minister who could think outside this particular box and see that we need an integrated transport policy if we are to solve congestion, environmental damage, pollution affecting people's health and deliver economic benefits as people can actually get where they are going when they want to conveniently and cheaply.