The best people to give advice on how to run a successful railway? The reason I'm asking is as I leaving the Rennaisance Hotel here in Doha tonight I saw a sign saying 'British Embassy - Uk Network rail' pointing upto the 1st floor. My thoughts were what on earth are they doing out here? Then I remembered reading that Qatar wants to build a railway. The problem being Doha is what I would call not a city conducive to have a railway in it. The major road upgrades going on at the moment are a nightmare as it is. Surely if that's what they are doing out here, the Qataris could find someoe better to advise them?

They have done wonders since the end of the Railtrack fiasco, they have missed their targets for train punctuality last year but they were quite tight.

The punctuality targets become even more interesting when you compare them against the punctuality qualifications applied by the train operating companies

Scathing report on Network Rail (and train operators) in the papers today. 23% less efficient that Euopean networks and 30% more expensive (fares and subsidy). Network Rail seem to be the main problem.

So in order to get the rail network functioning properly again, the rail regulator is demanding Network Rail slashes £2bn from its annual budget.

Lunatics taking over the asylum.

"Taking"?

Decades of under investment take time to unravel and they don't unravel by cutting budgets.

Those stats me nothing BTW they just give the Mail and Express something to be outraged about.

They do mean something. They mean people are being ripped off by over paid managements that are perhaps wasting money by negotiating poor deals with major contractors.

Take are local station for example. They have wasted a fortune on it whilst doing nothing to improve the running of the railways and turning the station into an identkit version of an inner city station.

Daft things they have done include:

- putting up a waiting room then demolishing to make way for a new footbridge
- the old station building has a ble plaque commemorating an award for sypmathetic refurbishment. What do NR do? Build a modern steel and glass monstronsity on the side of it with atomated barriers. The operating company then pays two people to stand there. Same on the other side of the tracks. Daft things the barrier building close after evening rush hour. There is no point in them. An absolute waste of money. They don't stop fare dodgers as they are not 24/7. In any event it would be cheaper to have ticket collectors on more trains.

I could go on but cannot be bothered.

The point being huge public subsidy and huge fares do not neceassarily equate to better service. It often just means more wasteful expenditure in this country.

We have this daft, wasteful political narrative that people like you buy into that "years of under investment" mean we need to chuuck cash at things and then "years of profligacy by Labour" mean we need to slash expenditure. As ever, where politicians get involved things just become a mess. RBS is the latest example.

No. That is not the reason why public spending is being cut.

And you know that perfectly well.

I was talking about the railways and BG's comments.