Network Rail is to be fined £70 million for failing performance targets on punctuality. The fine will, of course, be paid by taxpayers since Network Rail receives subsidy – fares do not even cover operating costs – bust since 1955 and before.

Furthermore Network Rail has a debt of £30 billion.  That debt is notionally secured against the (imaginary) value of the Regulatory Asset Base, the RAB, on the fraudulent basis that investment in rail leads to an asset that can be traded.  Instead, without Government support, the railways, if retained as railways, are worthless in the market place.

It is not Network Rail and or the banks which should be fined.  Instead it is the Chief Execs, past and present, and their henchmen – all of them guilt of misleading the Government on a mammoth scale.

The claims made by those lobbying for HS2 are the top end of that; a scheme which will, if built, waste resources equivalent to the lifetime wages of 80,000 working men.