Four-and-a-half years after the election of a government committed to an “integrated transport policy”, we have no sense that Stephen Byers, the sixth transport minister since 1997, has any idea of how to do the simple things the railways need. Instead, Labour allowed the defects of the Tory privatisation scheme to work themselves out until the Hatfield crash belatedly forced Mr Byers to put Railtrack out of its – and our – misery. He even managed to mishandle that to such an extent that the City will now look even more askance at funding partnerships with the public sector in future.The simple things needed to turn Britain’s railways from a mitigated disaster to a success are to run more trains, more reliably while ensuring that incentives to safety are uppermost in managers’ minds. It may be technically difficult to design such a railway, but the principles are simple.It does not inspire confidence, however, that the Labour Government should in effect be starting from scratch now, while the performance indicators for a demoralised Railtrack have been sliding since the company went into administration.Whatever the blueprint for the future, whatever the mix of public and private, and wherever the balance between integration and competition is struck, one fact is unavoidable. We will not get a better railway in this country unless we are prepared to pay for it.

That is a truth Tony Blair is prepared to spell out in relation to the health service, but shies away from in this case.The reasons for that are obvious. Which politician would like to tell rail passengers that taxpayers as a whole cannot be expected to bear the entire burden of improving the railway and that fares really ought to rise by more than they are doing this Christmas?. ‘We had Roger Scruton for supper once and persuaded him to write my daughter’s philosophy essay She got a D’

It’s called networking. It used to be called nepotism but that’s old fashioned like dropping bombs on people No one drops bombs anymore, they inflict collateral damage. Chamber’s Dictionary will tell you exactly when networking replaced nepotism as a recognised and perfectly acceptable social practice but I became aware of it only a couple of years ago when one of my student daughters consulting her university appointments office about career possibilities, was advised to go home and network her parents.
So there, it’s official and I can understand why that wealthy banker Philip Keevil is so miffed because his son has just failed to get a place at Trinity College, Oxford. The £100,000 he personally donated to the Trinity College kitty wasn’t to buy his boy a place, it was honest to goodness networking. I imagine it went to something like this”Dad, I’ve been thinking I’d quite like to go to Oxford.

Do you know anybody who might be able to help?”"Well lad, let’s see now. Your mother if I remember correctly goes to yoga on Tuesday’s with the sister of the admissions tutor from Christ Church and didn’t that fellow who came to fix the boiler last week say he’d just rewired Brasenose?”"Well actually dad I was rather hoping to go to Trinity College.”"Trinity College eh? Well in that case I might be able to do something for you seeing as I was there myself.”"At Trinity College. Were you really? Gosh dad you never told me.”"You never asked.”"So do you know anyone who could get me in?”"As a matter of fact I think I do, there’s a fellow called Beloff I wrote a cheque out for £100,000 only the other day…”All parents want to do the best for their children Remember Mayor Daly of Chicago in the 70s. He fixed it that all the city’s insurance policies went through his son’s office and when someone suggested there might be a bit of corruption there – young master Daly was collecting millions of dollars in premiums – all his old man said was: “If a father can’t do something to help his son, what kind of a father is he anyway?”It’s natural for parents to want to help their kids, whether it’s getting them a place at Oxford or two weeks as a snow fairy in a pantomime at Worthing. That’s all I wanted when I left stage school but alas I didn’t have the connections and my Burmese mother wouldn’t have recognised a network if it landed in her lap.If I had wanted to breed saddle-back pigs or raise deep-litter chickens she might have been able to help – my stepfather had recently bought a smallholding in Hampshire But I didn’t. I wanted to be a snowflake and the next best thing to having a famous name like Hayley Mills, who was in the class below me, was to have someone you could stay with in Worthing while the pantomime lasted.