A couple of years ago I wrote a short book entitled ‘Are Trams Socialist?’. Spoiler alert, but the answer was no as the book was really not about trams but about the failure of transport policy ever since the first minister for transport was appointed just after the first world war. In truth, the notion of transport policy has been an oxymoron. In other words, there never has been...

So the review is going to be a ‘root and branch’ examination of the state of the railways and what to do about the structure of the industry. While I give my full support to Keith Williams who is carrying out the review, it does seem strange that someone with limited experience of the industry – he does have some transport knowledge but has never worked in the railways...

Here we go again. A review is in the offing. They may not have the frequency of buses but they certainly have the regularity. The response to any major cock up on the railways is to call in a reviewer, possibly someone with experience in the railways (Nicola Shaw, Richard Brown, Peter Hendy) or not (Roy McNulty), and give them a year to produce a report. Then it gets...