No infrastructure of ANY Country should be Privately owned and run at a profit, it should be run for the good of the Country!!!

Brown is still sticking to the reason our troops are in Afghanistan that it is keeping UK streets safe from the Taliban. I have never seen any evidence that says the Taliban want to come here. Their domain is Pakistan with their sights on Afghanistan not the UK. I thought we were supposed to be fighting the terrorist organisation al Qaeda which are already in the UK plotting our downfall and the spread of Islam.

In a densely populated country like Britain, a joined up Rail Network is of vital importance. What we need is to get people out of their cars, therefore reducing the need for petrol, and onto Public Transport. The more people that travel by Public Transport, the less need for new roads, less need for oil, less congestion and less pollution. Both Labour and the Conservatives have paid lip service to this common sense solution to Britain's congested roads, environmental degradation, air pollution and reliance on oil imports. But we see that their interest was purely lip service – they have never had any intention of doing what was best for Britain, their only interest was to appear to have those intentions while actually helping their friends in big business.

If the Railways had remained a Nationalised Industry, there were plenty of easy solutions to the problems that existed when it was, but the politicians were not interested in these easy solutions, they were only looking for reasons to make their objective of privitisation possible and to make it appear to be the only reasonable solution. So we now have the ridiculous situation of a Publicly funded Rail Network, where the people who fund that network (the tax payers) have to pay exorbitant amounts to use it. The worst of both worlds for the ordinary people of Britain – but, the best of both worlds for big business. How strange that successive Conservative and Labour governments, elected to represent the people of this country and to do the best thing for the country, have managed to screw us while enhancing the profits of big business?

As others have pointed out, almost every other advanced country in the world has an efficient Nationalised Rail Network, where the people who pay for the network (the tax payers) get to travel cheaply and quickly. We have the exact opposite – we pay for the whole thing in subsidies, then pay through the teeth to use it, and are lucky if we get anywhere fast. But like everything else in this country, the whole set up has been created so that some fat cat can get even fatter, with the assistance of tax payers money. Of course, by then forcing people to continue to travel by car, the government can then punish us with 'Congestion Charges', parking charges and fines, toll charges, road tax etc. Whatever they say, it really doesn't benefit them for us to travel by Public Transport, so what do they care about the whole mess?

Just a laugh, news tonight keeps going on about Brown saying he won't support a corrupt Government (Afghanistan) – endemic corruption is the phase used I think. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. What does he think his government is. You can't teach anyone something you don't know/do yourself.

Yet now you have to be on the MPs 'gravy train' to make such a journey.