National Express has now taken over the East coast mainline from GNER. The first thing I noticed was on Sunday - the url www.gner.co.uk - no longer works. Don’t suppose anyone in the civil service who was responsible for the procurement could have had a joined up moment of thinking and decreed a re-direct.

The tender process itself was kept to the absolute minimum within EU guidelines. Thus effectively preventing some of the would be ‘competitors’ from joining in.

Yet again, the trains get re-painted; but are they going to run on time? It reminds of a Polish joke from the years of dictatorship. ‘We used to have butcher’s shops with meat inside; now we have meat shops with only butchers inside’. If, as we are told, there is limited public finances then surely this should be spent on the core ‘process’ (blah blah blah) of running the trains from A to B and *on time* rather than spending yet more money on new logos? It’s Blair’s vision of brand Britain.

But wait; they’re now offering free wi-fi, from which I can complain about all of this…