Chris

Indeed. And Merseytravel (the strategic transport authority for the Liverpool city region formerly known as Merseyside) had to fund the purchase of the new class 777s because, had they left it to the usual process there was a material risk of the units, if owned by one of the leasing companies, being contracted to Merseyrail for a limited period and then getting redeployed somewhere more lucrative. Which, as it happens, is exactly what happened with the class 507s these new trains are replacing. They were ordered for Merseyrail but then deployed in London for services out of Waterloo, only arriving in Merseyside several years later.

There are new trains appearing on northern and transpennine routes (I’m not giving you Azuma, they serve the East Coast main line into London). However this purchase programme has lagged the southeast of England by decades. Some southeastern lines are on their second generation of new rolling stock since privatisation while lines in the north of England have only just got rid of the dreaded Pacer - the ******* child of a Leyland bus and a freight wagon (yes, really) that was meant to be a 1980s stop-gap but instead hung around like the friend of a friend of a friend hours after the party was over. The state of rolling stock in some parts of the northern network was threatening to make the service unviable and the sign-off on new hardware here could no longer be avoided.

If we sound ungrateful, it’s because we’re still getting far less than what we need just to keep pace with economic growth in the south, let alone catch up.

And, before we get away from ourselves, this isn’t a Tory problem. Crossrail was conceived under a Labour government and a Labour(ish) London mayor.

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My mum probably looked after your dad’s pay packet