News just in: Conservatives admit mistake!

I am astonished by reports that the Conservatives have admitted that they made a bit of a cock-up of rail privatisation. They now realise that they should have gone for vertical integration of trains, track and other infrastructure, rather than breaking the system up into small pieces and making the legal profession even wealthier at my expense.

Is this the new Conservative strategy, intended to build upon the foundations of, "we're nice people, really we are, and when we've got some policies, we'll let you know."? If it is, here are some suggestions for the next phase...

1. "We're really sorry about creating such high levels of unemployment in the 1980's. We still believe that it was the right thing to do in terms of building a stronger economy, but we really didn't care about the individual lives that we destroyed. We're really sorry about that..."
2. "We're really sorry that we gave the Argentinians the impression that we didn't care about the Falklands. If we hadn't done that, we wouldn't have had to send other people's children to fight and die at Goose Green and elsewhere. Please accept our apologies...".
3. "We're sorry that we spent more than two decades undermining local government and local democracy. We only did it because we didn't want Labour councils to get in the way. But now that we run those councils and not the government, we realise the error of our ways. Please give us another chance..."
4. "We're really sorry that we spent so much time attempting to destroy both the morale and the capacity of the Civil Service. Admittedly, most of them didn't vote for us anyway, so we didn't see what we had to lose by upsetting them. Perhaps some of them might vote for us now..."

But turning back to the railways, who do I approach for a refund? The idiocy of rail privatisation (and remember, you were warned by virtually every expert in the field at the time) cost the British public an absolute fortune - just look, for example, at the profits made by the three companies who comprise the rolling stock leasing market. So, until Chris Grayling and his ever so caring sidekicks come up with a meaningful apology, they can rot in a siding for all I care (although they'll probably have to pay line rental charges on that siding so get your cheque book out, gentlemen!)...