Last week the railway line to the south west of England at Dawlish Warren was restored by Network Rail permanent way engineers ahead of schedule, which was a truly amazing, Herculean achievement in the face of such adversity.

At a triumphal ceremony of pomp, which included the heads of Network Rail and First Great Western, PM Cameron quite rightly sang the praises of an ‘orange army’ of 300 engineers who worked around the clock at a cost of £35m to complete the work. However, wasn’t PM Cameron showing something of a hypocritical Janus face, as only two days previously his government’s ORR office of rail regulation had scathingly announced its intention to fine Network Rail £70m later this year for not delivering planned works on time during the last Christmas and New Year period? If I remember correctly the weather at this time was nothing short of appalling, as was the winter weather of the two preceding years, which meant that most of the work would have been carried out in appalling conditions, by the orange army of heroes.

However, the heads of Network Rail seemed to be quite acquiescent towards the ORR and willing to eat crow by admitting they could have done better, but, just a minute, was it not this same orange army doing the work to the best of their physical ability, and so shouldn’t their management be defending them, to the point of prompting that Cameron’s coalition should drop this ridiculous fine completely?

After all, the only possible reason for the government’s ORR to impose a fine upon for what is for all intents and purposes a state run arm of our rail network, is to rob us, the taxpaying travelling public yet again.

Surely it is the fact that it will be us, the taxpayers, picking up the £70m fine, which is no surprise, as successive governments have a sordid history of stealing from the tax payer, by flogging off state assets to majority corporate shareholders, speculators, hedge fund managers and spivs, what we have all worked so hard during our lives to pay for. The latest example being Royal Mail which was sold off for a song with an announcement last week of the first hike in stamp prices since then, which certainly is possibly the precursor of many which may well herald a £1 stamp for sending our next Christmas cards.

G A Woodward, Nelson Street, Swindon