ATOC claims 99% of railway spend is waste!

This from the Archer...

Further to Eye's earlier piece on RAIL's expose of the doomed nature of railway financing, did anyone else hear Michael Roberts of ATOC on Radio 5 this morning?

He rolled out the following amazing statistic:

"For every pound that is spent on services by the government just one penny is spent on running the railways."

To Listen Again click here and go to 1:51.51 into the programme.

The canny journalist obviously wasn’t going to be caught out by what he must have thought was an All Fools' day wind-up.

If only this were so!

UPDATE: This just in from @EdwardWelsh, not via Twitter...

I am delighted to see that it wasn't just Michael and I who were up at the crack of dawn this morning.

I am confused, however, why you think that "services" applies only to train services?

When talking to a national audience, I think you can safely assume that they would know he was referring to all government services and not just train services.

Happy All Fools' Day.