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Who would be a train operator on today's railway.

Obviously the "thinly capitalised equity profiteers of the worst kind" cannot now even be trusted to run their own stations without some apparatchik of the state sticking their oar in.

Comrade the Lord Adonis today unveiled his latest big idea - "Station Czars".

“I have asked Sir Peter Hall and Chris Green to look at how we can get the basics right as well as to consider the broader role of stations in the future” said Adonis.

Sir Peter Hall is currently the 76 year old President of the Town and Country Planning Association, whilst Chris Green, 65, is a non Executive Director of Network Rail.

How clever of this tired administration to select two men so obviously at the cutting edge of twenty first century retail and facilities management thinking.

No matter.

Messrs Hall & Green, Stationers by appointment to Lord DafT Vader, has a certain ring to it!

On the up-side, shares in Dulux have rocketed on the expectation of an immanent return to the Red Lamp-post Railway.

UPDATE: This just in from Ithuriel...

Given that Adonis described British Rail in the Guardian as "a national joke in terms of quality and reliability" one wonders what is the point of inviting an old-BR retread like Chris Green to be his station czar.

Surely he should appoint some thrusting dynamic new-railway-man, in touch with today's demanding rail travellers like, err... Richard Bowker or Brian Souter or Moir Lockhead or, why not Sir customer focus himself, Richard 'Beardie' Branson?

Odd that when Adonis is in a hole he turns to someone who ran not one, but two "national jokes".

"Railways, like any other industry, have got to modernise." Adonis told the Guardian.

So that's back to the future then!