The Tube Of The Future

Want to know what Ken Livingstone's definitive statement about the future of the capital's transport system was earlier this week?

We are all breeding like rabbits and you have to build the trains.

That Ken Livingstone...sex mad.

Honestly though, is that it? That sounds like an excerpt from some strange x-rated version of Thomas the Tank Engine, not a serious and far-reaching transport policy.

Come on Ken, you can do better than that:

Mrs. Thatcher deregulated [the financial-services industry], and all those American and Japanese banks moved in, and the old boys network had been smashed within a decade.

No, your computer isn't playing up, you just read a quote from Red Ken praising Thatcherite economic strategy. Moving swiftly on...

If China locks in to seeing this as the place to do business in Europe, then London's economy is secured for a century.

And so from sex, to Thatcher, to Communism, beat that! Although maybe this is why we're releasing thousands of tradional London black cabs onto the street of China next year, so they kind of see us as their second, slightly damper, home?

As for the Tube specifically, Ken did admit that "We have pushed fares to the limit,'' however there's also strong evidence that the cheapest cash ticket will rise by a third to four quid next year, so we're not quite at the limit yet it seems.

And so in a nutshell: we need a Thatcherite scheme of deregulation, funded by Communist China, supported by a GLA rule governing the amount of sex Londoners are allowed to have.

Oh, and then there's Crossrail and the Olympics to think about.