Sir, The railway operators’ spokesman quoted (“Railways condemned for leaving Britain stranded on Boxing Day”, Dec 24) has knocked the last bit of the bottom out of the notion that public service remains any part of their purpose. “Train companies”, he or she said, “are not in the business of running services they know will lose money.” Does it not occur to them that on such occasions a bit of money might be made over from all the services that do make money?

Geoffrey Best
Oxford

Sir, Libby Purves’s column “The next train on platform 2 is in 58 hours” (Dec 26) should be tattooed in mirror-writing on the foreheads of every politician and every civil servant, to remind them each morning, when they are shaving or applying their make-up, exactly whom they are supposed to be serving.

Then again, they’d probably just mislay the mirror, and then blame someone else for it.

I wonder if a single “representative of the people” has the nerve to attempt to rebut Libby Purves’s conclusions. My guess is that they will simply pocket their lavish, self-awarded pay rise, ignore and deride those such as the police, who actually do something, and continue their unblushing annual shearing of the sheep who are us, relying on our placid inertia to continue to pull our wool over our own eyes.

Bruce Barnfield
Selborne, Hants

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