This morning, on nationwide talk radio station, Talk Sport's Mike Dickin show, the special guest was Christian Wolmar, the transport journalist. Wolmar is a man I have a great deal of respect for (see here, ) and he was on promoting his last book (on railways) and his soon-to-be-released book (on the Tube).

The problem I have with Christian Wolmar is that he attributes the railway's problems to privatisation. As I never (yet) tire of saying, the railway's problems have nothing to do with privatisation and everything to do with franchising and fragmentation. Oh, and various other bits of government interference. This a theme that was recently tackled by Paul Marks on Samizdata.

Despite my efforts to change his views Wolmar seems to remain unmoved and this morning was uttering phrases like "...since privatisation" and "private railway companies".

I felt moved to call.

I have never called a talk show let alone appeared on one but for once decided to give it a go. I dialled 08704 202020. I was answered by a guy who seemed to be on jerk patrol. He asked me what my point was, I replied, he came back with another question and I replied again. I passed and got put into a queue at about 12.35pm. I switched off my radio (otherwise you get feedback) and waited. By the way, as you hold you do get to listen to the show - which is nice. After about 15 minutes I was beginning to despair. I told myself if I didn't get on next I would hang up. I didn't. The next caller was Roger Ford, doyen of railway journalists, so I listened to him. There was a break. "You're next". And sure enough, at about 12.55pm Mike Dickin came on and announced "Patrick from Twickenham". Yes it would have been nicer if it had been "Patrick Crozier from the Libertarian Alliance" or "Patrick from the UK Transport web log" but I wasn't quite sure I would get past jerk patrol with that lot and anyway it would have been a nightmare to explain.

Anyway this is (approximately) what I said:

"Christian Wolmar would like us to believe..."

[I do wish I hadn't said that. I wish I had just said "Christian Wolmar seems to believe...". I certainly didn't and don't want to cast aspersions on Wolmar's motives which I believe to be true enough. Anyway, I said it.]

"...that the railway's problems are due to privatisation. While I accept that problems exist and they happened after privatisation they have nothing to do with privatisation. The problem lies in what happened at the same time: fragmentation and franchising. Japan also has a private railway. It doesn't have fragmentation or franchising and it works very well."

Oh, I think I stuttered over one word but quite frankly, I am a bit of a stutterer at the best of times and given the stressful nature of putting across your views live to millions of people I regard that as acceptable.

Wolmar replied something to the effect that he entirely agreed that fragmentation and franchising were indeed the real culprits, that he had written extensively on Japanese railways, that they had received massive subsidy [I tried to interject that they had not] and that anyway it was always a stupid idea to have a private enterprise like Railtrack at the heart of the railway. I think he also said that fragmentation etc was part of the privatisation process (grrr).

And with that, Mike Dickin, running out of time as he was, moved onto the next caller.

Had there been time I might have replied pointing out that the placement of Railtrack (which I am beginning to conclude was a pretty incompetent organisation) at the heart of the railway was a consequence of fragmentation and privatisation and not privatisation in itself. I would probably have gone on to point out that for 120 years (up until 1948) private organisations were at the heart of the railway and things went rather well. But there wasn't, so I couldn't and millions remain to be convinced. Oh well.

Nevertheless, I had done it and that was a personal Rubicon crossed. So, I am glad. Whether it did any good or not is another question. It's very difficult to tell. Maybe there was one person out there who really got what I said and will make a difference. Maybe there were lots of people who from now on, deep in their subconciousnesses will bear the idea that at least some people think that private railways are a good thing.

We will never know.