Rattletrack Rail Re-Nationalised

A Whitehall snitch, (Wilton Thort-Nott) speaking on conditions of anonymity with reporters last night in Soho’s infamous Pikey’s Arms public house, revealed, for a modest thirty pieces of silver, a swift snort of coke and a pint of Headbanger lager, that the government is to take the East Coast Rattletrack rail service, run by PFI incompetents National Excess, back into public ownership.

The troubled rail franchise, which is expected to have lost what financial experts refer to as ‘a whole shitpile of money’ in the first half of the year, is suffering from slumping passenger numbers due the lack of carriages - and rail-worthy engines to pull them.

Sir Quentin Fuctifino, Minister for Choo-Choo’s, has refused the company's requests for its contract with the government to be renegotiated so they can claim subsidies to guarantee their director’s annual production bonuses before they are actually declared bankrupt and all fired.

The Department for Transport said that the East Coast services previously operated by Rattletrack would continue – by bus or rickshaw - and that tickets would be honoured for weekend excursions after 6:00pm.

Minister for Dodgy PFI Deals Lord Adonut announced: "The government is not prepared to renegotiate rail franchises and I'm simply not going to bail out companies that are unable to meet their commitments to public services.”
"It is simply unacceptable to reap the benefits of contracts when the government handed out subsidies, only to renege on them when a fall in profits occurs through piss-poor management."

National Excess was contracted to pay the government £1.4 billion to run the East Coast Rattletrack, which runs between Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, until 2015.

Lord Adonut added that he believed the government also had grounds to end National Excess's two other ailing Rattletrack train franchises – Bumpy Rail and the ‘Puffin’ Billy’ Cross-Channel Eurostar Pullman service due the former having no carriages or staff and the latter never actually ever reaching Folkestone without breaking down or running out of firewood.

Harry Slag, General-Secretary of the train drivers union Scrunts, told a reporter from the Tank Engine Gazette that “Wot National Excess offered our members woz massive bonuses based on profit-sharin’ - wot’s now turned out ter be an effin’ ‘loss-sharin’ scheme wiv these bastards cookin’ the books an’ milkin’ the company dry.”

Ms. Candida Mingerot, press secretary for the Chancellor’s office, spoke to Pox News, confirming the fact National Excess’s loss-making Rattletrack franchise had been rescinded after the company had failed to meet the terms of their agreement.

She further added that the government did not expect any losses incurred from the stricken franchise would be recouped from the sale of Rattletrack’s ‘Scrapheap Challenge’ quality rolling stock, and that rival rail transport company Worst Group’s take-over offer had been given the big finger as it simply presented an ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ scenario.

Fritz von der Dorkk, chairman of National Excess, has confirmed he is to leave the firm to become chief executive of Hump Track Rail in the United Arab Emirates and do an equally-incompetent job of fucking up their newly-built revolutionary Mag-Lev cross-desert train service also.