Over the past couple of months I have had to travel to London on business very frequently.

This is not something I enjoy doing. It usually means leaving home at 6.30 am and not getting back until after Coronation Street has finished.

I have to drive to Newport railway station, pay £6 to park in the station car park, walk almost a mile from the car park to the station (because British Rail have closed the short cut pathway) then spend two hours travelling on a train packed to the gunnels with commuters. (What exactly IS a gunnel, by the way?).

I then have half an hour crossing London by tube - which defies description.

The return journey, late in the afternoon, is even worse because the train actually starts off full and only becomes merely uncomfortable rather than excruciating by the time a proportion of travellers have left at Reading or Swindon.

I don't have to pay for my rail tickets. YOU LOT - the Community Tax and Income Tax payers, pay for my tickets.

And First Great Western charge you £146 for those tickets. One hundred and forty six pounds!

I stress that these are STANDARD class tickets, not first class. One hundred and forty six pounds! And they are bought three weeks in advance of the journey to get the best rate.

If I were to drive to London using my own car - which is not the most economical of vehicles - I would have burned my way through about £40 worth of petrol.

But of course, because I work for a politically correct Government body I have to look for the most carbon efficient, environmentally friendly mode of transport - which we are told is the train.

Surely there is something seriously wrong here when we see that the form of transport which the Government want us to use costs more than three times as much as the most convenient form.