14 APRIL 2007, Page 26

Vivè la difference

Sir: In his eulogy to the wonderful French railway system (‘French trains: faster, cheaper, greener, sexier’, 7 April), Neil Collins fails to mention one important difference between French railways and their British counterparts: SNCF is owned by the French government, whereas British train companies are owned by private shareholders. For an awfully long time we have been brainwashed by free-market fundamentalists into believing that anything owned by the state is always going to be more inefficient than anything privately owned. The continued success of France’s railways and the expensive post-privatisation chaos which is experienced by millions of British commuters every day proves that it simply isn’t true.

Neil Clark Botley, Oxford