Train v plane: fight!

Ever wondered why so many people feel compelled to fly? Rail fares in the UK are the highest in Europe, whereas flying gets a £10 billion subsidy because there's no fuel duty and no VAT on tickets or planes. Sure, you can get a cheap ticket if you book ahead, but it's a nonsense that it's often cheaper to fly than to hop aboard a choo-choo.

Despite what the industry tells you, it's often faster, easier and certainly greener to go by rail than to fly. There's no check-in, no probing searches by bored security guards and no one tries to sell you crappy perfume and a pen with the airline's logo on. But we're indundated with adverts pushing 'cheap' flights and all that jazz on us day after day, so we forget the horrors of air travel and plop over to the Ryanair website to indulge ourselves (because we're worth it).

But where rail is given a fair playing field it can more than compete. Virgin runs the London-Manchester rail link, and has aggressively marketted its trips to the same audience as currently flies. It's paid off: they now have 77% of the market share, with passenger figures up 12% in the last year. This is, I should point out, despite 60% of their trains running late, and their walk on tickets being astronomically expensive.

So stop advertising aviation (and end that ludicrous subsidy) and give those poor trains a fighting chance. Don't delay, deface an airline advert today!