Incentivising Improvability

It will be remembered that, before he was called upon to replace Adam Werritty at the Ministry of Astuteness, Porker Hammond did a stint at the Department for Roads, Runways and Big Petrol, and that while there he manifested a bizarre delusion which prompted him to draw a fictitious distinction between fare-payers and taxpayers. The affliction appears to be spreading, as witness this piece about the Office of Rail Regulation scolding Network Rail for its lack of punctuality. The mention of "punctuality commitments which [passengers] and taxpayers have funded NR to deliver" is not a direct quote from the ORR's lecture, so it is possible that the reporter was suffering the effects of too many Whitehall press releases; but it is at least equally possible that the ORR has succumbed to Porker Hammond's complaint, and sees no incongruity in the idea that travel on public transport somehow puts one in the same club as Lord Ashcroft and the Barclay brothers. The ORR's solution to Network Rail's dilatoriness is to impose ever-larger fines which, in accordance with the genuine and all-important distinction between Network Rail executives and the rest of us, will be covered by the taxpayer.