They seem to fall well below the 100 m.p.h. standard of running so confidently promised when the 1955 modernisation and re-equipment plan was first made public by the British Transport Commission.

Michael Portillo as shadow chancellor will immediately leap up with the parrot-cry: Labour always increases taxes and often invents new ones.

The devil a one of me will ever set foot there.

It was easy to see that it was an avoided house—a house that was shunned by the village, to which my eye was guided by a church spire some half a mile off—a house that nobody would take. And the natural inference was, that it had the reputation of being a haunted house.