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In the late 1970s, my daily commute to school involved two trains and a connection which regularly failed because the first train arrived after the second train departed. There being no other train until nearly lunchtime, a great deal of time was spent listening to records at the houses of friends whose parents worked and a lot of school days were missed.
So while I'm generally in favour of the idea of reversing the UK's failed experiment in rail privatisation, it's worth sounding a note of caution: things weren't that great in the days of British Rail.
While we're on the subject of ownership of public utilities, something that just about everyone I know agrees with is that the privatisation of our water and sewage has been something of a disaster and the fines recently issued against three water companies are a step, if only a token one, in the right direction. But there are bigger problems at issue here that go beyond water company failures and involve the way we all, as consumers, misuse the existing infrastructure.
After months of grim news from the battlefield in Ukraine, my working week was perked up no end by the news that a second front has been opened inside Russia which appears to have put Vladimir Putin firmly on the defensive.
We've published a few great stories this week for anyone whose fancy runs towards historical curiosities. Easily the piece most likely to make you spill your morning tea was this astonishing research which has worked out that the giant Altar Stone which is an integral part of Stonehenge actually came from north-east Scotland, traveling more than 430 miles to where it now lies and baffling the experts who are trying to work out how the ancient architects did it. Equally weird are the paper charms which people used, as recently as the 1930s, to keep witchcraft at bay.
From the world of health, there's been a breakthrough in the treatment of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women in the form of a new bone-building drug, abaloparatide, which is showing very positive results. Meanwhile in Africa a major outbreak of mpox across several countries is causing a great deal of concern.
Elsewhere in the world, from our friends and colleagues in the global network, people in Chicago are getting ready for next week's Democratic Party Convention by watching these movies about the infamous and hugely violent convention in 1968, while Australia is riven by a political crisis surrounding the issuing of visas for Palestinians fleeing Gaza.
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