Law of the jungle goes Underground

There are nine weeks to go here at the Dunlegislatin rest-home, before the electorate gives someone a mandate for a whole new set of policies. Many of the inmates here are readying themselves for extinction, others to meet glory in more agreeable ways. All agree that - for the time-being at least - their innovating days are over. All it seems, except for Sir George Young, the Secretary of State for Transport, who yesterday made a statement to the House on the Government's proposals for the future of London Underground.

Sir George is a phenomenon. With his gentle voice, slightly distressed expression, immense height and thinness, he looks like the descendant of a Victorian union between an adventurous aristocrat and a giraffe. Found in the jungle, like Tarzan of Greystoke before him, he has come to Britain to start a new life. That is why he has trouble with those funny ticket machines at Tube stations - they don't have them on East African plains.

This loftiness might also explain why Sir George has failed to notice that there is an election pending, and thus no chance of this parliament deciding anything about London Underground. As a result, he is in danger of asking his civil servants to do a lot of expensive work, of hiring a large number of extremely well-paid consultants, and forcing London Underground into numerous emergency management seminars with sharp-suited trainers - all for nothing.

Or could it be that - far from not being aware of the election - the charcoal giraffe is aware of practically nothing else? That he, along with his Cabinet colleagues - having devoured all the tasty leaves at the bottom of the privatisation tree - is now forced to stretch his neck as far as possible in order to nibble at the topmost, scrubbiest foliage? (Not even nibble, indeed, but merely promise to nibble if re-elected). That what he is doing is employing a whole ministry to undertake a feasibility study for the Conservative election manifesto - at taxpayer's expense?

Certainly sir George was very keen that electors should, in his words "mind the gap" between his radical proposals for attracting investment to the Tube, and Labour's rather hopeful ideas for nice partnerships between kind businesses and wise service providers, which will magic money into the system.

Not that Andrew Smith, Labour's transport spokesman, raised the question of the giraffe's timing. Small, tan-haired and beetle-browed, Mr Smith has a voice problem, which is all the more noticeable since he sits next to the greatest classical actress of her generation - Glenda. The words "nasal" and "high" do scant justice to the grating timbre and unusual production of Mr Smith's vocal output. His tones emerge with difficulty from a point just between his eyes and - as he becomes agitated - seem to project themselves from the top of his head.

Mr Smith compensates for this by rattling his words out with great speed, ensuring that there are plenty of hyperbolic damnations - on the principle that if you miss a dozen or so, you still won't lose the thread. The overall effect yesterday was that of an angry meerkat doing its yappy best to tear the throat out of his lanky and largely oblivious opponent.

But Sir George is an unflappable beast. How could anything worry a man who can simultaneously state that he has no idea whether the Tube system should be sold off as one, or spilt up - and yet can promise that pensioners' concessionary fares will exist in perpetuity? On second thoughts, an election might.