Breakthrough in Tube PPP contracts

There was jubilation at Transport for London yesterday when it claimed to have found a person who understands the PPP contracts signed with regard to the London Underground.

The seemingly impossible task leaves the way open for a coherent infrastructure to be built and maintained in the UK's capital city. "We cannot disguise our joy at having found someone who can understand and explain what these contracts actually mean," said transport commissioner Bob Kiley while draining a Budweiser at his Mayfair flat. "I tried and got as far as page 784 before my doctor had to sedate me."

The documentation for each contract is several thousand pages thick, with many sub-contracts similarly lengthy. They cover such minutiae — including the number of pieces of litter allowed on each platform at each station in each hour before any penalties are introduced — that it has often taken weeks for TfL to decide if it can seek any recompense at all.

Just last week the Court of Appeal ruled that TfL was right to ask the Victoria Line managers for £100 after its 3,000th train was over six minutes late in a specified 49-day period in 1991.

However, the new Contract Czar should put an end to the endless bickering. Understood to be a German national who has worked up until now in a trendy sewage design business in Dortmund, he offered his services to TfL after hearing of their incomprehension at the pages of legal extravagance.

"It's pure fluke that he ever got involved," a TfL person blabbed while caressing an ivory statuette of Ken Livingstone. "He's a bit of a boffin apparently and after a hard week designing pipes for householders in the Ruhr he likes nothing better than to try to decipher impenetrable business agreements."

However, some opponents of the deal claim that finding the individual at this time is "suspicious" and have asked for more information on the man's credentials. One lawyer who drew up the ground-breaking Metronet deal in which the company is permitted to diversify into bus transport if its core Tube processes prove incompatible with milking as much money out of Londoners with the least effort, commented: "If it's that Günter from Dortmund again you can forget it. Although he's does always have a fine selection of peppered sausages and meats."