I've got massive sympathy for those caught up in the air travel chaos. I spent many years travelling between London and Scotland and the Christmas trip was always a nightmare. I only flew once at Christmas, almost didn't make it and stuck to the trains thereafter.

The flight cancellations also have a massive impact on the trains, something I know only too well from personal experience. The trains are always packed at Christmas; with all these unfortunate would-be fliers also trying to squeeze on they'll be even worse.

Of course, nobody can do anything about the weather. It's winter in the UK, these things happen and safety has to come first. We can't blame the airlines for the cancellations (although the information provision appears unacceptably poor).

But what about the trains? Since these things do happen frequently during the winter shouldn't there be extra capacity to cope? Shouldn't there be some integrated contingency planning? Of course there should be - but there isn't. The trains only just cope with the numbers as it is.

So our national transport infrastructure is totally unable to cope with a predictable annual problem. That's really not good enough.

But we can't really blame the Train Operating Companies. They're Limited Companies who have a legal responsibility to maximise profits for their shareholders. And that means running the minimum number of trains and carriages they can get away with rather than taking the risk of running half empty trains in order to ensure contingency capacity.

This doesn't just apply at Christmas: London commuters experience this every time a peak time train is cancelled and the next one turns into a Hieronymus Bosch scene.

No wonder we have ever increasing car usage with all the environmental problems that brings. Our railway "system" is a mess.

The answer to the UK's travel problems is clear: renationalise the railways, the buses and domestic flights and run them as a single integrated system with a public service ethos rather than a profit motive.

I'm more likely to see Santa's sleigh running a scheduled service.

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