The Sketch: This Darling fails to provide sweet talk when it comes to catching the bus

The previous Transport Secretary made the only completely frank statement in all his time in government. Naturally, he was splashed all over the Sunday papers. It was something so filthy during a bout of hotel sex that the woman involved felt she had to tell the News of the World about it. The actual phrasing – always the crucial part of any Byers statement – was not recorded. He may have growled into her ear that Railtrack wasn't any more insolvent than the new not-for-profit company set up by the Government. He may have whispered hoarsely that small Railtrack shareholders deserved greater compensation. He may have yodelled ecstatically that Gordon Brown's public-private partnership was just an off-balance sheet exercise to conceal the extent of public spending. We will never know. He has never come clean in his political life, he won't start now.

His successor, Alistair Darling, now supervises this most complex area of government. He's able, Mr Darling; safe hands, they say. He's on top of the brief already. The 10-year, integrated, cross-cutting, multimodal, overarching, regionally weighted bollocks that John Prescott left in a pile on the doorstep when he left the department is at Mr Darling's fingertips.

Someone asked him why local authorities were prevented from going into partnership with Age Concern to help old people travel to and fro, an unintended consequence of competition regulations. Mr Darling replied confidently: "I am very sympathetic to greater use of the bus." Presses all over the country shuddered to a halt as front pages were held. But he had not finished. "You can do things with buses that you can't do with trains," he said. But hang on. Was it true? A moment of doubt paled his elegant, subcontinental colouring. Perhaps his enemies would quote this rash remark back at him in years to come. "Buses," he clarified his meaning, "could help people move around more." There's nothing this blue skies thinker calls unthinkable. The £180bn public spending plan is in safe hands.

Opposition Day filled the Tory benches. They came to hear David Willetts denounce the government record on pensions. He and others made the following points:

Gordon Brown had justified his £5bn a year tax on pension funds by the fact that they were so substantially in surplus. Now that the stock market had fallen and the justification for the tax had gone, would the tax go too? Since the Government had agreed to simplify industry procedures it had passed 251 extra pages of regulations; was this intentional? Was it true that individuals needed to save £100,000 to be better off than saving nothing at all? In opposition, Mr Brown wanted to eliminate means-tested benefits. Now 50 per cent of pensioners were means-tested. How had this happened? The Government wanted to encourage savings, but Britain was saving less than at any time since records began. Was this a success?

To these points, Gordon Brown has already said: "Xxxxxxx xxxx off!" Honestly, that's exactly what he said. Only the spelling was different. In this case it was Andrew Smith making a great long mashing noise with his voice. It was horrible. It lasted for 20 minutes then he stopped. Several of us were in tears. Especially the older ones. The ones, you know, nearing retirement.

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