Quotes of the week

We have to try to break the Communist approach to running a railway. People freeze to death on draughty stations. People don't freeze in the airline business.

James Sherwood, chairman of Sea Containers and new owner of East Coast mainline

This is the blackest of farces. The country's primary transport assets are being handed to a man who thinks that British Rail was being run by Communists.

Brian Wilson MP, responding

As fewer and fewer people come to confession, the more morbidly interested they are in the sins of others, especially sexual sins.

Father Thomas McCoog, Jesuit priest

You English bastard, you give my cows BSE then you want to know how I feel.

Georges Hourmann, Breton farmer who claims his cows were infected by feed from Britain, to British reporter

There is more bacteria on a Frenchman's breath than there is in a docile cow.

Michael Day, cheesemaker, protesting at the suggestion that BSE panic may mean French milk will be used to make British cheese