WE read that Virgin East Coast (VTEC) bid £3.3bn (£3,300,000,000) for the East Coast franchise over eight years.

Simple arithmetic shows that that represents £412.5m per year, even more simply £7.9m per week, every week of those eight years.

That’s what they agreed to pay the government after covering all their running costs and making an operating profit. More than £1m per day.

That’s plainly a quite ludicrous and unrealistic amount.

I frequently travel with VTEC to London and have no complaints about the standards of service but I fear that the management have only themselves to blame for submitting a totally unsustainable bid for the franchise.

Peter Sotheran, Redcar