There’s a lot of very odd news about tonight, and even more worrying is that it’s all real.

For example, the FT tells us that a think tank says HS2 can be a growth engine. Nor was this a mere Thomas the Think Tank saying it: it was a proper grown up one, called the Independent Travel Commission, which I can only assume is a tank that lobbies against the idea of package holidays. I’m all for that personally, but there seems little in the way of explanation as to why the ITC would know anything about disulphanide as a means of propulsion.

I know it’s supposed to be about trains that get you more quickly to places you didn’t want to go to in the first place, but surely every train that has an engine must also have a tank? So would we feel safe on a train where the tank does all the thinking, but the experimental engine is powered by disulphanide? Chemists tell me that it’s all to to do with gas phion energetics, and while an energetic engine seems like a sensible notion, the stuff also has vibrational electronic energy levels, which don’t sound quite so promising.

I find myself firmly in the agnostic camp with all this HS2 nonsense. The tank thinks the engine can grow, but that’s not the job of a train engine. Train engines that grow must one day surely explode, especially if they’re full of unstable gases like disulphanide. All I can say is, it’s a damn good job that there are commonsense chaps like me to point out the obvious at key moments in every governmental process.

Be in no doubt, however, that trains are making a comeback. And the Spanish one is on the right track after tackling the Labor Laws, says Angel Gurria, the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Mr Gurria complimented Spain’s coalition government on having only shrunk the economy by 1.4% while stopping unemployment from growing.

Once again here we find further evidence of muddled minds. Mr Gurria says Spain is on the right track, but gives us no clue as to where it’s headed now that dead Labor Laws have been cleared off the line. Has anyone given any thought as to whether it ought to move from its agreed position to the south of France and east of Portugal? I very much doubt it. Surely if the OECD is about anything it is about growth, so why throw undeserved compliments about if things are shrinking and being stopped from growing? Sometimes I think these people go out of their way to confuse us.

From Israel, however, comes the even more baffling news that the National Bank has given the Governor’s job to a Flug. I wouldn’t take the job for all the tea in China, but I do think giving the post to an aeroplane flight is a tad extreme. I can only think that once again the Germans are somehow involved in this obsession with travel analogies: what with these energetic engines and railway tracks, no doubt the Teutonic mind wants us to think that things are taking off, flying high and other such drivel. It really is rather puerile.

And finally, news is emerging tonight that the Government is going to offer young people help to buy maps. The bloody things are so expensive these days, it doesn’t surprise me. I mean, what’s the point of knocking 20% off the price of a house if you then have to fork out twenty quid for a map? For many youngsters these days, that’s the difference between being well off, and rummaging around at a Bring n Buy sale.

Mind you, don’t most people have Satnav these days? In which case, would they need a map? Would they know which way to hold one up? These are important questions.

But many first time buyers won’t have their own car. Simon Gammon, head of finance at Knight Frank, said he believed banks were pricing out first-time buyers because they were unwilling to increase lending. Get real, Sime: what you need to do is offer free maps to every potential customer who turns up with worn out shoes. I’m sure that would sort things out in no time.