IS this to be remembered as the week when it all went south?

For our hard-pressed commuters, one man’s political ambitions, the hopes of the Wire Nation?

In ascending order, with the talk of the proposed Warrington West station looking considerably more costly than the £12.66million set aside by the project’s principal backers, the answer may be in the affirmative.

Heaven save any higher power, even WBC, when you step into Network Rail’s labyrinthine web.

Because if there’s one proud tradition the quango has inherited, from British Rail through Railtrack to its current guise, it’s the inexplicable ability to set seemingly random budgets for grand schemes, trundle along without any real sense of urgency, then pluck another figure from the great blue yonder some way down the line.

This week’s announcement prompted assertions that Warrington West’s promoters may have to find considerable savings.

How is this achieved? Are you going to ship in some dodgy Chinese steel for construction, to balance the books? Dispense with a platform roof? Pull down Glazebrook station brick-by-brick and reassemble it at Chapelford?

Maybe get a National Lottery grant so Terry and Theresa Taxpayer can shell out three times over.

Just so people with very little affiliation with Warrington can be assisted in jumping on a train heading out of the borough with consummate ease each day.

  •  Political ‘spotters’ are being assured that Labour in Warrington South’s man for all seasons Nick Bent is not a spent force.

While our Nick may have stepped down from his constituency spokesman and campaigns manager role (not having done a bad job at the last polls), he is adamant a third tilt at the big time is within him.

Podium’s last ill-fated stab at punditry – where we innocently suggested Helen Jones’ scathing account of Labour Parliamentary life in the Gordon Brown years could be her Westminster swansong –was met with a rebuttal swifter than those once doled out by her beloved Tony Blair.

But is the large metal hook being polished up by the comrades, ahead of any selection contest, somewhere down the line?

Only a fool would deny his claim that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are as likely to turn Stockton Heath and Lymm red as Sheila Woodyatt taking up a subscription to the Morning Star. Jury’s out then.

  •  Journeying 113 miles (slightly) south-west will be Lee Radford’s table-topping Hull outfit on Friday.

Sky Sports’ unceasing devotion to screwing with every season ticket holder’s annual outlay means that the away day crew will be sampling the delights of John Cooper Clark at Manchester Albert Halls, a gig booked at Christmas before Hull decided to make a name for themselves.

Never fear, it’s not like The Likely Lads, trying to dodge the outcome of that all-important clash before you catch the replay later.

So that’s no Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, bars with Super League on, TV and radio news spoilers, takeaways with the rugby on, and no well-meaning relatives offering congratulations on a good win. Easy, eh?

  • Your correspondent didn’t need wall-to-wall coverage of the European referendum to predict that Boris Johnson is as trustworthy as Edmund Blackadder and loyal as an Italian commando.

And however hilarious it might appear in the age of austerity to watch its architects tear each other apart with a bloodlust usually reserved for the Boxing Day hunt, this tit-for-tat sloganeering has reached an impasse.

It must be time to arm each side and clear Hampstead Heath.

and leave these tedious self-serving swine to their own devices until one side emerges triumphant. Or everyone perishes. That’s one surefire no-lose result.