Thank you to Mingulay for bringing us back on topic.
Leaky mk3s or otherwise, we can all agree that the HST programme is in big trouble and management of the consequences of that, however they've come about, has been very poor. We're all suffering it day in day out and it needs sorted ASAP. I think that it's only the festive season that stopping it from becoming a bigger political issue than it is.
Considering the above, niftily on Christmas Eve Transport Scotland served Scotrail with a notice requiring a remedial plan within eight weeks. Given that one of the two triggers for the notice (the other is the very poor condition of the Suburban East service) was to preempt stats describing unacceptable deterioration of service throughout the network, and given that it's public knowledge that a shortage of serviceable diesel stock with appropriately trained crew is the main reason for that network wide deterioration, then a resolution of the HST shambles has to be front and centre in that plan. The plan could include forced abandonment of the HSTs, I'm sure that noone on here knows for certain that it won't?
I've read the franchise agreement, but what I'm not still not clear about are the consequences of the remedial plan being inadequate or if, later, they fail to deliver on it. We have to assume that termination of the franchise is a distinct possibility in these circumstances, and the collapse of the HST project could be the main trigger.
What I'm describing is worst possible case, but at the moment it doesn't feel like we're a million miles away from that.