I may not be the train regulator, but… One of my eight wishes for 2008 was:

That the majority of my commuter trains into London are on time (December’s score: 0%).

Two months into 2008, how is Southern – my local train operating company – faring? I’ve crunched the numbers and the answer is that they’re getting better, but are short of my target.

Based on the wording of my wish, these stats are limited to journeys I’ve made into London for work, and only count the train I actually took: if I got to the station and a train due earlier than the one I was aiming for arrived late and I caught it, that counted as a late train; but if it was so busy that (rather than squeezing in) I waited for the next train and it was on time, that counted as an on time train.

On the one occasion that the train I went for was cancelled, I’ve made an exception and counted that as a particularly long delay (17 minutes; the longest delay otherwise was 9 minutes).

Here are the stats:

So my morning train did manage to be on time the majority of the time this month, but, averaged out against January (when I caught more trains), the proportion for 2008 so far is 45%.

Not great, but only a little way to go to get over the key 50%. And what a triumph that would be.

In a story about two British men trying to get their DNA removed from the national database, the BBC has reiterated one of Home Officer minister Tony McNulty’s arguments against having a mandatory DNA database of the whole population:

“How to maintain the security of a database with 4.5m people on it is one thing. Doing that for 60m people is another,” he added.

Excellent point, Tony. And guess what – it applies exactly as much to ID cards as it does to DNA.

Readers may be interested to know (and I’m going to plug it regardless) that since December I’ve been writing a regular weekend column for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Something for the Weekend is a light-hearted (I wouldn’t go so far as “humorous”) review of the week, and today’s post – written in Llandudno, from where I’m typing into your internets right now – is now up.

Not this one – this one.

And probably not. But still…