With all the furore in Britain over the disturbingly close relationship between business and politics I suppose it's understandable that the awarding of a relatively mundane civil engineering contract in Northern Ireland may have escaped the currently hyper-active ethics and standards watchdogs. All the same, for what its worth, Tony Blair's purity in public life police might care to assign a few spin-inspectors to explain away the nuances emerging from the £12 million contract recently granted to a company called Mowlem Civil Engineering.

The company, although expert in the currently fashionable discipline of bridge building, is this time turning its expertise to laying new track, sleepers, and ballast in the reconstruction of a 10 mile section of track, the last link in upgrading the Belfast to Dublin railway line

While the association between the formidable Northern Secretary Dr Mo Mowlan, herself a bridge builder of some repute, and Mowlem civil engineers is doubtless wholly coincidental, this worrying matter is further clouded by the presence of Environment Minister Lord Dubs (sic), raising some disquieting issues of political, commercial and linguistic engineering. Track laying, while worthy and cost-effective, enhances cross-Border links but remains a poor metaphorical relation to the more esoteric bridge building. More work is required on what vacuous euphemism represents best rolls off the tongue. Sounds like another job for Mowlem and Mowlan.