Sunday 22 December 2013

Britain must reclaim its common sense

Britain must reclaim its Victorian vision - http://www.ft.com/cms/89d56aae-68ad-11e3-bb3e-00144feabdc0.html
Building homes and roads and rail or air infrastructue is not a Victorian invention nor did they do it perfectly.  Actually the Victorians missed a big trick as they had the wealth of an empire and failed to use it for the benefit of all or for many generations. 
Before arguing whether the Victorian heritage is good or bad and whether it deserves to be the ultimate benchmark everyone in Britain seems to be obsessed with, it is worthwhile perhaps examining who outside the belssed shores of the British isles has had some vision in more recent times.
The fact that it takes decades to build anything with public money, and it is several times more expensive to build that anything in Britain than elsewhere it should raise the basic question: Is it anything wrong with us? Perhaps we are just different, not better.
Britain has been sold a few myths extraordinarily well. We are a small island and we don't have public money, we don't have any money to spend. There are some 50 countries in the world more densely populated than Britain, even London is actually pretty fine on that front so there is plenty of room for urbanisation beyond dreaded greenbelts etc.
A one thousand six hundred billion economy which cannot build a runway, a tube stop or a bridge in more than 3 decades deserves little praise. It actually deserves pitty and is a model to be avoided. Sad this negative example is set by the land of people who like lecturing the world about right and wrong.
www.softcapitalist.blogspot.com

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