Dick the Butcher had a point
We list these achievements not to boorishly hark back to our country’s former glory, but to remind us how prosperity was painstakingly built – brick by brick, track by track – to inspire us to look forward with hope and possibility.
In today’s Britain, things are very different. Looking at our ability to deliver new projects, from transport to clean energy, it’s no exaggeration to say Britain has lost its knack for getting things done.
As a result, economic growth and the distribution of prosperity that comes with it, has stagnated. Successive governments have failed to tackle an acute housing crisis – exacerbating the intergenerational wealth crisis.
This is true, yes. No bugger can ever do anything such is the restriction of the legal bureaucracy. Given that doing new things, or old things new ways, is the very definition of economic growth that’s why we’ve not got any economic growth. This isn’t just a matter of infrastructure, of building, it’s systemic.
Years of political turbulence and a decade of economic austerity has not helped. But in addition – like a frog brought to the boil slowly – an ever-increasing myriad of well-meaning regulations and laws have choked our country’s spirit for getting things done. Consenting times have increased. Judicial reviews have spiked, creating largesse for legal services.
As a result of delays, construction costs have sky-rocketed. Our roads have the highest cost-overruns relative to comparable countries. Rail construction is twice as expensive compared to the global average.
At which point Dick the Butcher does have that pleasing, even enjoyable, solution. But of course we can’t do that, tsk, no. As Birmingham is showing we’d not be able to get the gutters clean after they’ve run red. This though is also not the solution:
This is why the Government’s flagship Planning and Infrastructure Bill is critical at this juncture. The Bill improves clarity for nationally significant infrastructure projects to prevent unnecessary delays, and sets limits for the consultation processes around development consent orders with a reduced list of statutory consultees.
This will stop incentives to over-consult, or to lodge unfounded objections not actually designed to win on merit, but cynically to stop projects by increasing costs and threatening investor confidence.
No, not, just absolutely no and absolutely not.
Freedom from the system itself will only apply to those bureaucratic micturation schemes. Smaller scale - the sort of market led development that actually leads to economic growth - will still be hamstrung by this system. This system that we now all agree needs to be slaughtered because not even government can do anything while it exists.
Which brings us back to Dick and his solution. We think it possible that the GoFundMe will be successful enough for a double headed axe so that he can go properly Viking on that system. It’s the only way….
Tim Worstall