Mark Casci: Time to lose our national bad attitude on infrastructure spending

I took a fair bit of flak on social media at the end of last week, and for once it was not due to my football team's performance.
I am a spark - Leeds 2023 European Capital of Culture Bid

Stills from videoI am a spark - Leeds 2023 European Capital of Culture Bid

Stills from video
I am a spark - Leeds 2023 European Capital of Culture Bid Stills from video

I can totally understand why the brickbats came my way as, on the face of it, it may have appeared as though I was simultaneously supporting a major multi-billion pound infrastructure for southern England and the ideas of Boris Johnson.

The subject of course was the Foreign Secretary’s suggestion of a road bridge across the English Channel.

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To clear up any initial doubt, I do not consider it a viable option. I have seen no evidence to suggest the traffic of cars using the Channel Tunnel is at capacity.

Foreign Secretary Boris JohnsonForeign Secretary Boris Johnson
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson

It would, as many have pointed out, traverse one of Europe’s busiest shipping routes and cause disruption to the transportation of goods the world over. And, of course, it would cost billions.

My thoughts were rather an expression of deep concern about our country’s attitude to large infrastructure projects.

Increasingly, whenever anyone suggests spending any substantial amount of public money on improving transport, public services etc, the knee jerk response is to dismiss it out of hand.

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“A waste of money” is the usual first port of call from the naysayers.

The new route for HS2 has been confirmed.The new route for HS2 has been confirmed.
The new route for HS2 has been confirmed.

It is usually followed up by the naïve claim that whatever the estimated bill for the project is would be better spent on the NHS, schools, pensioners etc.

And, for the truly desperate there will be the inevitable comparison to that most prominent of public expenditure disasters – the Millennium Dome.

I am not saying we should blindly charge into acceptance of spending huge amounts of taxpayer’s money on whatever blue sky idea pops into a politician or civil servant’s head.

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Such things should always be heavily scrutinised and interrogated to ensure a return on investment for the public.

Foreign Secretary Boris JohnsonForeign Secretary Boris Johnson
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson

But if we allow us to have a culture of wholesale negativity about modern, forward thinking and bold projects then we are consigning ourselves to being a nation which used to build great things.

To serve my point, the Boris Bridge idea came in a week in which civic and business leaders in Leeds pledged to press ahead for a year of cultural celebration despite EU bureaucrats vindictively pulling the plug on the UK competing for Capital of Culture 2023.

To my dismay a vocal minority took aim at the project as, you guessed it, a waste of money – all despite vast amounts of well-researched evidence to suggest it would yield a healthy return.

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And while HS2 and HS3 remain going concerns, the amount of time spent discussing rather than building them is problematic. Financing large projects should never been phrased as a choice between it or say cash for the NHS.

The new route for HS2 has been confirmed.The new route for HS2 has been confirmed.
The new route for HS2 has been confirmed.

It need not be a binary matter. To do otherwise means we run the risk of knowing the price of everything and value of nothing.

The great railways and canals of the Industrial Revolution stand as proud monuments to our past as a worldwide powerhouse.

What will be the monuments which people look back on in 100 years’ time to define our era?

If we are not careful there will be a blank page in history.