A Place to Stand: FORTH CROSSING

A Place to Stand

Comments from Scotland on politics, technology & all related matters (ie everything)/"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."Henry Louis Mencken....WARNING - THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS HAVE DECIDED THAT THIS BLOG IS LIKELY TO BE MISTAKEN FOR AN OFFICIAL PARTY SITE (no really, unanimous decision) I PROMISE IT ISN'T SO ENTER FREELY & OF YOUR OWN WILL

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

FORTH CROSSING - SCOTSMAN LETTER

This letter, sent out yesterday, is in the Scotsman today.

I note the SNP government is to ask Westminster to pay the £2.3 billion cost of a new Forth crossing. One would hardly think the SNP was a party committed to independence from the UK. Perhaps they should be asking Brussels for this sub since this would be more ideologically compatible with their opposition to independence from the EU.

In any case there is no question that at £2.3 billion the project is grossly overpriced. The previous bridge cost, in inflation adjusted figures, £320 million & this is similar to bridge prices across the world. Better even than that is the fact that a tunnel could be cut for £40 million or that the bridge could be recabled, with far stronger materials than existed 50 years ago & thus double decked as was done with Lisbon's bridge some years ago for around £10 million.

Readers may be interested to know that these points have been put to all our MSPs & while I thank the 4 who bothered to answer the more important thing is that not a single MSP feels able to dispute that the facts show what a massive rip off is going on.

Neil Craig
Ref - letter to MSPs & 3 + 1 previous replies http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2010/06/forth-crossing-23-billion-is-8-1000.html

The highlighted bit was edited out which is a shame but understandable. It also went out to other Scottish & UK newspapers but appears not to have been used so far.

Online comments have been strongly in agreement. One from Gary says

the SNP had to employ the lie-bore trick of jobs for the boys by over pricing and gaining as much cash as possible.

The bridge will be put out to tender - as is the law - but that won't stop the rise in government jobs to oversee the bridge.

which certainly fits the facts but if so shows our entire political establishment to be corrupt to such an obscene extent that the cost of fraud is 618% of real costs. Perhaps some MSP will write in reply detailing exactly why the costs are not fraudulent but on previous experience I suspect not. It would be nice if some part of the Scottish mainstream media were to be sufficiently investigative as to try to get to the bottom of this can of worms.