- We wanted the power to borrow money.
- The only way that we could get that was to promise to use all the money we borrow to build a new motorway.
- So we’re building a new motorway.
As a
justification for building a six-lane highway across the Gwent levels, this
doesn’t work for me. I suspect that it
won’t work for a lot of other people either.
And whilst I’ll admit that it’s paraphrased, it does seem to sum up the
argument being put forward by the Welsh Government for the decision to press
ahead with the M4 relief road.
Adding in, for
good measure, that "Business people
are very content", doesn’t do it for me either (even if it were true;
my understanding is that some business organisations would prefer to have a
cheaper route finished sooner).
It makes it
appear as though the power to borrow money became, at some point, an end in
itself rather than a means to doing whatever it was they originally planned to
do. And it means that the decisions on
the Welsh Government’s transport priorities – and indeed more generally capital
spending priorities - are effectively being set by the UK Government, not the
Welsh Government.
It’s not a good
starting point for new financial powers.
Posts
1 comment:
Surely giving the Welsh government ' the 'power to borrow' is just a sign of growing up. And yes it is indeed an 'end in itself'. But, as any parent knows from their own offspring there is still a lot more to come.
On a slightly different topic, I see that comment levels are down on many blogs. Is this because of the 'Brenda Leyland' effect?
I, too, wonder how Sky managed to identify this woman just from the Twitter name '@sweepyface'. Either some form of hacking or a police informant must have been involved.
Why is there no political outcry?
Post a Comment