On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 03:09:58PM +0000, Anthony Polson wrote:

If you take into account all the Government help, from derelict land
grants for cleaning up the subsoil through all the sweeteners for
developers to paying £1 billion for the extension of the Northern
Line, one has to wonder whether the outlay of taxpayers' money will
ever be recouped.

Does it have to be recouped? Government isn't meant to be about making
a profit, and especially not about making a profit on every project.
IMO government should exist solely to correct the failures of the free
market. Law and order, for example, can't be left to the free market
for obvious reasons. Nor can most large scale infrastructure projects,
either because the capital requirement is too great, or it's too
difficult to get the necessary rights of way, or the pay-off is too far
in the future.

I can think of only one railway in this country that was built without
government help, that being the Snowdon Mountain Railway. All the
others were either funded partially by government, or were at least
helped on their way with private acts of parliament which granted the
companies various powers.

None of which, of course, says that the Battersea extension is actually
worth building :-)

--
David Cantrell | Official London Perl Mongers Bad Influence

You are so cynical. And by "cynical", of course, I mean "correct".
-- Kurt Starsinic