Skip to content

Yes, of course

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) has warned that successive Labour and Tory governments have found it “particularly difficult” to deliver quick and meaningful increases in capital spending, even when budgets are increased substantially.

Because it’s damn near impossible to buildanyting in Britain, that’s why.

13 thoughts on “Yes, of course”

  1. The legal profession makes a lot of money stopping things being built. To be fair it also makes a lot of money supporting those who want to overcome their opposition to building things. It’s profit for them either way. The longer and more complex the process and appeal system, the more they make. Twice.

  2. And then there’s the restrictions government impose on builders. A proposed developement in Shoeburyness has just fallen through over the demand to have a certain percentage of ‘affordable housing’ which the developer appealed and has now lost.

    So no houses will get built.

  3. Politicians love talking about funding “shovel ready” projects as if there’s a massive reserve of such things, whereas nobody who’s sane is going to spend the time, effort and money necessary to get a project into that state without the guarantee of money for it being there up front.

  4. Bloke in North Dorset

    Even better for politicians if they can be photographed wearing hard hats and hi-viz jackets whilst looking important at the site where the fantasy project will be built.

  5. Ah, the legal profession.

    Never forget that in any court of law one side will be found to be wrong. That’s a guaranteed 50% failure rate. But they still get paid, oh yes.

    If I had such a failure rate in any of the work I’ve ever done I’d probably be dead by now.

  6. There is an absolute forest of large new buildings and cranes on the line into Waterloo Station. The area is unrecognisable. Someone is managing to get something built, so I guess they are the ones with the good lawyers.

  7. One could suspect much of the activity of government is intended to provide remunerative employment for lawyers. And then one looks at the number of MPs who are also lawyers & wonders…

  8. London is a forest of cranes and has been for at least 20 years. Take a look at it from Alexandra Palace. Also note all the clusters of high-rise apartments that have appeared in that time. The whole place is turning into Stratford, filled with diversity-hutches.

    Last year we had a week looking around Essex, at the Dengie peninsula, around Maldon, and places like that. Everywhere you look the big house-builders are either knocking up estates of little boxes made out of ticky-tacky, or have fenced off fields with hoardings proclaiming their intention to do that shortly. No doubt these will be bought by those fleeing the diversity-hutches.

  9. Norman: It’s not all court work. A decent lawyer tries to keep his client out of court. Think about the “cease-and-desist” letter. If you can get someone to stop doing what he’s doing without court action, you do that. Because nobody wants to go to court. It’s a pain in the arse for all concerned.

    Law’s like any other business: you attract and keep clients by saving them money and making their lives easier, not landing them with hefty fees and inconveniencing them. My father was a solicitor for over forty years, and I don’t think he ever set foot in a courtroom during my lifetime.

    As to lawyer-MPs, I think I’ve mentioned before what he always said when a politician claimed to be one: “If he was any good at the law he’d be practising it, not swanning about playing politics.”

  10. There’s a town in Canada that burnt down 3 years ago and they still haven’t restarted rebuilding, the latest hold up is the need for archaeological assessments

  11. Sam Duncan

    Divorce lawyers?

    To me, that equation’s very simple. The parasites gain every penny that the kids (inheritance) lose.

  12. ‘they still haven’t restarted rebuilding, the latest hold up is the need for archaeological assessments’

    God BniC!!! You’d think you were in Oz!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *