Big spender - I bought a bridge

The Government has announced £30Bn pounds spending to improve the road network and transport infrastructure. This sounds impressive in these austere times, so where is our cash strapped government getting this money from? Well it turns out they are only actually spending £5bn of their own money before 2013, with the promise of another £5bn after that. The rest will come from the private sector. So essential the Government has announced it is spending £5bn plus £20bn of someone else's money, with the promise that they might spend another £5bn if they really really have to.


A rather good analogy covers this. In any group of friends there is always the one who buys the first round in the pub, publicly, loudly and generously. He will always buy the first round because everyone remembers this, because they are still sober. Subsequent rounds, which will invariable include more expensive beer, shorts, crisps and nuts are paid for by everyone else. Ideally the group is just large enough so that everyone gets a round in and goes home before it comes back to the first round again, but if it does, watch our generous friend squirm and wriggle – by then some will have had enough and gone home, others will have just a half for the road and the rest will have moved on to another pub, so his promise to buy the round remains either that –“i’ll get the next one in” but that never materialises, or it’s a very cheap round anyway.

So our government is our cheap posturing friend, who will constantly remind us that he got the first round in, and spent £30bn on a night out.

But more astonishing is where this money will come from. We are already broke, the government is trimming benefits off our pensions, we will all have to work longer for less, and now it turns out that not even our reduced remaining pensions are safe. They are actually “investing” our pensions in this scheme. That is where the cash comes from. So my pension will be spent widening the M25 (again) but because the private sector is involved and will want something back having paid for the road to be widened in the first place I will also have to pay a toll to drive on it. Except I won’t because I won’t go there.

Nearer to home, of course, they are promising to halve the debt of the Humber Bridge, allowing tolls to be reduced to £1.50, a level last achieved in 1988. This is good, but then you find out that the remaining debt gets passed to the local authority. So let me see if I understand this. The Government owes itself money, writes of half the debt, then passes the reminder on to someone else. Now I know that either way the taxpayer foots the bill, but at least it was every tax payer before, no it’s just the taxpayers of Hull, Holderness, and Lincolnshire, which is a lot less. So my personal tax burden has just increased? Because if Hull own the debt, you can be damn sure they will raise taxes to pay for it, particularly as the deal pegs the bridge tolls for several years.

This does of course mean that I now own a larger part of the bridge. I hope it’s the toll booth.