When the country's economy revolves around finance it's not surprising we struggle to do anything useful.

The Tories have sold the whole country off

Fun fact from a Leeds resident, a public transport system was first put in place in the early 1900s but was delayed due to WW1, ever since plans have repeatedly been planned and cancelled.

mental we had a decade of low interest rates to build infrastructure and built nothing

In France, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Netherlands Germany, Austria and Switzerland, it’s ALL about the DESIGN & QUALITY. In U.K. and Italy, it’s ALL about the PROFITS you can send off to your mates…. Greed is in the drivers seat in the U.K.

i'm 50yrs old and Britain has been like this my whole life

Because the outsource everything and get price gouged, not to mention robbed through corruption

As someone who works in an industry that's usually blamed for construction delays by government official on the campaign tour I can 100% say that one of the major issues is red tap. My lot aren't holding jobs up (we're dependant on this kind of work) and if things have gone right we're usually in several months or up to a year before development starts (barring any unforeseen circumstances). However, I've literally been in a situation where pre-construction assessments and first stage construction have to take place AT THE SAME TIME because someone at the local council didn't make things clear and dragged their heels on a decision. I've literally turned up to a site where my job was literally "monitor", that's it. A simple monitoring job, only to be told when I got there that "oh so-and-so from the city council said that you were going to do this intrusive work which will delay us" which surprised me and my office as the council hadn't told us at all and just threw it at us unannounced. Literally a "right hand doesn't know what the left is doing" job with different council representatives giving different instructions to different offices working on the same job. Yet, instead of blaming themselves and their own mishandling they:ll blame delays on "newt counters" (ecologists who are usually on sites months before development starts unless circumstances change), "stuffy archaeologists" (same as the ecologists, shouldn't have to be on site at the same time as development if things were planned out), "health and safety gone mad!" (Anyone who works in construction knows that yeh, you get banged over the head with a lot of health and safety paperwork and training, but usually because yeh - people do die and there are a lot of folk who love shifting the blame onto others), "woke green mobs" (a.k.a. the councils didn't do their own job right and fucked up on public conseltation or research) and "egg head experts sticking their noses into proper building work" (a.k.a. the folk at the geological surveys saying "you can't build houses here because this is literally a floodplain"). All the different construction and preconstruction companies tend to get along as we know what each of our jobs is meant to do. Friction almost always happens when there's poor planning and multiple different jobs that shouldn't overlap are demanded to take place at the same time.

Tory project: HS2, 225 km, 2017-2030, £66 billion French Paris-Bordeaux HS Line, last leg 340 km: *January 2012* start of work. *July 6, 2015* end of civil engineering works, *ahead of schedule.* (500 heavy works including 24 viaducts, 3 million tonnes of ballast, 1.1 million tonnes of concrete sleepers, 13,000 catenary supports) *July 2, 2017* commissioning, *ahead of schedule* (planned: December 2017). Cost 7.8 billion euros

Here in the UK, we're not good at anything at all, aside from complaining...

how are you supposed to get better at building infrastructure if you keep cancelling projects!!!!!!!???????

I met a Brit, last month, who said he worked on the HS2 project - was surprised I had heard about it let alone had an interest in it due to many of the YT channels I watch covering it. Some of the things he mentioned about the project was there was a lot of time wasted for health and safety. Multiple teams, multiple meetings. He mentioned that someone who worked there died (which was not work related) but the HR people wouldn't stop talking about it for weeks, to the point where it actually started to upset people. Most strikingly was the inefficiency and outright thieft that was allowed to take place. The Private construction firm purchased 5 CAT excavators, 4 sat on the site while only a single 1 was used, and then after 18 months they were deemed to be paid for and so the 4 unused CATs were sold and shipped to Canada.

It's absolutely correct that projects like road widening aren't taken at a local level. Far too many highway departments justify their own existence through flawed expansion projects that fail to take into consideration factors like induced demand. Widening a road should be the absolutely last option we take. Instead we should be looking at ways of moving demand for transportation to other modes. And yes, I'm aware that the UK rail system is hugely flawed; but if we took some of the money we seem to be happy to waste on road expansion and instead invested it in non-road transportation infrastructure, we'd be amazed at how much of an impact it would have on traffic levels. You only have to look across the North Sea to the Netherlands to see that in action.

The problem is the conflict between public funding and private greed. Basically what happens almost every time is the government puts it out for bid and someone intentionally under bids. They then delay the work until there is a public outcry about how long it is taking and claim that actually they can't do it for the price agreed to. The government rather then doing the smart thing when confronted with what is essentially blackmail and suing them out of existence for breach of contract. Succumbs to public pressure and the sunk costs and pays ever increasing amounts as the private company slow walks construction while demanding more and more money. It is similar to why privatization so rarely works as well and why the UK government is paying more for the supposedly privately owned rail network then they were before it was privatized even counting for inflation.

The number one issue with infastructure is local bodies wanting changes for non techical reasons but "not in my backyrad" attitude by local communities. Meaning expensive tunneling, sound proving and detours.

Looking at the general standard of typical British infrastructure, housing etc and comparing it to the younger, especially the Nordic European countries one can tell people in the UK are just used to lower standards and it's much more acceptable to have shitty build quality in housing etc. The amount of bodged solutions I saw in the UK was shocking, yet nobody cares.

As American, it makes me feel so warm and fuzzy to see our ancestral connection to Britain on display 😂😂 If anything, we’re worse

So, we're mired by red tape? I guess none of us are surprised at this. ☹

The UK is becoming quite depressing.

One of the problems with most things in the UK is the proliferation of the “Busy Work” people. Those people that don’t really add any value to a project but will suck the money out. The NHS is a major sufferer of this. For instance, the people whose job it is to oversee the movement of information that still goes missing. We have more people in offices pushing pointless paperwork around, than we do people actually building stuff. This is allowed to continue because the price of inactivity is less than the cost of the risk of doing the wrong thing, especially if you can blame delays and spiralling costs on an unnecessary group of people.

My hot take: Decades of denigrating trades and hard skills. In favour of an academic elitism, which prioritises jobs based on talking rather than doing. And an economy which is built primarily on manipulating abstract financial instruments.

All the skilled building personnel have f'd off back to European countries where they are valued and paid properly with a social safety net that will help them if the arse falls out of it as it has in England, with no friggin safety net.

I'm all for regulations but man the red-tape and bureaucracy in this country is out of control.

In Scotland the Queensferry Crossing (large bridge project notorious for going awry) was built on time and within budget. Professionals are coming from all over the world to find out how this was done. However, as this was achieved by an SNP Scottish Government, it is either not reported or reported in the poorest light possible.

Why does it take 18 months (planned) to replace Armco barriers with concrete on the M4/5 at Bristol. I bet it only took about 6 months to build that section in the 1960s.

Sometimes i wonder if most of the London MPs have travelled anywhere outside London. Seems there's a major disconnect with what's going on outside London and assume it's essentially the same

I served 50 years as an industrial plumber after having served a six year apprenticeship. I was lucky enough to work with and learn from the old guard, the sort that had patience providing you gave 100 percent interest. Over the years apprenticeships vanished and the lads who started just didn't seem to be interested. I don't know if it's the same for other trades but there seems to be very little interest in providing vital services these days.

As a Civil Engineer, i can list multiple reasons off the top of my head: -Aging infrastructure (much of it over 100 years old) with little investment during the various financial crises during the 20th and 21st century, meaning that over time newer projects need to be larger to meet current demands. - UK land ownership rights are very favourable to the land owner, so it is very expensive to buy land, so developers need a high investment. - UK design and Health and Safety standards are much higher than other countries, so many projects are over designed and take a lot of work to convince the authorities that they are safe - Lack of skilled engineers. The 2010s saw the highest infrastructure investments ever, but there were't enough people to design or build it all. This means that we couldn't capitalise on a decade of a strong economy.

I moved to the UK in 2019. And although I love this country and the people (mostly), what shocked me - especially coming from Germany - is the quality (or lack thereof) of houses. Shocking.

It's a mix of cant & wont. Won't because lobbyists & the need to stay in power requires pleasing certain voters. Can't because well you've lagged behind in the education needed to build intricate infrastructure & need to outsource which is expensive

It's idealogical fanaticism. Ever since Thatcher, if it doesn't make an instant profit for private investors, it's seen as bad.

Corruption…..

From my point of view, the biggest problem of British politics in general is that everything gets micromanaged from London instead of having local governments decide on the matter.

How about we bring those Spanish builders and bureaucrats to teach us how to do things properly?

what a surprise that the tories couldn't be bothered doing their jobs and updating the planning policy statement things so the country could keep functioning. They pretend they want small government, but what they actually want is lazy government. Where they get paid the same but don't do any of the work

Pretending this is a UK only problem is a bit disingenuous. It's a common problem for most english speaking countries (USA, Canada, Australia, and increasingly Hong Kong and Singapore). This is more than just a problem of British politics and policy, but of a wider culture of HOW we build infrastructure, including excessive use of consultants and over-engineered solutions. The Pedestrian Observations blog has a few articles on this if anyone is interested.

a few things. 1> there is no cost of living crisis. Its just a rebranded wages collapse against inflation. 2> no one cares about long term investing. esp if someone else can claim credit for an opening of something 3> lobby groups 4> "think tanks" 5> revolving doors for gov officials. put another way, british contractors were involved in making singapores metro. 130+ stations, built in 30-40 years. meanwhile in the uk, *just* electrifying the track in the uk, balfour beatty struggled years & in the end gave up. roads are not built to last. materials exist, but the way projects are run, its more profitable to repair / resurface. projects are also low balled with numbers to get approval because if real figures were announced - would be canned instantly. in short its the way projects are specified, managed and costed. there is little appetite for forward thinking. anything risky is done by such a large committee that should failure occur - no one is blamed. thats why such things are so expensive.

As with many things, this goes back to the 15 years of austerity, lack of investment, and honestly a lack of vision or ambition from the government. Building HS2 would have been the bare minimum compared to similar European projects and David Cameron was right to champion it as he couldn't know how his successors would fumble the ball. The kind of gusto, energy and support that should have gone into HS2 has instead gone into arbitrary goals like "Stop The Boats", "Get Brexit Done" etc. I don't really understand the cancellation when in reality the hardest part has been bending over backwards to get approval from Greenbelt MPs to allow it, which is a one of many factors in the ever-increasing costs of the Project, going further North isn't anywhere near as difficult, because as we know the tories don't give a crap about the North, even the sitting MPs there. The leg from Old Oak Common to Euston, just makes the service functionally useful, without it, it will be quite hard I feel to make the route popular with it's intended audience, which was effectively to link B'ham to the centre of London, so allow the city to continue to increase productivity and at the same time allow the wealth of London to be shared with the "north"(if you consider Birmingham to be Northern) The official reason was cost saving to spend the money elsewhere, but, what money? Its all being paid for with government debt, there isn't a pot somewhere they can redistribute, if they want to do something else, it's the same debt and as we saw, this was just a smoke screen as many of the suggested recipients of this phantom money were for projects that had been completed in at least one case 10 years prior.

I went on a tour of a small local hydroelectric power station that had been built about a hundred years ago. The tour guide told us that the header tank (a big square water tank) at the top of the hill needed renovated, and that so far they had spent more time trying to get planning permission for the renovation of the header tank than it had taken to build the entire power station a hundred years ago.

I can't believe a news channel named after a phrase originally popularised by 4chan has become one of the most respectable journalism outlets in modern britain. I'm always impressed by this channel's ability to tell me about things without telling me what I should think about them.

We closed or sold off all our world leading companies. A good example we built the worlds first nuclear power station 70 years ago and now we don't even know how to build one. The Tories (1979) thought you could deindustrialise the country and still have the same economy based on finance and services, well sadly we are finding out the hard way that you can't.

In my own country infrastructure is seen more as a vessel of direct economic stimulus rather then an expense needed to keep the country running. It’s the difference between replacing a damaged shingle on your roof vs demolishing the entire house and rebuilding it from scratch.

The UK is actually quite good at building infrastructure so long as it benefits London.

Should be noted that this isn't a uniquely UK issue but also parts of the US and most of Europe. We should also be cautious about "removing red tape" because most politicians will understand "Remove red tape so we can build infrastructure? Yes I agree I also oppose the res tape they call workers rights. Unions are annoying when building. The stupid environmentalists also dont want us to build grey appartment complexes about historic landmarks and lakes. We also oppose the red tape around high taxes. Lets remove taxes that will mostly help the rich, they will help the middle class as well, but they wont be able to own stuff in 5 years anyways." Thats the problem when I hear people opposing buerocracy and red tapes. Are some bad? Yes, but I often only hear one side of the story and the tapes removed are often the ones that are very much needed.

One of the major issues in the UK is the ownership of the land these projects need to use or go through. Unlike on much of the continent, the U.K. Government or councils cannot just decide to build on or through land not owned by them. The land owner holds most of the cards and this takes time and money to sort. On the continent, the government can decide to build on land and the owners have less right to so no.

Missed an open goal by not having thumbnail as Rishi using a hammer wrong…

Simple answer: All the money taken away from Britain does not need any infrastructure. "Don't waste your coin on a lost case!" "Never catch a falling knife!"

Well 100% political leadership has caused issues but this manifests itself in so many ways. HS2 for example was weakness in just pushing the project forward but also a really unhealthy relationship with risk, treating all risk as if they were issues and costing accordingly. HS2 also didn't take into consideration the strain of supply chain, concrete supply alone became heavily constrained due to HS2 consumption, causing the costs of concrete to increase for HS2 as well as others.

French can make stuff Brits can’t: - High Speed Trains. HS1 line & rolling stock were built with French TGV technology. French built in 1981 the 1st true HST line in Europe, world speed record on rails 380 kph (1981), 515 kph (1990), 574 kph (2007). HS2 trains will be built by Japanese-French JV (Hitachi/Alstom). HS2 line building strongly relies on French expertise: "Dominique" the enormous "launching girder" being used to construct the HS2 Colne Valley viaduct is French engineering. - Nuclear power plants. EDF owns 56 nuclear power plants (largest number in Europe). EDF is 2nd world power producer, 167,000 employees worldwide. French electricity is almost completely carbon-free by eliminating (almost) all gas, coal and fuel oil in electricity production: 17 gCO2/kWh (Netherlands 98 g, UK 183 g, Germany 196 g) - 600 dams and 4,253 hydraulic power stations in France. - In 2023 France was top power exporter in Europe: 50.1 TWh, far ahead of Sweden (28.6 TWh) and Norway (7.3 TWh). - Big ships. French shipbuilder St Nazaire holds some world records (2005: QM2, biggest Atlantic liner. 2016: 'Harmony of the Seas'. 2018: 'Symphony of the Seas'. 2021: ‘Wonder of the Seas')

To be fair, the other EPRs, Olkiluoto 3 & Flamanville 3 went way behind schedule(18 years instead of 5 for O3, 10 years behind schedule for F3) with Flamanville 4x the original cost so far. Olkiluoto was a fixed price contract.

The consequences of Chinese bureaucracy are exactly the opposite of those in the UK. Chinese bureaucracy will build more and even redundant infrastructure.

UK needs a 10-year industrialization program. Start lining up companies, training a workforce, and siting these projects. Import labor if natives don't want the jobs, but increase the tax rolls. a virtuous cycle

s simple story, a prefab building was ordered and delivered to save £ before the foundations laid, so extra storage was required for the building, costing more £, due to being stored unassembled suffered rain damage. when finally built a year later the building is warped, leaks and has a mould issue and now needs to be replaced the building is late and over budget probably the person who okayed the purchase or the prefab got a bonus for saving the company £

They had already built some of the Leeds tram system when it was cancelled. So now we have a weird bus lane with tram style traffic lights.

As a Spaniard, it amazes me how many comments are pointing "bureaucracy" as the mayor issue. I don't think you realise how much paper work is link to any infrastructure project in any european country. I mean, I doubt UK has more bureaucracy than Germany or the Netherlands. People talk about red tape as if deregulation allows better and cheaper infrastructure (I think you should read something about infrastructures project prices in a deregulation Uthopia called USA) and in reality is not linked. Regulation doesn't mean more expensive works. I'm not saying bureaucracy isn't part of the problem, of course it is. But it's just one (and a little one). I would say NIMBY movements affect more than red - tape and legislation. Small group of People opposing any major investment could delay, stop or even cancel projects if they start protests and lawsuits. And I would say NIMBY movements are more common in UK than in the rest of Europe (don't know exactly why)

Government won’t build a tram for the largest city in Western Europe without any metro as it’ll cost an estimated TOTAL £1.6bn but will shell out £1.4bn PER MILE on yet another line in London 🙄 they never really cared about levelling up

and has per normal London gets a new rail line for the city and other places get nothing yet is cost more to build the new rail line than it would of to build the new metro system in Leeds

The A 419/7 between the M4 Swindon and Cheltenham, always closed at night for years. Probably checking that none of the potholes has gone missing.

We didn't get worse at building, we got worse at costing -with the tender and charging process open to large scale corruption that no one talks about. A public works project will be absolutely milked for its readily available, unending money (even before the pandemic/ cost of living crisis) as greedflation on an epic scale, for decades. There's also something to be said about the spiralling costs placating nimbys and endless consultations with the public, middlemen and lawyers -foil to a litigious culture all of which adds up to the fact things are built at 6x the cost of richer Western nations with higher salaries, such as France and Germany. It took 12 years to refurbish an escalator at Tottenham Court Rd in the 90s-noughties, whilst it took only 7 years to build the entire Victoria Line in the 1970s. The fact the refurb of the Jubilee Line went from one year to a decade, and involved one charming example of laying the track & cable for a year, then whoops! realising it was the wrong type and having to rip it all out again and start again (plus their attempt to overcharge £2 billion extra that an investigation revealed). Likewise the project to upgrade the signalling system, with a contractor who came back months later saying it was sorry, too complicated for them, without a single thing done and pocketing the £100+ million -yet still managed to get the HS2 contract after. The fact these teams were found to be doing absolutely nothing each night, from secret cams. Also the high level political corruption -note how HS2 passes certain voter strongholds, and thus will have to tunnel through these 'beauty spots' and not others, and that it doles out new community centres and projects like Santa Claus, to every rich village and commuter suburb it impinges their view on. The US has similar issues if not worse -some subway extensions come in at $2 billion a mile, have been on the cards for over a century and infamously, one auditor found hundreds of labourers on the project, with no identifiable job in the construction being paid $1000-$2000 a week. She nor the managers, or company could identify their role onsite.

I've used the A428 since I was 17 (25 now) and it's been a such a slow process. If I can notice that in 8 years (and longer if you consider me seeing the process through public transport prior) god knows how slow it's looked to my parents and other citizens of Beds & Cambs

Our standards of building have fallen because we need quick, cheap, throw-it-up architecture that isnt built to last because thats how our building sectors operate. If we could sort our othwr problems out, we could incentivise more meaningful building from our cinstruction companies. But our government doesnt want community centred housing for its people, it would rather turn everywhere into a London Mega Metropolis. All the best architecture in London is the old stuff.

We can’t seem to build anything in Canada either

I was shocked when I saw a pernment board next to one of London's overground Station saying that there is a refurbishment going on of the bridge and "expect delays for next 3 years. They didn't bild new bridge just to be clear just fixing existing one. They bloked one line of traffic of a very busy road for the entire duration.

36 years working on infrastructure. Man and boy. The reasons are multiple, but I'd say the removal of autonomy from craftsmen/ladies has reduced the work place to a "computer says no" environment. Coupled to a management structure that is almost guaranteed to resembles a scene from a dreary legal drama. Every decision is countered by an argument against. The drawings issued to the blokes are always wrong. With the dictat of install it to the drawing. We know its wrong, but we'll pursue the architect/designer later for costs to cover what ever the expense to rectify. And on and on it goes......

Tories think the point of infrastructure are the kickbacks not the investment.

huh, the IPC has only existed in a Tory era (Cameron came into power in 2010)

01:54 Yep…there’s a road near me that has been planned as a dual carriage way since the initial one lane road was built…34 years ago. Last month they finally started clearing trees next to the road so that the dual carriage way can be completed. Trouble is that with the amount of traffic these days it’s probably not gonna make much difference. 🤷

How Big Things Get Done should be compulsory reading for anyone involved in large infrastructure projects, as it examines the data behind why some projects go over budget and experience delays.

Nation of rantiers is worse at building than empire? Big surprise. Keep placating homeowners.

I was having a discussion about this the other day on Reddit. Did you know in the 1850s a British railway company packed up their kit and went to Crimea and built 7 miles of railway in 7 weeks, at cost, during the severe Crimean winter in war time? And here we are, almost 200 years later unable to build rabbit hutch houses or a single railway line.

As someone in the construction industry, there are a lot of problems. Indecision and late changes is a major productivity killer. A lack of large schemes means that there is no scalability from lessons learned. Major mistakes get repeated as people aren't retained for the design duration. Under paid engineers wont have loyalty, over paid HR are busy bodies.

The statement about the crossrail line costing 1.392 billion per mile is mind blowing. A lot of people must have been given a nice envolope under the table

And I thought we Austrians were sometimes slow and incompetent in infrastructure projects

"Red tape for the British citizens, Red carpet for the immigrants" 😂😂😂

We went for a wide build but realised going tall was meta way too late.

"England is a nation of shopkeepers" - misattributed to Napoleon, actually from Adam Smith, the Scottish economist and philosopher, who first used a similar phrase in his seminal work, "The Wealth of Nations" (1776)

Cut bureaucracy and other useless spending.

Because of the Treasury department. Simple.

In 1954 the UK economy was 66% larger than Frances the Uk government said we need to curb spending, France did the opposite and by the 1970s Frances economy was larger than the UK. We've only got worse, the only reason it's not so noticable is because Neoliberalism infected those countries meaning they started to invest less as well.

Something very important is benefits cost ratio (bcr). We hear of projects like the Elizabeth line being over budget. That’s true but the benefits are invariably far greater too. So if you do the bcr in the business case now you will find it a success.

We are good at building what we suck at is getting the right people managing it. These large projects are filled with corruption of mates hiring mates it’s an open secret on site.

4 key reasons, 1. Lack of competition. Oligopoly among a few contractors. 2. Labour union. 3. Too many parties involved in decision making and flawed bureaucracy. 4. Lack of accountability.

When you have incompetent people doing the work it shouldn't be a surprise. A lot of new houses are being built and sold, and it turns out they have a LOT of issues ranging from structural to downright idiotic, then they refuse to put them right ...

None of the issues discussed here explain why infrastructure projects in the UK cost more than twice that of any other country, and take 4 times as long. The likely explanation is cronyism which had jumped to absurd levels under recent Tory governments.

It's almost as if increasing the bureaucracy, has not increased the effectiveness and efficiency of decisions! 😱 The problem is when the politicians ask the bureaucrats what to do. The inevitable answer will be more bureaucrats. 😱😱😱 This has being going on for years: UK Productivity = 😱😱😱😱😱👷😱😱😱😱😱

Private companies, thats where it went wrong. It is true, we cant build anything, even the most simplest thing. Here's some examples ive seen. Footpaths that don't direct water to to a drain, so flood. Footpaths that have a dip ion the middle, causing water to pool. Train stations that haven't been painted for decades. A pot hole filled with A) poor quality tarmac, and B) with no tar edging (water gets in, it all breaks apart after one winter). A pedestrian safety barrier gets knocked down by a truck. a temporary plastic fence appears, and it near leaves, the barrier never fixed, (interesting a local bus stop advert board was blown down a few weeks ago, and that get replace ASAP!). As a nation we are pathetic.

This is so true, to many meetings to plan a meeting about a meeting they had last week

They are a lot better at putting money in their back pockets than they are at putting it to work. That's the only reason. Plus builders charge government double, miss deadlines and demand more money. HS2 point in case.

roadworks all over UK and no one is even working there!

Because the private sector can achieve absolutely nothing.

really important topic, thanks for covering it

As a Portuguese living in UK I can't talk much ahahah In Portugal we still don't have TGV (high speed train) to Madrid or the nearest big city Porto, from Lisbon. It takes 10hrs from Lisbon to Madrid by direct train which by the way only leaves once a day at 9pm... The rest of the day is indirect train and it takes 17hrs at least. Currently I live in Lancashire and right in front of my house I can see traces of a bridge that used to be a train line from 1900's. Then the town next to mine has a train station that is used as a cafe and the trains that come are only used for tourism. Meanwhile I need that train line to go Greater Manchester for work ahahaha (I am laughing but crying at the same time).

Easy answer, it's because of NIMBY.

People need to stop blaming 'Bureaucracy' when the problem is political priorities. Bureaucracy is merely the process of organizational function. Whether it aids or hinder something, is dependent on the priorities of the ruling government. Singapore has the "biggest" bureaucracy of it's size as a nation and it is building 24/7 since it's founding, it's notorious as the most over-planned city-state in the world. Bureaucracy becomes a problem to accomplishing something when the accomplishment was never the goal of the particular government in power. If the Tories fail to build something and there isn't some external factor (such as lack of vital material etc.) stopping them, then it was never their goal to build in the first place.

I've worked on billions of pounds worth of infrastructure projects and from what I've seen, most of the construction budgets are swallowed up by various studies, approvals, paperwork and excessive health and safety compliance, supporting an army of office workers ............... on my most recent project, there were easily quadruple the amount of office workers to that of construction workers i.e. the people that actually get the site work done. Governments have to decide whether the want 'value for money' infrastructure OR job creation schemes.

We didn't even finish the London Ringways and that was planned in the 60s. We have been terrible at infrastructure and modernisation for at least 50 years. Imagine if we had improved the roads and public transport networks since the 60s and not made them worse with things like smart motorways, we have safe roads here, but we could have some of the world's safest roads if we had. Some of our most dangerous roads are country roads that are honestly not fit for use.

Brexit!!! You go from having hard working Polish werkers. To having almost no applicants for construction jobs.

Seems like stuff runs a lot better under public ownership. Trains in particular have been pathetic since they went private.

As someone who works in this industry I can list many reasons here are some: - inadequate budgets - IR35 stifling mobility in what is a transient industry - Wages the job isn’t for everyone especially with UK weather and bureaucracy, wages need to reflect this. - Corruption at a political level

The West Midlands Metro (seen at the start of the video) has and is taking years and years. The whole thing was closed down for months and months TWICE not long ago because they found massive cracks in the Trams. 🙄 they were built by a Spanish company called CAF. Then there is the M6 Junction 10 upgrade which has taken over 5 years to complete, should have been done in 2 years.