Britannia Radio

BY NEIL LYNDON

FIRST POSTED MARCH 2, 2009

Let's draw up a wish-list. Let's imagine that the £1.3 trillion now committed by the government to bailing out the banks existed in the form of disposable cash. How might you choose to distribute that Everest of money?

A "super hospital" like the new Royal Derby Hospital costs about £250m. For a mere £10bn, therefore, the country could be provided with 40 such hospitals and the entire NHS could become the most modern and best-equipped health service in Europe. Currently, our position is roughly comparable with Poland's.

If it is built, the new Holland Park comprehensive will cost £72.5m, making it the most expensive state school in Britain. We could pay for 13 such magnificent schools for £1bn. For £50bn, we could afford one in every major town in the country.

Nearly 30 years have now elapsed since we were promised a high-speed rail network which would connect Scotland and North of England to the Channel Tunnel and provide a TGV service all the way to Marseilles. That failed promise could be delivered with a snippet of the £1.3 trillion.

A mere £32bn would pay for a network from London to the West Midlands, Liverpool and Manchester on a westerly branch and the East Midlands, Yorkshire, Newcastle, Glasgow and Edinburgh on an easterly branch, with new city centre stations.

In the context of a £1.3 trillion budget most projects will cost chicken feedFor a further £30bn, 15 major cities in Britain could be provided with light railway systems. A high-speed rail link between Glasgow and Edinburgh would cost £3bn. A new Forth Road Bridge would cost £4bn. What are those sums in the context of that £1.3 trillion commitment? Chicken feed.

If we spent the £60bn on the road system which the government promised but has failed to deliver, Britain would go from near the bottom of the European league for the provision of motorways to near the top. A south coast motorway from Poole to Dover has been in need of development for 30 years, as has a motorway from Salisbury to Plymouth. Now, at last, we could have them.

At £3m a mile, we could afford 1000 miles of new motorway and still have enough money left to resurface every inch of Britain's