Another bad decision by Brown

Following on from yesterday's post about the Iron Chancellor's historic decisions coming back to bite us all, it appears (though this has been no secret) that the PPP investment in to the London Underground has been as disaster. Gordon Brown went against the advice of Bob Kiley (one of the world's leading transport experts) and the Mayor and went for a PPP arrangement. This is a worrying trend - it seems that Brown listens to no-one but himself even on issues he knows nothing about. The result is that the Metronet shareholders are looking like they are going to jump ship, leaving the tax payer to pick up the bill no doubt. The Government incredibly awarded the Metronet consortium a 30 year contract - something only a government who feels it has money to burn (our money) would do. Metronet has signed a contract with over 2 million words in, so complicated that no-one really understands it and it may take two years for any liability for this shambles to even begin to be understood. Metronet is currently on an overspend of £750m and you can bet your life they will try and shift it on to TfL (i.e. us). If you are going to use private money to run something, get them to take the liability too - if he had completely privatised the tube you can be sure they wouldn't be overspending some £750m. Right now you have given a consortium a deal where they want to make some money and have virtually no risk attached to it, and you wonder why it isn't working? A complete shambles from the start Mr Brown and 5 years later we are all going to be paying for it.