Re: scrap HS2 use the "savings" to get BT's fibre network up to scratch
The UK didn't get where it is today on thinking small....Stephenson...Brunel...Whittle...Baird...let's do something amazinglets make FTTP a reality!
Forgive me for playing devil's advocate, but while Stephenson (George) did some great work, the railway system he is most famous for founding (standardising) was an utter mess in its early years. Nearly all of the early railway companies raised several fortunes from private investors to build their track and their stations and their engines, and then went bust. It was the forced amalgamation into the "big four" which saved the railways from being completely bankrupt in the early 20th Century. Nationalisation (i.e. a great injection of public money) stopped those four going bankrupt a few decades later. More recent privatisation could be said to have only been successful due to debts being written off. Take the ongoing debacle on the East Coast as an example.
Brunel made a decent fist of most things, but again lost pots and pots of other people's money on failed ventures such as the atmospheric railway, the ships, the forced change from broad to standard gauge.
Whittle had great ideas, but made very little money from them, having to be bailed out several times by public money. It helped that it was wartime. His company was amalgamated several times (IIRC) and it wasn't his particular technology that won in the end. I can highly recommend Midland Air Museum, by the way, great Whittle history and a Vulcan you can climb into most days.
Baird? Again, more enthusiasm than nous. Technological dead-end, which maybe wasn't obvious when he started playing about (electronics being in its very infancy) but could surely be seen by the time BBC Television launched with both his and Marconi's systems.
As I said, bit of a devil's advocate, but British entrepreneurs do seem to have a habit of spending lots of other people's money and creating something which either isn't quite all it is cracked up to be or is eventually commercialised by someone else who now doesn't have all the development costs to carry.
:-)
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
