Putting Ability into Accountability

On the back of the Marble Arch Hill disaster, Mike Bodnar wants to see those in charge of huge infrastructure and vanity projects held to account…

London is hopeless. Not the city itself or its lovely notable bits – give me an ancient alleyway, historic pub or the Tower of London any day – no, I’m talking about bureaucratic London, the one that looks to spend taxpayer money on public works. Because very few of them work as planned, or open on time, and some don’t even reach completion.

The value of the mound has dropped. Image: The Guardian

The latest debacle is the Marble Arch ‘hill’, a frivolous folly rooted in good intentions that has suddenly closed after three days due to its universal unpopularity. Online memes suggest the Teletubbies’ mound was better executed, while even the media has called it ‘crap.’ One woman who paid her £8 to climb to the top said it was the worst London attraction she’d ever experienced.

It was supposed to give unparalleled views of inner central London; instead it has given us a clear panorama of wasted taxpayers’ money - all £6 million of it - stretching to the horizon.

But that shouldn’t be a surprise since none of the other recent proposed taxpayer-funded attractions or infrastructure projects have resulted in overwhelming approval, or completion.

The dream: the Garden Bridge. Image: Heathwick

Four years ago former London mayor Boris Johnson’s proposed garden bridge over the River Thames was abandoned after five years of hype with not a single bucket of concrete poured. The total cost? A staggering £53.5 million, of which about £43 million was from the public purse, according to an inquiry by Transport for London (TfL). Worse, it is now costing a further unbelievable £5.5 million as part of a ‘cancellation agreement,’ so the bridge spans the gulf of incredulity from one side to the other if nothing else.

By now, July 2021, I should, in principle be able to travel in some luxury and great convenience across London and out to Heathrow in under an hour via the Crossrail Elizabeth Line. I should have been able to do this for the past two years, but I haven’t because it’s still – after ten years since its inception – not finished.

Crossrail. Or not. Image: The Guardian

It could be argued that when it does finally open it can at least begin to recoup some of its cost (unlike the Bridge of Nothing to Nowhere), except that to date that cost is over £18 billion, which in itself is about £2.5 billion over budget. Yes billion, that’s not a typo. Okay, it’s apparently Europe’s largest infrastructure project, but that doesn’t excuse the ineptitude of those responsible for it, including Mayor Sadiq Khan who has been accused of taking too much of a ‘hands-off’ approach to it.

Should I mention HS2, the much-hyped fast rail connection between the north and south? Should I note the original proposed cost of £32 billion then became £55.7 billion which then further escalated to £88 billion in 2015? It now currently stands at an estimated £107bn, a figure not unreasonably suggested by Lord Berkeley, former deputy chairman of the government's independent review into the project.

We may as well just do some Swedish rounding right now and call it £200 billion by the time it’s finished (yeah, sure) in the 2030s.

High Speed 2 (HS2). Image: City A.M.

The problem we have here is unaccountability. Those in public office at the time of origin of such fantasies tend not to be in power later, and therefore escape the net of inquiry. There are few checks and balances, and public inquiries after the event are toothless in apportioning blame and – especially – recovering wasted money.

Imagine for a moment that you or I – normal everyday individuals – wanted to take out an extension on our mortgage. Do you think for a moment that the bank will agree to it without first going into extreme detail about our income plus the value of the property plus our equity in it? And, even if they agree to the extension, they will also draw up a contract that puts them first in the queue should we default on our payments and the property has to be sold. In short, they want a guarantee that they will get their money back plus interest in the event the deal falls through.

So why then are people in public office like Boris Johnson able to dream up fantastic schemes, invest millions of public funds, and not be held accountable? If they had to sign a personal guarantee that they would refund lost taxpayer funds in the event of a project’s collapse, the project would then never go ahead. But it’s not their money that’s involved.

Image: Free Enterprise

I know, you’re saying, ‘But then nothing would ever get done.’ Well, in the case of the garden bridge it didn’t anyway, yet it still cost over £50 million. But yes, there has to be a compromise between pie-in-the-sky or much-needed projects, their costs and their over-runs, and appropriate accountability in the event of significant delays or no-shows. 

Independent reviews after the event are too late – the money has gone. What we need is accountability at the top level on a weekly scale, independent fully-armed, locked-and-loaded reviews that have the ammunition to call a halt to a project in the public interest at a time before the damage is done. Whoever heads these accountability crack squads should also have the ability to fire at will (in the sense of ‘You’re fired,’ rather than actually putting the culprit in the cross-hairs and pulling the trigger. Although…)

Darfield Earthquake 2010, NZ.
Image: Mike Bodnar

And there should be some insurance to safeguard the public’s funds from misappropriation. Because in the end that’s what is happening: taxpayer money is being thrown away. I’m no expert in high finance or international economies, but if entire countries can take out international insurance against devastating earthquakes (viz. New Zealand and others) then surely we can do it on the basis of our own domestic home-engineered disasters.

Further, while I’m on a roll, let’s see those in charge of huge infrastructure and vanity projects are held to account by having contracts that stipulate no bonuses where targets are not met, no pension pay-outs in the event they lose their positions, and no golden handshakes either whether they are fired or resign in disgrace. It’s exactly what the rest of us humble individuals would be up against in the workplace. 

And public office is just that: a workplace. Let’s make it work.

 

 

 

Gunpowder, No Reason, and Rot

Last evening London was rocked by explosions near Parliament, and although no suspects were arrested we know who was responsible: the city's mayor Sadiq Khan. Oh, and some guy called Fawkes.

Guy Fawkes - a non-event

It was (as you guessed) the occasion of the Mayor's firework display on the River Thames, and Liz and I had front-row seats on a boat mid-stream. Well, when I say seats what I mean is we were standing in the bows of one of the many Thames tourist boats, jostling shoulders with dozens of others as we watched the display light up the sky just beyond Waterloo Bridge.

Earlier, before the pyrotechnics, the boat had cruised upstream past Westminster and the Houses of Parliament, about which our lovable Cockney skipper shared a few interesting tidbits. Blimey, the stories that came out of his north and south, you wouldn't Adam and Eve it. 

But no mention of Guy Fawkes or the plot to destroy Parliament, which I guess isn't necessary now anyway since it's falling down on its own without any gunpowder or treason (just rot) and costing a few billion in restoration and conservation that we can ill afford since we have an NHS that's also crumbling and needs rescuing. (Enough rant; get on with it - Ed.)

The Thames was hugely busy on this particular evening, with large tourist boats, super-fast RIBs, the usual floating obstacles like rusty barges and anchored hulks, and even a flotilla of hardy kayakers battling the chop. Our plate of kipper (that's Cockney rhyming slang I just invented to reference the captain) had his hands full a) not hitting any other boats and b) maintaining our position midstream in the fast and choppy murky waters. He did well, and the life rafts and buoyancy aids remained unused. When you think about it, sending up a distress flare in the middle of a fireworks display would likely have been useless anyway.

The fireworks started, and - thank you Mr Khan - it was a cracking good show; taxpayers' money literally going up in smoke. But it was also the first fireworks event I've experienced in the proper context. I mean, the primary reason we have fireworks in November is to 'celebrate' the failed attempt at blowing up Parliament in 1605, and here we were, within a banger's throw of Westminster watching a commemorative display of controlled and colourful explosions. 

But it's a wibbly-wobbly upside down concept when you think about it - a massive display of potassium nitrate, sulphur, carbon and a few other chemicals - all designed to bang and swoosh and cackle and light up the sky in acknowledgement of an event that didn't happen. 

What are we missing here? There must be plenty of other things in history that failed or never eventuated as planned - why don't we celebrate them as well? The flying saucer crash at Roswell in 1947 for example; why not a day to celebrate this unsuccessful attempt by aliens to invade Earth? We should, every year in the first week of July, be lighting little burners under saucer-shaped paper balloons and sending them skyward into the night.

Canute Day - worth celebrating

And, a thousand years ago, King Canute allegedly sat on his throne and waited as the tide slowly came in and lapped around his ankles and calves, proving to his sycophantic courtiers that in fact he didn't have any divine powers and couldn't stop the water coming up the beach. Surely each year we should all go down to the seaside with our chairs and plonk them along the tideline, celebrating Canute's failure as we are slowly but inexorably - yet delightedly - soaked.

If someone had the time and inclination to do the research, we could probably be celebrating things that didn't happen virtually every day of the year.

It's a shame really that the fireworks barge wasn't moored directly alongside the Houses of Parliament, since that's where all the fuss was 412 years ago, but then it doesn't bear thinking about if it suffered a catastrophic malfunction and blew up.

Then again, that might have solved a whole lot of problems in one glorious spectacular go, and given us something to really celebrate. Remember, remember the 11th November...