Why does Britain feel so poor?

InDubioProRubio 4/4/2025|

feel - devalued the audience reality as subjective before it even started.

tremon 4/4/2025|

If you want to know what the author intended with that headline, you need to read the first line of the article.

bigyabai 4/4/2025||

> HS2 Chair Sir Jon Thompson said: “To build a railway between Euston and Curzon Street in Birmingham, I need 8,276 consents from other public bodies, planning, transport, the Environment Agency or Natural England. They don’t care whether parliament did or didn’t approve building a railway.”

I dunno, that strategy worked fine for Americans. Am I supposed to believe that liberal use of eminent domain will turn Britain into an overnight utopia?

alabastervlog 4/4/2025||

The US is, infamously, nearly incapable of quickly completing major public works projects at any cost, and when they eventually do get done they cost double or more what they would have in other developed countries.

It's, among other things, part of the body of evidence that Civil Law may be notably more efficient than Common Law. Britain's also unusually bad in this department, though not as much as the US (the Civil vs Common thing probably isn't the whole story anyway—it's rarely that simple)

diordiderot 4/4/2025||

>infamously, nearly incapable of quickly completing major public works

Unless it's roads

alabastervlog 4/4/2025||

Provided there are no tunnels or bridges involved, yeah.

sanderjd 4/4/2025||

It isn't working fine for Americans at all...

regularization 4/4/2025||

Maintaining imperial outposts like Thiepval and Holywood in the north of Ireland, Mount Pleasant in las Islas Malvinas etc. ain't cheap.

sixothree 4/4/2025|

Not sure I saw the cost of housing mentioned but I can’t imagine that helps the situation being described.

moritonal 4/4/2025|

Really should read the article if you choose to comment on it. Especially given they joke about how "It’s a cliché that every other policy problem in Britain resolves to a housing problem,"