Dave is trying to move the horizon again. I don’t know whether you will remember, but I do, that Dave last announced that he was moving the horizon in November 2010.
As far as I can see, since then the sunrise/sunset thing has been going on pretty much as before. Dave is not happy about that.
Dave told us about the horizon in a speech at the Institute for Civil Engineers. It was a “great purpose” of his Government to “engineer a Horizon Shift”.
I had a vision of giant cranes lining up on said horizon, burnt orange with the sunset, trying to pick it up to shift it. Where to?
Dave would only say it was visionary. I felt a rainbow had to be involved somehow. I have to say that Dave picked an odd place to move a horizon.
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We were in a basement, a nice one, mind, but very definitely subterranean. Note to Dave: there is no horizon when you are underground. There is only the desire to tunnel to the surface.
Dave was standing in front of a giant board with a picture that looked like an engine, a fan or a flower, depending on your knowledge base. The slogan was: Innovation is GREAT Britain.
“I am happy to be here, standing in front of such a great British innovation,” said Dave.
“Cardboard,” whispered a colleague.
Dave now began the gargantuan task of making the word “infrastructure” sexy. Infrastructure is not just about a list of projects.
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“It is an all-pervasive force in society too,” he said. “It’s the network that powers smartphones, allows us to log on to Facebook, to travel, to live the lives we choose. It is the platform of active citizenship.”
Oh dear, more cardboard, to use the polite word.
“Its value lies in its ability to make things possible tomorrow that we cannot even begin to imagine today,” he announced. I felt as if we were stuck in an underground shampoo advertisement.
Dave says he wants to keep the “flame of ingenuity” burning. I hope he doesn’t get it too close to the cardboard.
Dave wants a new infrastructure that helps British business. “That’s not about picking winners,” he burbled. “It’s about helping British companies to BE winners.” So, be a winner, live the life you choose, build a bridge. Oops, no, Dave didn’t mention bridges. Don’t tell Brunel. Bridges may not exist in shampoo rainbow land. Instead Dave wants new roads.
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The A14 is clearly a problem, he mentioned it a few times.
“Road tolling is one option,” he said, verbifying as he went along. “But we are only considering this for new, not existing, capacity.”
Then he added: “The A14 could be part funded through tolling.”
(For whom the bells are tolling, they are tolling for thee who drive on the A14.) Dave is also creating new garden suburbs (without, possibly, the gardens) and ten super-connected broadband cities. So there you have it. The horizon shift.
We are going to be winners, choose our lives, imagine today what tomorrow will bring.
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William Blake, eat your heart out. We are building a new Jerusalem and it’s got cardboard toll booths.