> 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?

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)

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