(no subject)

[johnny9fingers]

Gods, we have to pay more attention to civil engineering and checking our bridges.
This should be why we pay taxes: civil engineering checks and repairs, & the safety of the infrastructure; and the maintainance of our roads (and for those countries that have a nationalised transport sytem, Railways and other forms of public transport).
With these things the market never decides, as it will always go for the lowest cost, highest profit solution, whereas the emphasis should be on minimum safety standards, rather than cost.

This is the sort of stuff government legislation should be about.

Comments

[tripinthehead33.livejournal.com]

Is this regarding the bridge collapsing in Minnesota? It won't happen. MY taxes go to shooting innocents in countries that have stuff my government wants dontcha know. Not for supporting anything within our borders. What a silly concept... fixing bridges. Pshht.

[towith.livejournal.com]

The UK did extensive polling during the early '90s. It told us that nobody worried about infrastructure, they were far more interested in public-smoking and other relatively small annoyances. Policy then changed to meet voter demand. That in itself isn't the problem however. The real difficulty is that instead of fully privatising or even fully nationalising infrastructure, they put us in this uncomfortable limbo of contract monopolies. Now the market can't act, as it's disconnected from the customer. And government can't act, as it's disconnected from the industry. It's a farce.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

It's an issue now.
And in the UK, in structural terms, Gordon Brown has huge complicity in this mess.
PFI: a chicken looking for a roost to come home to.

[winterlion.livejournal.com]

Agreed. And considering the bridge collapse in Quebec - and how it's been handled - we're actually not doing that bad in general but occasionally bad in specific over here.

the lesson here was to : A: let the engineers report and B: don't let not reporting become tradition.


In many places (most of the US for instance) cost cutting has bit into civil engineering and support, after eating away any vestiges of a social support system.