Monday, July 18, 2011

Wanna buy a bridge?

How much do bridges cost? Half a crown? Twenty squillion dollars? How would you know? If it is not something you buy a lot of you wouldn't have a clue of the price of anything. I have no idea how much a leg of lamb costs because Mrs Obald is in charge of that sort of thing. I am, therefore, a sitter for getting ripped off at the Mad Butcher because if he says bits of sheep are a bargain at $x per kilo I'm going to take him at face value and buy one for each corner.

So it is with bridges. I haven't bought a suspension bridge, nor yet a simple log across a stream, for a week or two now and so am a little rusty when it comes to the going rate. If the Auckland Council tell me that a second harbour crossing is going to cost $3.9 billion I think to myself 'Bridges ain't cheap, I think we'll stick with the lamb shanks this week' and move on. Well I mean they have to cost that much don't they? It will be about eight hundred metres or so long, be full of expensive steel and concrete and stuff. And there will be all those big yellow machines to hire, armies of blokes in Hi Viz jackets. I'm surprised that we are getting such a good deal; could easily be over $4 billy.

Last week the Jiaozhou Bay bridge, which was built over the course of four years was opened in China. It is the longest bridge in the world at 26 miles (got that, it would take a Kenyan just over two hours to run across it) and it cost $1.5 billion. Even if that is in US dollars (which I think it is) that is still only $1.8 billion South Sea pesos.

We are planning the country's biggest ever rip off. Buy a bridge from China; we buy pretty much everything else from there. At just under a kilometre long it probably will only cost half a crown. But we must protect the New Zealand worker. Just look at all the fuss buying railway carriages from China has caused. You can just hear the bleating from the usual coterie of bleaters. In the face of unnecessarily spending billions of my money I have only one thing to say to that.

Bollocks.

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