There’s been lots of that going on. To the fury of big ticket contractors who see such expedients as stopping them getting proper programs at a proper price. Plus creating history that such things ca… (View Post)

Arguably, the small scale lottery projects are extremely efficient spending. Things like new changing rooms for the local park/field used by schools for their sports. (View Post)

Not to mention that if every country where betting is banned, you get illegal betting. Which is the basis of organised crime, usually. One of the metrics for alcohol pricing/tax is the amount of fake… (View Post)

It’s not revisionism to learn lessons from the past. The lesson was (and is) to try and run a surplus in the boom times. Winter is coming. (View Post)

Indeed. There was even. Concern that the time taken to form the Coalition government would cause a borrowing crisis. If Brown had been running a 4% surplus (say) then the GFC would have wiped that ou… (View Post)