Oops! Thinking out loud again by you and George has set the hares running. Perhaps that is what you wanted so that a watered down version of the plan to allow private business to tax us even more for travelling would not seem so bad when it is announced.
Yet again though the pronouncements miss the point and the fine words about having a strategy and taking a long term view are not matched by the ideas. I do agree that 20 years is a long time, but committing the taxpayer to pay private companies to build and run roads for four terms of government is not a strategy, it is a straightjacket.
The Unofficial Green Paper (www.bigsocietygreenpaper.org) proposes a national system of social enterprise and the roads could be a perfect test case for such a body. Why not create a national company, owned by the state pension fund but run by business people and give it the entire roads network as an asset? Give it the income from road tax as an income, targets for measurable outcomes and allow it to do the rest? It's all very simple and such a business would be hugely successful provided that its investment in new roads is properly measured for all outcomes, not just based on immediate financial return.
The new business could partner with private enterprise where appropriate but could also over time spawn hundreds, perhaps thousands of new social enterprises and new small British-owned businesses to provide the services that it would need.
This is all very simple and could be set up and announced within a few weeks. As always I am happy to help if needed!
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