Mention of the HS2 reminded me.The budget estimate has gone approx. £8 billion over the original budget and they haven't even started yet. We are still great at engineering,but we also have a habit of wasting lots of money on white elephants (particularily when politicians get involved) and this will almost certainly be another one. 
We have always invested heavily in projects deemed to be of benefit and in the process have "wasted" money when things go wrong, with budgets blown. Ask Isambard Kingdom Brunel about that one, and the others who were adventurous and bold, going outside of the box, but sometimes slipped up. To me though it is far better to have tried something than never have tried anything at all!
If the Georgians and Victorians had been like our culture now they would never have achieved anything and the British Empire would have petered out before it really started.
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Topic: 75th anniversary (Read 2795 times)