I never said I'd rather live in China. What I said was that China managed to build 1000 miles of high speed rail in six years. Now the people of China appreciate they need high speed rail so they go and get it done. The people of the UK want HS2 and the people of South Wales want the Metro but it just doesn't go and get delivered, it gets held up time and again.
Having bureaucracy and processes is not democracy, Stalin and the USSR had plenty of both and I'm not sure I'd hold up either as a shining light of democracy and freedom.
do we need the Metro? Yes - now I appreciate that my analysis may not stand up to scrutiny but I reckon my analysis is pretty accurate. how many papers did I write to come to that conclusion, how many consultations, reports and other such 'required' deliverables did I prepare before reaching my conclusion?
as we have quite quickly answered whether we need a metro or not what other questions need answering meaning that a start can be made on even the most basic parts today? probably a few forms haven't been filled in correctly in quadruplicate and sent to all interested parties but we could have work starting on monday if we can get the emails out today....
We need to accept that the UK is pretty poor in terms of project delivery rather than making excuses of why delivery takes so long. seemingly it is much better to have mountains of paperwork and reports that nobody will ever actually read rather than boots on the ground creating the bloody network that is required.