"David Cantrell" wrote in message
k...
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 02:42:10PM +0100, tim..... wrote:

Someone must have considered it commercially viable (on say, a 40 year
timetable) as otherwise it wouldn't have been built.

Not necessarily. You can argue that the role of the state is to make
sure that socially beneficial things get done even if not commercially
viable, such as provision of Radio 4 and the original Dartford Tunnel.

I'm well aware that the government could have decided to build it as
socially necessary, but the start of this thread was Roland's comment that
its expansions was done by a commercial organisation because the local
councils would have ****ed it up.

And in order to evaluate that statement you have to assume that both parties
have a level playing field. It definitely shouldn't be the the case that
the commercial organisation was given a subsidy that would have been
unavailable to the LAs.

tim