Plans to PFI the road network

In a bid to keep things moving along, the government is planning to sell off the last of the family silver

I was annoyed to hear about the government’s plans to PFI the road network. Given the amount of money motorists spend on the roads, this should not be necessary.

But I’m not surprised because they have no money and no hope of borrowing any more. UK plc is in quite a pickle. To all intents and purposes, we have borrowed to a state of bankruptcy. We have reached our debt ceiling and could not borrow any more even if someone were willing to lend, which they are not.

Government austerity measures aren’t helping; as they try to service this debt, there is less money in circulation and less money back in taxation. Every citizen is spending more of their income servicing the national debt.

So, in a bid to keep things moving along, the government is planning to sell off the last of the family silver. A PFI – private finance initiative – may be off-balance-sheet, but it is still a mortgage like any other, and the country will pay dearly for these services in the long run.

I know this because I am a businessman, and I don’t engage in a contract unless it is profitable. If the government does another Thameslink by awarding these road contracts to foreign infrastructure companies, then even more taxpayers' money will leave the country, as has happened by privatising our utilities and selling them to foreign corporations. It’s pretty basic economics.

When your national economy is based on credit-fuelled asset bubbles, eventually you will hit a debt ceiling. This has now happened, and we need an alternative plan based on creating real value. While it may seem from the last three decades that you can have something for nothing, we are about to find out that this is not the case as we pay it all back, with interest.

• An economy based on spending borrowed money is a house of cards (credit is not free money, it will need to be repaid with interest).
• Producing something which other nations want to buy (ideas, products and services) brings money into the country to pay this debt.
• The obese layer of nanny-state bureaucracy adds no value to the economy but rather stifles creativity and productivity.
• Money raised by services should be spent on those services (money spent by road users spent on the road infrastructure).
• Mortgaging the country to raise a fast buck for re-election glory is not the sort of long-term thinking we expect from politicians.

Andrew Goodman, London

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