I've always thought, and this is a bit of an unsubstantiated personal conspiracy theory, that one of the "dark arts" of business is to secure a big expensive project and embark on it knowing full well it won't come in on budget and on schedule, the trick being that once the project is past the point of no return, the money tap basically has to stay on until the bitter end. The Scottish Holyrood building is an incredible example, the Millenium Dome was another, and more recently HS2.maverick23 wrote: ↑26 Oct 2020, 09:11 It’s sad. Goes to show how important it is to surround yourself with good, knowledgeable people with proven track records.
How the hell do you go £8m over budget, have no records against it (legally they should have invoices etc. to support) and only flag it now?!
You can believe the tens/hundreds of millions in overspend (or even billions) is down to incompetence, bad luck and unforseen circumstances, but I don't buy it. I think its a case of getting the snouts into the trough, knowing that money tap has to stay on.
I grew up in Batley, West Yorkshire, and in the 80's the town was awarded a massive "City Challenge" bonanza, tens of millions in investment. It got a new small shopping centre that has only ever housed a few shops. Batley was a xxxx hole back then, and is even worse now. Think it was about £60m which in the 80's was worth even more than now obviously. My mum was into local politics and said it was just a gravy train, and that a lot of "executives" employed in the start up agencies to "spend" this money wisely had come over from an area of Liverpool, where a previous "City Challenge" project had blown even more money. They just followed the money. I don't doubt there was some material investment but Batley remains a small run down town, more or less the same now as it was before that massive investment, and its not like that kitty was its only investment, because it comes under Kirklees, ranked 11th biggest local authority in the country. Towns generally stay the same as the decades pass, but that "City Challenge" thing was meant to turn it all around. Bugger all changed....
Anyway getting back to Amir, it seems he has been taken to the cleaners going by his post. His project manager has some serious questions to answer, it seems incredulous that Amir would literally put in £11m of his own money. I can see him eventually selling out ownership, and being taken to the cleaners in the process.
and this is also why government now lacks those skills in-house, which means they're dependent on very expensive outsourcing to get done things they used to manage fine on their own. If it happened anywhere else we'd call it what it is - massive corruption.