I read the news today, oh boy!

[Ruby]

You're probably right CH - let's wait and see. Like most of the weirdo celebrities out there she blames her behavior on bi-polar disorder. Convenient excuse to behave badly.

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^Looks most impressive. That could never happen here. It took 9 years to resurface a 10.1km stretch of road along the coast where I live – dreadful business entailing many hours of waiting in a stop/go system with one of two lanes closed to traffic, hugely frayed tempers and a few entrepreneurial souls selling coffee and other bits and pieces to the captive queue. (Ok – they were re-laying pipes and stuff as well, but still) The roadworks finally came to an end timed perfectly to coincide with my no longer needing to go that way every day. Sod’s law, lol!

And to think - in China they put up a 30 story hotel in 14 days. You can watch a time lapse video on YT. It would take 14 months just to get planning permission in Ireland. I was told that they managed to construct an entire, functioning railway station in China in under 3 days! The West is way behind the East. Like light years behind. We are using outmoded construction methods and we are bogged down by an endless amount of red tape. Hey, somebody has to make sure the civil servants have something to do. Ireland and the UK are in a coma when it comes to infrastructure. And the real killer punch is after all those delays and dithering the construction quality is even worse than China's - especially the housing sector. Had to re-do the wiring in my place because it was so badly executed. Looked like it was done by a blind man. Incorrect wiring sizes etc. etc. The list goes on and on. When I worked for Intel a friend had a gas installation done on a new build. After a couple of weeks he was having trouble with the heating system. He called in the experts and they found that he was not even connected to the gas main at all. He had been hooked up to a large gas cylinder that had been buried in the back garden when the house was built. I kid you not!

^Jeez – don’t think even we are that bad! But we are definitely lacking in creativity and industry in construction, as a general rule – especially when it comes to government projects (there are always exceptions, but they are few and far between). For example, anyone can see that there seem to be wonderful potential solutions out there to solve the housing crisis, but the powers that be persist in chucking up inferior and impractical dwellings - why??

There’s a cleared and prepared area fairly nearby, intended to resettle 600 disenfranchised families – all the infrastructure is in – roads, street lights, utilities, paving, etc., and the whole place is rapidly returning to nature because the housing department has run out of money. Everything stopped, just like that, almost a year ago. It’s like an overgrown ghost town that never was. And plantlife is astonishingly virile - those foundations are ruined. A total waste of time and resources.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are gobbling up land and property all over the place, even in the small towns, and doing a fine job of refurbishing too. We might be sorry – or maybe they’ll show us a thing or two! I guess time will tell …