The man is mad!

There are also rumours that the budget is going to be delayed by months. If that's true, the public won't find out for ages how vanity projects will be financed. All the promises can be spun out for a bit longer before the reality kicks in.

Johnson has form with his distracting "bread and circuses". Don't be fooled. Keep an eye on the main issues and watch how he dodges accountability.

No, Johnson didn't come up with the idea, but he is approving its revival. So it's as good as his.

I actually think it was a diversionary tactic from Gove's announcement that our borders with the EU will be subject to full border controls after 2020; a huge change from pre-referendum soothing noises about frictionless trade post Brexit. A bit of 'project fear' come true, really.

But it's kept us going for a few days, hasn't it? And not a word about border controls... Job done, No. 10

Boris Johnson did not come up with the idea of a bridge between Northern Ireland and Scotland and to read many posts I honestly think some posters thought he did.

Yes the government is looking at the proposal but so we're the Northern Ireland DUP MP's and the Scottish SNP MP's at one time too.

Only one politician is a ' Mad Man ' However.

Maizied

' It could only be theoretically useful if Scotland became independent and rejoined the EU and Ireland became united. Then it would facilitate frictionless trade between the two EU member States.'
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You are making the point I made succinctly. That is why I said let the EU/ Reunified Ireland / Independent Scotland pay for it, if it is even a feasibility. If in the future the United Kingdom remains intact then the United Kingdom could / should pay for it.

If the United Kingdom does fall apart as some predict and many would wish this to happen sooner rather than later , why should this be a United Kingdom effort / financial project to assist 2 countries one of which is hell bent on leaving the United Kingdom and the other going who knows where with the possibility of Reuniting and also leaving the United Kingdom.

I know not whether it is feasible, Alan Dunlop and others say it is, so who pays for it and who gains from it would be the major factor.

I don't see what a bridge is meant to 'solve'. There'll still be a border between the UK and NI as per the Withdrawal Agreement. It could only be theoretically useful if Scotland became independent and rejoined the EU and Ireland became united. Then it would facilitate frictionless trade between the two EU member states.

Of course, we'd then need an England/Scotland hard border...

As far as I remember the idea for the Scotland - N.Ireland bridge was to get round the problem of trading between N. Ireland, part of the UK, and Eire, which is part of the EU.
After Brexit.

It was my point also wheniwasyourage.

I stand by saying a Reunited Ireland and an Independent Scotland is possibly on the cards and it is a project, if it were feasible, best left until the future of the United Kingdom is known.

quizqueen, can I just point out that the money which might be spent on this stupid idea is not just English/Welsh money? Your view that it would be spent on 'prospective foreign countries' rather than 'at home' is a little odd when seen from here. At the moment, whatever one's views, this is still a (dis)United Kingdom, and it would be UK money which would be spent on a UK project.

Elegran on a more minor scale, when flood defences were built on the Thames to protect one town, it resulted in flooding further down which flooded another town which had previously been considered safe from floods.

Now, if they started talking about investing in wave power, that might be interesting.

I am very disappointed in Boris - I thought that at least he was intelligent, but now I wonder if he has a butterfly mind, he can’t stick to things. I think he gets bored easily. It does not bode well.

I doubt very much if Wales and England were the only two countries in the UK, the money would be spent equally for both countries.

Even from what I read on GN this certainly isn’t the way things are at the moment

I'd want to wait and see if Ireland became united and Scotland left the Union first. I don't want to spend money on prospective foreign countries when we should be spending it at home.

Forgot the link www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea - but there are plenty of others.

dinahmo posted on 13th Feb at 11,34 that There is a proposal to create two dams across the North Sea (Norway to Scotland) and the English Channel (Cornwall to France) to control higher sea levels which will result from the melting of the polar ice caps. This seems to me to be a much better idea than Johnson's bridge across the Irish Sea.

There were articles about this in the media on 13th Feb, such as this one in the Guardian -

"In a paper to be published this month in the American Journal of Meteorology, Groeskamp and Joakim Kjellsson of the Geomar centre for ocean research in Kiel, Germany, say the idea is affordable and technically feasible – if intended more as “a warning of the immensity of the problem hanging over our heads”.

However, Cloke cautioned that a dam may not be the best use of the money. “Maybe we should be thinking about making populations resilient to flooding in different ways, and also think about what we can do to stop the climate getting worse – invest in keeping ourselves safe in the long term.”

“But in the final calculation, we must also take into account factors such as the loss of income from North Sea fishing, the increased costs for shipping across the North Sea, and the costs of gigantic pumps to transport all of the river water that currently flows into the North Sea to the other side of the dam.”

However, the costs and consequences of doing nothing about rising sea levels would ultimately be “many times higher”, they warned. The project “makes it almost tangible what the consequences of rising sea levels will be”, Groeskamp said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will rise by 30cm-60cm by 2100, even if the Paris climate accord pledges are met. If emissions continue on their present trends, it foresees an 84cm rise by 2100 and up to 5.4 metres by 2300.

“A rise of 10 metres by the year 2500 is predicted, according to the bleakest scenarios. This dam is therefore mainly a call to do something about climate change now. If we do nothing, this extreme dam might just be the only solution.”

A dam between the nearest points of Scotland and Norway would be 475km - as long as the distance from London to Manchester, or from Brussels to Munich,- that is about twelve times as long as across the nearest points of Scotland and Ireland. It would also cross depths greater that those in the North channel, and be far more exposed than "Boris's Folly", both in the building and maintenance of it and for its own survival.

The cost would be astronomically more than 20 billion (estimated between €250bn and €500bn - and I reckon it wouldn't work because the extra water would just go round to the west coast of the Uk and flood us from there.

Stopping the activities which exacerbate climate change would be better!

I rest my case.

Doubt if Boris can tell the difference

The Oresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark runs 5 miles to an artificial island and then turns into a tunnel of 2.5 miles. Surely, the Scotland to NI bridge would be longer.

Boris Johnson reminds me of Mad King Ludwig II of Bavaria; the man who developed a mania for extravagant building projects. Should he not focus on some more urgent issues first: NHS, schools, houses, poverty, etc...

SirChenjin
Yes it’s nuts because [...] it crosses an incredibly busy shopping lane

Shipping lane or shopping lane, I reckon they are much the same thing, aren't they?

I think there is a whiff of hypocrisy surrounding the so called Boris Bridge.

This is not a new thought and there was not a poo pooing of the idea when it was mooted by the likes of the SNP and DUP not so long ago when they were ' considering ' the matter of a bridge joining Portpatrick and Larne
.
It appears to me as soon as the proposal is related to Boris Johnson the claws come out and the proposition is a stupidity because Boris Johnsons name is mentioned.

Personally I have no particular thought one way or the other but I do hold the opinion if the money was spent on connecting Northern Ireland to Scotland and as many believe what the future holds and the UK is broken up due to Reunification in Ireland and the Independence of Scotland then put it on hold until that problem is sorted out first.

In other words let the EU/a Reunited Ireland and an Independent Scotland pay for it, if that is what ' they' want. .

But they( or one does) seem to encourage criminal activity ?

Danish bridges are shallow water as well, partly submerged tunnel, causeway and suspension

The Danish bridges are nowhere near the length of this stupid idea are they grande?

To be honest Denmark has many bridges, the one crossing the Great Belt, two crossing the Little Belt, one connecting Zealand to Falster and one connecting Als to the rest of the South of Jutland. Probably more, but the list is those I have crossed.

We also share a bridge from Copenhagen to the south of Sweden and plans have been discussed for years to build a bridge from Denmark spanning Femarnsund to Germany.

Some of these bridges have to be closed to traffic in high winds, or closed to vans and motor homes. All of them cost fortunes to build and maintain, as does the Forth bridge and the Forth road bridge in Scotland. Bridge tolls supply the government with some of the money, but even then bridges are expensive. They are however an improvement on the old ferry system, where it took time to load cars, lorries and trains on and off.

The challenges are that it would need to be a floating pontoon bridge with sections of suspension bridge to allow shipping to pass. There are examples of pontoon bridges used to cross lakes and fjords but not rough water that would be common in the North channel.
Technically it probably is feasible, wether it is ever likely to be done is entirely a political decision

They had a detailed manifesto, Cunco. Which was more than the tories had.

Let me get this straight. You aren't clear what a party intends to do when they have a manifesto detailing what they intend to do, so you vote for a party with a minimalist manifesto which says nothing about what they intend to do.. Apart, of course, for 'Get Brexit Done'.

Something odd about the logic there. Can't quite put my finger on it...