daveybot, 4 months ago

Some back-of-the-envelope cost comparison examples:

Westminster refurb (estimate) = 53 Scottish Parliaments

Garden Bridge (unbuilt) = 0.13 Scottish Parliaments

Michelle Mone's PPE contracts = 0.5 Scottish Parliaments

Loss to UK economy from the Truss / Kwarteng mini budget = 72 Scottish Parliaments

London-Birmingham HS2 line (predicted) = 160 Scottish Parliaments

Rwanda deportation scheme (so far) = 0.6 Scottish Parliaments

passenger, 4 months ago

@daveybot

I've seen Afghanistan-hours used. Once you include all the costs, the British part of the Afghanistan war cost 4bn a year, which is about $457,000 an hour. This means that the Garden Bridge was about four Afghanistan-days.

I've seen New Yorkers use "NYPD Misconduct Settlement Hours" in the same way.

cstross, 4 months ago

@daveybot "Heads of lettuce" = duration of a Tory prime minister