Just came across this on another forum and I wonder how many people knew this. I certainly didn’t. Of course, if you don’t live, or pay taxes, in the UK, it is free. 
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There’s a section of M6 that’s a toll road, and has been for a long time.
Was the M6 Toll financed à la PFI or funded directly by central government? That’s the issue though.
Addressing the point in the video about the company not having an incentive to maintain the road to a decent standard, I’d have hoped some SLAs around minimum levels of maintenance were written into the contract by UK Govt.
My recollection, and I could be completely wrong, is that it was privately funded, not even PFI.
That’s the ‘new’ bit to relieve traffic to the north of Birmingham. I have never used it but I thought that was a direct peage, in other words you paid to get on, or off, it.
This one on the A1(M) near Peterborough is completely different in that you don’t know you are paying, in your taxes of course.
Its why the scum tories are thankfully not running the country (down) now. What pf the honours list, any major awards to these company heads?
Think you missed the point.
The Dartford Crossing is also a péage - as was the Severn Crossing until Dec 2018.
Yes but a different kind, which was my point. The last time I used Dartford, last year, I had to pay in advance or within 24 hours of crossing. With this, if you haven’t seen the video, you don’t know you are paying.
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I absolutely agree with David there. You don’t pay directly for the sorts of roads the video is describing whereas you always have for the special bit of M6 etc - normal type of peage.
I used to drive frequently on the M6 up and down to Birmingham and beyond. It got more and more congested over the years with very slow moving sections each morning and evening. The new toll road did help to ease the problems. I was very glad to leave all that behind when moving to France.
Driving down from Cumbria to Dover we always used that peage - well worth the charge to avoid the congestion!
But it was nothing new to me - used to commute into Boston on the Mass ’ Pike (the setting for Jonathan Richmond’s proto-punk Roadrunner) Warning! It’s an ear worm…
He’s 100% correct about the myth of the Private/Public partnerships benefits. It’s always the clowns negotiating on the public side that get ripped off. What do they care anyway, their on civil service salaries. Whereas the dudes on the other side are paid on results. Game over
Exactly,having witnessed CS going about their days spending the public purse like moneys going out of fashion.
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A bit unfair on the CS who follow ministerial direction, because that’s their job. But don’t let the Daily Mail rhetoric sway you in any way.
I’ll accept that they’re generally hugely outgunned but frankly clowns is utterly offensive. Let’s not forget that the good ones are generally poached for significantly higher salaries.
In my experience they care a lot and often know that they’re being shafted, as much by their own paymasters as by the bidders.
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I was one for a while and its nothing to do with the daily weil, its what I witnessed. They do their jobs but follow a long laid down track resisting change. I had to step in on one project, not mine as I couldnt stand to see the public purse drained of another £12,000 more than I got the job done for having come from the much poorer charity side of private enterprise.
Didnt win any populatity contests for doing it.
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John, wake up, they are “poached” for their insider knowledge not their intellect 
One might say they are traitors, but fair enough, that’s the system. How many senior civil servants have retired to lucrative positions on the boards of companies? Conflict of interest, give me a break
I don’t think the junior ones care a bit, they are just doing a job.
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Having seen it from the inside, it’s not quite as cynically simple as that and I do get quite irate at the lazy stereotype that civil servants are shit.
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Having seen quite a lot of industry and the civil service in action, there are plenty “just doing a job” at all levels.