Whatever might be a good idea for Britain gets stymied by committees and bureaucracy. Transport for London was set up over a decade ago and tasked with improving cycling facilities, as part of the planes for congestion reduction. Millions of pounds has gone on leaflets, posters, studies, guides, petrol pump stickers, visits to Holland, reports, meetings, advertising etc. Hardly a single penny of the budget has gone on cycles lanes. When they decided to make an underpass for pedestrians under the south end of Blackfriars Bridge (where many pedestrians had been killed or injured, and many collisions) from agreeing the idea, it took 18 years of bureaucratic waffle before they FINALLY started actually making the thing that had kept them on the gravy train for nearly 2 decades.
Also when South London Innovation Centre was facing closure I was part of the rescue plan, and we made a suggestion to Dept of Trade and Industry to set £1.000,000 in trust for the organisation, which could then survive forever on 1/2 of the interest, with the govt getting the other 1/2. Great idea said the Mandarin, let's do a report. Off they went to their favourite beneficiaries, Coopers and Lybrand (Accountants to the bureaucrats) and commissioned a huge report. The report took 6 months and concluded that SLIC would "Not make a profit" ...something that was NEVER in our proposal, we wanted it set up as a TRUST to ensure its survival for the benefit of generations of inventors and craftspeople whose products and work WOULD earn tax income for the country.
As the doors of SLIC closed forever it was shocking to think that such a relatively small sum was unavailable for SLIC, yet £2.500,000 was available to give to C&L to make a report which did not even understand or answer our proposal!