Trusting Boris over his Burrow gives me that sinking feeling
FIRST it was the Boris Bridge — a planned engineering wonder which appears to have lost ground recently over understandable concerns that the finished product might have to be closed for around 100 days a year due to inclement weather (Only 100 days?),
Now there’s the Boris Burrow — a proposed underwater tunnel which would connect Scotland to Northern Ireland, boost trade, encourage tourism and get around (literally) that unfortunate border in the Irish Sea.
It would ‘only’ cost £10bn to build, would be about 25 miles in length and would facilitate cars, trains and HGV traffic. What could possibly go wrong?
Call me overly cautious, but I can foresee a few tricky issues. It’s obvious, though, why Boris would be keen on his latest pipe dream.
First up, in the wake of the Covid pandemic, the economy is going to need a major reboot and such a project would provide a massive jobs boost.
Secondly, Boris, as we know, likes having his name linked to infrastructure and transportation schemes.
And, finally, there’s a handy bit of symbolism involved.
This would be Boris’s tunnel of love to Arlene and the DUP, badly in need of some consolation having finally come to the realisation that he’d taken them for fools over Brexit.
However, I do feel that, before steaming ahead, we should have a think first about potential costs, potential construction difficulties and actual unexploded dumped munitions.
Cost estimates, as anyone who’s ever had the kitchen upgraded will know, have a tendency to spiral.
Take the Casement Park redevelopment. Originally, the work was forecast to come in at around £77.5m. Now, they’re talking £110m. The HS2 rail link was predicted to cost £20bn. Now, the bean-crunchers feel they’ll be lucky to get change out of £107bn.
Okay, Westminster would be picking up the tab for our tunnel. Even so, I can envisage a rethink should the hole in Exchequer finances turn out to be even deeper than the hole in the seabed.
Then there’s the issue of feasibility. The Channel Tunnel is 75 metres deep. The Irish Sea underpass would have to go down halfway to Australia.
And then, of course, there’s the Beaufort’s Dyke. This gigantic trench on the seabed would have to be circumvented in any case. Adding to the challenge is the fact that for decades it was used as a dumping ground for weaponry, including chemical munitions, and nuclear waste.
When the Scotland-northern Ireland gas interconnector was laid back in 1995, a number of phosphorus bombs washed ashore in Scotland.
Even more unsettling was an explosion back in the late 1980s which measured 2.5 on the Richter Scale.
You do not want to be hoking around, destabilising that, especially since there are worries too about short-dumping, which I take to mean stuff they tried to lob into the Dyke but which fell shy of target.
Who knows what is really down there? More to the point, shouldn’t something be done to find out?
Instead of heading a thousand leagues under the sea, why isn’t Captain Nemo Johnson doing something to secure this dodgy undersea rubbish tip?
Possibly because the Boris Beaufort Bin-lid wouldn’t be such a headline-grabber.
Whether the PM is actually serious about building a tunnel is hard to fathom.
I’ve my suspicions that, as with much Johnson backs, it’s all bombast and wild promises made without any real determination to follow through.
Maybe a tunnel would be viable and successful.
My instinct, though, wouldn’t be to trust Boris Johnson as a salesman — for anything.
The DUP, I think, need to be especially cautious.
Like silt around the boring machine drill, they don’t want to be sucked in again.