THE HS2 line linking London and Birmingham, which are already linked, is currently set to cost £100bn. What else could that money buy?
23 manned missions to Mars
The estimated cost of the first four-man Mars lander is £10bn, with each subsequent launch costing £4bn. For the price of a fast train we could put enough Britons on the red planet for a five-a-side football league.
Enough nukes to take out Russia
Remember the 80s, when all anyone wanted was to reduce the Soviet Union to a glowing radioactive wasteland where only leather-clad mutants survived? We could achieve that retro dream on the same budget as a train between two cities sensible people avoid.
Half of Greece
Buy Greece’s national debt and you’ve pretty much bought Greece. Seafront location, lots of lovely islands, a real sun-trap in the summer months, large goat surplus, comes with complimentary EU membership.
The Kardashians
The UK deserves a bit of glamour in its drab life so why not purchase America’s first family? Not just the main ones like Kim and Kanye, but the back-ups like Kourtney and Khloe, who could be made to live in places like Doncaster to brighten them up.
18 tons of pharmaceutical cocaine
HS2 backers claim it will boost the economy. But not nearly as much as giving every man, woman and child in the country a year’s unlimited nose candy to work frantically away in their cubicles like overdosing lab rats. We’d take over the world.
A Royal yacht
If the Tories are going to waste this kind of money then they really should waste it on the thing most dear to their hearts, a new Royal yacht. For £1bn they could get one big enough to keep the entire Royal family safe at sea while the rest of us die of the Coronavirus.
Half of Brexit
Unfortunately £1bn won’t be enough to cover the entire economic cost to the country of Brexit, because it’s far more ruinously expensive than that. But it would at least split the bill.
