Ragged trousered Philanthropists

[redbhoy]

Has anyone else read this book?
Good story. Basically the businessmen of the town make up the council. A conglomerate of these businessmen/councillors buy a gas works. It turns out to be a white elephant as electricity is soon to take over.
So they hire a dodgy engineer and bribe him to do a report saying how great the gasworks is and eventually they sell the gasworks back to the unsuspecting idiotic public. How great they are!

Does anyone think that this has shades of the current buyback of the M50 bridge??
Was it public money that helped build the M50?

 

[DrMoriarty]

Moderator's note:
Please avoid any risk of potential in responding or your post(s) will have to be deleted immediately. I have strong feelings myself on the matter, but I won't post them on a public discussion board. You can listen to Shane Ross's views on the Newstalk106 [broken link removed] site.

[Edit: a rather more nuanced discussion is now taking place on the Last Word...]

 

[redbhoy]

Only caught the end of the radio show last night. Surely by opening up the M50 toll it will just lead to bigger queue's at the exits from the motorway.
Luckily i don't use it that often but i'd say it wont make a big difference to many peoples lives.
How do frequent users feel about it?

 

[Thirsty]

In regards to the orginal question - yes I have read it, the gasworks story is only part of it though - the social commentary is much more interesting (in my view anyway)