Here, Only The Lawyers Win
I'm going to detail another instance from 'Be Amazed''s Youtube channel 'Most Expensive Mistakes In All History' and at first was concerned that it might not hit a high enough word count to reach Intro status. Not to worry, I've got a page of A4 notes to work from. Art!
First, a bit of background. BA is rather coy about attributing what follows to corruption, but I'm not. The Thai government of Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan in the early Nineties was very, very dirty. Their Cabinet was openly used to enrich members and their business pals, usually on infrastructure projects; stick a pin in that, we'll be coming back to it. Art!
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| Ol' Choony |
Things got so bad that the army mounted a coup, absent bloodshed, in 1991, and took over. Only, they were quite as corrupt as the people they ousted, and the Thai population eventually got so fed up they revolted in 1992. This resulted in the creation of a new Constitution in 1997.
Back to BA. In 1990 the State Railway of Thailand drew up a contract with a Hong Kong company, Hopewell Holdings, to construct 37 PROUD IMPERIAL MILES of elevated mass-transit railway, named for the purposes of this Intro as the 'Bangkok ElevAted Road & Rail System', hence BEARRS. It was to link the international airport at Don Mueang to Bangkok city centre, and to reduce the horrendous traffic congestion in the capital. Art!
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| Total gridluck, which is like gridlock but worse |
Projected cost was $3.2 billion, and Hopewell actually had a background in infrastructure construction, and I know this because I went and checked.
HOWEVER at the time of signing, there had been no feasibility study done for the project, nor a timeline. Remember what I said about corruption? Someone was getting a whacking big backhander from this and a feasibility study that quashed the construction would mean no embezzlement or bribe money. Art!
Problem number one was legal. Ownership of land along the projected route had not been determined before approval, and determining who owned what proved to be incredibly time-consuming.
Problem number two was political. As Cabinet members were changed, they shut BEARRS down as being a bottomless money pit, only for a new arrival to start it back up again as an essential infrastructure commitment. This happened several times and played merry hob with the timetable. The first stage was supposed to open in 1995, five years after construction began, with the rest opening by 1999.
'Twas not to be. Asia was hit with a severe financial recession in 1997 and all work on BEARRS was completely halted. Ooops. Art!
After 7 years, only 13% of the work had been completed, meaning at that rate it would take 55 years to complete. State Railway of Thailand voted to terminate the project in 1998 as Hopeless Holdings had no chance of completing it in a reasonable timeline.
Inevitably, with huge sums of money at stake, both sides blamed each other. Both sides wanted compensation, Hopeless on grounds that the government had failed to acquire land with any speed or urgency, SROT allegedly asserting that HH had mismanaged funds and run out of money.
The lawyers on both sides rubbed their hands with glee.
By 2010 (!) HH wanted $1 billion for the wrongful termination of their contract, and SROT wanted $6 billion in lost business and damages. Art!
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| The lawyers |
By 2023 (!!) the Thai courts ruled that HH's case was valid - BA gets it completely wrong here stating that they weren't successful - and they would receive compensation, No incurred costs were published at the time, so I did a bit of digging and SROT were out of pocket to the tune of $800 million, which is why they were looking for a x5 payoff. They had to pay this sum to HH, whom, however - a word that keeps popping up here - had gone through $640 million of their own capital on BEARRS.
What remained were over 1,000 concrete pillars, ironically dubbed 'Thailand's Stonehenge. Art!
Most were demolished in a scheme that cost another $6 million, though a few remain if you ever visit Bangkok and feel mischievous, alongside the Vibhavadi road.
To contrast BEARRS with a successful elevated railway scheme, the BTS Skytrain was begun in 1996, long after the years of corruption, and was finished in 1999. It was built by both Siemens and Italian Thai Development and cost $1.4 billion, spanning 70 kilometres. So, longer than BEARRS and delivered at half the cost. Something of a victim of it's own success, it has seen up to 760,000 passengers being carried daily <lawyers look verrrry disappointed at this>. Art!
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| BTS Skytrain doing the train thing |
But the lawyers went away happy and well-paid, which is what really matters. Right?
Now, a short intermission as I go to sort out laundry. BRB!
More Gentle Shoeing
Hmmm, maybe not so gentle. Alright, downright vindictive. Yes, time for another embarrassing photo of Donnie Dorko, this time as a contrast in colour tones rather than being bloated like a flesh blimp. Art!
I love the contrast between his sepia-toned face and his bright pink ears, and note that his Hair Helmet appears to be failing to maintain sufficient contact to prevent him looking bald.
Long after the event, I recall seeing one of these terrible photos on Twitter, and a Comment "He's 79'. I should have countered 'Is that his IQ or his weight in stone?' but I have it in reserve for the future.
Necessity Is Both Mother And Father Of Invention
Especially when you add a bit of Kozaky ingenuity and innovation into the mix. Art!
I would say 'Game Enhancer' rather than 'Changer'. The tests have shown that a Hornet drone taken to 8,000 metres height can be released and glide for 400 kilometres, rather than the normal 200 klicks. This would increase the list of targets inside Mordorvia even further, and decrease the effectiveness of orc electronic warfare along the contact line, as well as warning time. Why so? Because coming in at a 45ยบ angle means the orcs below don't get warning until the last minute.
The downside is that balloons are non-steerable, so you'd need to wait for a favourable wind. Conrad unsure how the weather works on the borders of Ukraine. Art!
Courtesy 'Dronebomber. Fill in your own wind patterns. Blue tracks are jet-powered so deffo not directed by wind. Just so we're clear.
Updated to add: 340 'Ukrainian Angry Birds' flying tonight. Mordorvia sowing the wind and reaping the hurricane. Bomber Harris and the Second Unpleasantness comes to mind.
"21 Days In Normandy" by Angelo Caravagio
Further into Ol' Ang's very detailed account of the 4th Canuckistanian Armoured Division pre-D Day, and how circumstances worked to seriously diminish the division's ability to train as a single entity. Art!
This is Mackenzie King, quite possibly the only person bar Mackenzie Crook to have that first name, and he was Prime Minister of Canuckistan during the Second Unpleasantness. The reason he's here is because when he came to GREAT BRITAIN (ha, take that, Lavrov!), the whole of 4th Armoured Division had to stop what they were doing and parade for him, a process that ate up 4 days that could otherwise have been used for training. Art!
This is the Canuckistanian 'Ram' tank, one made by taking the hull of a Lee, changing the superstructure and adding a new turret, to the tune of 3,000 of them. All the Canuckistanian armoured divisions were equipped with these until early in 1944, when they began to be replaced, slowly, by Sherman tanks. This meant some brigades didn't get Shermans until May, meaning that much less time to train on them. The Lee hull did have a certain degree of commonality with the Sherman, but they were not the same.
Finally -
Supplies of loose-leaf Darjeeling are running dangerously low. A visit to Sainsbo's in Babylon Lite beckons.
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