Gaswork
I LIKE the notion of celebrating the mil- lennium on the Heights of Abraham. They are (of course) near Matlock, and the plan is to make them 250 feet higher. A tower with a platform going up and down and round would afford a panoramic view of Derbyshire, and trump the disused site of Greenwich gasworks, where the view is of Canary Wharf. The Matlock tower would cost £11/2 million and would have to pay for itself. The dome and its gasworks site are now supposed to cost £758 million, which means that another £8 million has crept in since I last looked — or £178 mil- lion since June, when I urged Chris Smith, the minister concerned, to cut his losses while he could. He might have done, so the project was taken away from him. That extra £8 million has a ring of spurious pre- cision. What this project would turn out to cost and who would come forward to pay for it — these must still, if I may say so, be matters of gaswork. Under the old regime, some businessmen supported it by way of ingratiating themselves with Michael Hesel- tine, or getting him off their backs. Some will now see it as their chance to curry favour with the new regime, qualifying themselves to be Friends of Tony or even of Peter. They and we would be better off on the heights of Matlock.
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