The surprise is that there are still people who buy tickets with British Airways on them when there are so many better airlines.

Johnny Britain, London,

The Tay bridge collapse while a train was passing was not caused by poor design. The bridge design by Beamont was considered to be excellent and proven. The problem was poor castings which were hidden using a mortar/plaster mix in order to meet the construction timetable. This mix [known as Beamonts egg] had no structural strength and with the stresses caused by an ferocious gale and the train loading led to the tragic loss of over 8o lives. In my profession "Beamonts egg" is used as a term of derision for
poor finishes on structures.

Philip Bosley, Tidworth, England

After hearing and reading a lot about Terminal 5 eversince it opened on 26 March,2008 I have been having nightmares every day since I need to go through this terminal to my country on 23 of April. Often I wonder if the chaotic and disastrous situation would be set right by then. It is certainly a blow to the Britain and Heathrow is on a further downslide. Surprisingly I haven't come across such a chaos in any other airport that I have travelled across the world and for that matter in my own home country.

Prof.S. Asha Devi, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK

I can't believe what I saw just yesterday at Terminal 5.
Complete chaos! As if the Monty Python troups had been in charge of everything.

I am more than ashamed about our proud English reputation which certainly is completely worthless by now.

2 years ago I was in Germany on the soccer games. Those folks, I am afraid to admit, are the most organized and efficient folks I have ever seen.

And... they were able to shift full business operations from the old Munich/Riem airport to the new Munich/Moos airport 30 miles away.

OVER NIGHT; NO HICCUPS, no problems.

I am ashamed about Heathrow and our folks.

Paul, London, UK

notable exception of the Forth Bridge.???

Am I missing something here?

Or is, perhaps, your author reesmogg's perception of geography on a level with the people he seeks to criticise?

Jim P, Worcester,

Only in England? Pity!

Mark B. Stagg, Stratford, Canada

Er - I think it was the *Tay* bridge that did not work as planed in the 19th Centuary.

Martin H Ackroyd, caen, france

"The UK spends more per patient on healthcare than the USA - and gets far less."

The US spends nothing per patient - and that is exactly what any sick American not fortunate enough to be able to afford medical insurance receives - nothing.

Terrils, California, USA

Babbage invented the computer 150 years ago - but as electricity had not yet been discovered, his machines were mechanical. Then Alan Turing, possibly the most unfairly neglected of all great Englishmen, laid the theoretical basis of all computing in the 1930s. Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web (and then gave it away for the benefit of all). British know-how contributed to the Internet, for example in the form of packet switching, although as Marcus pointed out it was a US government project.

I'd like to point out that the British are also quite good at big projects that look successful, but are in fact hollow shells. A case in point was the battlecruiser Hood - known as "the mighty Hood" - the world's largest and most prestigious warship between 1919 and 1939. When finally put to the test in a duel against the German battleship Bismarck, the mighty Hood was utterly destroyed by one of the first enemy salvos.

Tom Welsh, Basingstoke,

All true,but not just for BIG projects !
The UK muddles through on everything.There is no committment to high quality as a normal state of affairs.Everything is shoddy,not quite right,etc in lots of different companies,institutions,shops,products,trades etc.
Think of your last experience, in a restaurant or shop;with a builder or repairman;with the tube/train/bus public transport;etc.When we say the word ENGLAND,high quality and efficiency don't come to mind...maybe they do for the word GERMANY or Switzerland; but not for England.And the reason is the people are not personally committed to high quality standards and efficiency in their everyday lives.They "make do";"muddle through";"get by" with a smile and a chuckle to disarm.But high standards are not in the English genetic code.I enjoy the English for their sense of humour and ability to not take life too seriously ,but these attitudes result in sloppy work and substandard quality.
You can't have it all .

C.Elder, Paris, France

Amazing, try living somewhere else but London, Manchester has a world class airport (with two runways), it regularly wins traveller awards and is a pleasure to use as well as being 20 minutes from the City Centre by train.
Oh yes and Manchester delivered the Commonwealth Games on time and on Budget, even the London based media accepted they were a great success. The City is still using all the facilities built for the games. I love London and visit often on business but moving from there to another city was the best decision I have made. Now if we can just sort out the West Coast Main Line ...
Finally I believe it was Alan Turing that is often credited with inventing the modern computer, working from Manchester, there's a statue in Sackville Park.

Damien, Manchester,

M Reid in Canberra - Babbage invented the computer and Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the internet including the URL system and the www and html and furthermore gave them to the world FREE.

But in this sorry tale please don't count St Pancras as a success. To place the euro-terminal in the only London Terminus without its own tube station (badging Kings Cross as "KC and St Pancras" is a con - it's MILES) . And the Midland main line has been moved a quarter of a mile further from central Lndon which is just lovely if you have luggage or children or are old and are faced with even further to struggle to the Kings Cross underground.

christina Speight, London, UK

Nice to get a mention in despatches. I rather suspect the PR people have thought this one out in terms of the longer run appreciation of the construction. This is a huge project and it might be undesirable for people to presume that these occasions can be expected to be trouble free. On the other hand, I would have thought they had already devised computers to check new computer systems. I suspect the problem may be that the men who have previously maintained their employment in the context of faulty systems may be needing some reassurance.

Henry Percy, London, UK

With the notable exception of the Tay Bridge, I think you mean.

James, Monteria, Colombia

"For some reason the Government allowed Ferrovial to buy the BAA monopoly"

Better, surely, than leaving it in British hands. After all, British Airways seems to have been the bigger culprit last week.

Andrew, London,

Oh, please, no more self-flagellating cultural gloom.

Yes, BA was hubristic, also stupid, in not running a month of full-flow trials at T5. (Tho where to rent 50,000 bags ?)

But have perspective. The reality is that these giant projects are inherently unmanageable. They're just too big. See the exhaustive RAND study of this. Pace WRM's dreary gloom, there's nothing unique to Britain here. Look, for example, at the building of offshore oil platforms. As engineering feats, a triumph. But on time & budget ? Forget it. At one stage in the building of platforms for Norway's Statfjord B field --- a project run out of Houston, Texas, one of the two or three world centres of management skills in these mega-projects --- the consortium found itself with an unforeseen bill for a MILLION man-hours of overtime just to remedy welding deficiencies. Did they lament some ingrained cultural failing ? No. They said: OK, screw-ups happen on projects this big. WRM copy.

john barry, chevy chase , USA

Splendid! Roll on the 2013 London Olympics!

Kevin Browne, Reading, Berkshire, England

For nearly 30 years I have used Heathrow (and BA) many times per year and, despite inconveniences and some missing baggage, I have survived the whole thing unscathed.
My Heathrow experiences have really not been so very much worse than those at other much-touted airports around the world. Tavel today needs much patience, an abundance of humour and realistic expectations of the experience.

Bill Atkins, Rehoboth Beach, USA

I'm sitting here shaking my head. Tomorrow at this time I will be over the Atlantic on my way to -- you guessed it -- Heathrow. Normally, I'm not too anal retentive about my checked cases, as I carry everything important in my one carry-on case.

However, this trip is a bit different. I have packed my wedding dress, and the odd bits and pieces that a bride might assemble for what used to be called 'a trousseau'. My British groom-to-be will be waiting to meet me. Images of baggage bedlam haunt me.

I keep having visions of an elegant wedding party with me, the American bride, wearing cut-off jeans and a t-shirt that says "BRIDE".

I have flown all over the world. The JFK to Heathrow flight is as familiar as jumping on the crosstown bus. No airline has ever lost my bags. How much will you bet that this time my bags, and everything in them, will disappear without a trace?

Kirsty, New York, NY (Where else?)

Leonard Colquhoun from Tasmania, I like you.

John F, London,

The first computer was invented by the English to break German codes at Bletchley Park. It preceeded the ENIAC by 3 years but was top secret.

Steve, Sydney,

Flying has become by far the most unpleasant form of transport ever devised. Time considerations apart, I'd rather travel by horse and cart.
PS
I don't get the reference to the Forth Bridge. Do you mean it wasn't built in the 19th Century, or that it didn't work?
PPS
Can't wait for the London Olympics - though my guess is that when the ordure really starts to hit the fan it will have quietly changed to the "British" Olympics.

Ken Leyland, Liverpool, U.K.

Fly with Virgin! I have never had a serious problem flying in and out of Terminal 3 (certainly not the most attractive place) with Virgin. Sure sometimes you are late taking off but that happens everywhere!!!! The problem is that there are too many flights scheduled in the same time frame.

Fly BA????? Never again. I gave up on them years ago. I always found the staff...both ground and inflight, rather cold
and uncaring. They have a long way to catch-up.

Go VIRGIN!

m.helms, New Jersey, USA

To D cage: It was Colossus that Churchill ordered to be broken up, not Enigma. Enigma were German mechanical encryption machines; Colossus was the world's first electronic computer and prediated ENIAC by several years.

But you are right, by some nefarious deal that he did with the Americans, he destroyed the UK's ability to be dominant in the world of computing. Of course even had he not done soe,we would have fouled it up, just as we did with our dominance of jet aircraft design and production, ships, cameras, cars and all manner of heavy engineering.

David Garfield, London, UK

I agree with William Rees-Mogg's sentiments entirely but he is wrong about the Forth Bridge. It was the first Tay Bridge which collapsed in a storm with a train on it at the time. Lessons were learnt from the failure of design and site supervision and the Forth Bridge was the result- still working perfectly.

Bernard Doyle, Bromsgrove, UK

An Englishman did invent the computer, though Charles Babbage's machine was an all mechanical counting machine. It took another Englishman, the mathematician Alan Turing, to develop the foundations of modern computing in his work developing the electro-mechanical code breaking computers at Bletchley Park during World War 2.

Bob H, Glasgow, UK

Curious that the railways always get slagged off but St Pancras International opened without a hitch.

Phil Payne, Sheffield,

If you want a British success story just look at the North Sea Oil and Gas development which built and operated complexed structures in an extremely harsh enviroment many miles from land. Its a pitty that Mrs Thatcher used the oil revenues to finance unemployment but thats another story.

Over the last 20 years I have passed through LHR on average 6 times a year without problems and certainly no lost baggage, unlike CDG in France where I have experienced endless delays and lost bagage.

Anthony J, Alton , Uk

Brad Jensen,

"When something is free, it is far more expensive than when individuals pay for it. The UK spends more per patient on healthcare than the USA - and gets far less."

I'm afraid you are totally wrong. OECD statistics: around 13% of GDP in the US, and just around 8 in the UK. And the per capita expenditure on health in the US is twice as high as in most European countries. The fat that it is a publicly organised system actually makes health care considerable cheaper in Europe than in the US.

peter, birmingham,

A big problem is the separation of reward and risk. The people who want these big projects get paid regardless of success but taxpayers bear the burden when things go pear shaped. Witness the Olympic Games budget spiralling, sub-prime mortgage bailout and government information technology projects. In Japan, managers who fail resign and sometimes commit suicide and in China, some are even executed. If Willie Walsh or Seb Coe faced such consequences they would work much harder to ensure success.

john, London, UK

Tay Bridge, Forth Bridge, whatever, it's somewhere north of Watford.

He's right about Heathrow, though. For years, if we can't travel directly from a local airport, we go via Amsterdam or Paris. Why take the risk of travelling through Thiefrow?

Frank Upton, Solihull,

The inability of the British to manage large programmes comes as no surprise to those of us who have worked over many decades with international engineering and hi-tech Companies. Where are the top engineering schools, such as exist in France with SupAero or SupElec? Where are the competent managers of complex projects? Most UK companies, unwilling or unable to plan ahead and develop their own engineering and planning skills, scramble around desperately to acquire them only when they feel they absolutely must, and then are surprised by the chaos that ensues. It's asking a lot, but maybe the British could learn just a little from looking at the way projects are run abroad, in Germany and in France for instance.

Alan Depauw, Verrières-le-Buisson, France

London will certainly be ready in time to host the 2021 Olympics.

Joseph Bruno, London,

It is elementary to have a trial run, there was ample time to find out if people could find their way to there staitons, that parking spaces were allocated so that people knew how to get to work and how long. That security key cards worked etc. etc.
Something will always go wrong with a new project but this total chaos is reminiscent of Gallipoli, at least no one died!
By the way Mr Mogg the Millenium dome was commissioned by the previous Tory government. The mistake of Blair's govt was to continue with it.

plato, ely, uk

Dear Brad, you've been listening to lies from Rudi Giuliani or someone like that. The US health care 'system' is by far the most expensive in the world, and probably the worst in the developed world judging by overall standards of public health in different countries.

Adam, Lancaster,

I wonder how many people realise that in the case of the computer the third Englishman who fouled it up was Winston Churchill.
His decision to break up the enigma machines and keep the information gained secret set the scene for the end of computing in this country. The ability to use lead gained was confined to those working on the American end of the project. His famous quote that engineers should be on tap not on top was a symptom of an attitude by British politicians that further enhanced our slide into oblivion.

D Cage, Highworth, Wilts UK

After 10 years of living overseas and many, many sub-average Heathrow experiences, we are now in the glorious position of being able to bypass it altogether. We travel Emirates and go to Birmingham instead. From landing to exiting the airport, it takes about 40 minutes. What a difference!

Morgan, Sydney,

T5 looks familiar. Down Under, our technical high schools were trashed, ironically, by Labor state governments and the dual university-technical tertiary arrangement was trashed by federal Labor. Results: (i) 16 and 17 year old boys who would have once learnt a trade now get essays on how a nail feels as it is being hammered into the wood; (ii) a massive shortage of tradesmen; (iii) higher level training no longer takes place - would be teachers in uni courses, for example, don’t actually (a) learn much about their teaching subjects, and (b) don’t actually get any training in how to teach; there’s similar complaints about some medical courses; (iv) lots of wankers (you use the term ‘tossers’, I believe) with rubbish degrees in Indigenous Perspectives on the Binomial Theorem and Wimmyns Approaches to the Periodic Table who can’t actually do anything except draw taxpayer-funded salaries in, of course, so called universities. Result: bulk ignorance and chaos beautifully spun.

Leonard Colquhoun, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia

Sorry ,am I missing something? Heathrow has been dreadful for years and I have twice experienced this. I use Stanstead mostly and have always been captivated by its superb architecture but ,also, I have found it to be efficiently run and a relatively pleasant travel experience.

alan burden, mijas pueblo, España

When something is free, it is far more expensive than when individuals pay for it. The UK spends more per patient on healthcare than the USA - and gets far less.

Brad Jensen, Tulsa/OK, Usa/Oklahoma

excellent !!satirize it with a funny tone, i love your style

cty, zhejiang, china

Charles Babbage invented the computer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage

But the Internet was invented by DARPA in the US.

It was the World Wide Web that was invented by Englishman Tim Berners-Lee, whilst working at CERN.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee

Marcus, England,

Excellent, article But it was the Tay bridge, not the Forth bridge that fell

Alex, Hereford,

And who were the Englishmen who invented the Internet and the computer?

M. Reid, Canberra,

About the only value for my tax money I can see, about the only silver lining on the loss of our everyday sporting facilities to pay for the olympics, is the potential amusement at watching a colossal disaster unfold. If not for that possibility the whole thing would be a massive bore.

Jamie, Bolton, UK