Remember when Britain could build stuff?

Heathrow. The whole British story is there. Reading up around that debacle last week, I came across the eye-watering — and I think true — claim that, over the course of the second world war, Britain built 444 airfields. Four hundred and forty four. Although not all in the United Kingdom, probably. Some will have been in far-off lands, where Johnny Foreigner could be bought off in exchange for a pretty goat, or just shouted at, at gunpoint, until he went away. Hundreds, though, will have been here, on British soil — where it has now taken us over half an actual century to not quite build a new runway at Heathrow. 444. This is what we use to be able to do.

So also trains. Crossrail is finally happening, with holes dug and buildings torn down and built again; they can’t cancel it now. All 73 miles of it, largely underground, will be with us by 2019, a mere six decades since somebody first thought of it, and only four since they came up with the name.