Boris Johnson's Scotland-Ireland bridge is a distraction from real problems

A bonkers scheme to build a road bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland has yet again grabbed attention after Downing Street said it is seriously looking into the proposal. This serious look would need to account for bridge supports the same height as the Eiffel Tower, 1000ft deep water, extreme bad weather and a trench full of a million tonnes of World War II explosives.

"There is a proper piece of work being carried out into the idea," a spokesman said. "It is reporting into No 10, but obviously we will take advice from wherever it is needed."

Let me introduce you to George C Parker, he has some existing bridges you could buy at half the price.

READ MORE: Plan for Boris Bridge or tunnel linking Scotland and N Ireland rubbished by opponents

In Marge vs. the Monorail a shyster comes to Springfield hawking a faulty monorail that will cost $3 million and nearly destroy the town. Marge, our moral centre, wants to invest the money in Springfield's crumbling roads but conman Lyle Lanley bewitches the town's mayor with The Monorail Song – "What'd I say? Monorail! What's it called? Monorail!" – and off they go, the pointless, expensive white elephant is installed.

The Monorail Song is loosely based on The Music Man's song Ya Got Trouble. It's too uncanny to be coincidence. We got trouble, it's name is Boris Johnson.

Lyle Lanley's real life counterpart must have been leading a song-and-dance routine around No.10, leaving Boris Johnson bewitched at all he might spend his budget on.

Marge, on saving the town from the Monorail, has only short relief. Her neighbours go on to invest in an escalator to nowhere, a 50ft magnifying glass and a skyscraper made from ice lolly sticks.

Our Prime Minister, too, has exceptional form for unrealistic and grandiose projects.

Have we forgotten Boris Island? The six-runway London Britannia Airport was mooted to be built on an artificial island in the River Thames at a cost of £47.3 billion. Where is it now? Fortunately forgotten, unlike the ludicrous waste of money that is the cable car across the River Thames in east London linking Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks.

Another Boris brainchild, this was supposed to be a new commuter route yet the £60 million project attracted just four regular users.

Obsessed with a grandiose transport plan - the little boy spoiled with a vintage Hornby rail set has never grown up - Johnson's last bridge dream was a link over the Channel to connect Britain and France. He put this idea to French president Emmanuel Macron while he was Foreign Secretary.

"I agree. Let's do it," Mr Macron reportedly replied, presumably before phoning Angela Merkel to laugh about what those crazy Brits are up to now.

The UK Chamber of Shipping was more blunt. "Building a huge concrete structure in the middle of the world’s busiest shipping lane might come with some challenges," a spokesman said.

And on the topic of bridges we cannot overlook the London Garden Bridge, a vanity project of such bloated proportions that in any normal year would have been a nationwide scandal and seen its champion Joanna Lumley cancelled. This profligate waste of tax payers' money saw £43m spaffed, as the Prime Minister himself would say, right up a wall.

Here we have one of the really troubling elements of the Bridge Dream That Will Not Die. A bridge from Portpatrick to Larne would be a humiliating waste of money. We would be quicker, cheaper and more realistic to look at plans to harness chariots to Kelpies to whizz us back and forth across the Irish Sea.

Who will stop Johnson's plans in their tracks before millions has been spent on feasibility studies? With such a potentially long project a contractor with the means could take it on, make money from it and then cancel the work when it becomes too expensive.

There always has to be one naysayer who's down on investment in the arts or in cultural projects while austerity grinds on.

Or dour folk who are very much into the notion that we cannot spend money hosting an event such as, say, COP 26 while the nation still has foodbanks, as if ambition and innovation must be parked until poverty is entirely eradicated from modern Britain.

It's short sighted to insist that investment ends in straightened times. We should be a country capable of managing more than one thing at once.

READ MORE: Prime Minister brands idea of 'Boris bridge' between Scotland and Northern Ireland 'very interesting'

This is not that sort of grumble.

It is quite one thing to want to invest in infrastructure - could we crack on with a rail link to Glasgow Airport? Focus on a decision on HS2 maybe - and quite another to fanny about with pie in the sky transport plans designed to do nothing more than create diverting headlines.

That's another troubling element. While we busy ourselves reacting in horror to this sheer preposterousness, what are we missing? There is no doubt Mr Johnson loves a bold transport plan, particularly when he might name the resulting infrastructure after himself. But will we really be taken in by such blatant distraction? "What'd I say? Boris Bridge! What's it called? Boris Bridge!"

The opposition needs to stand up to this nonsense or soon there will be enough dead cats to create a causeway.