Assembly building "on budget"!!??

A glossy publication from the Welsh Assembly and funded by the generosity of council tax payers across Wales arrives on my desk. It boasts that the “Landmark” new Welsh Assembly building will be finished this summer “on budget”. In fact, when it was first mooted in 1998, the estimated cost of the building was £10 million. Since then AMs became used to the regular announcements that costs had gone up - except for a period when worked stopped during a dispute between the architects and the Assembly Government. When the building is finished the price tag will be around £66 million – over three times the amount which Monmouthshire Council tax payers have lost as a result of the under-funding of their council. I wonder how many will feel that their money has been well spent!