Consultants on over-bloated numbers, EDG costs £billions to the UK and Western economies. My history is in banking and property investment as well as consultancy (no, not one of those ones) where I arrange everything in the UK for my clients. Now what I can tell for a fact, is stock markets, therefore pensions, as well as the investment and savings wealth of our citizens has been deeply damaged by ESG and Diversity and Inclusion. It isn’t an opinion, it is known financial fact. It applies to every project and increases costs onto the stratosphere, for worse results and misallocation of capital. It creates perverse incentives, delivers worse results over linger timescales and rewards incompetence. Now you believe ESG is irrelevant, yes? The ‘E’ is for Environmental. Do you know the costs for HS2 just from this one letter in the bureaucracy? It is £billions in consultancy fees and unnecessary planning. In banking it has led to political NOT financially rewarding investment. The acronyms are why banks and financial institutions (especially pensions) are investing not for returns but for political ideological reasons, which is unforgivable if you care at all about people and economies growing. Let me let you into a little secret - pensions have no money in them to pay for you. They are circa 20% under where they should be due to hiring on emotionally incontinent grounds instead of for commercially astute reasons.
HS2 is a failure not because it is the wrong project (although I have my doubts about the two-track section taking so much strain with so many destinations it was to serve) but because it has been executed in the most appalling manner.
We need the best people for the job hired on merit. If they happen to be white, so be it, but this pernicious nonsense needs to be ejected from every commercial space in the Anglospheric world. I say this as France, Italy, Japan et al do not engage in this nonsense and look at the difference.