With Hinkley Point, squandermania has reached dangerous new heights | Simon Jenkins

George Osborne is signing IOUs for megastructure projects on behalf of future British taxpayers – and yet no one dares call him to account

It is the costliest white elephant in history. No power station, perhaps no building, so expensive has ever been built anywhere. In a modest meadow overlooking the Bristol Channel is to rise a structure that will outstrip in extravagance the Three Gorges dam, St Peter’s Basilica, the Taj Mahal and probably the pyramid of Cheops. It is to be built – you gues...