This brought an astonished response from Bernard Rimmer, general manager of construction at Slough Estates. "That's absolutely diabolical," he says. "You are never going to drive out waste without management of the supply chain."
The affair marks the beginning of a sustained crusade by Kroes to crack the power of the monopolistic barons and their political friends, just as Margaret Thatcher brought the unions and the mineworkers to their knees, after they had humiliated a previous Tory government. It took years to achieve, but nobody should underestimate the determination of a woman on a revenge mission.
There are certainly pitfalls in this new model - what happens when a for-profit philanthropic organisation makes a large loss, for example? Or if shareholders mutiny against the idea?
The economic and political stability that has reigned since Brazil's election of Lula da Silva in 2002 has allowed inflation to fall dramatically, a reduction in black marketeering and informal labour, bringing employees into the tax and benefit system, increasing national wealth and security and raising productivity. An estimated 190m people have been brought into the 'consumer market' for the first time under president da Silva.
At one boarding school, he started an affair with the headmaster's pretty 18-year-old daughter Charlotte and one night a teacher spotted him sneaking out of her room. The headmaster expelled him on the spot, but Branson wrote a suicide note, gave it to another pupil and started walking slowly towards some cliffs near the school. Teachers came running after him and the expulsion was taken back.
The pitfalls for the unwary include 'leakage' from the toll collection system (some operators insist on a maximum six-week employment term to counter fraud), onerous repair costs and replacement of collection technology, even having to re-lay the entire road because it was built for too light an axle-weight.
