Keynesian economics says governments should spend their way out of trouble. The trouble is, however, that governments spend badly. State spending may take cash from the public and return it to the public through projects but there is little tangible to show for it at the end: usually it would have been better not to tax the people or borrow from them to start with.

From the people who brought us the Dome, the latest grand project to hit the rocks is the £13bn scheme to centralise NHS patient records electronically. The costs have escalated and the project is four years behind schedule and slipping further. Now Fujitsu has joined Accenture in walking out, reckoning it has nothing to gain from losing more money on the contract.

At least the Japanese supplier is sharing in the state’s losses - but not to the extent that the state’s bill has soared.

It is too late to turn back on the NHS plan but the lesson from fiascos like this is not to undertake grand projects in the current economic climate. And the most worrying project currently on the drawing board is probably the 2012 Olympics, already costing three times the original budget and shortly to use the contingency fund to top up the sums already being provided by Lottery funding and the levy on London taxpayers.

The Olympics cannot be four years late, so the option is to throw more money at the plan, to fail to meet the objectives - or to start scaling back the scheme now and impose rigorous cost controls.

The problem with the NHS computerisation and the Olympics is that they were planned in boom times but will have to be paid for when we can’t afford them. The prime minister has probably got it about right, therefore, to be talking now about extra nuclear power stations.

Such projects are expensive, but talk is cheap. By the time building starts, Gordon Brown will almost certainly be out of office and the economy may again be recovering. And hopefully it will be the private sector, not the state, which undertakes this huge investment.

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