It's been expensive to bail out the banks, but as Lehman Brothers demonstrated, it would have been far more costly to let them go under.
Her government's tacit support for Saddam Hussein's war against Iran led to successive Gulf wars and John Major's studied neutrality in Bosnia – which later pushed Tony Blair in the opposite direction, towards costly interventionism that overstretched MoD resources.
We are now consulting regarding potential legal action and hoping against hope that the 12 libraries being thrown over to the community with the threat of volunteer-or-lose-it, will survive long enough for the future council members to realise their costly error and resume running this vital social and educational service.
The England Under-21 defender was making his first start at Goodison following his full debut at West Ham United and despite that almost costly slip, he produced a prominent, assured outing from left-back.
The government is said to have learned that breaking its 2010 election promise to have no more top-down reorganisations of the NHS was politically costly.
With work on the bridge running late, the project is viewed by some as having parallels with Hull's quest to become the UK's city of culture: a costly act of hubris.
The SNP pledge could therefore be costly, but isn't costed.
"It is easier and cheaper for partnerships to develop, compared with the costly and cumbersome takeover processes used by the private sector.
And the more horrific the circumstances, the more needful, the more precious, the more costly is the truth".
Yet their failure to take one of those chances might have been costly if Speroni had not saved bravely at Troy Deeney's feet two minutes into the first spell of extra time.
FT Alphaville makes a typically insightful point this morning – the cost of insuring Dutch debt against default has increased sharply in recent months, and is rather more costly than the German equivalent (having actually been cheaper a year ago).
