Re-selling and re-packaging pre-existing projects, including ones put on ice, as some bold new initiative is practised elsewhere, too.

A prime example is President Sarkozy's announcement of a grand TGV expansion programme earlier this year: most of it was started or planned already back when Jospin was PM, but Chirac and Juppé put them on ice later.

You see this at EU level, too: for example, the so-called Main Line for Europe, Paris-Vienna-Bratislava/Budapest. Again disparate projects are touted as a single trans-European project, despite lots of gaps between high-performance fast lines.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}