The weekend papers report on two major schemes halted by people protest and Barratt's David Pretty fondly recalls Mrs Thatchers' fish paste sandwiches.

The Sunday Times reports trouble for contractors at both ends of the country this weekend: at a publicly funded bridge over the Clyde in Scotland and a development of holiday homes in Cornwall.

Work to build the span linking Finnieston and Govan has been delayed for a year after a legal protest by charity worker William Smith, which claimed it would prevent vital dredging in the area, and could cause flooding. With steel prices rising 25% in the interim, the one-man campaign has added £6 million to the cost of the bridge.

Meanwhile in Cornwall, The Sunday Times reports that work on The Beach, the south-west’s largest ever development of holiday homes, has ground to a halt after conflicts with local residents and worries over planning permission led developers Ampersand to pause to “rethink” the Carlyon Bay scheme. Ampersand told the Sunday Times that it had returned deposits to buyers, with interest.

Sunday’s Observer looks at the broader picture, and asks if US contractors, especially Halliburton and Bechtel are “overpaid, oversized and over here?” After cataloguing Halliburton’s exploits in Iraq, the Observer analyses the involvement of subsidiary KBR in a £3 billion ship-building contract, and subsequent falling out with BAE.

It seems that British contractors are more than a little uneasy about the American heavyweights muscling in on their patch. The story is also reported in the Sunday Telegraph, and the Independent on Sunday, which reports that the MoD has “watered down” KBR’s role so as to placate BAE.

The Mail on Sunday interviews David Pretty chief executive of Barratt Homes, to find out his prognosis of the current housing situation, and discovers that he knows exactly how many homes were built in 1925, and that Mrs Thatcher makes very good fish-paste sandwiches.