the UK is busy trying to ensure that EU directives don't require it to give renewable energy sources priority access to the national grid: that might undermine important incumbent operators who provide jobs for the boys when they leave public service.
It is difficult to overestimate the damage that public officials can do when self-interested careerism is allowed to flourish. As a project engineer and manager with an electronics systems company in Los Angeles I was sometimes involved in projects done for export. I would build and test the system. It would be loaded into a 20' or 40' shipping container and sent to Africa or the Mid East. We would then cash the letter of credit.
On at least two occasions I am aware of, these containers, with million + dollar systems, were simply placed in the desert or the jungle to wait. The only benefit the purchaser received from the investment was the 10% "sales commission" which I presumed to have been paid to the responsible official in the destination country. I thought "Geez, they will squander a million dollars just so some clown can pocket a hundred thou!" Shocking.
But thus taught to recognize the scheme, I began to see it in play with public money on infrastructure projects in Los Angeles and to recognize the symptoms in national policies and projects. I had to conclude that so called "1st world" countries were no better off than corrupt 2nd and 3rd world countries. The only difference was that our theives had more sophisticated PR. Welcome to the 3rd world. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
I hoped that they remembered what was there in that container on the desert when Desert Storm occurred. It had been intended for an air base in a neighbor to Iraq, but the last I heard, it was still in the container. May still be. As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
