I REFER to the contributions from Lyndsey Ward, Dr Ken Brown and Neil
Arthur (Letters, July 3)on the pressing issues of energy choices for
Scotland and who is making them.
There will be many who agree with the opinion attributed to Sir William
Lithgow that “The hallmark of the British administrative class is
technological illiteracy” and indeed Sir Francis Tombs,the former chairman
of the South of Scotland Electricity Board and later of the state-owned
Electricity Council for England and Wales prior to privatisation comments
in his 2011 book, Power Politics, that “the growing insecurity in
electricity supply , the head-long expenditure on renewable energy and the
necessarily incomplete examination of the climate change threat and its
possible mitigation all stem from a lack of competence in understanding the
assumptions on which decisions have been,and are, reached.The sheer
incompetence of a procession of politicians in government and opposition
renders the need for an informed analysis of the most major decisions in
the energy and environmental fields.”
This from a chartered electrical engineer who understood the engineering
science of electrical power systems, who knew all of the leading
politicians closely during his 50 years in industry, and who went on to
save a collapsing Rolls Royce.
Following privatisation only the Government of the day is responsible for
keeping the lights on, not the power companies, and the politicians have
put themselves behind the wheel of a vehicle they do not know how to control.
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, “they don’t know what they don’t know”.
DB Watson,
Saviskaill, Langdales Avenue, Cumbernauld.
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