British Boondoggles
1/. The "Independent" British Nuclear deterrant.
2/. The R101
3/. The Brabazon
4/. The invasion and occupation of Afghanisatn
5/. Government support for British Leyland
6/. PFI (see earlier post)
7/ The European Union
8/ The East African groundnut scheme
9/. The National Health Service
10/. Any Government judicial enquiry into the misuse of public funds
Something about the Aral Sea. They are going to try and restore it. So far the Kazakhstan government has built the Kokaral dam in the north. Sadly the Uzbeks don't seem to care about doing anything in the south so far. Check out the first video about halfway through.
How about the Sergeant York anti-aircraft system? The military spent a fortune on it only to scrap it almost immediately. Another good candidate is the B-1 bomber. It was supposed to be stopgap plane between the B52 and the Stealth bombers. However, by the time they got most of its problems worked out, the Stealth was almost ready for deployment. The Carter Administration cancelled the B1 program, but the Reagan Administration decided to continue its development.
From what I gather about the B1B Lancer they usually end up as a long black scorch mark on the ground when they perform as they were intended, flying low using the terrain as cover. Maybe the few we have are better today but I never heard about them solving the problems.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. The idea of a geological waste repository is not a bad one - although I'm not equipped to judge the arguments about Yucca specifically - but they spent more than $9 billion just studying the site, only to decide they aren't even going to finish the evaluation. I really want to know how they managed to spend that much money just studying a mountain...
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