18 October, 2010

Your money in their hands

You will scarcely believe this, but it is true.


All the Satellite Navigation we have at the moment is courtesy of America. The US developed the GPS system which handles everything from the accurate positioning of shipping to getting you home from the restaurant on Friday night. It is given away free, but a more sophisticated system exists which can pinpoint you down to your little toenail; it is used for military purposes.

Some time ago the European Union decided it must have its own GPS, and it is called Galileo. Incidentally it is one of the most disturbing features of the EU recently that it feels it must copy America: President Rumpy goes everywhere in an Obama style motorcade, and we are spending €280 million on a White House style palace for him.

Anyway, Galileo, as you can imagine with a project run by bureaucrats who have never had any connection with the outside world, is running 10 years late and at a cost of €22 billion against its original budget of €2.6 billion. According to Open Europe, ‘The German government has admitted that "All in all, it is assumed, based on the currently available estimates, that the operating costs will exceed direct revenues, even in the long term."’

The project has been abandoned by industry, which sees no future in it, and abandoned by its Chinese partners, who have set up their own system, on the wavelengths which Galileo wanted to use, so Europe will now have to ask China’s permission to establish Galileo. Russia, India and Japan have also set up their own systems.

In fact the only people who want this are the Eurocrats: self-aggrandising functionaries who see no limit to the amount of your money they can spend.

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