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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