Hey, Why Not? The US Isn’t Unique In Wasting Government Funds
Time: GPS is a handy technology, but in Europe it’s become a political football. That explains why a new poll found that while only 20 percent of Europeans use satellite navigation devices, 80 percent want the EU to set up an independent service to rival the U.S.-run Global Positioning System — and use taxpayer money to complete it.
This week’s release of the poll came just days ahead of key talks between EU governments on whether they should invest an extra $3.25 billion (approx. 2,6 billion Euro) in public funds to salvage a European satellite system known as Galileo. The EU has abandoned plans to share the cost with business.
Time magazine has an excellent item about a recent poll conducted in the European Union about the ill-advised, presently dead in the water self-aggrandizing Galileo “self-licking ice cream cone.” Thanks to About Electronics EU where I came across a reference this morning.
This is becoming a more ludicrous soap opera every day. It is hard to believe the number of people in technologically equal (in cases even superior) countries and hard-nosed, highly profit-oriented lands that can not see the forest for the trees.
Originally France (I suspect highly motivated by its huge, wasteful and “old AT&T-like” telecommunications giant Alcatel) supported a totally superfluous and extremely wasteful carbon-copy of the US built, implemented and funded GPS. The main reason anyone could really articulate was for the Glory of France, so far as I can see. Because even a French “beltway bandit” like Alactel knew the EU countries would balk at the stupendous and un-needed tax burden of a government-funded effort, they cooked up a completely ignorant and un-workable scheme that would have the contractors building out the system on their own money, to be recovered by “profits” from charges made to use an otherwise totally free world-wide utility.
Last months someone within the consortium of contracts finally put down the mouthpiece of the hookah they were smoking (they had to be on some kind of drugs to think they could make this work) and figured out that there were no profits waiting in the future and stopped pissing way their shareholder’s money on this nonsense.
Now, if you believe Time’s sources, a significant portion of the citizenry of the European Union is in favor of going ahead with this boondoggle using government (that means individual taxpayer’s) funds. Amazing.
There is no lack of invention necessary in this world. Even in the narrower spectrum of space and electronics. If France and the rest of the EU want to spend money to make themselves look good they could do something about Greenhouse Gasses, cancer, childhood mortality, or (Princess Diana certainly wishes they had done this) a method to inhibit drunks from driving.
Why not enjoy the GPS for what it is and enhance technology for the future instead of slavishly copying what is already an old design and enslaving their grandchildren with government debt just to be able to fly the French (oops) EU banner on it?