Here's an astonishing essay, looking at the shambles DECC has made of smart-meter rollout.
Last week the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change announced that the UK’s smart metering deployment was facing another 12 months delay. That’s 18 months after they announced that the UK’s smart metering deployment was facing another 12 months’ delay. This is not all bad news. It means that the growing population of consultants within DECC can look forward to what is fast becoming a never-ending gravy train of consultancy work, public consultations and project reviews.
There are also some astonishing revelations about DECC's attempts to hide its incompetence and this rather juicy ending:
It’s all part of the Alice in Wonderland world that is our current energy policy, which is coming to resemble Swift’s satire of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. That’s probably the only renewable energy policy that DECC has not tried funding, but now I’ve brought it to their attention, they might. From feed-in-tariffs to keep the voters happy to offshore windmills that are about as effective as treadmills for mermaids, we have a department that is out of control and prepared to squander taxpayers’ money on anything that can be claimed to save energy, ministerial face, the climate or the world.
And you can count the MPs who give a stuff on the fingers of one hand.
(Coincidentally, the Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee are taking evidence on smart meters, right now).