to think these may be the biggest wastes of human time and money in our life times?

[futuristic1]

I've restricted my thoughts to wastes of British time and money, and these are just the first two I could think of...

£11billion - Smart Meters - on R4 earlier - will take at least 5 years longer than predicted to fit. Will only save, at most, (if anything), half of what they cost consumers to install and don't work now and may never work when people change suppliers.
£11 billion pound waste of human time and money that could be better invested elsewhere.

£50billion ++ Brexit

The way things are neither leavers or remainers will end up happy with the 'deal' so instead of at least 52% population being happy, the outcome will be that the winning 52% will be unhappy as will the losing 48%.
So Brexit as it stands, makes everybody unhappy.
Fair enough, you can't make all of the people happy all of the time, but is making all of the people unhappy all of the time the best alternative?
Surely not?

Why not stay in, save £50bn ++ and settle for 48% of the people being happy?

What other 'grand projects' is the British population currently engaged in that you feel history will judge to have been a waste of time and money?

And you don't even need a smart meter if you want to avoid estimated bills - I submit a reading on the last day (or so) of the month and take a photo of the meter to back it up if they ever queried it. Takes all of two minutes and I've never had an estimated bill.

We tried to get a smart meter fitted after Scottish Power badgered and badgered and badgered us. We finally let them in, only for them to discover that we don't have a mobile phone signal where it would need to be connected to.

The fitter said he's been telling the bosses since the whole shebang started that rural areas just don't work the same way as towns and cities..we were the tenth customer he'd seen that day and the tenth who didn't have the signal they needed. He was well and truly cheesed off about it all.

Oh well, he said, maybe next year, when they make them to work with wifi broadband, you can get one fitted.

Guess what we don't have?

Rural living and technology aren't always compatible.

Agree absolutely with you OP. Two of the most wasteful things to happen to this country.

I don't have a smart meter. I am not going to have a smart meter.

My utility company rang me several times about it, wrote several letters and eventually took me off the list.

It will make absolutely no difference to my electricity use or how high I set my central heating so why would I want one.

Whatever anyone say. No one can be made to have one installed.

And I voted to stay in the EU, so to me the whole referendum and subsequent mess is just a costly disaster.

Smart meters still aren't compulsory, despite what the fuel companies imply in their letters. I don't want to be an "early adopter" of a technology that isn't under my control. So the gas company have just fitted a new non-smart meter. And the electricity company may have given up.

We're PAYG meter so don't need a bloody smart meter. Also rural and I'd be super surprised if they can get a signal from where that gas meter is.

I agree with HS2. So much money wasted, people's home bulldozed, countryside dug up and for what?

I remember asking for a smart meter when they first came out. I was told I couldn't have one as I was on the wrong tariff. Eight years later I change suppliers every 12-18 months. I've frequently ended up with the supplier I was with 12 months ago, so I'm not even their bloody customer, phoning me up and asking if I want a smart meter.

ID cards are a thing. They just put them on non-EU immigrants as biometric residence permits instead so few would care.

They do love their new projects. I would like if they could do as many other countries do and make a basic universal non-driver ID other than expensive passports, but creating new expensive ones with the new tech to test out seems their focus on many of these things.

And Brexit, it's just a mess which is not surprising as no one had any real plans or even an outline of a plan which should really be in place before presenting them for others to make a decision on.

Trident and its replacement.... £200 billion for a weapons system we will never ever use without the green light from the Americans and by then it ll all be over for all of us, there is no scenario where we would use nuclear weapons independently or even threaten their use.

Agree totally on Brexit & Smart meters.

PFI gave us umpteen new Hospitals that we d never have got otherwise, its a good system BUT the rewards to the private sector were always far too great & need renegotiating.

after seeing on watchdog that theyre bodging alot of smart meters because of the time pressure i think i'll wait

dont want my house setting on fire just yet thanks

I see your Garden Bridge, your Smart Meters and I raise you our very own Northern Ireland RHI scheme.

A renewable heat incentive which paid out £1.60 for £1 fuel burnt. ie. burn more get paid more. These days better known as the RHI scandal.

RHI scandal: RHI 'cash for ash' scandal to cost NI taxpayers £490m. The cost of the botched renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme to the Northern Ireland taxpayer will be £490m

Smart Meters in particular, are a huge waste of money because they literally can't/don't save anybody any money. All they do is telling what's consuming electricity and if you don't want to use that electricity you can switch the piece of kit off.

Just like you could before you had the smart meter. Is it news to people that the way to save money on gas and electric is to use less of them? Really?

If people really wanted them then, they should have bought them voluntarily at cost - without any expense for anyone else - I suspect there would have been zero take-up then.
Instead everyone who doesn't have a meter pays for everyone who does have a meter and but nobody saves any money at all that they couldn't have saved without a smart meter.

As for Brexit, I'm a remainer so it's all shit for me anyway but I've not met a Leaver yet who's happy with the way Brexit is going, so it's shit for them too, shit all round...

Shit on it... as they say!

Farage paraphrased, said recently on LBC, something like "I never promised that it would be a beneficial thing [for UK] to leave [the EU]"

2015: Farage tweeted that the UK would "thrive" outside the EU.

Smart meters are great. Brexit not so much. Governments will always find shit to waste money on, think Iraq for starters.

The cost of the botched renewable heat incentive (RHI) scheme to the Northern Ireland taxpayer will be £490m

See that's a ridiculous waste but even that seems cheap compared to HS2.

The building of HS2 is set to cost £403m a mile, yes you read that correctly per MILE!!

HS2 - the sooner that fucks off to the far side of fuck the better

Smart meters - DH works for an energy company, he's spent lots of work time doing the analysis and monitoring side of the installation programme... he won't have one of the current generation ones (and they won't fit in our house apparently with the layout of the meters anyway).

Local to us - the AWPR - at least 20 years too late and when our totally inept council can’t employ enough teachers to cover all the kids in state schools, it’s a bloody joke. The fact that it has taken a local businessman to put in a new (and desperately needed) multi-storey carpark at our hospital because neither the NHS nor the council would pay for it says a hell of a lot.

Hs2. Honestly it's just to benefit London. The northern cities would much rather be better connected between each other then have an hour taken of a journeybthats already prettybwuick.

Also our council lost 1 million designed to 're do a horrible roundabout that all cars have to use to go anywhere. I wonder where that 1 million went? Maybe on the new council offices cough cough

when they make them to work with wifi broadband

Which presumably will mean we have to put our wifi password into the meter? The meter which is most likely to be in a cupboard on the outside of our house?

Not a hope in hell.

Metro Bud in Bristol! Shocking waste of tax payers money. Road built that will never be used as no bus service wants to take up the routes they have built.

Nice, expat. People like you are the reason I hate my job. I get that people don’t want smart meters but is there really any need to behave like such a twat to the poor fucker just doing their job?

My concern with the HS2 is in the Austerity cuts which I can only imagine Brexit will bring it will be abandoned.

The issue with RHI is it is suggested it all went in to the pockets of the cronies connected to the biggest political party here. Allegedly

Of course, the Smart Meters debacle is just a cover for the introduction of Peak-Time-Pricing.

Sold to me as a great thing for my benefit, "look Futuristic, this wonderful smart meter will enable you to save money by using your kettle less - because you didn't know that using your kettle cost you money, did you? - well now you do - and all for a measley £11billion spread over everybody's bills for evermore. There's nothing in it for us - it's a charitable gesture for you Futuristic - to help you."

Once the roll out is done (if ever, I'm hoping Sarah and John Conner and the resistance will Terminate the machines) SSE will phone me up and go - "guess what Futuristic, we've been studying all the data on your usage that we've been collecting from your smart meter - you mean you didn't know we were doing that? Sheesh! That's the whole point, didn't you know?"

"You'll never believe it, but it turns out everybody's using electricity between 8am and 8pm and sometimes we run a bit short of power and have to buy in stuff from abroad. We could build more power stations but that costs a lot of money and guess what, that would mean less profits for us so we've decided we're going to have to discourage people from using electricity between 8am and 8pm."

"And you know what the best way to do that is? That's right - to put the prices up!! And the great thing about smart meters is they enable minute by minute billing Yayyyyyyyy!!!"

"What's that you say Futiristic? All of your usage is between 8am and *pm? Gee, that's tough. Well you could boil your kettle and drink your tea overnight - we'll make it cheaper for you to watch TV at 2am or have a bath at 4am - well, not cheaper - just the same price as it was before."

bing that says it all for me-you dh knows exactly how bad they are