With the end of the cold war the idea was to get rid of the asset and these scientific civil servants at all cost. Rather than pay them off and shut down the laboratory, an alternative was found which was less embarrassing to the government. What we are seeing is a slow death of the place to avoid embarrassment. A transformation that will see many of the scientists leave or forced to leave and replaced by less intellectual odd jobs people. For that reason, the government agreed to get rid of this asset at any cost. It is not possible to calculate the costs because a lot of investment went to hire bean counters to float the thing and all the money was coming from one place anyway. Maybe in the final count, the government did not make much money from the sale. All of these government jobs and research costs are straight losses.
Maybe slightly off-topic but something I have wondered about for a long time: how did John Major get his Carlyle shares? Or, if we speculate that a quid pro quo for the first Gulf War might have been the real reason. how did he explain the sudden millions?
Wat,
Probably naive for my age but what precisely did taxpayers get for the sale of DERA? I'm still not sure how them selling off a public service sector translates into money in my pocket, especially when we now contract out Qinetic for defense purposes and testing.
Carlyle is a dark, dark company; the cynic in me thinks they bought off Major some time before he left office with talk of joining them after if he would advocate the privatisation of public service sectors that should never have been sold; dont get me wrong - I think the sale of some public sector companies was necessary, but as a minarchist libertarian this belief doesn't extend to aspects of public service that deal direct with security, such as DERA.
Commenting by HaloScan
