White heat

The story at reference 1 seems to be that a plausible entrepreneur with a good story has extracted a good deal of money out of government. A good story about giving the UK a stake in the rare earth business, which provides vital ingredients for high technology and which is presently dominated by the Chinese. But there seems to be plenty of reasonable doubt about whether this entrepreneur can deliver. An entrepreneur who is paying himself a handsome salary in the meantime. 'Atherley, who previously raised $120mn from investors for a uranium project in Spain which was never built, will receive £275,000 a year, which can rise to £750,000 with bonuses'.

I associate first to an Australian called Greensill who charmed his way into the centre of Cameron's government, back in 2015 or so (reference 2). Second to a famous speech by Harold Wilson, back in 1963, about how he was going to bring on the white heat of technology (reference 3). His record on that front was, in the event, rather mixed: backing industry had got rather more complicated and rather more difficult than it was when all that really counted was one's ability to produce coal, coke, iron and steel. And even more complicated today.

Which is not to say that we should not try to do something. We are as exposed on rare earths with China as we are on wheat and natural gas with Russia.

References

Reference 1: Experts cast doubts over UK’s first rare earths processing site: Government launches strategy to bolster supply of critical minerals with £150mn investment in Hull facility - Harry Dempsey, Financial Times - 2022

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=heywood.

Reference 3: Harold Wilson's 'white heat of technology' speech 50 years on - Matthew Francis, Guardian - 2013. The source of the snap above.