Aha, so that's why John Hutton resigned ...

From The Times:

John Hutton, the former Business Secretary who was the architect of Britain’s plans to build a series of nuclear power stations, is in talks with EDF about joining the group as a senior adviser, The Times has learnt.

I had developed a sort of residual respect for John Hutton as the least-bad of a terrible bunch, but it now turns out he's a trougher like the rest of them. Reading on ...

EDF Energy set up a Stakeholder Advisory Panel in 2006. A spokesman said that its role was to allow the company’s senior management “to draw on the experience of eminent and diverse senior advisers outside of EDF Energy to discuss key strategic issues and their impact on our business”. Other members of the panel are Will Hutton, Diane Coyle, John Roberts and Simon Robertson.

So they're getting their propaganda team in place.

Will Hutton is currently 'Chief Executive of the Work Foundation', which is a Quango From Hell, see footnote here.

Diane Coyle's Wiki Page says she's "a freelance economist, and a former advisor to the UK Treasury. She is a member of the UK Competition Commission, and a member of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

I can't track down anything on John Roberts, but Simon Robertson's background is even murkier:

THE Eden Project has been criticised by environmentalists over its links with French nuclear energy giant EDF and its UK subsidiary EDF Energy.

The Cornish environmental attraction supported EDF Energy's Green Britain Day, launched yesterday by athletes including Olympian Victoria Pendleton and Paralympian Eleanor Simmonds, which urges people to reduce their carbon footprint...

Two of Eden's trustees, Sir John Rose and Simon Robertson, are senior figures within Rolls-Royce, a firm known to be keen on nuclear development in the UK.

Picking losers

The original Picking Losers 'blog seems to have gone to sleep, but there are two articles in today's FT that bring this all back to life.

In the first, the nuclear industry is calling for hidden subsidies (cut price access to waste storage facilities) and in t'other the games industry is calling for tax breaks to prevent programmers relocating to Canada (where they get "30 to 40 per cent of their wage bill refunded ... while employees are offered income tax holidays for up to five years").

Call me old-fashioned, but I am happy to pay market value for my electricity, however generated, and I don't buy games anyway. But I am buggered if I, as a taxpayer, should subsidise a French state-owned enterprise or other people's hobbies.