The US was first to deploy large-scale electrification, and settled on 110 V @ 50 Hz. Everyone who wasn't buying their equipment from the US saw some flaws and

The US was first to deploy large-scale electrification, and settled on 110 V @ 50 Hz. Everyone who wasn't buying their equipment from the US saw some flaws and went for 230 +- 10 V @ 60 Hz. First movers often end up committing to a suboptimal first draft version. The UK has a lot of these. The railways are notoriously expensive and inadequate because they're over a century old, and we're designed for a different society with different traffic patterns. The housing stock wasn't affected that much but The War, and many of the larger older houses were built with the assumption that they're would be servants living there too. Heavy industry was reliant on a lot of manual labour, and didn't mechanise when the opportunity arose. The biggest problem is that democracy arose in the age of the humanities, when the sciences were idle curiosities for eccentrics. The revolutions in England - which negatively affected the rest of the archipelago - happened in the seventeenth century, too early for an urban middle class to have its say. The political establishment still has too many landowners - too much power is feels by the descendents of warlords. Most of the power is held by former members of Oxbridge debating societies, who've never had to do anything than throw ideas about. The Civil Service is run by a core of 'generalists' with humanities degrees, with subordinate groups of 'specialists' who can never rise to the top. The same problem afflicts business: the country is run by people who are barely competent in arithmetic. US politicians are accused of insider trading and gerrymandering; British politicians don't have the skills needed to commit these crimes. Boris Johnson needed epidemiologists to explain percentages to him; the water companies have debts that are almost equal to the dividends they've paid out since privatisation. The solution is not political, but rather economic. Many of these businesses can be undercut by the use of industry knowledge. Software startups are cheap to run if the founders have a deep understanding of the problem, can build much of the solution themselves, and know who their customers are. In manufacturing, the Midlands and the North have long histories and community cultures surrounding these industries, and are desperate for someone to bring the factories back. Once technical people have money, the politicians can be bought. They're surprisingly cheap. In a mathematical sense, the problem is solved. We just need to stop waiting for the lawyers and classical philologists to do technical work, and do it ourselves. We're not getting value out of our elites, so we should get better ones.