THE vanity of politicians to waste billions on having a European version of the American GPS could be a disaster for boat owners, car direction finders and all other non military users of GPS.

As the Americans may say, if you want your own system, we will restrict ours back to military use only.

As with any EU project, it will be over budget, have years of problems and system failures. That unlike the American system may not be free.

How many boat owners and other GPS users would want to junk all their existing electronics to switch to Galieo?

This expensive vanity project must be aborted now.

PHILIP PEARCE-SMITH MBE, Commodore Venturers Search and Rescue.