I've often read about all kinds of interesting things regarding ideas that seemed good on paper but worked really bad in practice. I can't mention any of the political ones on this forum, as there's rules against this (and maybe it's not a bad idea).
However, there are some ideas that aren't exactly political, but ideas that looked good on paper but really worked out disastrously. I'm sure many of you have quite a number that you can add to this thread, which can be aviation or non-aviation themed.
Up Concrete Creak Without a Paddle
This was a mining giant that accidentally created gaping cracks in a conservation area in Australia while mining for coal. I've been told that when you make a mistake, it's important to clean-up after it. To their credit, they did.
Their proposal included pouring grout into the cracks to seal them up. As a liquid it flows into the cracks and hardens -- it couldn't be simpler, and definitely makes a degree of sense. Unfortunately, there was one detail they failed to look into: How deep the cracks go, and how sturdy the ground is. If they checked this out at all, they didn't do a very good job.
The execution was straight-foward: They got out several cement trucks and unloaded almost 400 million pounds of cement into the cracks. Unfortunately it didn't work so good because the cracks were through and through. They had cement flowing out the other end of the cracks, and that flowed right into a creek.
Since cement is wet and hardens when dry, you'd think that it wouldn't dry all that easy in the middle of a lake -- I wouldn't have though so -- but it wouldn't be the first time that you or me would be wrong. Whatever the creek was called before, it apparently was known as the concrete-creek (not to be confused with the concrete lake -- which is Lake Karachay) in 2013.
Last I heard they were proposing to jack-hammer the concrete away. Part of me thinks, as before, that if you make a mess, you should clean up after yourself; the other part thinks -- with all the screw-ups they did so far -- maybe they should call it quits and just go home.