Despite the majority of the British public being opposed to a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C, according to various surveys, Theresa May has approved the £18bn project.

The arguments against it are well understood – cost, safety and national security. On the first point, George Osborne, the former chancellor, was on the radio supporting the project last week, claiming that the costs would be borne by French group EDF and its Chinese partner CGN.

That is disingenuous at best, misleading at worst. EDF and CGN expect to make a profit from their investment and the National Audit Office has said the project could cost taxpayers almost £30bn in subsidies to these companies.

Other factors May had to consider when making a final call about whether to go ahead with Hinkley included the diplomatic repercussions of scrapping a project that was significant to France and China. The shadow of Brexit also hung over the decision: this is not a time to be damaging relationships with two key trading partnerships.

EDF and CGN’s reputations were on the line. EDF has lost its finance director and is at war with its trade unions because of the project. China – a country not renowned for taking disappointment well – has said the opportunity to invest in UK nuclear will allow it to advertise its technological expertise to the world.

As a result, May faced a decision akin to not inviting your boss to your wedding. It is your day, you are more than entitled to make that decision and you probably shouldn’t have invited them in the first place: but snubbing them is not going to be positive for your career prospects.

The government was not overwhelmed by alternatives either. Yes, Rolls-Royce could build smaller nuclear reactors around the country and yes, other forms of renewable energy could help. But Hinkley is scheduled to start producing electricity by 2025 and deliver 7% of the UK’s energy needs. Could the other options really deliver that much electricity in the same time frame?

One of the criticisms of Hinkley is that it is an answer to an old question, with energy requirements and technology evolving all the time. Well, yes: that is partly because the project was first dreamt up 10 years ago – and to block construction now would eradicate a decade of work.

Taking all this into account, it looks like May and her government have played the percentages. They may not have been excited about the idea of Hinkley, but the cons of scrapping it at this stage probably outweigh the pros.

However, Britain’s energy strategy beyond Hinkley is another matter. It was surprising that alongside the government’s announcement that the nuclear power plant would go ahead there were suggestions emanating from Whitehall and Beijing that similar projects in Bradwell, Essex, and Sizewell, Suffolk, were also on track.

The Bradwell B project is particularly noteworthy because CGN will design the reactor and own two-thirds of it. The Chinese company plans to submit its design for Bradwell within weeks.

May and her government must seriously think about whether they want more nuclear power stations popping up around the country. While the decision on whether to proceed with Hinkley became wrapped up with diplomatic issues, Bradwell and Sizewell must only be approved if the government genuinely believes they are the best solution to Britain’s energy issues. Most experts would say they are not.

Stopping Bradwell and Sizewell would not be straightforward: one of the main reasons that CGN supported Hinkley Point was so it could develop its own power station at Bradwell. However, it is possible that the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the government could, for example, reject CGN’s design for the reactor. Or the Chinese could be offered the opportunity to invest in another high-technology project on attractive terms, such as High Speed 2.

So, while Hinkley could finally become a reality, the debate about nuclear power stations is far from over.

A good start on pay reform

Reform is coming to the world of executive pay, or so our new prime minister leads us to believe, but what form should it take? Iain Wright’s business, innovation and skills select committee promised on Friday to lift the floorboards not just on executive pay, but on corporate governance and the composition of boardrooms, including workers’ representatives. That is a very wide brief – possibly too wide to achieve consensus.

In the meantime, Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), the fund management arm of the insurance company, put forward two proposals that have the virtue of being easy to understand. First, LGIM said public companies should publish the ratio between the chief executive’s pay and that of the median employee. This idea is so sensible that it is a wonder it is still regarded as vaguely controversial.

It is true, as the critics grumble, that ratios are crudely measured and don’t tell the whole story of a company’s approach to pay. But, come on, boards of large public companies have spent 20 years bamboozling the outside world, and their shareholders, with the complexity of their pay schemes. A dose of crudity would be welcome and oblige remuneration committees to look beyond the boardroom.

Second, LGIM says directors’ annual bonuses should be capped at two times salary. This idea is more inflammatory because some remuneration committees seem to believe that executives won’t put in a decent shift unless they are chasing bonuses worth up to 500% of salary.

Such inflation has served to disguise the truth about bonuses. They have become a form of semi-guaranteed salary supplement: an executive has to mess up monumentally to get nothing. In the process, the original meaning of a bonus – a reward for exceptional performance – has been ignored. A cap at 200% would restore a degree of sanity.

LGIM’s proposals should not be regarded as full package. Much more is needed for public’s trust in business is to improve. But they are a start. Sensible boards should comply, rather than a kick up a fuss that will only invite heavy intervention by government.

Carney’s schoolboy error

Headline writers owe a debt of thanks to the schoolchildren of Coventry. More than three years after he became the governor of the Bank of England, a gentle grilling of Mark Carney at the Whitley Academy winkled out a piece of information that had eluded Fleet Street’s finest in their many interviews and profiles of him.

Asked what his nickname had been as a child in Canada, a startled Carney said it had been “carnage”, an admission that will undoubtedly come back to haunt him should the economy go awry under his stewardship.

Carnage Carney struggled to explain monetary policy without lapsing into jargon and at one stage felt he had to explain to his teenage audience that John Lennon was a member of a 1960s group called the Beatles.

Never work with children or animals, WC Fields once said. Sage advice, governor, sage advice.