The Guardian is offering clear messages on the failed direction of UK economy this morning. I've already noted one. Here's another headline:
Of course the UK can't and won't develop graphene further. It may put a patent in an offshore tax haven regarding its use, but that's as far as UK aspiration now goes.
When tax planning to exploit a rent (and in economic terms a patent royalty is a rent) is believes to be the most important activity in the UK innovation and well-being dies with it.
That's the point we've reached.
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The reason is that the industrial entrepreneurs have to go abroad, because they won’t get funding from the rent seeking parasites in the City of London. These parasites and that it is what they are, and I won’t mince my words, want to set up “toll booths” everywhere rather than invest in real industrial development. They have either bullied or gulled a succession of politicians that the UK has had the misfortune to endure for the last 30 to 40 years.
From being the country that had a prominent industrial sector we have descended to a finance sector dominated slag heap that brings to us “Wongaland”. Buried deep in the the slag heap, there are a few gems such as Dyson, Rolls Royce etc.
It seems an entire world away from the nation that was for example able to develop Concorde with France. This project was high risk and entrepreneurial and although not a resounding commercial success resulted in the development of leading edge technology in the aviation industry.
Now we are incapable of building our own nuclear power stations and left hanging on to the apron strings of China’s industrial might.
The only way that we can start to re-balance our economy is to curb the City of London’s hegemony first.
Please excuse the rant, but every day I get more and more exasperated with the neo-liberal fools that run the UK.
That sort of rant is excused
Some other types aren’t
“Buried deep in the the slag heap, there are a few gems such as Dyson, Rolls Royce etc.”
I believe Mr Dyson’s company is based on the UK now, but didn’t he stab his workforce in the back and bugger off to another country to set up his factory there? This after his workforce in the UK had made him a household name?
As for Rolls Royce, only the aerospace arm of that company is now in UK hands.
More indication that shareholder greed holds sway as do financial instruments over the ‘real’ economy. The creative spirit is dead in this country -talk about lack of aspiration -this Government must count as one of the most ambitionless in history.
A very interesting and insightful piece by Aditya, Richard. Two years ago a colleague and I used graphene as a case study of possible future innovative activity for an OU module we wrote. On the basis of what we observed had happened to many of the discoveries by UK universities since 1990 we thought it unlikely the exploitation of graphene would come to much in the UK, but not wishing to be seen as negative we left those conclusions out. It seems we’ll have to go back and revise what we said and add a link to the Guardian article.
In terms of the wider research/innovation situation within universities in England, it may well be that for many of them even the threadbare system Aditya describes becomes untenable as the intended and unintended (but mostly easy to anticipate) consequences of the marketisation of HE that the ConDems have unleashed continues to gain pace. Add to that the news that appeared at the weekend that BISS may have to slash funding for science and technology to balance the department’s books before 2015 and the extent of the mess this government have created becomes ever clearer.
March of the maker? No way. In HE as in so many policy areas “March of the breakers” is an accurate description of this government.
I like that last idea
If it was not so sad that it’s true
Listening to the Today program this morning, it was noted during the discussion that over the last 20 or 30 years Britain has invested about 1% (or less) in infrastructure, whereas comparable developed’ countries like France, the USA, Canada etc have invested around 3-4%. In some other developing’ countries like China, that figure is more like 9-10%.
So the infrastructure investment the coalition likes to boast about is nothing more than trying to catch up with decades of neglect. And since much of this investment is going to come from China, we have the spectacle of a right wing UK government doing deals with a Communist tyranny, where human rights abuse and corruption are widespread, because apparently the UK can’t afford to do this investment itself.
But of course, we can afford to hand hundreds of billions to the banks through the Funding for Lending scheme, and subsidise mortgages through the ludicrous ‘Help to Buy’ scheme.
Meanwhile, the ‘i’ reports that doctors are warning the government that welfare cuts have led to an increase in malnutrition in the UK, and a report commissioned into this by the government itself has had its publication delayed by months. And to cap it all, the new boss of RBS has admitted the bank has failed to invest properly in IT ‘for decades’.
What a shambles. Utterly, utterly pathetic.
“decades of neglect”?
As a culture, we have completely given ourselves over to the short term, “because you’re worth it” advertisement led nonsense of the consumerist society. Nobody does anything “for the long term” any more. Unless a project will show results before the next election, no political party will support it.
We need, to use Nietzsche’s phrase, a “revaluation of all values” that puts education and self-reliance at the heart of culture, rather than passive consumerism. But that will take courage as, to butcher Oscar Wilde’s famous quotation, our long-term values have been replaced by short-term cost/benefit analysis.
Listening to start the week yesterday, Jeanette Winterson, who was brought up in an extremely religious household (which she turned against) bemoaned the replacement of the King James translation of the Bible. Until it was replaced, ordinary working men were still able to understand Shakespeare, because they had been brought up with the same language. In attempting to make things “accessible” what happened was that people were cut off from their past and their heritage, and thrust into a simple “present” when thoughts are replaced by desires and desires are the product of the advertising arena.
It really is Brave New World, with Sky and the XBox taking the role of Soma.
Roger – could you expand on what you understand by ‘self reliance’ as this phrase has been corrupted by a certain neo-liberal, distorted notion?
Self-reliance means simply being active in your own life and doing what you can do rather than being passive and accepting what comes to you. So yes, it applies to the person on benefits watching Sky TV, but it applies just as much to the rich fool who works all hours to pay for someone else to bring up their child or who funds a partner or child who regards shopping as an activity, or who knows Gstaad or Aspen better than they do the Lake District. It means people coming together to recognise that they can have a vital, fuller life without having everything provided by international companies: everyone can bring up their own children better, read more, think more, make more (beer, bread, music, art, whatever), find more time for contemplation and for questioning what they do. Ultimately, it means being mindful and not swallowing the crap that is poured into our ears and eyes constantly. That’s my definition. It has nothing to do with money, it is a state of mind.
Thank’s Roger, I’d concur with that!
“Until it [the King James translation of the Bible] was replaced, ordinary working men were still able to understand Shakespeare, because they had been brought up with the same language” I’ve never met a single ‘working man’ who understood Shakespeare – nor any women, nor any that were that familiar with the bible for that matter.
Well maybe not now but in the past the King Jame’s Bible was the only book people had in their house and it was a link to the richness of language for people who read and wrote with difficulty – we now live in an age of twitter induced illiteracy where people don’t have the time or inclination to read a sentence more than once.
“So yes, it applies to the person on benefits watching Sky TV”
Thank you for contributing to the myth of the “benefits culture”, the belief that people on benefits are so cossetted, they prefer to live on benefits rather than work.
This only really exists in the fevered imaginations of tabloid and media hacks!
It is a convenient way to divide and rule and blame those claiming what they are legitimately entitled to in benefits to take the attention away from the real malaise in our society.
Perhaps the following quote (in an article on the site @Peak prosperity’) is indicative of shareholder mentality today:
‘Stock chasing – Here’s a quote the WSJ recorded from an actual retail investor buying shares on the first day of the recent twitter IPO: I messed up not buying any Facebook so I want to get some Twitter. I’m just buying because everyone’s talking about Twitter. Not because of its product (which she admitted she didn’t use). Or its business model (which has never been profitable and unclear whether it ever will be). The purchase decision was based purely on hype.
And yet many of my clients are being encouraged by the Research & Developments Tax Credits scheme to innovate & invest. You don’t even need to patent the work that’s being done to qualify under the scheme, although some of it has been and not one of those patents is held off-shore.
So in the real world that I work in, there is plenty of innovation going on and it is being exploited here in the UK. Maybe those who rely on a few agenda driven headlines in the media for their views are getting a distorted picture? Like those who rely on distorted headlines about benefits cheats for their views on that topic.
A tax wheeze should not be confused with reality
Reality is what happens in the real world.
The world inhabited by me and my clients.
Not the safe world of wishful thinking theories that will never be put to the test.
Maybe you forget I headed an 800+ client firm once