back to article Prime Ministerial exploding cheese expert to become 'entrepreneur'

Rohan Silva, the Downing Street wonk behind the fabulous soaraway Silicon Roundabout, is leaving politics to join a venture-capital firm closely associated with his biggest initiative. As the Prime Minister's 33-year-old special policy advisor, Silva branded the name Tech City on the cluster of small businesses huddled around …

COMMENTS

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  1. Naughtyhorse

    BONG!

    thats all

    1. /dev/null
      Coat

      Re: BONG!

      Don't you mean ¡Bong!?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nepotism

    I guess they are moving toward to greater levels of nepotism in the future.

  3. Alan Esworthy
    Stop

    benignity

    The most benign thing any govt can do to foster innovative entrepreneurs of any sort is to get out of their way and ignore them.

  4. The last doughnut
    Facepalm

    Funny if it wasn't so farcical

    Really just goes to show how clueless our privately-educated ruling class are.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Smell my cheese...

      Your special adviser was a hamster and your policy smells of elderberries

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    OMG ! A Dutch Conspiracy !

    So the plates of Holland, made of cheap cheese, will eventually submerge London ? Followed by a fire beneath the cheese-plate, which will then slap a speckle of raclette into the face of each and every human being on this Blue Ball Of Crap ?

    Indeed, these Hollanders are masters of High-tech witchcraft !

    Picture of a Cheese-Plate made by a geostationary satellite.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    He's about the eighth senior spad from this government to have ended up in education-related "entepreneurship". Gove must bloody love spads.

  8. Justin Stringfellow
    Trollface

    hang on...

    Wasn't Silva the villain in the most recent episode of James Bond?

    You could tell he was a nutjob, he had no HVAC in his datacenter. Mental!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Manchester?

  10. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    The God's honest truth with full Tory backing ...... Nice One, Dave. Any More, Gideon?

    Bull shit artists ..... they are everywhere, although venture capitalism is an odd bed fellow for them.

    I suppose though, that does leave a vacancy for someone who actually has entrepreneurial talent and can really make a go and a mega splash in the virtual environment.

    Whom does one directly engage with in current government to discuss terms and conditions, opportunities and zeroday vulnerabilities to exploit and export with launch and control, so as to avoid the embarrassment of another public failure in a novel market sector? Or are there hoops to jump through and lackeys to bamboozle with things way above their pay grade, which is a really odd way of trying to do great business, which is probably why business is so bad and all the best brains be elsewhere and off shore?

  11. Anomalous Cowshed

    The bollocks

    Culture of bollocks strong is, with British government, Luke. Feel the bollocks!

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    who moved my cheese ?

    obviously it's not meant to be taken literally. It refers to any manufacturer of dairy products.

  13. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Unhappy

    If it looks like cheese

    Smells like cheese.

    Walks like cheese.

    ...It's time to get rid of it.

  14. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Flame

    Manufacturing not services!

    This is not a real entrepreneur, rather a useless p' artist who they will regret hiring. The conservatives, like most political parties are wasters and con artists who have no clue about genuine Capitalism; the prevalent Corporatist crony 'Capitalism' has a limited lifespan before is crashes and burns.

    Service industry pushing is cretinous because the real wealth is generated by manufacturing, as Germany, Switzerland, and China well know; yes even Switzerland makes most of its money from manufacturing, not banking, or other vapid services, that is why Switzerland is an active participant in the devalue your currency war!

  15. 6 inches long, handle.

    Common sense it not a common thing...

    @Article

    "...there is no evidence that clusters of successful tech companies can be willed into existence by state intervention."

    That's very true.

    @Article

    "They tend to form around high-quality universities whose bright graduates have access to capital: for example, Stanford in California, and Cambridge and Manchester in the UK."

    No, this is not always true. Most of the time it is the other way round i.e. companies setup offices to attract talent from good colleges.

    Real startup eco-system is formed around large project(s) that is/are viable and has specific goals. The Silicon Valley did not form with blink of an eye because the US government/jobless investment bankers infused cash or promoted hype. It sprung to life because the US government had very specific goals and requirements. The requirements were to do R&D in the field of defense and space (and to claim political victory over the USSR). This US government requirement gave birth to some big defense and space research companies. The side effect of this was that lots of small companies (startups - both hardware and software) sprung around these big R&D firms to help them in the project. And this generated lots of perpetual growth i.e. old firms dying and new ones taking their place. The US government did not "start" Silicon Valley. It was an organic growth in a desert like place far away from New York or Washington (and very far way from investment bankers!). I hope the kids that are advising No. 10 atleast read the history of Silicon Valley before snapping the word "Silicon" in front of every dead or alive thing to make it sound cool! The government is getting into this hype machine because they achieve two things with this "policy", one they want a way to rehabilitate the bankers in London who have become jobless(and useless), and the second, they want to give a phony sense of "job creation" to the general public!

    @Article

    "As they say, it's all about who you know."

    Very true! In this setup if you have an investment banker on your side, then even a 16 year old can become a millionaire within a year or two without any tangible creation!

    This phony growth is going to come down as a house of cards one day and we will be left to pickup the pieces as we are doing now as a result of the follies of the bankers few years ago.

    My maths teacher once said to the class: "Kids, you will soon realise when you venture into the real world outside that common sense it not a common thing!"

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

      Re: Common sense it not a common thing...

      I think your maths teacher must have know my tech instructor, who (on workplace safety measures) said:

      "We have to face the fact that intelligent behaviour is rather unusual"

  16. Tom 38
    WTF?

    en·tre·pre·neur

    /ˌäntrəprəˈno͝or/

    Noun

    A person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on financial risk to do so.

    I don't know the chap that well, but it doesn't seem to me that he has ever done either of those two things.

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