Re: Ah, so they finally noticed...@Trevor Pott
"You sir, are naive."
Sadly not, although you sir, appear to be a fool. Its a long while since I worked as a techy myself, and now I work in business management for a very large company. I have the joy of reading, trying to understand government's long winded claptrap, and then trying to cope with the inevitable unintended consequences and costs for business. I know far more about this than I wish to, and I've studied enough commercial history to know that government planning of economies always ends in tears.
A few facts might help you: The 2006 Companies Act is over 700 pages long, full of requirements, restrictions, prohibitions, mandations, ALL IN ADDITION to many millions of pages of other statute. Tax law is now so complicated that Tollies guide to UK tax law is over 11,000 pages if you have all volumes. Or if you want the basic starter volume, that's only around 1,900 pages. Now, funnily enough I haven't seen any recent successes of UK tax law of late, have you? Nor many examples of better corporate behaviour. And if you were running a small business, would you be able to find time to read all of the Companies Act, and to understand it?
"The UK needs a few 800lb gorillas" Ahh, National champions, eh? I thought nobody was stupid enough to believe that bilge these days, but evidently I'm wrong. Government have tried that before, and as a direct result, we no longer have De Havilland, Hawker, Bristol, Blackburn, Westland, Handley Page, Avro etc Instead we've got a single fat cat defence lobbying operation, in the form of subsidy and cost-overrun addicted BAES. And they don't now appear to be able to make any aircraft on their own; Even their best commercial offer is the Hawk, designed with slide rules by Hawker Siddeley forty years ago. The British motor industry is a similar case in point, where a range of innovative manufacturers were swept up by a series of idiot socialist politicians, convinced they could do a better job, and by the attractive logic of national champions and 800lb gorillas. As all can now see, they couldn't, and there is no UK owned volume car maker. I could work my way through the whole gamut of failed state consolidation and central planning examples, but that would be a book as long as Tollies tax guide.