Instead of public sector non-jobbery, Martha, how about creating real entrepreneurs? One of the general complaints about the British economy and its capitalism is that we don't seem to aim large. We are good at coming up with new ideas, we've even people who know how to make ideas work. Yet we very rarely seem to build up new entreprenurial companies that then go global. Why hasn't Britain (or even Europe?) …
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" why hasn't Britain produced .....a BAE Systems"
What, that useless company that have never developed any aircraft at pure commercial risk, instead relying on the commercial nous of Hawker Siddeley, building aircraft originally designed decades ago with slide rules? That same useless company that piddled away billions on the over-budget, over-due, never delivered Nimrod MRA4 (after achieving similar ignominy with Nimrod AEW3)? The same company that is behind the over-due, over-budget, fault ridden Astute submarine? The same company behind the vastly expensive and essentially purposeless Typhoon? The same company behind the crummy and costly Bowman radio system?
Given the incredible heritage of its predecessor companies, BAES is a tragedy that we can hardly be proud of.
And I might add that ICI was bought by AkzoNobel and no longer exists, although I'll accept that ARM and AstraZeneca are doing well for now.
Not one to normally stick up for British Wasteofspace, but....
Nimrod MRA4 was a crazy idea to start with, but it needed poor management and risk analysis on the part of the MoD to become the disaster it did.
Nimrod AEW3 was GEC-Marconi's fault - the airframe was OK, it was GECM's complete lack of ability to produce a working radar system and their insistence on using their own thoroughly inadequate computer that killed it.
Typhoon - essentially purposeless? Apart from intercepting Bears on a regular basis and dropping bombs on Gaddafi's tanks, that is?
Bowman? BAES was only a bit player in that; the prime contractor was GD UK.
Get everyone digitalling? Whatever that may mean????
Actually we're pretty good at that, aren't we? From the BBC micro to the raspberry pi, get them hacking. From Prestel to virgin and sky, get them online.
Oh, er, right, you mean all the most interesting non-commercial efforts - the open source foundations, the campaigners for rights and freedoms - are based elsewhere? Well, fortunately, they're pretty inclusive and welcome Brits as genuine equals with anyone else.
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I'm with you regarding the eternal puzzle of how/why Martha Lane-Fox has credibility in the digital sector. Ahead of many distinguished commentards on El Reg, for example.
Wrap her in graphene and chuck her in the North Sea.
[Note to moderators etc.: The above is simple hyperbole to strengthen the point being made and in no way is meant to incite or condone violence against Ms Lane-Fox.]
She became part of the Zeitgeist for Blair Feelgood. The ethos of dotcom, the swaying bridge, the vanity dome, etc. And - unlike the politicians - she's never called on to take unpopular decisions, or to explain herself. A bit like royalty. She'd probably have to be caught on camera eating babies before she could ever be dislodged from secular sainthood.
FTFA, a quote from Martha:
> There is a crisis in skills and the understanding of the digital world’s power and potential, but it is not limited to the corridors of Whitehall or the boardrooms of the City.
Strangely this lack of understanding did not seem to be a problem when blagging funding for a certain loss-making dotcom company or flogging it before anyone twigged.
But again it's a bunch of crap from her because the 'non-digital' population are not the problem, it is those boardrooms and corridors of whitehall that still need some basic work with the cluebat. Probably still the same bunch of clueless pillocks and ontraprenooahs and/or chums thereof that paid stupid amounts of money for stupidly overvalued companies back in the day.
Yes, I hate this 'darling of the dotcom' badge she seems to have been given, which I am sure was not related to the gender non-balance within the industry or amongst its financiers who are the main target here (mind you, nothing to stop Lane Fox from honourably stepping back from it).
The White Man's Burden is about the (very bloody) US conquest of the Phillipines, and how the US was replacing the UK as the main Imperial power. Kipling is warning the US of the dangers of Empire, of wasting the best talent on fruitlessly trying to modernise poor countries, and in the end seeing "heathen waste and folly set all thy work at naught". He didn't foresee that in the end the heathen waste and folly of the US Empire would be by neocons and Halliburton contractors, but in general he seems to have had the right idea.
His verse for the UK at the same time was Recessional about the decline of British power - "Far called our navies melt away/on dune and headland sinks the fire/lo, all our pomp of yesterday/is one with Nineveh and Tyre". It's a pity he wasn't listened to; staying neutral in WW1 could well have been the smart strategy, and his own son wouldn't have been pointlessly killed.
In fact, it is a pity that we aren't even less obsessed with empire (in the senior ranks of government where pols under pressure immediately want to invade somewhere) and more obsessed with national commercial success. But digital isn't perhaps it; the thing about digital is that anybody with a brain can undercut you. Germany does very well of advanced tech, and we need to make more of ours. Self driving cars yes, Shoreditch webtwattery please no.
"It's a pity he wasn't listened to; staying neutral in WW1 could well have been the smart strategy, and his own son wouldn't have been pointlessly killed."
This makes no sense whatsoever. Kiplimng was very enthusiastic about the war, wrote some extremely jingoistic (and for him poor) poerty to supprot it and help recruit for it and helped get his son a commission in the irish guards. Kipling was not against the war until his son was killed and even then it is unclear if he was against the war or just the conduct of the war.
The idea that Britain could ride out WW1 staying neutral is the same fantasy as Britain riding out WW2 and staying neutral. What would be the prospects for Britain once an aggressive militaristic Germany had conquered Europe and Russia? Much better strategy to fight early rather than later against a triumphant germany with all the resources of europe and asia at a time of the Germans choosing.
The choice was between a unpleasant dangerous and costly war now or a substanitally more dangerous and difficult war later.
and...
" we very rarely seem to build up new entreprenurial companies that then go global....
...this again clashes with the usual diagnosis that being British is excessively rapacious ..."
The East India Company comes to mind - outrageously successful for a very very long time --- if only they'd had vaseline for those cartridges.....
Well, yes. Because the ones with the brains and the ideas are not making it to the top and the ones at the top are too busy awarding themselves massive bonuses and getting their bought-and-paid-for cronies in Government to say "that's fine, because they're providing lots of (zero hours and minimum wage) jobs which make it look as if we're helping the country instead of ham-stringing it and besides, when we stop being MPs we're in line for a nice lucrative directorship..."
we here on the other side of the ocean would like to apologize for the creation of Facebook and Google and what's being done to the world's informational/intellectual freedom in the name of crony capitalism.
It may be that's what we're doing "better" (for values of "better" actually negative) than Britain for "making" corporations. Press and political hyperbole aside, it doesn't seem as if your government is choosing winners and losers based on transparent (also for values one would consider "opaque") financial largesse and appointment of crony personnel into critical industry monitor apparatus.
In other words, I don't think it's a bad thing Britain lacks a Google or Facebook. one could have a dozen companies producing a thousand jobs each and the consumer (and society) be better off than one company with 12 thousand jobs.
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H,
yup she did nowt but evil...
I mean wasn't the phone, leccy and gas monopolies, sorry companies excellent beacons of customer service and innovation?
Plus we should be supporting archaic industries that couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery obviously...
I have fond memories re trying to 'educate' a staunch socialist family member that Thatcher did not crucify the British car industry, but shite products, dipshit managers, f'wit unions and deluded staff did...
About 20 yrs ago I was working on-site with a well known consultancy that was trying to turn around a failing uk manufacturer. On day 1 of our 'have you got any ideas' session a senior production mgr said with a perfectly straight face that 'if our customers don't like what we make, that is their problem...'
He (and all of his colleagues) were on the dole in 18 months.
It was genuinely terrible what happened to many mining communities, but times change and the world still contines to rotate.
My granddad was a docker in East London, he saw the writing on the wall and took early retirement.
My ha'pennies
Ymmv.
J
European deep coal mining was doomed by the development of efficient shipping that allowed much cheaper surface-mined coal to be imported. No doubt the end of the UK mining industry was accelerated by the pig-headed stupidity of Scargill, but if anyone wants to claim that Thatcher was responsible, they would need to account for the fact that (e.g.) all the German deep mines closed at roughly the same time.
I believe the only deep mines still operating in Europe are in Poland, and if anyone wanted to work down a pit for Polish rates of pay and to Polish safety standards, we could probably reopen deep mines in the UK.
Much the same argument applies to dockers - doomed by the invention of the container, only the timing had an element of political choice.
"Imagine a new kind of digital organisation, diverse and independent but with a strong mandate from government."
I imagine it. An organisation spending lots on IT but nobody who knows how to turn it on. A lot of gear written off as it serves no purpose. A diverse group of every ethnicity and possibly even gender but not a technical skill among them. And of course with the further fleecing of the population by getting the gov to steal it for her as the population wouldnt willingly pay. But in the end I see a vision, it is so clear, absolutely nothing changes except tax payers have the privilege of letting the capitalist aspect of this country slip further away. But with the election coming I see it slipping away anyhow.
Do you think the problem could be .... far too many non producers sucking at the teat of those who are creative and taxing them for a share of the bounty? And spinning themselves as being indispensable to the program.
And government is the major parasite in that field, is it not? And banks thinking that they be in control of things with the supply of fiat paper and credit which they then virtualise and realise as debt to be repaid to the ponzi with interest. And they know that it is a scam which enslaves nations and is certainly evil but oh so addictively simple a system to manipulate the masses.
No wonder they are battening down hatches as their actions and its consequences and rewards are more widely understood and a cause for terror and concern.
"We'll give you Facebook but you have to take Zuck as part of the deal. Fair enough?"
That would be Lord Zuckerberg of Shoreditch to you. The British government would love him, he'd have a private island protected by naval patrols from sightseers, and he would control every cctv camera in the country.
The problem is, the UK is too small for his ambitions.
and was covered by the beeb recently
To summerise.
What us brits have been good at doing is coming up with the brilliant idea.
The wine glass with the inbuilt cooling system to keep your wine at exactly the right temperature for example.
However , you now want to manufacture said wine glass, so you goto the bank for a loan and the bank says "far too risky, pissoff, we've got some AAAA rated sub-prime morgages to buy"
So you goto the next source of funding, the stock market.
Someone says "good idea, I'll risk 10 million on this venture in return for 49% of the shares"
5 months later said wine glass is now a world beater, sales are up 200% on last week, profits are coming in, another factory has been built , again by issuing shares on the stock market.
Original backer notices his shares are now worth 20 million... time to cash in, other share owners also decide its time to cash in.
Suddenly, the guy with the idea realises he does'nt own the company any more, the shareholders force a hostile takeover, chuck him out and re-locate the factories to the far east in order to increase profits, then a US mega corp already making wine glasses buys up all the shares and stores the profits in the Cayman islands.
Inventor looks at the results and says "wow that was a wild 8 month ride" and tries to start again.
And gets sued out of business by the US mega corp.
@Boris the Cockroach
I challenge you to find a single example that's actually followed that route - especially the 'moving the factory to China' and 'suing' bits.
If the company was ever to be a success the wine glass would have been made in China in the first place. You're going to sell your business for a lot more if it has solid patents and non-compete clauses to protect it from competition. It's in your interests not to go and set up a competitor (or, more to the point, not be able to do that) the minute you leave.
The "problem" (if there is one) is one that you do mention - investors want to cash out, not build something permanent. Sometimes the founders want to bale out as. All of this is neatly illustrated by one Lastminute.com.
But is this really a problem? That happens everywhere. All the big American internet businesses are constantly acquiring start ups, so someone must be selling them. The UK tech sector is doing fine. There are few to no equivalents to Google and Facebook anywhere else in the world without a Great Firewall. I sense collective 'wisdom' and confirmation bias at work here.
Lane-Fox is part of the upper-middle class who have an idea, but not the talent and/or technical know-how to implement it, so pay minions a pittance to implement it for them, while they sit back and take all the glory (ie money). It's like the way people used to say something like "Lord Toffington-Smythe built the Suez Canal" - he had the idea, oversaw it, but the labourers actually built it.
Now she's part of this clique who schmooze around, 'enabling' people, While there's an overpaid managerial/political class in this country, Digital will never take off as it should.
Joseph Bazalgette DID build London's sewers, he had the idea, lobbied for it, did the experiments, hand drew 1000s of plans, checked and commented on 10,000s of documents and oversaw pretty much every brick. His great grandson made far more money by making crap TV programs.
One of them was "digitally enabled"
I think, from prolonged observation of the 'digital' tribe, they are talking about what we used to call 'software', normally web applications and mobile applications with some sort of back-end.
The main distinguishing feature of 'digital' over 'software' is that the products have names that are comprised mostly of made up words that sound like real words; and the logos have rounded corners. Very much like the teletubbies.
would never enter my definition of Digital CZar, he did promote stuff like MySociety which gave us WriteToThem and TheyWorkForYou which was very open sourcery digital inclusion.
FixMyStreet is brilliant.
This is exportable technology.
I have no idea what Martha is doing or trying to achieve but she is participating in the economy, satisfying demand at price.
How demand and price discovery work in Marthas world is anybodys guess
I don't know if this is really true, but I have the impression that setting up and running a small company in the UK is just swamped in legal issues.
We have very complex laws which are difficult (and expensive) to understand and comply with, and they're rigorously enforced.
If the laws were straightforward then it wouldn't be a problem. If the laws were business-friendly, lax or non-existent then it wouldn't be a problem. If the laws weren't so punitively applied even for minor infractions then it wouldn't be a problem.
But here, the laws are basically the opposite of what an engineer or inventor wants to deal with. You need a big commitment to pay for lawyers, accountants etc to get started safely, which rules out the soft start in the garage/back bedroom for a lot of inventive disciplines.
It's a lot quicker, cheaper and easier than in most of europe. A single form, a single director and 20quid to get a solicitor to witness it. Unlike in France where it can take 20years and marrying the mayor's daughter to get the right licence.
Or the US where as soon as you start a company you will receive daily frivolous lawsuits which you have to waste time and money dealing with. And the IRS who will send you totally incomprehensible forms and when you phone them will quote a 10min disclaimer about how they are unable to advise you and then read you exactly the same small print on the form in front of you. However much you don't like paying tax the Inland Revenue are generally helpful to small businesses.
You can sell in 20+ countries with a single set of technical, legal and financial regulations. In the US we have to have a different customs agent for air and sea freight because Houston's airport and Houston's container port are in different "cities" and the regulations are different !
"You can sell in 20+ countries with a single set of technical, legal and financial regulations"
I wish that it was true. As of the First of January 2015 New EU VAT laws came into effect which means if you sell any type of digital product in the EU you have to charge the VAT due at the rate prevailing in the Customers country. PROVE with 2 non conflicting "proofs" that your customer actually resides in the location they say they do. No you can't take the customers word for it. Suitable proof includes Geolocation by IP address and banking details which must be stored for 10 years. The VAT has to be remitted to the tax jurisdiction in the country where the customer resides. There are 28 countries although 3 are not fully in the scheme and 81 VAT rates. The seller has to know all the VAT rates and be aware when they change. Submit returns quarterly oh and there is NO VAT threshold. So even the smallest businesses get caught in the legislation.
Many small UK businesses have just given up and closed or blocked sales to the rest of the EU as the technical and administrative costs of complying are simply too high.
Sadly its not just Whitehall that does not understand the digital economy but the EU as well.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-supplying-digital-services-to-private-consumers/vat-businesses-supplying-digital-services-to-private-consumers
There is a Facebook page for those who are fighting this legislation https://www.facebook.com/groups/euvataction/
You might have noticed the recent increase in the price of apps in the Apple App store and eBooks on Amazon. This is a direct consequence of the legislation.
Sounds a lot like what sales tax is turning into here in the US. Only here you also have to contend with differing tax rates for different services. As an example, the tax code which applies just to a small computer repair shop is in excess of ten pages in my area, and contains gems like a different tax rate for removing software from a computer than for installing software on a computer...
Ac,
nah, it is dead easy, and can pretty much all be done on t'interwebs in minutes.
Also in our little village (in Devon), most of the small businesses [thankfully] have a business rates (basically an annual ongoing property tax) of not much more than zero, which is a VERY GOOD thing.
Cheers,
j
//nah, it is dead easy, and can pretty much all be done on t'interwebs in minutes.//
OK, but you are referring to the registration of a company, I was talking about the actual running of one.
I have no idea what the business rate tax you mention is, and unless it's zero outside your little devon village (and doesn't need to be declared regardless) that goes to prove my point that you need an accountant to deal with all that shit.
---
//Or the US where as soon as you start a company you will receive daily frivolous lawsuits which you have to waste time and money dealing with.//
I concede that, but there are many other factors. The legislative framework /may/ be as complicated (for the sake of argument), but for example perhaps[1] you don't get punitive fines for a minor infringement like we do here. For example they took many years to get round to doing anything about Microsoft's pretty blatant practices - and ended up giving them a slap on the wrist.
//You can sell in 20+ countries with a single set of technical, legal and financial regulations.//
But these are tiny countries compared to the large single market which is the USA. The whole of the EU is apparently about the same as the USA - but as a small business you may not be targetting it all. I mean, if I were trying to start up a small business in my spare time, I probably wouldn't be getting everything necessary for the business translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish and the other 18 official languages of the EU right off the bat.
It's not even really a single set of regulations (c.f. uber).
And it's certainly the case that even laws which are notionally the same across Europe are differentially applied.
[1] as in - I don't know and this may not be the case. It's one of many possible differences.
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Hum... Successful, and rather wealthy, woman with ideas and opinions trending towards inclusion, encouragement and possibility for all rather than snobbery, selfishness and exclusion? No wonder no one likes her.
Though, I will admit to not quite understanding Mr. Worstall's "who's an idiot and why isn't society run like I want it to" 'argument' this week.
The UK has a lot going against it as far as free enterprise is concerned (even in the glory, gory past of misinterpreted free enterprise days such as the India Company?).
These critical factors are the UK class system, state control mentality and all monies belong to the Treasury. Even this tidal wave of interest in IT (get your kids coding?) smells of a fascist/non-free state intervention to get everyone doing the same thing (daft innit?)
The fantasist?
Another trend with guvmint monies is to influence decision takers (politicos) by fantasy what-if scenarious. I'd guess that 98% of all uk guvmint laws, enactments, ... are based on knee jerk reaction to fantasy what-ifs (a bit like get your kids coding?)?
Slightly off topic, I know, but if the UK *was* a meritocratic democracy, and had been for a generation or so, it might well have an identifiable group of people who had done well at school, gone to the (well-known) leading universities, and gone on to do rather well in whatever their chosen field happened to be. They might also have been able to influence the major political parties to the extent that they all were singing largely from the same hymn sheet on economic matters and differed only in terms of social policy.
OK, we aren't quite there yet, but if we ever do get there then the country might not be quite as you expect or hope.
" We must ensure that the 10 million adults who can’t enjoy the benefits of being online because they lack basic digital skills no longer miss out." The only digital skills that you need are dangling of the end of your hands Yes fingers and how to use them to two finger type or one finger),of course you need a computer of some type, I'm counting "smartphones" here as computers as well.
Tim Worstall: She walked away to join a couple of resolutely non-digital boards, signed up for a couple of quangos and that was it. The quangos led to the government tsar bit, which in turn led to the peerage and now has led to... umm, well, a committee to tell people to be digital, I think.
Is it any wonder that we're not creating serial entrepreneurs when that's the preferred career path for those who could be one, to have one success and then aim for the tiara, not the next big thing?
I think you're wrong about British entrepreneurs but that's irrelevant as MLF isn't an entrepreneur, is she. She's a salesman. She's a motivational speaker. But not an entrepreneur.
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