back to article Cisco promises half a billion dollars for Cameron's BIG idea

Cisco chairman and CEO John Chambers met UK Prime minister David Cameron yesterday, pledging half a billion dollars over five years to help the UK private sector solve the unemployment problem, and avoid the Olympic legacy being more about white elephants than east London renewal. The investment comes in the form of the …

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  1. Tron Silver badge

    And in other news...

    "Government put brakes on Bribery Act" [Reg.]

  2. The BigYin

    Really?

    "This will involve two networked innovation centres, one in Shoreditch and the other at the Olympic Park."

    And who, exactly, will work there? UK workers in UK companies paying UK taxes? Or multinationals using of off-shore skull-duggery to avoid paying?

    I know it won't be UK workers as successive governments have under invested in the education of "hard" subjects, just the kind of thing you'd need to work in a high-tech, high-level "innovation centre".

    Still, at least we'll have enough people with degrees in advanced hairdressing and applied sandwich making, eh?

  3. Ian Ferguson
    Paris Hilton

    Eh?

    So Cisco are opening a massive shop? I fail to see how that is 'major investment' in Britain. Where do they pay their taxes?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Good News

    All this negativity...

    Where is the downside ?

  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    Beware of Geeks bearing Gifts

    "For its half billion commitment, which doesn't necessarily mean hard cash as Cisco equipment and services could be provided at less than list price, Cisco gets a huge amount of pre-sales opportunities coming to its UK door" ...... Is that pre-sales opportunities coming to its UK door, another way of saying, without saying it, prime phishing rights on networking intellectual property. Will the network being provided, be well provided with backdoors in routers and secret rooms for switches for a Trojan Network to phorm the UK rather than transform it? Yeah, nice move, Dave, Lord Haw Haw would be proud.

    That's the downside, and it is not Good News, AC..... [who asked, "All this negativity... Where is the downside?"

  6. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    @Good News

    > which doesn't necessarily mean hard cash as Cisco equipment and services could be provided at less than list price.

    Like when Microsoft ran foundation schools - it invested millions of $ - in the form of ACLs and the local authority merely paid for the buildings and the teachers.

    So local council will pay for the call centre - in tax breaks, grants and 'training investment' - CISCO will charge itself $500M for installing it's own services and a government minister gets his picture in the paper.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More Cisco claptrap and self agrandissment

    Absolutely right!! The Kool-Aid fountain is running dry and the amount of obfuscation, smoke, mirrors and plain deceit in exercises like this are there for all to see. This is the sort of thing that IBM would have done in years past, another previous post mentioned |Microsoft and now the beautiful and fragrant Cisco have peddled their version of manure to a gullible politician. This does not necessarily make it wrong, but it certainly does not make it right. Kind of similar to coming back from the January Sales claiming to have saved £100 when you have actually spent £300 on something you do not really need and is not as good as the more appropriately priced and specified alternative(s).

    A point that has yet to be raised; do we really want a network that, at best, will be vaguely fit for purpose as opposed to best of breed?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Down

      This is the sort of thing that IBM would have done in years past

      "This is the sort of thing that IBM would have done in years past" its seems that IBM cant afford these kinds of Govt "incentives" these days as they have fallen off the global Chip Plan investment tables and are it seems going fabless in the future , so no new chip fab or similar types of hard bricks and mortar information infrastructure anywhere for them , never mind getting them to build one on the UK mainland

  8. BossHog
    Headmaster

    Shoreditch...

    I'm going to need a smaller hat.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    give us a sub mate

    it seems simple enough, the fact is Cisco want a tax dodge and as per usual London and their banks steps up to feed that want....

    where are the world class High Tech Co-location and tech sites planed for greater Manchester and especially that lovely place conservative Cameron himself visited to see the degradation the long standing Labour council have created there over the last 30 years or so.

    that massive place being one of the UK's largest airport with massive income , and yet home to the EUs largest council estate , whythenshawe, south Manchester with more housing than schools and places or work places for people that actually live there to actually earn your minimum wage living after all its grounds and everything of value etc ware all sold off.

    after all where better to buld these so called "state-of-the-art networked collaboration technologies linking innovation and technology centres across the UK and other global hubs of innovation." than smack bang in the middle of the UK heart of the original global revolution with easy access to both the east and west coasts connecting all these global locations with fibre etc.

    where are the new rules and open initiatives to help international technology companies such as Intel etc get incentives to take these run down Northwest area's that once provided the backbone of the UK industrial revolution, and build and maintain new chip fabrication foundries and their support tech industries near the massive international Manchester airport locations rather than the exclusive offshore Irish chip plant they spend all those billions of cash on today!

    where are the plan's to bring the UK's internationally successful fabless ARM inc and their support industries to the other parts of the north that need rebuilding for this new age in computer innovation etc, cant we have a new multi billion £ chip fab here for ARM and others use, or more to the point why are you not even considering re-building on these scales in the north west for everyone's future benefit.

    where are all the manufacturing and expansion incentives to bring the international renowned Manchester computer centre campus and infrastructure just 10 miles down the road to the south Manchester area and beyond into the affluent place where the Uk rich live (you know where i mean david) for parts of the year, just on the other side of that same internation airport.

    where are the simple Govt funded initiatives to take the uk's only fully licensed long range Wimax company aka the old Pipex Wireless , aka FREEDOM4

    http://www.computeractive.co.uk/pcw/news/1924169/manchester-leads-wimax-rollout

    and help grow that long range high bandwidth version 2 super broadband coverage to the whole UK for the future benefits of remote Co-location sites and infrastructure etc, many , many more questions and no answers appearing any time it seems from dear Dave and his conservative pals that know and visited whythenshawe and other parts of the north west.

    and what about all the other low income area's as regards the many international Tech companies plans to expand and build real industrial grade infrastructural income for these places and people there come to that OC.

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