“This column recently praised Silicon Valley for its ebullience and optimism,
silicon valley has an an industry”
margaret thatcher pretty much caused the collapse of all manufacturing in britain including our silicon industry in favour of service industry’s by not marketing it right, and discouraging it, and giving up on manufacturing in general, if you dont practise the art of making things you loose the expertise to do so well, or even to do the design and instruct others somewhere else.
“noting that the attitude of Californian tech entrepreneurs was a major factor in the region’s success.”
hmm … Silicon valley is mainly still there today, because of collaborative efforts made in 1986 to unify the industry into a unified geographic unit to hold up against global chip market and innovate and to retain the design and industrial assets necessary to be in the semi fabrication game there, and this was acheived by bob noyce who made it his agenda to help bolster the chip industry through running the semi conducter industry body sematech, and also he popularised the IC by pricing them less than their production cost, and gambling production improvements and efficiencys could garner a profit back.
read on >>>
“But it wasn’t until returning to the UK that I realised just how vast a gulf it is between the land of the free and this bitter, divided Isle.”
Divided ? well thats immigration for you, we were once divided by class, now you can multiply class by crazy relgious imports and foreign groups of all sorts, this immigration was a philosophy that we imported from america, not every philosophy you import from america is a good idea, but hey immigration has benefited your genetic to the extent of getting a well paid job at the telegraph ?
“Because an enterprise-unfriendly Government is only 30 per cent of the problem when you live in such a profoundly enterprise-unfriendly society.”
Agreed certainly industry based, but bear in mind allot of american production has only been maintained through protectionist market strategys. though the tech industry is one area that does well by itself, ie is healthy as evidenced by obamas tech round table
30% percent where did you pull that figure from ?
“Over the past decade and a half, Britain has sunk into a dependency culture that is suffocating free enterprise.”
Agreed as a self employed tax payer, who has never claimed benefits in his adult life, I am appalled as to how easily people slip into benefits dependancy, but because we live in such a divided culture, a small portion of people belong to the moral culture that once ruled this culture and prevented individuals from being so gauche as to be so profligate and self orientated, but the imported peoples also, are fallible at understanding this essential of english cultures, conceptual foundation stones, entitlement is not a reality, take half my neighbours though? too many are on benefits and fake disability. or dodging taxes and running business’s deliberately in the red to avoid tax from now till eternity it seems, or using bankruptcy as a tool for their economic advantage and allot of these distorted business behaviours come from america. And also the governemnt seems to give allot of benefits to people for just breeding, thats an economic industry in itself for some breeding nutters.
I was shocked to discover I earn well under half the amount of people who still recieve some kind of government allowance or benefits for children or family tax credits, or whatever the whole system is out of control in this sense, and the idea a somalian immigrant family can be living in a large luxury house in chelsea at the taxpayers or my expense for £1200.00 a month is so offensive and stupid and could only occur in this country ! where i can’t afford even a nats chuff of a flat anywhere using my own resources after tax within which to raise a family, and were told that british people aren’t breeding much which is why the government imports to prop up an ill founded pension plan scenario. what the fuck ? give us a chance, you rigged the house market out from under us and reduced the chance of native births ? and this housing benefit scenario leaching of the taxpayer, tends also to benefit the multiple house owning property investment set through rents paid, who all governments seem to overly encourage, destroying the possibility of first house ownership for familys etc by allowing multiple house owners to price them out of the market with those individuals greed for perceiving homes as the lazy way of making themselves money, cherie blair included in that ie specualtion on markets rather than invention, creation or actual labour ? another american invention or better still producing some exports, yet britain is riddled with an ever smaller number of people who sadly economically settled for squabbling over who will win the whole pot of the dusty old monopoly money of the internal economy that anemically circulates within britain, regardless of the state of our export economy, perhaps you really should move to america youll get allot more space, house wise britain already the boxiest saddest house in europe, because america being so much larger geographically the average standard of home is just better
We do not praise the merits or teach the tools of entrepreneurship in our schools and universities. We scoff at the self-employed, telling them to “get a proper job”. Entrepreneurs are little better regarded in the popular consciousness than wastrels on benefits, because we fail to recognise imagination and audacity as the prime movers behind the advancement of technology, society and culture.
Agreed people on the dole should not ask for a job but start their own business to employ themselves, but industry itself needs to be of a certain scale and quality to be effective on the international scene at providing opportunity beyond the cheapest employees it can find in europe,which is what europe was really for ? and to be even a minor player, most of our genuinely domestic owned businesses have almost shrunk to the point of irrelevance on the international scene, unless they’ve been bought out by foreign multi-nationals, which sadly almost all have been, ie the concept of a british business is extremely rare anyway, and this a fault of the european union which seems determined to to destroy and blur cultural identity and boundrys including that of national utilitys or infrastructure, as privatisation and international mergers has led to a situation in which most large companys ownership is almost indecipherable, and therefore placing on value on it being being say british enterprise or not has become sadly an almost irrelevant excercise ?
“Meanwhile, the clunking, anodyne, eternally finger-wagging and nauseatingly hand-wringing face of the public sector, a cancer that has been allowed to engorge itself on the productive portion of the economy, continues to bear down upon us. Meaningless but eye-wateringly expensive regulations, enforced by a vast army of busybodies, have taken the place of ambition and enterprise.”
“Gone is the nation of shopkeepers: they have been replaced by armies of small-minded, mean-spirited clipboard Nazis, enforcing ‘elf-n-safety legislation on an ever-dwindling clutch of industries gasping for air.”
couldnt agree more 53% public sector sponging off 47% private sector taxes is insane, foreign shopkeepers in both britain and america by the way ? once british a long time ago.
“Like my colleague Dan Hannan, I love Europe, but I worry that its overarching bureaucratic administrations are making its citizens poorer and less free. The European superstate creates 30 new laws a day. We are obliged to comply with them. This makes a mockery of the Coalition’s “one in, one out” rule about new statutes and means that, with each day that passes, another slice of our liberty is gone – and, with it, another opportunity for business to flourish.”
Agreed europe currently well over reaches its remit and is dragging things down and making things worse, Greeces situation a case in point, im sure half of them must be wishing they were lumbered by the lack of economic agility the euro imposes ? its also destroying cultural identity, and run by the failed intelectual children of the super left wing, a tax black hole, full of overpaid bureaucrats, most failed politicains go to europe and have more unelected power than if they ever got elected in their country of origin, surely you cant complain of europe though because its allowed the agressive and mobile lot to roam elsewhere, to seek their own benefit at the expense of the native inhabitant everywhere who sustain actual culture, after all shouldn’t you be more worried about the greek state of affairs rather than britains ?
“Brits took to this new culture with gusto, perhaps because they are mean-spirited by nature. Sorry, but it’s true: as my friend John Corey, an American investor living in London, mentioned on Twitter yesterday, even that famous British ‘wit’ is all about the negative.”
Ok with 800 years of researched heritage in this isle here let me clarify this for you : hhmm clears throat :
“mean spirited” you say ? so mean spirited in fact that your greek genetics is living in britain getting paid by a british newspaper to throw your opinion around in exchange for a living ? you mean that mean spirited ? britain is and has been too ‘amicable’ in fact. The media is not much above the public sector ? in the moral enterprise ranking, the media is nought more than distractional entertainment or gossip and poor opinion, and your chum living in the british capital is an ” “american” investor” (nested quotes lol) ie : were so mean spirited you and your american international living wealthy friend, both seem to be living here ? is he the kind of investor who buys shares and makes money of other peoples ingenuity and enterprise ? like when i could have bought apple shares at $15.00 a piece umpteen years ago but didn’t ? or is he the better kind who riskily invests venture capital ? and has run a successful business once in his life, and knows something of that which he talks about ? and how does he afford to live in the capital ? considering its now disenfranchised all but the already house owning, wealthy, immigrant or claiming classes ? from owning property or living properly within in it ?
“About finding what’s not there. Americans may find our snarkiness amusing – even adorable – but that’s because they aren’t subject to the malaise from which it springs.
We’re profoundly ashamed of success.”
self promotion in its extremis ie lying in marketing terms is a very bad thing, which truly british people understand deeply the evil of. Americans are confused on this issue and are perfectly happy to overpromote, the true evil is somehow this nation thought its job was to apologise for empire for the last 40 years which is in know way interesting beneficial or functional, and has led to a sad culture of falsity and apology in favour of all things foreign, hence no pride in our own cultural strengths, failing to see all culture outlooks should be based on what might yet or can be acheived, rather than what was once acheived.
“There’s a culture of envy deeply ingrained in the British psyche that poisons politics, relationships and business. Successful people are torn down with glee in the media. We barely raise an eyebrow at it.”
Correctly so, recognition success isnt as important as integrity and people who have extreme success tend to have little integrity. what might be more important would be to say the britain totally fails at recognising and promoting and utilising and providing with opportunity any useful talent in industry’s it no longer has any industry in, and this is a major failing, Which will always lead people abroad.
“Think how KFC and Starbucks have been exported to Asia, not just as American products but as premium brands. It’s because they embody American values, and do so proudly.”
hmm you really must be delusional to imagine british people would be interested in exporting massively price inflated coffee or fried chicken, i would be embarassed to do either of those things on the basis, any culture worth theyre wit, can fry chicken or brew coffee, the only thing impressive in the export there is the business model, the product is practically an irrelevance. and the fact that generally where american culture goes it rarely serves to do anything but to damage native culture, and herd us into an even more homogenous international breed of corpulent ignorant consumerists ? not much to be proud of ?
“Can you think of an everyday British product propelled to luxury status in another market simply by being proud of its Britishness? No, because we are too embarrassed by what we produce.”
The product you were thinking of is the media export but not for much longer. embarassed to some extent, but you certainly are not helping you are merely being fed by the culture and denigrating it in this article, so how the hell are you helping ?
“One of the most appalling illustrations of our myopia and lack of confidence happened yesterday: with the world’s second largest economy in free-fall after a devastating natural disaster, the FTSE moved… not one jot. Why? Because we don’t sell the Japanese anything.”
“A month living in California has made me realise what a bitter, broken, negative place this country is:”
hmm its why i dont go to america, i might not come back, yet truthfully im so english i couldnt live anywhere else and if I did my culture would lose a little more neglishness by that action, and it needs all it can et, broken i might add : by imported american multiculturalist values, distorted through the lens of government approved ‘community’ based segregation, that make little sense here ? britain is not a mini america ? america was founded on immigration, britain was not ? britains potency stemmed from a unity of purpose of the people it contained and a strong brand or cultural identity which we exported around the world from this small island, like other great island nations japan etc. now we live in a culture divided more ways than I care to mention, what is that great expression … “divide and conquer” well its the division thats destroying britain.
young from old, house owning from not, rich from poor, religion, ethnicity it all goes to enhancing the division, made worse by a culture that falls over itself to help the foreign and shit on the native who complains about it, and propogandise the general population that this is all fine and dandy and your a racist if your not keen on it, how does that create unity ? when the native identity required to acheive anything as a nation, is being constantly broken down into an ever smaller and smaller devisive communities mentality ? jewish courts ? shariah courts already operating, devolution, immigration, the only nations left in the british isles with any sense of national idenity will be the outlyers the welsh and the scottish etc, unless we get a grip on this now and fast, and make some doffing of the hat to a unified culture regardless of immigration, ie, no faith schools no favouritism to minority funding, no encouragement of devisiveness.
“how eager we are to tear down those around us and how pessimistic we are about the limits of human possibility.”
Not at all ? we have all the ideas we now lack all the industry in place to execute it, why do you think Jonathan ives in america in the first place ?
“Can you imagine a British chief executive weaving technology and the liberal arts together in a glorious triumph of the corporate imagination, as Steve Jobs did when he unveiled the iPad 2? No. Because we have forgotten what it means to aspire.”
Bullshit ive been using Apples since pre macintosh and the days of the apple II europlus, Steve has over the last ten years been spoon feeding us tech, the ipad, regardless of hype is not a revolution in anything, it is merely a predictable evolution, what you are mesmorised by is Steve’s prime skill and a very american one “MARKETING”, 1984 and the mac weren’t a revolution either, steve bought some tech in he noticed was good when he was shown it from Xerox PARC, another skill of his recognising clearly whats in front of his nose, combined and popularised it under a better operating system than had been seen before, but that was an evolution of things. It felt like a revolution because the average idiot hadn’t seen such magic.
Also until we build/rebuild a tech industry of our own in britain we have no chance to compete in the future of almost everything : ARM processors being the only exception, and a good starting block better than the greeks chances I might add. the tech industry though the largest its ever been and moving quickly, is matured from an economic sense and now in a wierd phase because there is a lack of possible revolution coming from anywhere but the big players, and dont class some overrated social web software shmuck like the blackhole that is facebook as a revolution ? its a more failed myspace in the waiting, unless zuckerberg can capitalise the current oversized market capitalisation and turn into a physical hard and software giant.
The reason why apple seems to be ahead of the game is purely because they bake the whole tech pie, theyre are no other players who design build and make the hardware, the operating system, the software and its general ecosystem, from one end to the other, we need consolidation of players to create competiton, apple has created its own monopoly and the other players are just beginning to poop theyre pants, a 50$ iphone would wipe the market clean and they know it, and apple has enough cash to make it happen.
“Working for an American company – like life in America itself – can be nasty, brutal and short, as the proverb goes.”
is that truly a proverb ? i dont think its brutal compared to a chinese company ?
“But it’s that Darwinism which has enabled some of the greatest innovation and enterprise. It’s that Darwinism that guarantee’s America’s place as the only remaining superpower. It’s that Darwinism, coupled with clusters of business-friendly state infrastructure, that ensures American pre-eminence in cultural influence.”
Darwinism stems mainly from the study of animals under genetic influence in a regime of survival of the fittest, it involves the suffering and death of many under its influence, and sadly for humanitys sake does not provide the best solution, as those that breed might well be the most agressive immoral and leats pleasant ? after all darwinism is rife with human culture philosophically speaking and it is not yielding a happy world. Humanism is what we should encourage at a countrywide level, if at an international level we encourage some market darwinism to keep progress moving. what make humans great is not survival of the fittest, its the finer elements of human nature which we have not identified and enshrined as global cultural tenets, see the truth is darwinism writes sloppy code that will do, we can ship out the door right now and fix its issues after delivery and charge for now.
“And it’s that Darwinism, by which the greatest stand and the weak, unproductive and parasitic fall, that will some day propel me to make the move.
Let’s celebrate European successes. Let’s find the best Europe has to offer and transport it to America, where it has the best chance of flourishing. Let’s support those in Europe who are fighting against the appallingly lazy, slovenly, entitled culture we have allowed to bloom. But let’s be under no illusions: in Europe, the rewards of success are envy and malice.
For entrepreneurs, Europe – and Britain in particular – is perhaps now best considered an incubation area and a holiday destination”
hmm some truth to the incubation area in reality, but its precisely those people that leave their countrys for more opportune places britain then followed by the usa say, that are in fact also damaging the countrys they leave, and not truly comprehending americas remaining strength being its belief in its own identity, which is precisely what this european culture needs and is not enhanced by people denigrating a country and then leaving it, ask your favourite Steve he’ll tell you thats negative marketing
Admittedly though scale helps and america still has the space to make economic opportunity, economy’s have historically bloomed on the basis of critical mass within a certain geographical space, britain was perfectly scaled and opportuned to provide the circumstance for the industrial revolution, which in turn exported innovation to the world creating new mirrored versions of the same revolutions elsewhere but on grander scales in larger places that would make possible larger innovations and revolutions, like that in the 50’s the USA and now its technology industry, but soon to bloom in the largest population on earth China will be the next revolution. but i guess having come to britain from greece, once home to its own empire and democratic revolution, you now in the cliched sense, see the USA as the true, greater land of multicultural opportunity that britain hasnt succeded at emulating. btw the way no-one ever succeeds by emulation alone, which is what britain forgot in the process of adopting american philosophical cultural concepts.
In truth the USA’s easy attitude toward epic debt and taxes for military spending and its crush the financially poor attitude, are its downfall, only saved to some extent by its technological innovation, but they did mistake darwinist animalistic ayn randian market economic philisophys as gospel, without following through on fiscal prudency as demoed by the national debt, and left the humanism bit behind, which is why conversation with americans tends to revolve around how great they think they are, and what material gain/stuff they have as evidence of it. which can be very boring, the best kind of americans and people globally for that matter sadly are those that through positive feedback effects have the power and opportunity to demonstrate it.
an idiot with a degree, a computer and a 3d printer is always going to seem more innovative than a subsistence farmer in the immediate eyes of the world ?