By silicon.com, 13 June 2006 16:10
'Whatever happened to the British Google, Yahoo! or MySpace?' This is the latest cry from the Conservative Party.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne has been on a fact-finding tour to Silicon Valley to figure out where we've been going wrong.
Osborne's general point is this - we the Brits invented the web and yet we've let it slip away because of high business taxes and a lack of innovation in our universities.
Whether you believe in the Tories as the saviours of the UK internet economy is one thing. But he does seem to have something of a point.
Silicon Glen, Silicon Fen, Silicon Corridor, Silicon Beach - we've heard 'em all. It's not for want of trying that we lack any really big UK internet players. But where are we going wrong?
Perhaps part of the problem is the way the British have looked down on business success.
From the days when the landed gentry looked down on the oiks that made their money from new-fangled steam engines, the British have never really shaken off the idea that business isn't a suitable employment for a gentleman.
And just as those Victorian engineers were looked down on for getting their hands dirty, so today's software engineers are similarly shunned. Even though - as the Conservatives have apparently just noticed - much of the innovation is coming from internet technologies.
On top of this, in the US - for all its other ills - there is a willingness to try, fail and try again. And again, until they succeed. In the UK there is a feeling that if you fail once, you aren't likely to get a second go.
So it's strange to see the posher of our two main political parties bemoaning the lack of innovation in the UK. Perhaps we need a little less snobbery before we deserve some internet successes.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the "web" invented at CERN in switzerland/France.
I'm sure there were Brits involved but the shadow chancellor shouldn't take all the credit.
BTW Hope he enjoyed his holiday
2. anonymous
George Osborne's comments were very typical of Cameron's Conservatives - bring up a problem that is there for all to see, utter a few well-meaning platitudes and then do absolutely nothing about it in case they upset someone. That is what we have come to expect from the Conservative Party since it gave up being Conservative.
However if there is one thing more useless than the Conservative Party, it is your ridiculous and out-of-date assertion that the problem is really just class-based snobbery.
Grow up! Stop fighting a class war and start trying to figure out why the original point about our lack of internet success holds so true. The sort of nonsense you came out with is what you might expect to hear from John Prescott, not silicon.com.
It could be our obsession with celebrity that makes other more useful industries unfashionable, it could be our education system that fails to educate enough quality people, it could be our Government that regulates every aspect of business, it could be our Government that taxes us to the point of extinction, it could be the City Instiutions that crowd out a functioning venture capital industry, but the one thing i can assure you it isn't is snobbery.
3. Simon
The problem is complex, with many causes - hence there is no simple solution.
Yes, as has been pointed out, in this country we have something of an 'anti sucess' culture - doing well is seen as somehow being bad. Do well in this country and people want to put you down, do well in the states and people applaud you.
Then there's taxes and regulation. Successive governments have steadily found new ways to stifle industry and innovation, either by taxing it to death or be regulating it. This effect has been much worse under the current <expletives deleted>. There's nothing like a "can't do, won't allow" environment to stifle things.
And there's indirect effects. Planning policy for example means that housing is in a shortage where I am - hence any back street garage/workshop/commercial premises/whatever that comes on the market is snapped up to convert to housing. Even where planning permission has been refused, the vendors hold out for the price they'd get as a housing development as they know that if they can leave it empty for a while they'll get permission because "it's got no other use - look, it's been empty for a year and I can't let it". The result is that even if you have an idea, and some backing, and the bravery to battle 'the system', you fall flat on your face when you want somewhere to work - there just isn't anything at anything on the same planet as sensible prices ! It's killing the nature of the town where I live due to the number of businesses that are disappearing and being replaced by more ticky-tocky shoebox flats.
And down't even get me started on the problems caused by the existence of the National Parks with their non-elected management committees vetoing anything that doesn't fit in with their vision of some quaint rural idol - presumably with the 'yokels' leaning on the gate, chewing a piece of straw, and doffing their hats to the squire.
There's no simple answer, but here's a few radical things for them to think about :
1) Reduce red tape. Every time the shelf of legislation gets longer, it is a failure on the part of government. If they put as much effort into removing stupid regulation as they do to thinking up ever more complicated ways of banning things, then life would be a lot easier.
2) Do something about business accommodation. Stop this stupid thinking that says you can't have commercial and residential in the same area. How people can complain about the amount of commuting when new developments are virtually all 'out of town' business parks, ...
3) Make tax less complicated, and less of it. It's easy to see why they like complicated taxation - it makes it easier to hide the stealth taxes of which Gordon B seems particularly fond.
4) End the stupid 100% tax on training. What 100% tax ? Well work out, for every pound you might spend as an individual on a training course, how much tax goes to the government in VAT, Income tax, Employees NI, and Employers NI - it's near enough another pound !
4. John H Woods
Errr ... ? What?
TIM BERNERS-LEE
For Goodness Sake!
5. Eric the Disillusioned
I totally agree with the previous commentator. Having watched all major government IT programmes stagnate into a procurement nightmare that drives out all innovation and risk I am not surprised that we fail to deliver on the opportunities that our high standards of education and professionalism afford us. It's not just government but lets face it - this is where most IT companies are making their money at the moment.... and they're happpier milking the cash cow than trying to develop new capabilities that enable change and efficiency within the civil service. For example, whats NHS Spine but the biggest monolith ever devised? Surely they could have got a bit more creative than that in these days of dynamic online social networks and on-demand CRM?
6. anonymous
Osborne is talking through his rear end.. There is a huge amount of innovation going on in our universities but little of it is being commercialised.
And - it's got naff all to do with high business taxes as the Scandiwegians, French and Germans call all demonstrate..
The real problem lies with the attitude of the VCs and the institutions that fund them. It's a matter of huge regret that these outfits are generally unimaginative, bereft of people who have any concept of strategy or vision, are lazy and wait for punters to go to them instead of proactively seeking out opportunities, greedy and totally unpatriotic, short termist of course and generally don't have anything like the understanding of either markets or technology that they should have.
Given that prior to the election the chap Michael Howard slung out - Flood, Flint - cant' remember - said the "City" was naturally Tory do you think Osbourne will criticise it? Of course not. He will always blame someone else when the real blame for the UK's abject failure across all industrial sectors lies very firmly in the Square Mile.... But as long as they get their £7.5bn in bonuses again this year mainly for flogging off UK companies to foreigners do you think they're going to care we don't make anything anymore.. Of course not but I bet you all the useless creeps are watching England play Trinidad and Tobago and have got St George cross flags stuck to their Porsches !!
It's not snobbery - it's utter stupidity.