News: 1599570232

The EU and Trump won't like that one little bit. Remember folks that there is a 25% duty on Scottish Single Malt Whisky when it is imported into the USA. This is in retaliation for EU State Aid given to Airbus and at the same time ignoring the huge amounts given to Boeing for the same thing but that's life ain't it!

You think that the duty on Scotch will vanish on January 1st? I'd love a full glass of Talisker (icon).

That's also the WTO which Boris said the UK will use for EU trade if (when) there's a no deal Brexit.

How's that supposed to work out?

Well since the US has hamstrung the WTO's dispute resolution mechanism, the rules are there to be broken.

I, for one, fully support the US import duty on Scottish single malt whisky.

In fact I'd like an equivalent Scottish 25% export duty on Scottish single malt whisky. Too much of it is leaving our shores, never to be seen again. Let them drink bourbon. (American whiskey is vodka mixed with flat Pepsi)

It really annoyed me when I found cheaper Scottish single malt whisky in the Netherlands. They already had decriminalised cannabis!

There was a two month drought of decent, cheap Islay malt recently in Scotland. We endured. Just in the past week Lidl and Aldi have been restocking it for £16.49, a pound cheaper than it was, and only £2.49 dearer than the crappiest stuff.

Look, using Trump as a scapegoat, plus as a comparative to an idiot (the idiot gets the short end of the stick here) is getting a bit tired: we're (most Amerikuns) are trying to get rid of the damn fool as fast as we possibly can. But the incredibly entitled, selfish, worst part of America keeps wanting inbred fools like Trump, because they think it serves their purposes whilst they get destroyed by the very powers that they think they control.

If you could, promote a better world by helping us flush that jerk down the toilet like the piece of human waste that he so best represents. Please. We need every bit of help we can get - social constipation is a horrible thing.

China, of course, appears to give an affirmative answer to that question, with state oil and gas firm Petrochina beating Apple to hit the golden $1 trillion in 2007

I'm not sure it's the state aid that got you there when you can just dig free money out of the ground.

No point in worrying about this, the Tories have got Brexit done so what's going to happen is a complete mystery now, they have been promising that the UK will profit from Brexit and the economy will boom - oh wait, they U-Turn on all their promises don't they? They have not promised yet that industrial and vehicle pollution will drop tremendously yet - I expect that will be the next promise on January 1st.

actually that last one is plausible - both those things are fairly well correlated to economic output and that is likely to drop precipitously...

While I think that the idea of the state supporting the development of home-grown industries is a fine one in theory, I can see several objections:

1. How do we stop the money just going to Dom's mates/Tory donors/Boris's latest girlfriend?

2. How do we pick the winners?

3. This will kill any idea of a free trade deal with the EU as, well, they're pretty hot on making sure nobody gains an advantage from State Aid. I suspect the US won't like it either.

4. Shock! Horror! This is Socialism! How will we get that past (a) the Tory Party rump and (b) the rightwing press?

This will kill any idea of a free trade deal with the EU as, well, they're pretty hot on making sure nobody gains an advantage from State Aid. I suspect the US won't like it either.

While both, meanwhile, give all the state aid they can under the table. Boeing, Airbus, etc.

Absolutely, it's a bit like Aziraphale in Good Omens talking about Heaven's view of guns. "Evil in the wrong hands, but give weight to a moral argument in the right hands" (not quite word for word). Giving aid to your own is "encouraging innovation and growth" but when another government does so it is "stifling competition and providing an unfair competitive advantage". Go figure.

#1 is the key thing for me.

Never in my living memory have I known such a transparently corrupt shower of shit be in charge.

We have racist dog whistlers barking at the migrant boats crossing the channel like a little dog yapping at the postman. Meanwhile our "owners" are warming their feet on the open fire of taxpayer money.

Tens (hundreds?) of millions are siphoned off to the incumbent's friends and associates, PPE contracts going to party donors for equipment that had expired. To ferry companies without ships.

Lets not beat around the bush. This is unashamedly a cash grab. How much can they milk from us (oh, but not *their* friends) before the next election.

I hope I am proved wrong.

They will milk it till the cow runneth dry. Then the 4th industrial revolution will back to the work houses but this time there won't be any Unions to fight for better pay and conditions because they basically own the press.

The answer to all of your questions is it's all about control.

The former Brexit secretary David Davis said: “I would be inclined to repudiate large parts of the withdrawal agreement, because they were agreed on the basis that there would be a trade deal.” He argued that should include ripping up the financial settlement if no trade deal is reached. But Davis questioned the prime minister’s chief aide Dominic Cummings’ focus on securing control over state aid, something No 10 is keen to use to build up the UK’s tech industry, calling it “intrinsically un-conservative”.

There's this industry, it's undoubtedly the future, but it's not under Cummings' thumb. He's a control freak and can't stand that. He needs to be able to shower the right people in the IT industry with money to get that control.

2. How do we pick the winners?

Simples. They are the ones that don't need state aid.

If you have an obvious winner, then you don't need state aid, because getting investment is easy.

It is only failing companies, like British Shipbuilders, British Leyland etc, or ones that provide a public service at below cost - like the BBC, public transport, NHS, public libraries etc - that need state aid.

Ah, so just about anything that starts with the word "British"!

There's also the argument that certain industries have high start-up costs because they need massive infrastructure investments. Things such as large-scale manufacturing of commodities like steel, mining, bulk chemical refining and processing, stuff like that. Not anything IT-related, which at best needs data centres.

And even data centres are no longer needed, thanks to cloud computing. You can try your idea, with your computing costs scaling with your popularity. If it works, and you get big, then you can move to the cheaper option of buying your own servers and eventually buying your own datacenters.

Well yes indeed. The places where investment would actually make a difference are the places where Thatcher pumped money into in the '80s (without falling foul of state aid rules might I add) - education in science and technology and tax breaks for tech start-ups. That got us ahead in the game before we decided to squander it in the '90s. Some of the same people who were in charge then still have influence in policy-making today.

Of course, to properly invest in tech, you need to properly invest in education, which means also properly tackling social inequality, so that the next generation of child-wonders aren't hamstrung by not having been sent to Eton. That sort of thing really does sound like socialism, and the Current Lot will have nothing to do with it.

Doomed to fail from the outset, and just more swill for the usual snouts at the trough...

Don't worry about Boris' latest girlfriend. Even paying £100,000 to a pole dancer every day isn't even one pound per year per tax payer. Cummings is much more effect at destroying taxpayers' money.

Tories don't do State Aid, not really. UK doing about 1/2 the EU average. Most unlikely they really want to do any aid that would exceed EU rules, except they already had refused to implement Banking & Tax and Offshoring stuff even Switzerland has added to law. Particularly relating to IOM, Channel Is, Gibraltar and the transatlantic tax havens that are British Colonies, though renamed to Overseas Territories.

“ Cummings Johnson - and we have to assume his boss Johnson

Cummings too"

Quote in the FT, from a No 10 insider:

"If you’d dropped in from Mars, you’d struggle to work out whether Cummings or Johnson was the prime minister"

https://www.ft.com/content/aa53173b-eb39-4055-b112-0001c1f6de1b

Ack! Ack ack ack! Pew pew pew!

Sorted.

That's a bit unfair. He certainly seems to have a track record with Jennifer Arcuri....

UK allowed Softbank (Japanese holding company) to buy ARM, so I'll take any statements about protection and generation of Great British Technology as propaganda pretending that Something is Being Done...

IF they stopped shipping out jobs to India or any other cheap offshore location then Britain may have a tech industry in 50 years time.

Accenture, PWC, Serco, et al should be taxed a premium. Fine ship out the job BUT we're going to tax you the top up amount for EVERY employee. so if you THINK you're going to pay a £50k employee £10k in Eastern Europe or India, then we'll add £40k to your tax bill in a way that it can't be avoided.

Make it EXPENSIVE to outsource and offshore and you'll see tech jobs brought back here and we won't all be working in sweatshops making clothes for the Chinese by 2050

How do you tax a transaction happening in another country? Outside your jurisdiction, and ultimately none of your business?

You cant. What you *can* do is put taxes on the end result as it comes into the country. Which is paid for by *UK* businesses/consumers.

but moving a call centre to "Elbonia"? Where is the transaction the *UK* can tax? Any attempt to do so will result in reciprocal Taxes set up damaging our own industries.

At what point is it moving (what you perceive to be) a UK job abroad, and not *importing* a foreign job from elsewhere. Look at Japanese car companies massively pulling out of the UK. Are *those* UK jobs? Or are they *Japanese* jobs that the companies no longer wish to outsource?

What is good for the goose and all that.

Well, for instance they could add it to corporation tax. Costs saved by outsourcing, and not invested by employing in this country, could be made to count as profit - a profit attracting a higher rate than other pre-tax profits made in the UK.

Where there's a will and sime imagination, there's a way.

I'm just happy that we are taking back control of our borders, our money and our women

And our precious vital bodily fluids.

Remember kids, drink only rainwater and grain alcohol!

Gotta love that one!

wow, I have been posting that all over the places for years and you are the only person who has ever got the Dr Strangelove reference! Most people think I am being serious hahaha

...and that film was supposed to be a parody. Somebody had better tell Ripper Johnson.

Are you f**king kidding me?

The Classics & the Modern & Ancient History grads. WTF do they know about technology winners (other than telling targeted lies at the gullible through social media of course. Or rather finding someone to do it for them).

*Thin and Fat

Can't wait to see the results of us ploughing our massive budget surpluses* into subsidies for our future national champions.

...said every chum of senior Conservative Party members.

*This post may contain sarcasm

There's not only the question of "picking the cronies winners", but also a problem of scale: Apple's market cap is around 70% of the UK's entire GDP...

If the appointments of Martha Lane Fox and Dido Harding to IT positions of importance are examples of UK judgment in the IT industry, I hold out little hope thart no matter how many billions they throw out to their friends that any of it will result in a world class IT business.

The smarts and skills, I am sure exist in Britain but the chance of the right people getting the right support is par with a lottery win.

ah, "chances of a deal", "beginning to ebb away", fine examples of those great British overstatements ("peace for our time", "a mild breeze up to 60 mph", etc.). There was NEVER a chance of a "deal", because we have ALWAYS insisted on a "deal" as in "We will have ALL we want and if you don't like it you can fuck off". So, the EU has fucked off and all they're doing now is making polite movements and conversations before getting up and leaving the table. As to Johnson and his pals, they'll be allright, non? Bitching all the time about how the EU has kicked us out, etc, etc. But hey, don't blame them, it's the will of the people so the people will keep paying for their choice.

Come on. Both sides go into a negotiation wanting everything and giving away nothing. It's naive to think otherwise, especially at state-level.

Governments trying to pick winners is just terrible. For example the EU funds toward the Greek railway project that will never be sustainable. Or the money thrown at Poland to make oversized airports for nothingtowns. Maybe we can get a right wing (or really a more libertarian) party to vote for after brexit has finally been done.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2007949/The-Big-Fat-Greek-Gravy-Train-A-special-investigation-EU-funded-culture-greed-tax-evasion-scandalous-waste.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-airports-specialreport/special-report-eu-funds-help-poland-build-ghost-airports-idUSKBN0JS06K20141214

The idea that the government will effectively bankroll a trillion-dollar company begs many questions, the most pressing of them being...

1. What's the idea that the rest of the world has missed (or implemented badly) so far, and what makes you think it's the big one? The idea comes first, and even if the idea is to copy somebody else's idea but do it better, it still comes first. You don't magic a trillion dollar business into existence just by flashing your cash like the guys at We Buy Any Car.

2. How much access, and control, will unelected government lackeys have? I'd expect certain of them to have far too much influence at far too many levels for almost anybody's comfort (except their own, presumably) - and for that reason alone, any idea, even one with legs, won't fly. People with principles won't join or won't stay. People without them tend, in my experience, to be more blinkered - a major disadvantage when trying to build this unicorn of a company.

In short, even if this is true, it's a totally garbage idea that simply wastes more money that we don't have. All to stroke one unelected government lackey's ego.

Success is partly having the money to start, marketing, hard work and luck.

Not actually ideas.

Intel didn't invent x64, AMD did. Or Transistors. They got lucky with the 8080 because CP/M (Digital Research). They started as a RAM maker.

Apple didn't invent the MP3 player (iTunes & Marketing) or the Smart phone (Data plans & Marketing).

MS didn't invent BASIC (Dartmouth College) or DOS (Digital Research) or Windows (Xerox) or C# (based on Java).

Hovercraft, Concorde, Inmos Transputer, First electronic Computer. Also UK developed their own independent atomic weapons and space flight. The only country to develop either and give them up. US persuaded them to rent / buy from them.

Maxwell, Faraday.

The rot started actually before Thatcher, but she accelerated it. Being ONLY Services based and a Nation of Shopkeepers is not sustainable for a former Empire now a small island Nation. A lot of Empire wealth was asset stripping and exploitation. Ask Indians, Africans, Caribbean, China, Australia and Ireland.

I think you've missed my point. Money is certainly required for an idea to be developed and to succeed, but it doesn't create the idea or pick an existing idea that has the potential to become the Next Big Thing. All the things you've mentioned - Hovercraft, Concorde, the Transputer, the first electronic computer - and all the products, were ideas that already existed that got funded to develop them. None of them came into being because somebody sat down one day with a massive pile of cash and thought "ooh, what shall I do with this then?"

People do that. People who have skin in the game, know what they are talking about, can explain why something will work, how something can be developed, and sell that concept both to the people with the money they need, and to the potential customer base. DC's not a fan of independent thinkers and will want to be involved in every detail, thereby guaranteeing failure.

You'd need an idea with wings to make it fly!

Maybe. Give it legs and see how far it can walk ;-)

Pissing good money away on Vapourware? gigity million for this, bong billion for that contract, which never gets fulfilled?

and rhymes with 'Dung' ?

Cummings and Johnson.

"That's another fine mess we've gotten the country into"

At least Stan and Ollie were good at making us laugh

I can't see the point in trying to have a grown up conversation about how to improve innovation, research and business growth in the UK, when the mere mention of Brexit, Cummings or any current political party will bring all of the frothing loons out of the woodwork arguing that we can't/ won't/ shouldn't do whatever the other frothing loons insist we can/ will/ must do.

For what it's worth, if we are to replace initiatives like Horizon2020 and other research and innovation friendly schemes, we should do so with our local knowledge base, workforce and skill set in mind. On the whole I think such schemes are good, if rather heavy on procedure and documentation.

Equally, Cummings is a big fan of the idea of a UK equivalent of DARPA, funding 'moon shot' projects and encouraging emerging technologies. Again, I don't think it's a bad idea.

As a country, for various reasons, we are not very good at risk, early business growth and long term market ownership. However, we've got some very smart guys who drive real innovation and deliver engineering excellence that brings the whole world to our doorstep. That suggests that we should think carefully how we handle funding and finance.

Not going to happen though, because the political infighters will be too busy ripping each others' heads off.