Another nail in the coffin of UK Ltd

[rauschwerk]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/dec/03/cures-killer-diseases-cuts?INTCMP=SRCH

Do governments learn nothing? One of the best things about the Blair/Brown government was that it recognised how badly this country lags behind its competitors in non-military R&D and proceeded to do something about it. Now that looks like being undone again. I despair. Meanwhile, the son of a friend of mine has so far failed to find a job in his field with a Cambridge 2:1 in Natural Sciences. Some of his contemporaries are doing unskilled work in shops and the like. If I were 21 again I should take a course in German and shake the dust of this country from my feet at the first opportunity.

If the UK has no use for the talents of its people it richly deserves to go down the tubes.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

could not agree more strongly rauchswerk .... it is all these bl%%dy senior civil servants with Classics and PPEs from Oxbridge who run policy in this country ... since these people have some of the highest verbal IQs in the known universe it makes one question the value of intelligence or wonder whether there is a character dysfunction in the establishment which has been effectively anti science since 1945 ... with the odd lurch, white hot or no, in favour

all one has to imagine is what the universities could achieve with 10% of what the Ministry of Defence misspends every year ....

the brit establishment is anti science and education, pro military, pro finance and the city and pro servants ... stay angry, despair gets one nowhere ...

[ahinton]

Until seeing this thread I'd no idea that there were any spaces left on the UK coffin into which further nails could be hammered...

[PhilipT]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/...ts?INTCMP=SRCH

<Pedantry alert>

The photograph at the head of this article is badly captioned. The building on the left is the Radcliffe Camera; the building on the right is All Souls College. The Old Bodleian Library is out of sight, obscured by the Radcliffe Camera (and the New Bodleian mercifully out of sight beyond that). Admittedly the Radcliffe Camera is a reading room of the Bodleian, but to caption it the Bodleian Library is misleading in the extreme.

[Mahlerei]

There was a fascinating documentary on the Beeb last night about Rolls-Royce's aero-engine division in Derby. This really is cutting-edge technology, their Trent engines much in demand by Airbus and Boeing. Indeed, their present order book is around £40bn. It's gratifying to see we still have such expertise and sad that we can't encourage more. Most striking was the dedication of the workforce, who take huge pride in their product.

[rauschwerk]

<Pedantry alert>

The photograph at the head of this article is badly captioned. The building on the left is the Radcliffe Camera; the building on the right is All Souls College. The Old Bodleian Library is out of sight, obscured by the Radcliffe Camera (and the New Bodleian mercifully out of sight beyond that). Admittedly the Radcliffe Camera is a reading room of the Bodleian, but to caption it the Bodleian Library is misleading in the extreme.

Sorry - I attended only redbricks (nobody calls them that any more, do they?)

[Flosshilde]

And another earlier article -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/nov/27/isis-neutron-source-funding-research?INTCMP=SRCH

[Lateralthinking1]

Yes, RR is good but it is always in the media as the great example. There aren't a lot of others!

There is a lot of emphasis in Government on "innovation". However "I" used to stand for industry.

I see that the Government is seriously considering the innovative idea from one bright spark that the country should have a Minister for Industry.

No one seems to be aware of the history. We used to have a Secretary of State for one.

[rauschwerk]

The most dispiriting part of the ISIS article is the STFC soundbite response which could mean anything or nothing. Crucially, it doesn't mention when the new 'funding model' will be applied.

[Stillhomewardbound]

This was always the big flaw with Britain's move to service industries over hard industry, so that we have our young people in call centres parroting scripts when they should be in apprenticeships learning real skills.

We have had an unprecedented building boom in the last twenty years and probably much of that achieved with imported labour.

Similarly, the nursing sector which initially imported nurses from the likes of the Philippines as a stop gap, now seems to rely on that route as a norm.

I have no issue whatsoever with foreign labour but it gets to be a habit, meanwhile the young people on the sink estates are demonised and written off as unemployable.

It is a drawback also of the 'education, education, education' philosophy, so, as has been pointed out, we have a surplus of graduates and scarcely anyone that can fit a plug or plane a bit of wood.

A myth has been allowed to emerge that Britain just lost it with industry many years ago, and yet we can produce one of the most widely used commercial jet engines on the planet, meanwhile we also build and devise much of the most sophisticed array of ballistics and weaponry.

If it can be done at Rolls Royce and British Aerospace, then surely it can be done all over.

I think the summation of it was last week and David Cameron crowing about the creation of 5, 000 new jobs - in Starbucks!

Yes, 5,000 more people working for the likes of £6.75 an hour.

It doesn't really add up, does it?

[rauschwerk]

I suspect a very high degree of ignorance amongst the general public about the ultimate value of scientific research. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many suppose that the development of a ubiquitous device such as the mobile phone was a bit like The Apprentice, only slightly more complicated.

In reality, of course, you have only to trace the evolution of the silicon integrated circuit chip to understand that it's not that simple. It relied on the invention of the transistor, but that must have grown from a great deal of work on the properties of semiconductors (germanium in particular), how to manufacture them with an extremely high degree of purity, and what happened when you 'doped' the germanium with a tiny proportion of other materials. I'm willing to bet that a great deal of that work was speculative and led down blind alleys.

Add to that the development of plastics, LED and LCD screens, radio communication and computer technology and there is a very complex and (to me) fascinating story to be told. There's a popular science book in it somewhere, perhaps for Bill Bryson.

[gradus]

The huge volume of jobs needed in the short term, to reduce unemployment amongst the young will inevitably be found in service businesses like the reviled Starbucks. Great to read that two car manufacturers are generating more jobs and that Green energy projects are likely to offer employment measured in thousands in due course, but like it or not, finance and services are our principal private sector recruiters and will be for a while yet. You don't yet need a degree in Natural Sciences to become a Barrista but you might soon.
To find a career of choice, the current generation of UK graduates may have little choice but to do as their contemporaries in many other countries have done and work overseas.
I would rather that past governments had tried harder to invigorate and encourage manufacturing and for example our shipbuilding industry - I still hope against hope that we will find a way to re-establish ship-building here - but until then its Starbucks etc.

[greenilex]

We had a renowned shipbuilders but they didn't like our unions and relocated to Pompey (sorry) Portsmouth.

[Stillhomewardbound]

Whether its Starbucks, Costa Coffee, Nero or whatever, in London at least the vast majority of workers in these chains, Pret a Manger are almost excusively overseas students and the like.

This is not an environment where UK school leavers (again based on London) appear to get a look-in.

It points up also one of the falsehoods of the low wage economy which is too many people in poorly paid jobs with very little to put back into the economy or the exchequer via their taxes, the real beneficiaries being the likes of the coffee chains and the supermarket shareholders. How else did we get to a situation of the Tesco chief earning six hundred times more than the lowest paid worker.

These are concerns which could pay considerably better rates of pay without impacting greatly on their profits.

Certainly, the coffee shops have little justification for their paltry wages, given that they sell a vastly overpriced product.

Indeed, I'm reminded of the year I spent working in a public house some twenty five years ago when I was payed what would now be twice the wage of a 'barista' working, for example, for Costa Coffee. My employer then was Whitbread and that same barista today also works for Whitbread.

Yes, they got out of beer years ago. Much bigger profits in coffee, much lower wages.

[Lateralthinking1]

Steve Hilton favours using cloud bursting technology to create more sunshine. Seriously. I am guessing this is to psychologically manipulate the masses into being ecstatically cheerful in 2015. Half Ray Bradbury. Half George Orwell. What it would mean for global warming I hate to think. Why not muck up the climate even further along with everything else?

But here is the point. Surely if that is viable, there is equally huge potential to develop technology to tackle climate change? This has at least two strands - 1. Limiting it - what about making masses of snow and dropping it in suitable places? 2. Helping people to cope with any impacts - ie anti-flooding infrastructure - years in advance.

Then, why don't we have initiatives to produce the best motorised scooter, wheelchair, stair lift, etc? Make it a real competition to lead the world in improving technology for the disabled.

What about a new car and a new pop group with international appeal? I know that might sound ridiculous but in the 1970s when Sweden was a very solid country, it was said that Volvo were Sweden's biggest export and Abba were the second. When you look at it like that, it seems ridiculously easy rather than difficult!!