Look what the idiots are doing now ...
Look what the idiots are doing now ...
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Discussion

ATG

Original Poster:

23,855 posts

303 months

police state

4,380 posts

251 months

Wednesday 22nd February 2006
quotequote all
Just another brick in the European Federal Super state that Blair assured us would not happen. More empire building, more taxes, more control over individual states and their people.

The juggernaut builds momentum daily...

nonegreen

7,803 posts

301 months

Thursday 23rd February 2006
quotequote all
Well the idiots have given away almost all the innovations created in the 20th century. Then the various latin and buggary experts undermined the superiority the technological age gave us until finally the mad cow shut the battered and bruised failing manufacturers down. The current theory is that we tax and squander mostly on crap but some will be spent on ensuring the Universities keep us ahead of the technological game. This is of course utter crap as the Universities lag behind industrial cutting edge by at least 5 years. The truth is Universities have rarely led us anywhere, but the EU halfwits are blindly leading us into crisis, its just a matter of time.

denbeer

534 posts

251 months

Thursday 23rd February 2006
quotequote all
The EU is a crisis, bent on political expansion to the point where only the USA will be veto'd. Hitler and Napolean must be spinning ( like most EU heads of State) and thinking "why did'nt I think of that".

ATG

Original Poster:

23,855 posts

303 months

Thursday 23rd February 2006
quotequote all
If we consider where we lost out to the yanks, a large proportion of their commercially succesful innovation came out of Silicon Valley ... i.e. geeks who packed in education in order to set up their own businesses in their garages. During this period Bill Gates and mates pinched/wrote/shat out MSDOS and Jobs produced the Mac ... whilst Europe's contribution, care of the UK, was the the ZX-81 and the Spectrum... God Save the Queen, etc.

No doubt the EU will spot this too and offer state subsidies to build garages.

The reason US universities (and Europe's few world class universities ... Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and a few other UK universities) do what they do well is because they are not reliant on state subsidy. They make money by providing services to industry. They are therefore in touch with what industry wants and needs. Their employees are actively encouraged to create new businesses. If the EU wants to do something constructive to encourage hi-tech innovation, then they should be encouraging researchers to start businesses and forcing universities to find their own funding from industry. But what do they propose instead? They'll provide grants. Fab. Civil servants deciding what projects should receive funding. Clearly that will lead to commercially sound decisions.

nonegreen

7,803 posts

301 months

Thursday 23rd February 2006
quotequote all
ATG said:
Fab. Civil servants deciding what projects should receive funding. Clearly that will lead to commercially sound decisions.


Absolutely correct, we would do better dropping the grants in bundles of used tenners out of a helicopter at random.