Or reading the Toreygraph
"universities overrun by leftists peddling pseudo-Marxist gibberish to impressionable undergraduates”.
Bloody Guardian reading, latte swigging, sushi eating, volvo driving leftie lecturers!
At this point, they should just re-brand as the nazi party and be done with it.
Should have been posted in the cockpunching thread
And after uttering similar thoughts, a number of their ardent supporters; lost a lot of who I believed to be mates when they started spewing out this sort of nonsense.
I don’t let it go unchallenged and they got both barrels.
I truly despair the state of things at the moment.
Is there some kind of competition to see how much BS you can cram into one sentence? This man has a first in history from St. John’s Oxford. Oh. That competition, for Tory leader.
Oh fuck, I fear this could be a Liz Truss moment
These bigger funds would also be required to “specify a target for the pool’s investment in their local economy”.
Unfortunately, it does seem to appear that they have turned out to be pretty shite at economy, as we were told they would be, and hoped they wouldn’t.
Seems to be a rehash of previous tory policies which are already partway implemented - the fact that currently it’s neither fish-nor-fowl in that sense makes the overall structure less efficient. If it delivers as it’s supposed to (yehright), then it can only be a good thing - it’s similar to what most private pension funds have done over time. Compelling these funds to invest locally carries some risk bit, but is also the most compelling feature - and it’s a maxed at 5%, plus it’ll be backed-up by public funding… Investment in the UK in (very) general has become so incredibly risk averse that it barely happens at-all!
And Europe… from BBG:
Tech failures
“It’s a disaster,” says Daria Saharova, a partner at VC firm World Fund.
That’s her assessment of the nosediving fortunes of German electric aircraft maker Lilium, until recently one of Europe’s top tech bets. At the end of October, the Nasdaq-listed startup was forced to file for insolvency after the German government denied it a guarantee on a €50 million loan. Saharova, speaking to me on Bloomberg TV says Lilium’s plight is symptomatic of a bigger problem.
“It very clearly shows we, as Europe, fail to support innovative deep tech companies through the growth phase. There is no such thing as a growth market in Europe, especially in Germany,” the Munich-based VC operator says. World Fund invested in battery startup CustomCells, which supplies Lilium.
You can almost hear Mario Draghi whispering,“I told you so” from the sidelines.
Europe does have its Green Deal, aimed at countering the[Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, the US government’s effort to invest in clean energy industries, and, at least in part, attracting growth funding.
But according to Natalia Luna, senior thematic investment analyst at Columbia Threadneedle, it doesn’t go far enough. “The simplicity and clarity of the IRA will likely remain the key factor in investment decision-making in a US versus EU scenario and result in a smaller scale of support in the EU,” she wrote in a report published
To drive her point home, Saharova argues Europe may have just deprived itself of a Musk-sized opportunity.
“Lilium could be easily comparable to Tesla,” she argues — except Tesla Inc. received a $465 million US government credit line, while Lilium was denied a comparably meager loan guarantee.
Lift the hood of a Lilium jet and you’ll find a lithium-ion battery, similar to the packs produced by another deep tech continental startup, Sweden’s Northvolt AB. The Stockholm-headquartered firm is also struggling to survive.
Once pitched as a homebred European alternative to China’s dominant CATL, the Volkswagen AG- and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.-backed battery maker has been hemorrhaging cash, while missing production targets and seeing contracts from its own investors canceled. Northvolt is rushing to raise new capital to stem the bleed.
But when I asked Jim Rowan the chief executive officer of one of Northvolt’s earliest backers, Volvo Car AB, if a fresh liquidity injection was on the table, he replied with an emphatic “no.”
“We’re rooting for the Northvolt guys that they can get the funding that’s required,” he told me, but it won’t be his company that provides it. Volvo is “triple-sourced on our batteries,” Rowan said, so it isn’t vulnerable if Northvolt ultimately runs out of juice.
Agate Freimane general partner at Norrsken VC, another investor in Northvolt, also demurred when I asked if they would participate in another capital raise. And she admitted the negative Northvolt headlines were a risk. They could, she said, “scare off the next bold, daring entrepreneurs” needed to innovate and help hit those net zero climate targets.
Freimane is concerned, but she sees a fundamental investment case that continues to hold up: “I’m still extremely optimistic about Europe’s ability to compete globally because at the end of the day when it comes to impact, sustainability, and all green topics, we are best placed to win in the long term.”
But as the fortunes of Lilium and Northvolt show, that thesis is now being put to the test. The question is, are their challenges idiosyncratic, or symptomatic of a broader mismatch between Europe’s tech ambitions and its ability to deliver the funding and government support to turn them into reality.
Well we’ve spent decades offshitting manufacturing and then outright ownership to China, so we shouldn’t really be surprised that even the biggest startups fail I suppose… Fucking grim times.
UK Death Spiral in full effect.
Heavy metal legends
If this doesn’t get sorted out under a Labour government it will never happen.
Too much vested interest in the Conservative party.
Still the first of many who would be up against the wall after a good stint in the tower, the treasonous toad.