WEB EXCLUSIVE: Time to leave?

libertarian

I went to a business conference in London last week. The audience was 400 hi tech entrepreneurs of start up companies. The panel of experts were 6 British entreprenuers/business angles.

They were asked what one piece of advice would they give to anyone trying to start a buiness, raise finance or succeed.

They all gave the same answer

Move to California.

I agree, Britian is no longer a place worth even trying to do business we are a quasi socialist/Keynesian quangrocracy.

The new coalition government intends to keep that the same

michael

what is done can be undone.... politicians need to re-engage people not pay them off.

Nicholas

Bonnie Greer irritates me. A johnny-come-lately American who presumes to speak on behalf of the British and wears her colour in the same manner Diane Abbott does, as the defining aspect of her personality and beliefs.

She typifies modern Britain, full of foreigners who muscle into the public narrative, enjoy the benefits and then slag off the indigenes.

alec spurner

Are these debates available to download or watch online?

Edward

Time will tell. I'm in the fortunate position of being able to move to the States if I want to. Give the new Government a couple of years, then we'll see.

If I did move to the States, I doubt it would be California - it's probably one of the least free states in the Union. Texas seems pretty good - there's no state income tax there, for example.

In2minds

Time to leave? Time to leave the EU that's for sure.

yank

libertarian,

Your entrepreneurs and experts are not worth their salt, then. Business is fleeing California in droves. They are in deep, deep trouble. Their state legislature is controlled by a gang of union labor fanatics that would put Gordon Brown in awe, who have put them into a $50B yearly budget deficit, and a structural deficit that would likely match much of the UK's. The state is depopulating, business is leaving, even the Silicon Valley has massive commercial vacancies.

The gravy train in California has run out of coal.

fifer

So you've found 6 British entrepeneurs with particularly bad timing and / or understanding of California. The place is basically bankrupt so you'll be moving to somewhere where they'll be looking at massive police and other public sector cutbacks, school closures and there was never a health service anyway.

I'd modify the advice. If you've made it as an entrepeneur and have the money to live in a gated community (or up in wine country), have massive medical insurance and send your kids to private school then, yeah, knock yourself out. But things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

Gary Williams

It was "Catherine Mayer".

One listened in vain for any evidence of why the petulant Tristram Hunt had been invited to speak. The idea that this kid is a Member of Parliament is in equal measures risible and frightening.
He began his litany of one-liner cheap-shots with "this wretched Government", kindly sharing with us his sagacious reflections on a Government that has been in power for only 40 days. Anyone who thinks that a Government (in a democracy) can be judged after its first 40 days is unfit even to pretend that he is an "historian". Hunt proved this point in other ways as the evening wore on.

Augustus

Brazil might be an idea. Fine beaches!

Tim Carpenter LPUK

I know this may appear totally lateral, but some of our problems are staring us in the face and can be seen in the image you attach to the article.

Take a look at it. An early Victorian or late Georgian, I believe, 3 storey (or could be four, with mansard) with semi basement brick built house of a style most people hanker after.

Why is such a property run down and surrounded with entropic youth? Planning blight, proximity to ghastly facilities that nobody is free to bulldoze, lack of Rule of Law that would otherwise allow rich and poor to mingle more freely, State-subsidised housing distorting the market?

This asset is going to waste. That is where our wealth leaks away.

Edward

"The glory of our country today, he said paradoxically, is that ‘we have no purpose in life.’"

A person who has no purpose in life will eventually see no purpose in living.

Britain, collectively, appears to be coming to the same conclusion.

Marcher Baron

"A proud British subject, [Bonnie Greer]’s so loyal that she uses her UK passport ‘much more often than my American passport.’" Some definition of loyalty - sounds more like a flag of convenience to me.

Craig Strachan

I'm from Britain and live in California.

I don't recognise Britain as characterised by the Catherine Ayer side of the debate, or California as characterised in some of the comments here.

I was pleasantly surprised to read in last week's Economist that California's deficit, measured by next's year's projected shortfall as a % of this year's state budget, is in fact one of the lowest amongst US states. The absolute numbers are big, but so is California.

And - according to today's Telegraph -Britain has become a nation of savers for the first time in 20 years.

I have no doubt that both Britain and California will be back, better 'n ever, after a necessary (welcome?) period of austerity.

Kennybhoy

If I dinnae end up composting in some foreign field first, I will be the last one oot! One of my favourite among many Ray Bradbury short stories is, "Henry the Ninth"!

oldtimer

Rod Liddle is right.

oldtimer

Rod Liddle is right.

Gary Williams

Marcher Baron:
It may interest you to know that a dual US-UK citizen is required to use his US passport upon entering or leaving the US, regardless of his sentiments about the UK. If Bonnie Greer sometimes visits her country of origin, no inferences whatsoever should be drawn from her sometime use of a US passport.

Nicholas:
You are suggesting that those who woke up one morning to find themselves being born, by chance, in the UK are more entitled than those who cared enough about UK citizenship to seek it out and then earn it would be to participate in the UK polis.
One sees your point - it is quite outrageous that anyone not born a British subject should presume to have an opinion on anything in Britain. Indeed, if too many ersatz Britons were to voice their thoughts, real Brits might actually learn something.

AY

‘The in-queue is bigger than the out-queue.’

Yes ma'am. And it doesn't matter at all who and why are in and out.

Oh my. Some people definitely should use their heads only for primary purpose - for eating. If too lazy to think.

Jez

Ha Ha haaaaa!

Come on guys, don't see it as 198 against common sense.... see it as 198 people, that if you were in a scrape you be able to easily rip off out of their life's savings (er, probably over the phone by the looks of that)- especially the 57 for-a-while undecided borderline-retards!

How can such gullible people function in real life, day to day situations?

"Well you know, i don't really er, knoooow... but after talking to Bonnie i've joined the SWP."

Give us a break. Please.

yank

Craig Strachan: "...California's deficit, measured by next's year's projected shortfall as a % of this year's state budget, is in fact one of the lowest amongst US states. The absolute numbers are big, but so is California."

.

.

Hmmmm, so Mr. Strachan, you believe California is too big to fail? I'm sorry, but California's current bond rating is junk, and lower than Greece's, so the people who judge such things disagree with you. The Cali crowd recently resorted to paying off creditors with IOUs, they are so broke.

The rosy projections you reference for next year are made by the same people who rang up the junk bond rating, and were passing out the IOUs. Their word likely matches their bond ratings. Junk.

Soon, after the 2010 census, we will reconfigure congressional districts, and California's count of House reps will likely drop, as a result of % population drops, likely 1-2 of their seats yanked from their grasping fingers, after a 1/2 century of 5-10 seat gains every decade. People are recognizing the economic carnage the Left has caused out there, and are fleeing.

Worse, those who flee are the educated and business class, so the % of uneducated, illiterate, non-english speaking and often illegal alien increases, and these are the prime breeding stock out there, as you should know.

The image of California that the lad posted at the top of this discussion is decades aged. I'd sooner start a business in Greece than in Cali, and the food is better there as well.

Craig Strachan

yank: "Hmmmm, so Mr. Strachan, you believe California is too big to fail?"

Too big, too many electoral votes, too innovative to fail!

yank

Nope, as mentioned above, the kooks' political work in California is measured by the coming DROP in electoral college votes, and corresponding drop in congressional seats, after decades and decades of 5-10 increases in both. Political power drops as well, as you should know.

Folks fleeing will do that. You're reading from a Hollywood script that's like most of them... false... and decades old. California is as close to failure as Greece, or worse.

TGF UKIP

WTF is Bonnie Greer. Judging by the participants the whole thing seems like just another of The Fanzines lefty fests.