Boris Johnson floats idea of 'London visa' to attract tech talent London's tousle-haired ultra-blond mayor, Boris Johnson, has called for the creation of a special "London visa" to tempt the world's tech and fashion superstars to the capital. The London Mayor's office has submitted an application to be given an allocation of 100 of the "exceptional talent" visas that the Home Office hands …
The only rational way to allocate visas is as follows:
1) Decide how many visas we want to issue in a year (let's say 120,000)
2) Auction them off to the highest bidders (at 10,000 a month)
No more so-called "competent bodies" arranging visas for their best mate from down under. No more haphazard point systems, or lists of "high demand" occupations. Most importantly of all, let's put an end to companies claiming that they can't possibly compete if they have to pay their employees a reasonable wage.
It doesn't matter whether you're hiring a Bangladeshi chef or an Indian programmer or a Ukrainian scientist: if they aren't going to earn enough to make the cost of the visa worthwhile, then you don't get to bring them in.
Having worked with companies across the UK, the most clueless and lazy have been companies in London, which is why I'm always staggered when people in the South East try to claim they're so brilliant (rather than doing well because of massive subsidies for housing benefits, bank bailouts, Olympics, Crossrail etc).
The most productive software teams I've worked for have been in rural Oxfordshire.
Worst phrase in the help desk lexicon? Can you call so-and-so at our London office.
I think it's like the 'theory of Blondes'; All Blonde idiots stay blonde, some no-blonde idiots join them. Relatively few home grown self-deluding over-achievers (and god knows there are enough of them) can get a job outside London but many are attracted in from other areas.
I assume the 100 visas will come out of the national quota and therefore the rest of the country will again be suffering to keep London in the manner it has become accustomed.
Top marks to Boris for pushing his manor to the front again, but please, direct some energy at the areas of the UK that are still in the throws of the 80's recession, rather than stoking the epicentre of UK inflation.
Not that I live in Birmingham, or have any connection to it, but it sure as hell is more accessible to the rest of the UK and so more suitable for all the national centres of excellence that seem to cluster around London,
you know, the ones our taxes pay for, but you'll rarely in your lifetime get to see.
Does the Silicon Roundabout really attract the creme-de-la-creme? I'm not sure you'll find it does. Lots of Googly/Twitter hipster "Yes I am really a CTO" twats with social meedia-itis maybe - all doing the same sort of thing but without a profit/business plan (with a few exceptions albeit).
On the other hand we have Cambridge being named in the top 10 of global Unis. Presumably this, and others such as Portsmouth, Manchester, Edinburgh etc is where the real future talent and innovation is coming from in science, engineering and bio-tech; but the top grads from those and such like are being swept up by the top commercial names in University sponsorship/partnership agreements - and presumably anyone else worth their salt is picking up whatever they can to pay the debts.
London - meh!
My HK-Chinese nephew applied for and was accepted for a job in the scottish borders. The requirements were for an english/cantonese bilingual chef with experience of UK and Hong Kong dishes. The employers couldn't get a local, so it fitted the rules for overseas recruitment, and my nephew fitted perfectly and got the job.
He went back to HK to sort out some admin, came back with his employer's documents and work visa, but was immediately put back on the 'plane to HK. Oh well, sod them. He's now an aerospace engineer and is sitting his FAA exams in LA next week. The restaurant in the borders, tho', has gone bust.
To keep the rest of us Brits out ...........OH they do!
Its called the congestion charge,mind they need to make up a new name for that as it clearly doesn't fit the purpose for which it was introduced.Hmmm it now sounds like something a Government department would think up.
>London's tousle-haired ultra-blond mayor, Boris Johnson, has called for the creation of a
>special "London visa" to tempt the world's tech and fashion superstars to the capital
When did getting good grades in rote-memorising chunks of dead-language stuff provide good credentials for saying anything about technology?
Entertaining bored folks, 'twixt desk-time and pub-time, maybe. But anything beyond Big-Brother-esque amusement? From politico-whorelings? No.
Er, he was talking about visas - not technology. And the word visa is derived from one of those dead languages..... and if I had the brains to do a Classics degree at Oxford, I'd have jumped at the chance. If only it was just rote-learning and all the other stuff about actually speaking and applying the language didn't come into it....
Perhaps he needs more plumbers for London if too many poles have gone home?
But knowledge workers of any kind? Come off it, we can work from anywhere. I haven't had a UK employer since sometime in the 1990s, but fortunately my current (and previous) Silicon Valley employers treat me a lot better than any Brit company I've encountered.
The super-rich don't need special visas. The rest just line the pockets of London's slumlords until they escape.
Hah-what London really needs is a 'Leaving Fee'. Can we rename everywhere else as "Not London" so we know where to put the border crossings. Then we're sorted.
While Boris is at this though any chance that 'Not London' could seek compensation from London for so artfully masterminding private equity takeovers that have so successfully dodged the annual tax collection needed to maintain and develop our education, health and infrastructure?
ta.
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