We have to turn the clock back
This is a much wider problem than simply a matter of who owns what; this goes right back to a series of decisions made decades ago that are linked to the changes made to the function of what were then called "savings institutions". Immediately post WW2, while the government was deeply in debt, we saw the creation of many new companies that became bywords for the inventive and industrial capacity of the UK. Then, most new companies were formed from the investment of savings held by the people; savings that were guided by the local community stock brokers. Using my experience as a guide, anyone thinking of starting such a new business was almost certainly also a customer of their local stock broker; who in turn would put you into contact with others surrounding them who had funds available to so invest. Your new company was thus locally owned, initially entirely by the founders, then with the addition of funding from their surrounding community. All such new companies were thus locally owned and managed. Again, the mark of success was sufficient cash flow, created by a combination of the achievements of the employees in producing a successful product, allied to a increasingly prosperous surrounding community able to afford to purchase the product. As always, in any business, increased production requires ever increasing access to the working capital to expand that productive base, and your local bank, (then there were many such in each community), was where you went for such access.
Longer term anyone wishing to take the business further, you had to be able to deliver secondary success in two vital aspects; regular delivery of good dividends to the existing shareholder base, and by regular I mean that you had to show that you were focused upon that aiming point above all others - your share holders always received good dividends; the second requirement being strong management, clearly holding the entire company concept together in the interest of both the quality of the employees and the success of the product on your chosen market. If you could fulfil those requirements, you could approach a savings institution, who would in turn spend a great deal of effort to check your company out; that it fulfilled their requirements. At that point, the savings institution would buy a proportion of the shares of the company; but of much greater importance, the company was essentially delivered to the people with savings, as a safe investment for granny. That purchase by the savings institution ensured the respectability of your ongoing business prospects.
That in turn was the base foundation of the entire industrial economy. The longer term investment of our industrial economy came from such investment.
All that came to an end when we were forced to abandon our colonies and the leadership of those colonies were repatriated and they in turn decided to combine all our best industries into large publicly owned, (government owned), businesses. British - everything! But they all failed because they were from then onwards managed by bureaucracy and they needed ever more funds to keep up the illusion of success. sic!. and someone came up with the great idea that the rules underpinning the savings institutions should be changed to suite the need to use the otherwise, savings of the people, normally invested in either the savings institutions holdings of industrial shares; or indeed their own purchases of those shares using grannies box of money under her bed.
From that moment the entire function of the savings of the nation was diverted into the needs for further government funding; savings were from then onwards, increasingly diverted to be used entirely for the purposes of bureaucracy. Today we live in the fallout of those disastrous decisions where there are no spare savings available to be invested in our own industry; ergo the increasing use of the phrase- inward investment.
The UK lacks adequate leadership within it's bureaucracy which has become in my opinion, completely corrupted by their access to those savings over so many decades. The problem can only be solved by fundamental changes that it would seem no one has the courage to set into motion.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
