Best Of

But enough of the nattering nabobs of negativity.

https://x.com/SebJohnsonUK/status/2033499266715369549
Prior to 2026 the UK had never minted a Unicorn in Defence.

It has now minted two in two months.

One of them hasn't even announced it publicly.

The first is UK-Ukrainian UFORCE, which develops autonomous systems across air, sea and land, and has supported more than 150,000 missions during the war in Ukraine.

It has just raised a $50m seed at a $1bn+ valuation.

The second is
@roark_aerospace
. The company intentionally keeps an incredibly low profile and chose not to announce its recent $210m Series B.

It did $197m of revenue last year and is on track to do $400m this year.

It is great to see the UK finally waking up to the need to build and back defence companies.

Reeves says she will stop UK Tech drifting abroad.

So that's another piece of national prosperity fked

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k16zdr1r1o

The government just announced billions of new funding for both fusion and quantum computing.
Which sounds fairly positive on that score.

Do nuclear fusion and quantum computing not both require massive amounts of energy?

The single biggest thing the government could be doing right now is lowering the price of energy, but instead there’s Ed Miliband.

No.

You could run some quantum systems off your household mains.

The funding for fusion is aimed at a prototype plant which will be a net generator of electricity.

Milliband (along with, in a smaller way, our own SandyRentool) is a separate problem.

FPT...

Reeves says she will stop UK Tech drifting abroad.

So that's another piece of national prosperity fked

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k16zdr1r1o

As the article notes one of the attractions abroad is tax breaks. Here, Reeves thinks the government spending more money is the solution. It is the problem in a nutshell.

She also thinks the EU is the key to our well being. Though how taking on an additional 19000 pieces of regulation is going to help escapes me.

The woman couldnt spell IQ

To simplify, British companies currently have to follow 19000 pieces of UK regulation, but if they then want expand into Europe, they have to follow another 19000 pieces of EU regulation. Better then to just align the regulation, so there’s only one set of regulations.

Regularity alignment would simply force us to be as uncompetitive as the EU. I grant you we're currently there anyway, but there's always a chance of a Government coming in that actually wants the country to succeed.

I work with digital health start-ups. I write papers on digital health regulation. The companies I know want regulatory alignment. They want easy access to bigger markets. They accept the need for regulation in a safety-critical, health context, but they want clarity: they want to know what they need to do. They also want the promise of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: that is, if they jump through the hoops, there will be a reward. The UK going it alone on regulations is not top of their list.

Similarly, I think, with biopharma.
Those arguing Brexit was good for the industry are bonkers.

Well, Johnson was certainly a bonker. Well known for it.

The polish is quickly coming off ol' Merz who afaics seems to vacillate and reverse positions as much as Starmer.

Katja Hoyer
@hoyer_kat
·
9m
Merz is one of the most unpopular German chancellors ever. What's he done to lose trust? Nothing. That's the problem. Voters don't want strategic political caution. They want change. If Merz won't deliver it, they'll look elsewhere, I argue @Bloomberg
👇

https://x.com/hoyer_kat/status/2033829405085007934?s=20

You could substitute the word Merz for Starmer too.

At least Zack is heading to the top of the opinion polls. Some undiluted Marxist student politics government would be welcome in this World of Trumpian insanity.

No he isn't, Reform still lead the polls and Polanski is still polling well below what Corbyn got

I said "heading to the top". Reform look like they are in freefall. The Trump factor?

FPT...

Reeves says she will stop UK Tech drifting abroad.

So that's another piece of national prosperity fked

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k16zdr1r1o

As the article notes one of the attractions abroad is tax breaks. Here, Reeves thinks the government spending more money is the solution. It is the problem in a nutshell.

She also thinks the EU is the key to our well being. Though how taking on an additional 19000 pieces of regulation is going to help escapes me.

The woman couldnt spell IQ

To simplify, British companies currently have to follow 19000 pieces of UK regulation, but if they then want expand into Europe, they have to follow another 19000 pieces of EU regulation. Better then to just align the regulation, so there’s only one set of regulations.

Regularity alignment would simply force us to be as uncompetitive as the EU. I grant you we're currently there anyway, but there's always a chance of a Government coming in that actually wants the country to succeed.

Signing up to unknown future EU legislation is absolutely the worst possible option, because every single piece of it will be framed inside the EU as “how we can we use this new law to screw the British?”

Meanwhile most of the British political class will enjoy being screwed, because to them more EU is ideology over pragmatism.

This is just a bizarre paranoia. There is one global power out there who has been very explicitly trying to screw us in recent months, and that's the US under Trump. We have good relationships with the EU and the EU understands that both sides can win from easing trade barriers, e.g. through regulatory alignment.

FPT...

Reeves says she will stop UK Tech drifting abroad.

So that's another piece of national prosperity fked

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0k16zdr1r1o

As the article notes one of the attractions abroad is tax breaks. Here, Reeves thinks the government spending more money is the solution. It is the problem in a nutshell.

She also thinks the EU is the key to our well being. Though how taking on an additional 19000 pieces of regulation is going to help escapes me.

The woman couldnt spell IQ

To simplify, British companies currently have to follow 19000 pieces of UK regulation, but if they then want expand into Europe, they have to follow another 19000 pieces of EU regulation. Better then to just align the regulation, so there’s only one set of regulations.

Regularity alignment would simply force us to be as uncompetitive as the EU. I grant you we're currently there anyway, but there's always a chance of a Government coming in that actually wants the country to succeed.

I work with digital health start-ups. I write papers on digital health regulation. The companies I know want regulatory alignment. They want easy access to bigger markets. They accept the need for regulation in a safety-critical, health context, but they want clarity: they want to know what they need to do. They also want the promise of a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: that is, if they jump through the hoops, there will be a reward. The UK going it alone on regulations is not top of their list.