[Radio Wrangler]

Some of the decadent old stodgy businesses were once highly creative, but they went off the boil, they stopped creating and expected government contracts handed to them on a plate. At one time any good british business that was getting going could expect to be bought up by GEC and that would be the end of them.

here is perhaps a natural life-cycle of electronics businesses. Creative growth leading to eventual failure or getting eaten alive. A few businesses in the world kept themselves going by a process of reinvention. In a few of them the process was smooth, evolutionary, and not at all traumatic. These latter are far in the minority in the world but are most laudable. Think about David Bowie's musical style always changing and never getting left behind. A hard act to pull off.

I don't mourn the loss of some businesses because long before they died, the spirit had gone out of them. I mourn the loss of what they once were at their best.

Britons can develop some of the best technologies in the world and produce stuff to the very best quality level..... when we really want to. What you don't want is classical british management or a stock market at the helm.

David