North South Divide - will we ever recover?

[biotechpete]

You have to be careful with terminology. IP is, of its own, entirely worthless. And IP is not 'people' - it's their output.

 

It is the commercial exploitation of the IP which confers it value, don't forget that.

 

I am well aware of the what the term 'IP' means. I never suggested it was people?

 

I think that there is intrinsic value to knowledge in a society which it is perhaps not entirely easy to measure.

 

Perhaps in commercial terms it is the legalisation of the IP which creates it's monetary value but the knowledge base in our universities is a valuable asset to the country and given that the universities are public organisations that knowledge is a property of the country, which I think it is fair to apply the term itellectual property to, in an albeit more loose sense than a legal professional would use it.

[biotechpete]

Why not offer free training (with support grants) in those disciplines which the country needs? Not entirely free - the training would come with a work commitment to amortise the training costs. There is ample precedent. (As I mentioned in a post on another thread, I was trained by a major company (expensive training) at their cost. I was required to work for them for 5 years afterwards (and to repay a significant amount of my training cost over that period - albeit from a pretty good salary.)

 

I like the idea and I have no principled objection to it. However, it relies on a demand from companies in this country to train and employ UK workers. I can see no financial insentive for them to do so with an abundant supply of well trained labour from outside the UK. The government has to compete with other countries where this training will be offered at lower cost or for free.

 

 

 

There are two ways of looking at this problem, too. When the Czech Republic joined the EU, the government was aware that there was likely to be an efflux of highly-skilled and highly-qualified personnel. Pay in the Czech Republic is nowhere near as high as it is elsewhere. To reduce the outflow of skills, the government poured money into the University of Prague (both to enhance lecturers' pay and to increase the university's facilities) and recruited foreign students.

 

Those foreign students represent an 'invisible export' - they pay university fees and they pay money into the local economy.

 

In many countries, the demand for places in medical schools outstrips supply. The Czechs decided (very wisely, perhaps) to export skills rather than to export skilled people.

 

Is the shortage of engineers, scientists, doctors etc in the UK caused by foreign students coming in and snapping up all the places, or it it attributable to a reluctance among British students to study 'hard' courses?

 

Not sure about engineers but there are several thousand unemployed scientists in UK owing to the closures Pfizer, GSK and Astra-Zeneca R&D sites. One of the reasons we have so few engineers and scientists is because the jobs are intellectually challenging and poorly paid in comparison to other graduate careers. As I scientist I couldn't in all concience reccomend it as a career option. It's not through lack of students taking science A-levels either. Actually it's pretty easy to get As in science subjects these days with modular exams and most of the challenging subject matter stripped from the syllabus when AS-levels were introduced.

 

I believe there is currently an over supply of junior doctors too. Medical schools that I know of are full and not that many of the students are from abroad. I suppose this may be because the NHS pays for the training.

[L00b]

I am well aware of the what the term 'IP' means. I never suggested it was people?

In the context of your earlier post, that's how I understood it.

Perhaps in commercial terms it is the legalisation of the IP which creates it's monetary value.

No. Simply commercial exploitation.

 

The 'legalisation' just makes it easier to ascertain what the IP is, who owns it and what are the boundaries/conditions of its use. E.g. my 'free' software invention is just as worthless as my 'expensive-to-get' software patent until and unless (i) it is actually embodied in a software program which (ii-a) people want to pay money for, or (ii-b) M$/Google/another eventually brings about/commercialises

but the knowledge base in our universities is a valuable asset to the country and given that the universities are public organisations that knowledge is a property of the country, which I think it is fair to apply the term itellectual property to, in an albeit more loose sense than a legal professional would use it.

As a legal professional in that field, to me knowledge, or a knowledge base, isn't IP. It's just knowledge. IP is what some people output with their/the knowledge

 

The knowledge base in Universities wherever, is only an asset (rather than a liability) so long as research activity goes on to maintain and develop it, and -under the 'new funding paradigm' (of Unis at least)- so long as the output of that research/knowledge base is successfully harnessed (via IP) and commercially exploited.

 

"The country" hasn't owned a substantial portion of that knowledge base for very many years indeed (funded as it has been by private companies).

 

But anyway...you probably have your name to a fair few PCTs and EPs, so don't let me teach you to suck eggs...

[biotechpete]

In the context of your earlier post, that's how I understood it.

No. Simply commercial exploitation.

 

The 'legalisation' just makes it easier to ascertain what the IP is, who owns it and what are the boundaries/conditions of its use. E.g. my 'free' software invention is just as worthless as my 'expensive-to-get' software patent until and unless (i) it is actually embodied in a software program which (ii-a) people want to pay money for, or (ii-b) M$/Google/another eventually brings about/commercialises

As a legal professional in that field, to me knowledge, or a knowledge base, isn't IP. It's just knowledge. IP is what some people output with their/the knowledge

 

The knowledge base in Universities wherever, is only an asset (rather than a liability) so long as research activity goes on to maintain and develop it, and -under the 'new funding paradigm' (of Unis at least)- so long as the output of that research/knowledge base is successfully harnessed (via IP) and commercially exploited.

 

"The country" hasn't owned a substantial portion of that knowledge base for very many years indeed (funded as it has been by private companies).

 

But anyway...you probably have your name to a fair few PCTs and EPs, so don't let me teach you to suck eggs...

 

I guessed that you were in the legal trade. At risk of being modded for off topic discussion and bogging ourselves down in needless semantics....

 

I admit I was using the term loosely, but still. In the scientific community the term 'intellectual property' refers to much more than commercialised/commercialisable output. I suppose it is that for which you might even get credit or a nobel prize. I think most academics would regard all output from research and their ideas as their IP. It's what gives them intrinsic value to their employers. What I have heard termed their 'intellectual capital'. Probably you would call this a knowledge base but it's more than just knowledge and there's not much base to it, if only I know it. Perhaps it's that we are a little more lose with the definitions as a whole, but all my research output is owned by someone whether is is successfully harnessed and commercialised through an IP vehicle or not. Whether you would call that IP I don't know, but it's intellectual and it's property.

 

The software you refer to may not generate you any income, but that is by no means an indication of its value and doesn't make it worthless (to you perhaps, but not everyone). The internet, for example, originally developed as a research tool, has massive economic value doesn't it? Nobody bundled the internet knowledge base into an IP vehicle and started a spin off company from the academic insititutions, though surely someone invented it and therefore it must belong to someone. I would still regard that as the inventors IP for which they would get the credit, though perhaps it would have been far less valuable to us all if it had been more closely guarded.

[biotechpete]

I am blaming them for the fact that we, in Sheffield, or even those in Hull, are far less resistant to recession and seem far less capable of innovating our way out of it.

 

So how's this for a good evidence base for my arguement.

 

And while we're at it lets continue the comparison with city centre parking charges (I can tell you that purple zone is the zone which is about 1 mins walk from the centre:

 

Around thecentre:mk

Red (premium rate): £1.20 per hour (30p per 15 minutes)

Purple (standard rate): £0.30 per hour

Xscape, Theatre District and Food Court:

Xscape: £0.80p per hour

Theatre District: Red rate - £1.20 per hour

Theatre multi storey car park: Free of charge

Between Xscape and Theatre District: Purple rate - £0.30 per hour

Food Court: Free of charge – maximum stay 2 hours

 

Sheffield:

http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/local/barnsley/sheffield_parking_charges_to_rise_again_1_3236306

[donkey]

How's this for starters

From Guardian in 2008

Sheffield 24.86%

Hull 23.42%

Milton Keynes 12.34%

.

 

Given your user name, I would have thought that you have some knowledge of the level of statistical consistency required before an assertion is considered proven.

 

Comparing one service economy overspill town - having excellent infrastructure connecting it to one of the wealthiest cities in the world -with two cities in the North built on heavy industries which have laid off the vast majority of their work forces within the last generation, doesn't really cut it. Surely you must agree?

 

Do you really think it is down to attitude that an area which has seen 100,000s people loose major employment sources in recent history, is not as economically dynamic as the much less populous urban area recently built specifically to house burgeoning new industries and a workforce for which there was no longer room in the international trading hub less than an hour away, which has a GDP about as big as the rest of the UK put together?

 

Maybe we should open the Sheffield stock exchange. Do you think it could compete with The City? Or why doesn't Hull try and attract some multi billionaire Russian oligarchs? That would make an economic splash. Why hasn't anyone tried to entice the thousands of millionaire yacht owners along the south coast to moor their boats in Grimsby? "The North Sea, big waves, bracing weather and very far away from places which are warm, or anywhere really." With a good marketing campaign, who knows?

 

Unfortunately, post industrial northerners just aren't dynamic enough for such enterprise! You can tell by the way they vote. They cling hopelessly to naive assuimptions such as that the chances of launching a successful enterprise are impacted by the average level of disposible wealth in the local area, and by the geography/infrastructure concerning its' connectedness to competitive suppliers, trained employees and potential markets. Any Albanian will tell you how outmoded are these assumptions about wealth having greater potential to create wealth than relative poverty does. But try telling that to a Northerner! Personally, I blame the whippets!