Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

London Tech Week: All for the luvvies and the joke's on you, taxpayers

It's total nonsense - yet we're the ones funding it

+Comment Yesterday morning I was on a stage listening to the Deputy Mayor of London and trying very hard not to look out of the window.

I was the 39th floor of One Canada Square (you know, the building everyone always calls “Canary Wharf”), which had a great view over North London. If only I could sneak a peek, I was sure I'd be able to spot a local landmark.

The speaker was actually one of the six (count 'em) Deputy Mayors of London, Munira Mirza, a sociology PhD who gets paid £129,082 a year to advise Boris Johnson on culture and education matters.

Ms. Mirza, a career waffle-shop hopper (Royal Society for the Arts, Arts Council, etc), had something extraordinary to say to the audience, who were teenagers drawn from local schools. They were there because they hope to get jobs in journalism which nobody expects will exist. And if they do exist, they won't be open to inner-city teenagers.

London used to be known for its finance businesses, the deputy mayor told them, but now it was one of the biggest and best "technology centres" in the world - if not the most bestest of all! Technology was "driving" London's employment growth. Having explained this, Mirza sat down looking extremely pleased with herself. As you would, too, if you were paid almost as much as the Prime Minister.

The event was independently organised but had been sucked into “London Technology Week”, which itself hoovers up large sums of public funding ostensibly to stimulate the local economy. But in reality (as we shall see) it really benefits people who put on events like “London Technology Week”. It also enriches speculators, hangers on, carnival barkers: the pick-and-shovel merchants of the bubble, who rent space in "incubators", offer "mentoring" and put on endless events. The “London Tech Scene” was created by and for political, marketing and media types. The gap between these elites and the rest of the UK was illustrated by the enthusiastic youngsters who'll never get within breathing distance of their dream job.

The reality of the London's “Tech Scene” (yeah, I know) was inadvertently illustrated by three reports that accompanied its launch yesterday. One claimed that London now had more "tech jobs" than Silicon Valley. The “Scene” was actually pulling the UK out of recession: 27 per cent of new jobs in the UK were "tech jobs", apparently. That's 438,000 new tech jobs. The job numbers were was quickly debunked by Sky's Ed Conway and Tom Cheshire.

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like