725,000 public sector jobs face axe, economist warns

Andy_L

ILW wrote: »

So it appears the public sector did not invent the LCD, just one of the materials it was made from.
Even so a patent for a cost of a few thousands of pounds could have been a pretty good investment, cannot see many private sector companies having let that go.

IIRC Gov Policy at the time was that it was better, for the country as a whole, to get those defence/government research spin-offs out for the private sector to develop & explot, thus making more money via tax revenue than selling patent rights.

Andy_L

ILW wrote: »

When there are more managers than front line staff, there is a problem. I have every right to comment, because I am paying for it

and in which gov department does that actually happen?

ILW

Andy_L wrote: »

and in which gov department does that actually happen?

NHS, something like 4 support staff for every nurse. Many highr padi the the nurses.

thescouselander

ILW wrote: »

So it appears the public sector did not invent the LCD, just one of the materials it was made from.
Even so a patent for a cost of a few thousands of pounds could have been a pretty good investment, cannot see many private sector companies having let that go.

Yes, it would have been a good investment - although this investment could not have been made without a remit to do this which would need to be given by the government of the day - I dont think this sort of thing was policy back then.

kabayiri

tomterm8 wrote: »

As I understand it, the UK government via the UK's Royal Raidar Estalishment and the university of Manchester discovered cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals in the 1960's, which had no practical utility until work in the 70's by Hoffmann-LaRoche (which was work on a LCD display for a digital watch). It was really quite a lot latter - in 1997 - when Hitachi produced the first TV with a LCD display of good enough quality to be functional that they took off.

In other words, they didn't patent cyanobiphenyl liquid crystals because they didn't think they would make a profit from it.

My university was doing research into this.

Tom is right. It was recognised fairly early on that so called LCD2 was the big money spinner.

With a lot of these things there are often multiple solutions to the commercial opportunity presented by a technological innovation.

Knowing which solution will 'win out' is quite difficult to predict. Some would argue Betamax was a better technical solution than VHS but VHS got out there in greater numbers and won out.

Andy_L

ILW wrote: »

NHS, something like 4 support staff for every nurse. Many highr padi the the nurses.

So you've moved from managers to support staff then ...hmmm...still wrong though;)

Seeing as how nurses make up about 30% of NHS staff that impossible. Still, don't let facts get in the way of a lazy tabloid headline

http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/workforce/nhs-staff-numbers/nhs-staff-1999--2009-overview

headcone

ILW wrote: »

NHS, something like 4 support staff for every nurse. Many highr padi the the nurses.

I like the bit in Bahasa for some of our overseas nurses.

Nice touch that.