This links to an extensive report by McKinsey & Co on X-Prizes along with prizes of all sorts. It is a few years old now and not quite as enthusiastic as I am. This is largely because it doesn't foresee the sort of mass spending on prizes I do. Also by not concentrating on technology prizes it is concerned about how much the prize reflects glory on the awarder and worries that 2 much money spent on prizes will mean some go unreported. I see X-Prizes purely as a way of stimulating innovation - if it also makes the field more respected that is gravy.

   However the graphs are valuable.



     This is the recent increase in prizes in recent years. However it includes more conventional prizes like the Booker and other arts prizes which have barely risen so it considerably understates the rise in technology prizes.

It appears that the world's first rigid airship since the 1930s will soon take to the skies for flight trials: and better still, this ship has a new piece of technology which could actually change the existing landscape and permit the leviathans of the skies to return.
We refer to the Aeroscraft, brainchild of Ukrainian airship visionary Igor Pasternak, and its proprietary Control of Static Heaviness (COSH) tech which apparently lets it do what no other airship has ever been able to. The "Dragon Dream" half-scale demonstrator, which carried out hangar trials earlier this year, has now been certified by the FAA for R&D outdoor trial flights and the first crew to take the ship up has been named.
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   From the Register some time ago.
   The great advantage of this sort of airship is that it can pump in its helium, and by becoming heavier than air, land vertically. That means it can compete in transportation, at least to remote areas and islands. Also that it can transport units to large for road or rail - the Register article mentions a 600 man battalion with heavy weapons but I am thinking, less extravagantly, of prefabricated houses or nuclear reactors.
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Latest news is that the testing has been successful and that they expect to have it commercially available by 2016.

"Though the initial fleet will have 22 vehicles, he says there is a market for 2,500. NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Department of Defense are betting on the Aeroscraft’s success, having given development funding to Aeros. “The demand’s so huge, and if we’ll be able to build today or bring to the market today 22 vehicles, it will be not enough,” Pasternak says. “It will be just not enough because people are so struggling with logistical issues.”
 and its beautiful.

I wrote previously of how the R100 (the "capitalist airship") and therefore the future of airships was scrapped not because it was a failure but because it was a success which had worked perfectly. The 101 (the British government's "socialist airship") was a failure despite, or because of the ministry's total support whereas the R100 worked fine. This could not be allowed to be understood by the public so the R100 was sold for scrap.

Glad to see this technology has only been held up for 80 years by government parasites.

    This is a rather interesting idea on Mark Pack's "Lib Dem" blog:

A few years back, candidates wanting to stand as Labour/Co-operative Party joint candidates ran into a legal problem, despite the tradition of such joint candidates stretching back many decades. The Electoral Commission decided that, on close reading of election law, it was not legal for such joint candidates to have a logo appear next to their name on the party ballot.

Cue a flurry of election law changes to remedy the situation .....But in that mis-reporting is a germ of an idea which a pressure group could adopt.

A candidate for a political party could stand as a joint candidate, with a joint description and special logo on the ballot paper,* reminding voters at the most crucial key final moment before voting that this candidate is the one which gets their approval.

This idea of pressure group acting as minor political party in order to win coverage on the ballot paper and hence increase its electoral leverage – both to get candidates to agree to its policies and then to win votes for those candidates who do – is something aficionados of American politics may
recognise.

It is what US political parties such as the Working Families Party do, with a few wrinkles due to the different electoral law their but the same underlying purpose and method.

Imagine, for example, a group of environmental lobby groups setting up their minor political party and offering its ballot paper endorsement to candidates who back its policy.

Agree with them and you’re Labour? Fine, you get to stand as the Labour Party / Green Coalition joint candidate, so described on the ballot paper. Agree with them and you’re Lib Dem? Then it’s the Liberal Democrats / Green Coalition you appear as and so on.

This would simply extend the existing tactic of a pressure group asking candidates in a constituency their views on some set questions and then publicising the answers back to a relatively small number of voters signed up to the organisation in that constituency. Extend however in a crucial way.

Because by getting the answer as to who is most favoured on every printed ballot paper, it would take their message not to a small audience, but to the whole electorate.

Now that really would be a pressure group putting on the pressure.
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     I think that is a pretty good idea, but not particularly for the LDs for reasons I explained in a comment I placed. It is clear from the way he describes it he is thinking of lots of right on politically approved pressure groups could pile on to the LDs forming a band wagon.

The main one, mentioned in another comment, is the Electoral Reform Society, which has long been the LDs in academia. However as I commented  the LDs are no longer the most electable supporters of proportional representation. I would be quite comfortable with an ERS logo added to LDs or Greens in those areas where the Electoral Calculus said they were the main contenders and added to the UKIP logo where we are (& conceivably also a few Labour and Tories who had a genuine record of rejecting the whip to support PR).

With public support for PR running at about 70%:20% that could indeed be enough to make PR supporting parties a majority. I trust Mark would still support this, as a matter of principle, even though the main beneficiary would be UKIP.

The other advantage for opponents of overweening government (but disadvantage for LDs) would be that the Electoral Commission could never legally allow a government financed sock puppet to thus register itself as a party.

With almost every "Green" charity except Greenpeace, funded 70% by the EU and most of the rest by the British state no "group of environmental lobby groups setting up their minor political party and offering its ballot paper endorsement to" LibDems would be lawful.

But real organisations which aren't government funded fakecharities could. Who would the Migrationwatch Party or the Taxpayer's Alliance Party be likely to endorse? That's what I thought too,
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Incidentally, with the typical commitment to free speech of the Pseudoliberal party my comment, when, after a undue delay, my comment appeared, mention of the government sock puppet problem had been removed ;-)

Another commenter had, quite independently, mentioned the Electoral Reform Society, which is not surprising.

     The latest PR for HS2 is concentrating on how crowded the south of England's railways are and how being able to go to Leeds at speed will, in some inexplicable way, reduce this.

      The previous arguments that it made economic sense were ludicrous and have had to be dropped. At about £80 bn, if it had to make a 10% return on capital as is normally expected that would cost £300 per ticket plus the natural running cost - this clearly does not make economic sense.

      So back to overcrowding.

      Rail's problem is that while road vehicles only have to stay a couple of car lengths apart, trains have to be about a mile apart. This is because the stopping distances are so much longer - rails being slipier than tarmac and carriages much heavier. For a long time John Redwood has been saying rail should learn from bus technology and build much lighter vehicles. This is also obviously far more fuel efficient. He is right on that . I also think we should be building automated rail which, by allowing single carriage units running 24/7 would increase capacity.

     But here is another idea. A new magnetic braking system:

Here is a summary of the changes needed:

  As a result of the recent report pointing out the obvious facts that Scottish oil will reduce run out and that our demographics mean we will have a significantly larger pensioner population and lower pre-pensioner one (both points I have made before) the separatists are reduced to saying that if we get faster growth this will far exceed the losses from these.

   In that the SNP are absolutely right. If we had non-EU world average growth (6%) we would be twice as well off by 2025.

   And if the SNP were going to do it I would be for them. Indeed back when Jim Mather was their intellectual light I thought they at least intended to do so.

   The SNP have had a term and a half to produce growth and sweet absolutely nothing. Well nothing positive. They have wasted billions on windmills and committed us to be "100% renewable by 2020" which is a commitment to economic collapse and deaths. When their Green partner in the Yes campaign promised that separation would mean the joys of recession for at least 10 years and hopefully forever, they said not one word in disagreement. They still haven't. Their numerous promises of lower taxes and higher government spending do not suggest that economic competence is anywhere on their radar.

    The latest SNP spokescritter wheeze is to say that high taxes and government interference works in Scandanavia. Lesley Riddoch was squeaking this line last night. Well no they have a wrinkle our government doesn't. Their governments spend relatively effectively on doing things and don't regulate wealth creation out of existence,


Why does Sweden have so many billionaires ?

Billionaires per capita.

 Here's the top 10 (number of billionaires/estimated population):
 1. Monaco (3/35,427)
 2. St. Kitts and Nevis (1/53,051)
 3. Guernsey (1/65,573)
 4. Hong Kong (39/7.1 million)
 5. Belize (1/356,600)
 6. Cyprus (3/1.1 million)
 7. Israel (17/7.8 million)
 8. Singapore (10/5.2 million)
 9. Kuwait (5/2.8 million)
 10. Switzerland (13/7.9 million)
 12. Sweden (14 billionaires, population 9.56 million)
 But one country stands out on the list: Sweden.
 How does a famously socialist and left-wing country like Sweden get so many billionaires ?

Why are billionaries a good sign ? Because usually they created a great company.....The good news about Sweden is that it’s exactly that kind of place. High taxes go to finance cheap health care and education, an excellent system of public transportation, and relatively generous subsidies to low-income households that keep the poverty rate and inequality low. But they haven’t stopped Swedish entrepreneurs from building giant firms like H&M, Ikea, and Tetra Pak.

 The Scandinavian success stories show that great companies can be born and innovate amid generous welfare states, they do have some cautionary tales for left-wing thinking. The Swedish tax code was substantially reformed in 1990 to be friendlier toward capital accumulation, with a flat rate on investment income. Sweden has no taxes on inheritance or residential property, and its 22 percent corporate income tax rate is far lower than America’s 35 percent. Even after spending cuts by the current center-right government, the Swedish public sector is still about half the total economy (much higher than here), but the taxes that finance it fall more heavily on consumption and less on business investment than in the U.S.

 Sweden also has a relatively lightly regulated economy. There are rules about public health and environmental protection, of course. But Sweden is arguably further down the neoliberal path of dismantling purely economic regulations than the U.S. In Stockholm, for example, taxi fares are completely unregulated and for-profit charter schools are common. All things considered, international surveys rank Sweden as a place where it’s easy to do business. Within the U.S., surveys show that licensing rules rather than tax rates are the main driver of local business-friendliness.
If you have a high income tax rate but low corporate, property and capital gains taxes and light regulations for other aspects of business then you can still generate a lot of billionaires.
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     Norway cuts hundreds of km of tunnels at £4m per km whereas the SNP, with support from the other useless Holyrood parties, spent £2,300m on a new Forth bridge (8 times more than it should have been) and said that a £30m tunnel would have cost £6,600m if built by them.

    Finland, as well as Sweden, are willing to use nuclear power.

    Iceland, in proper free enterprise style, let their banks go bust.

    Norway and Iceland refuse to be part of the EU zero growth zone.

   Yes the Scandinavian  countries prove that with only a bit of common sense and very little free marketism it is possible to do rather well. Estonia, which started much poorer because it had been in the USSR went ideologically free market and is thus doing remarkably well.

    But none of the current Holyrood parties have any commitment to Scandinavian common sense. All are committed to massive state parasitism. Worse than that, our media institutions are also committed to it. Not one paper or broadcaster was willing, at any time, to report that the 7/8th of the cost of the Forth Bridge is either state parasitism or simple theft.

     Government economic parasitism (ie taxes) is important (it costs 50% of our gdp, possibly 55% in Scotland) but regulatory parasitism is worse in that it costs at least another 100% of current gdp, and the latter is the bit the Swedes have beaten.

    We wouldn't have to be run that well to achieve growth that would end all our problems (Zimbabwe recently managed 9.3%) either in Holyrood or Westminster, but it is absolutely certain that the Holyrood parties have neither the competence nor desire to do so.

    This is good news combining my previously expressed interest in automated rail, driverless cars & my rejected proposal that it would be better for the Scottish government to spend £20 million building an automated rail link to Glasgow airport than start a £300 million conventional rail project and then cancelling it for £40 million.

      The same company is now using the same equipment to provide driverless cars (on rail) to provide a public transport system in Milton Keynes  http://phys.org/news/2013-11-uk-town-deploy-driverless-pods.html

       This is my previous article on the subject. The Ultra system is also in use at Heathrow now. But not Glasgow.

    In a country ruled by the Sir Humphreys and amiable nincompoops like Cameron Hacker, with the unelected EU bureaucracy presiding over all this poem seems much more current than when it was then.

Rudyard Kipling

The Servant When He Reigneth

"For three things the earth is disquieted, and for four which it cannot bear. For a servant when he reigneth, and a fool when he is filled with meat; for an odious woman when she is married, and an handmaid that is heir to her mistress." -- PROV. XXX. 21-22-23.

Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book --
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master's name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.

His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy broken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave --
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!