How innovation will defeat Covid-19

I for one look forward to Mr Ridley coming up with some innovative proposals for the British banking sector. What could possibly go wrong?

My instinctive sympathies are with the eccentric inventor who can’t or won’t ‘get with the programme’, chances are he has been ripped off by some shyster.
In pop music in the 1960s and 70s, the eccentric genius could do well, make a lot of money for the company. By the 1980s this model began to change. I don’t know if there is any particular reason, there were social changes, in the UK the end of the grammar schools, where at lot of self-made popstars came from, ‘artists’ more trouble than they were worth, different styles of music, fashion, that’s the nature of pop. Perhaps record companies became risk averse, employed in-house songwriters, and auditioned for starlets, who they put on a wage. So things move on, people make money but where is the innovation? The business model? Akin to the post-war Hollywood star system, or 1950s pop. There were technological developments in recording, but often the surest way to a hit, was to find a song from a previous decade, or something derivative and formulaic, performed by the current favourite boy band.
There are always barriers to entry in established markets, start up costs, hostile competitors, amongst others. So one point is that a company or group of companies can remain dominant, without innovation. Indeed there may be new products, but as with the pop music example, they are not superior or improvements on past products, they may even be worse. Companies resort to gimmicks and marketing, or tinkering with ‘new improved’ versions.
Just sour grapes from the eccentric inventor? Possibly. Innovation just seems to take on a random form, not the positivistic sense of inevitable improvement.
The are social and cultural problems too. Once a company, or even a particular country get a head-start it can impossible for newcomers to compete. Certainly not just with the production of technology but its application. A society may fail to develop the potential of its people, and they in
turn may become disaffected ‘left behind’.
So, what about political innovation? Education has a role to play, but the education and the innovation may simply support the status quo, an illusion of ‘newness’ and progress, but still a class based society, where talent is not developed, or where there is no or insufficient opportunity for this to happen.
It used to be science and technology, science the dispassionate search for knowledge, technology the practical application of ideas, or sophisticated tool-making. Innovation carries the connotation of something positive and progressive. Some look forward to and some fear a technocratic society, what will become of us if we don’t ‘get with the programme’?
Back in at school in the 1970s, I remember talk of the ‘leisured society’. Maybe that remains the way forward. Maybe a few technocrats can do the work, or program the software to do the work, and the rest of us can chill out. If the plane is flying to where you want to go, you don’t mind who’s flying it or how it works. If you don’t know who’s flying the plane, how it works or where it’s going, you can start to feel nervous and uneasy. ‘Innovation’ sounds good though.

Little Jonnie I note that your allegations have collapsed as well. Unable to provide links of media outlets, unable to respond to the above article, and of course unable to provide a link to me saying he

I’m going to get myself a clown’s hat in rediness for Ricky Sixpack’s next budget. It promises to be a real corker.

Final Score:
Hysterical scaremongers: 1 UK Economy: 0

I would think a bit of common sense would get us out of this “pandemic”.

It will be gone soon naturally

Pandemic: “(of a disease) prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area.”

It’s called Covid-19, perhaps you’ve missed it.

“It’s innovation that will get us out of this pandemic”.

What pandemic?