Here's the thing: it is sensationalist, but not in the way people expect Lord Browne: non-executive director of Cameron's cabinet, now chairman of Huawei UK (the latter fact curiously absent from his Wikipedia page...) Andrew Cahn: Head of UK Trade & Investments in Cameron's cabinet, now non-executive director of Huawei UK & former chairman of their advisory board John Suffolk: Chief Information Officer in Cameron's cabinet, now Senior Vice President and the Global Cyber Security & Privacy Officer for Huawei I wonder if this had anything to do with Huawei being picked for the 5G contract?
Huawei are involved in UK R+D projects on 5G. But that is a big difference from a govt run/used comms network. BT have removed Huawei kit from the 21CN, as I guess having source code visibility of MLOC is too much to be practically scanned for potential security "back doors" put in at the behest of someone (actually they are more likely to find "(c) Cisco Networks" than security nasties - NOTE : this is an industry insider joke ) .
The real irony about Williamson's sacking is that it has deflected attention away from Chris Grayling costing the taxpayer another £56m over his failed ferry contracts, whereas usually the plan is for details of yet another Grayling cock up to emerge just in time to get somebody else out of the firing line
Could not happen with the following RDBD political rule : cannot work for any company relating to your former govt roles, in a direct or lobbying capacity, for at least 5 years after ending your govt office.
Good idea, but 5 years not long enough, should be 10. There should not be even the merest suggestion of dodgy dealings, rather than the current reek of it.
As an aside, makes you wonder where China got all it's cutting edge technology from. Was it developed by Chinese firms or simply ripped off western firms who went to China for cheap labour, not caring about anything else.
Huawei has used a mixture of legit and illegal stuff on its rise : 1. Undercutting on pricing That got them so far, until the quality aspect would not win further deals. So they invested in their QA processes to lessen that as in issue. 2. Going into markets where the incumbent vendors either did not rate the ROI, or got snobby. So a lot of "long tail" business in the EMEA region (Africa etc) . This established commercial goodwill with certain regimes, and also gained them a lot of "in the field" experience to feed back into their product R+D. 3. Costs With for a long time the labour costs in China being much less than the west, Huawei did a lot of "bend over backwards" bespoke work for customers, to add functionality that incumbent vendors could/would not justify doing, if it meant sealing the deal. 4. A tactic they have used for nigh on 20 yrs is to open shop in the home town of a competitor, and offer higher salaries etc to attempt to poach the talent from that company (for example : Ericsson in Kista and Athlone) . 5. Illegality Things like IP theft (the infamous "Cisco router" case) . I doubt that was a one-off at the time. Nowadays their QA is very good, they are functionally competitive to the west. They do a spend a lot on R+D (though it is heavily "bottom line" focused as opposed to the "blue sky" approach that characterised the mighty Bell Labs etc) . And as a ltd company they have no institutional shareholders etc so their massive profits can be used as above (AFAIK they made a profit of $4bn in 2016/17) .
Ironically, Huawei sites has massively strict IT procedures (I heard an "urban legend" relating to IPR theft involving domestic competitor ZTE) .
I mean it's not the first time Vince Cable has been involved with dodginess and the Royal Mail, but still...
The BBC doing their bit for the Tories and Brexit, again: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48142181 BoTh SiDeS! The electorate are clearly pissed that Brexit isn't being pushed through quickly enough. That's why all of the parties backing it have lost seats, while those opposed to it have gained massively. Laura Kuntberger is totally transparent.
I knew as soon as I turned the TV on this morning that the Tories took a thumping, as News 24 hadn't taken over BBC One Also, with the BBC somehow neglecting to mention UKIP took a hammering too, I had to double check that Robbie Gibb hadn't left Downing Street and returned as BBC's head of Political Indoctrination Output
Radio 4 Chief Gammon Humphrys was at this first thing. Totally ridiculous position to take unless forcing a political narrative. There's a load of Twats on Twitter claiming they didn't vote Tory or Labour as a protest vote for not seeing through Brexit, but not explaining why they conversely voted for Remain parties! Couldn't make it up!
I kinda sense that all sides of the debate are looking into the local council election results a little too much as far as Brexit is concerned. Let's wait until May 23rd for a more definitive answer to that argument.
May I draw everyone's attention to the line at the bottom of the chart... you know, the one that's barely getting any attention.
One thing that needs to be pointed out is that, in council elections, a notable percentage of independent associations are simply Tories in sheep's clothing - and it says a lot that nobody seems to notice, especially in those cases where an "independent association" is made up of a group of people who were previously Tory councillors I'd suggest that's why it's not getting attention, as that might expose the ruse
