the times | Tuesday September 15 2020 1GM 27
Leading articles
the question of why a transfer of ownership should
be controversial. The reason is suspicions that a
Silicon Valley giant might cut jobs, weaken the
company’s distinctive business model of licensing
its designs to semiconductor producers, and
diminish Britain’s standing in the technology
sector. Hermann Hauser, one of Arm’s founders,
warns that the deal will be an “absolute disaster”.
There are two main issues of contention: the
specifics of the deal, and the principle of foreign
acquisition. On the first, Nvidia has declared its
aim of keeping Arm at its base in Cambridge and
using the acquisition to build a dominant position
in artificial intelligence. Does the objective make
sense? It does to Arm’s owner. Though SoftBank
was criticised by analysts in its acquisition of the
company for $32 billion, it has made a comfortable
profit on the deal. Its view is that Arm will perform
better in combination with Nvidia, in which it will
become a substantial shareholder.
In general, governments across the developed
world have a poor record of picking industrial
winners. The danger is especially acute in innova-
tive industries where a company’s value is tied up
with its intellectual capital. Shareholders are in a
better position to judge whether a company’s
assets are being deployed as effectively as theycould be. And since its acquisition by SoftBank,
Arm has underperformed its sector.
And what is true on a national scale also applies
across borders. Britain is a premier destination for
capital, and this is a national strength. Economic
success is measured not by the existence of
“national champions” but by tangible measures
concerning living standards, output and
employment. On all these criteria, foreign direct
investment is a boon. So far from a company’s
profits being siphoned off overseas, all the
expected stream of future earnings is reflected in
the purchase price of the acquisition target.
The record of foreign-owned British businesses
in raising productivity and spending on research
and development is unimpeachable. With higher
productivity, these businesses are able to pay
higher wages and salaries. A study by the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development found a wage premium of about
5 per cent in foreign-owned companies compared
with British-owned companies.
Britain’s prosperity outside the EU will depend
on openness to the cross-border flow of goods,
services, capital and labour. If the Arm acquisition
were to be blocked on grounds of national interest,
it would show a lack of seriousness in the task.a generous £2 million donation from a private
benefactor, those most at risk of joining a lost gen-
eration of schoolchildren will now benefit from an
extra day of teaching. It is desperately needed.
There is much to applaud about the Harris
academies, whose success vindicates the willing-
ness of successive governments to think laterally
and undogmatically about state education. They
are engines of innovation and social mobility.
Lamentably, however, a far greater number of
comprehensives boast neither such stellar records
nor access to donors with deep pockets. For only a
few schools in the state sector to provide their
pupils with the intensive help so many now
require would create fresh inequality itself. What
is needed is a national government programme to
ensure that children make up as much lost ground
as possible by this summer — before a round of
GCSEs and A-levels that threatens to be just as
traumatic as the last if ministers do not act quickly.
Local initiatives aside, there is scant evidence
that Gavin Williamson, the education secretary,
has such a plan. In June the prime minister
promised that disadvantaged pupils in Englandwould be driven back to speed by a “huge catch-
up” programme of extra tutoring. Yet it has
since emerged that the tutors promised at a cost of
some £350 million will not arrive in schools until
November at the earliest. Some children will have
to wait until spring. It is no wonder that head
teachers fret that there are simply too few qualified
tutors to serve the hundreds of thousands in need
of extra help. Meanwhile Mr Williamson has yet
to say whether next year’s exams will be delayed,
and rising rates of infection in schools suggest that
a battle to prevent closures lies ahead.
To subject the youngest generation to another
year of educational purgatory violates the most
basic societal duty of any government. But all is
not lost. At the outset of the pandemic, retired
doctors returned to the NHS en masse. Teachers,
too, are public servants motivated by a desire to
serve the common good. Mr Johnson and Mr
Williamson should heed calls from their MPs to
draft retirees, Ofsted inspectors and graduates
into classrooms to help schools to stay open longer
before the month is out. Anything less would be
another betrayal of Britain’s children.tinned and frozen food may actually be healthier
than much of the fresh produce that we prefer to
buy. That’s because the fresh food typically takes
several days to reach the shelves and then be eaten,
during which time it loses some of its nutrients.
Tinned and frozen food, on the other hand, is
typically packaged immediately after it is picked
or cooked, which means that it does not
deteriorate. Indeed in some cases, tinned and
frozen food may be healthier, nutritionists say.
Because tinned tomatoes have been cooked first,
they contain more antioxidants than raw ones.
Of course for some cooks, tinned fruit neverwent out of fashion. Nigella Lawson likes to bake
tinned pears into her chocolate sponge puddings.
Jack Monroe even has a cake recipe that uses
tinned fruit cocktail. Meanwhile supermarkets
reports soaring sales in recent years for tinned
pineapple, which appears to be driven by a taste for
the culinary crime that is the Hawaiian pizza.
Besides there are other reasons why tinned
and frozen food may be a due a comeback. With
the economic outlook bleak, they are cheaper
than the fresher variety. And if Boris Johnson is
right that Britain is about to be blockaded by the
European Union, it may be time to stock up.Technology Takeover
The proposed acquisition of the semiconductor designer Arm Holdings by a
Silicon Valley giant is a potential benefit for Britain and should be welcomed
In seeking a new place in the international trading
system, Britain will need to exploit its historical
strengths. These prominently include business
innovation and openness to foreign investment.
Both are at issue in the planned sale of the British
microchip designer Arm Holdings to the US-based
technology giant Nvidia for up to $40 billion.
The deal will require regulatory approval and
has elicited criticism for its potential impact on
jobs and on British ambitions to be a world-leader
in technology. That opposition is misplaced.
Foreign ownership of British-based businesses is
not an economic impediment. Blocking the
acquisition would give the wrong signal about how
this country sees a route to prosperity after Brexit.
Arm is a British success story. Its microchips
power about 95 per cent of the world’s smart-
phones and are extensively used also in sensors,
servers and the smart devices that make up the
“internet of things”. It was acquired in 2016 by the
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank in a deal that
was widely seen as a vote of confidence in Britain’s
post-Brexit prospects. SoftBank, which is under
pressure to reduce its debt, will receive a mix of
cash and shares from Nvidia, the world’s biggest
semiconductor group.
As Arm is already foreign-owned, this promptsClass Divide
Catch-up schemes for disadvantaged pupils need to be introduced nationally
Traditionally only Britain’s public schools subject
children to the peculiar punishment of Saturdays
in the classroom. It is a measure of the disruption
caused by the coronavirus pandemic that some
schools in the state sector now feel impelled to
follow suit. This week the Harris Federation, one
of Britain’s biggest academy trusts, is launching a
programme of Saturday schools to help to redress
the inequalities that blighted schools before lock-
down and have been exacerbated by the closures
it wreaked upon the sector. It is time for ministers
to show similar initiative nationally.
The Harris Federation’s 49 schools, dotted in
and around London, are among the most success-
ful in the country. Fundamentally, however, the
story of their 2020 is no different from any state
establishment. When most children were sent
home from classrooms, they introduced a rigorous
programme of online teaching. Yet, as elsewhere,
it was not enough to prevent the gulf between the
most disadvantaged pupils and their peers from
widening. This problem is all the more acute for
those in their final year of primary school or those
staring down the barrel of their GCSEs. Thanks toAusterity Bites
It is time to look afresh at tinned and frozen food
Andy Warhol liked canned soup so much that he
famously created 32 canvases to correspond to
each one of Campbell’s varieties. But for many
people these days tinned food conjures up
memories of postwar austerity or the culinary
horrors of the 1970s, when a bowl of diced fruit
cocktail in syrup frequently passed as pudding.
Times change and tastes evolve. Why bother with
tinned today when supermarket shelves are laden
with fresh produce from all over the world or when
you can buy fresh chilled soup in a carton?
But perhaps it is time that the humble tin had a
revival. According to the consumer group Which?,UK: The Booker prize shortlist is announced.
US: President Trump takes questions from
undecided voters in Philadelphia; the UN
general assembly begins in New York.
It is mushroom
season, and one of
the most sought-
after species is
Boletus edulis, also
known as the penny
bun, porcini or cep.It has an attractive chestnut-brown cap that
darkens and flattens with age and a bulbous
white stipe, or stem. On the underside of the
cap, instead of gills there are tiny, tightly
packed tubes through which the spores
escape. Penny buns can be found in mixed
woodland, where their underground
mycelial networks form a mutualistic
relationship with tree roots, exchanging
minerals from the soil for nutrients
produced by photosynthesis. In autumn the
fruiting bodies tend to appear above ground
about a week after rain. melissa harrison
In 1938 Neville Chamberlain, the prime
minister, had a meeting with Adolf Hitler
at Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps.
The Duke of Sussex,
pictured, 36; Debbie
Abrahams, Labour MP
for Oldham East and
Saddleworth, shadow
work and pensions
secretary (2016-18), 60;
Sir Robert Akenhead,High Court judge (2007-15), 71; Charles
Bone, president, Royal Institute of Painters
in Water Colours (1979-89), 94; Sophie Dahl,
model and author, Playing With the Grown-
ups (2008), 43; Lord (Stanley) Fink,
hedgefund manager, principal treasurer of
the Conservative Party (2010-13), 63; Tom
Hardy, actor, Legend (2015), 43; Lord
(Philip) Harris of Peckham, chairman,
Carpetright (1993-2004), 78; Very Rev David
Ison, dean of St Paul’s, 66; Margaret Keane,
artist, known for her paintings of children
with saucer-like eyes, 93; Tommy Lee Jones,
actor, the Men in Black film series, 74;
Queen Letizia of Spain, 48; John Loker,
abstract painter, 82; Sir Michael Lyons,
chairman, English Cities Fund, BBC Trust
(2007-11), 71; Prof Helen Margetts, political
scientist, director, Oxford Internet Institute
(2011-18), 59; Clive Merrison, actor, best
known for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes
(BBC Radio 4, 1989-2010), 75; Emmerson
Mnangagwa, president of Zimbabwe, 78;
Brendan O’Carroll, actor and writer, Mrs
Brown’s Boys (2011-19), 65; Pawel
Pawlikowski, film-maker, Ida (2013), 63;
Mike Procter, cricketer, South Africa (1967-
70), 74; Renzo Rosso, fashion designer,
brands including Diesel and Marni, 65; Sir
Konrad Schiemann, judge of the Court of
Justice of the European Union (2004-12), 83;
Henry Silva, actor, The Manchurian
Candidate (1962), 92; Oliver Stone, film
director and screenwriter, Platoon (1986),
Nixon (1995), 74; Amanda Wakeley, fashion
designer, 58; George Walden, writer, former
diplomat and Conservative MP (1983-97), 81;
Steve Watkin, cricketer, England (1991-93),
56; Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for
Southampton Test, shadow business, energy
and industrial strategy minister, 70; Peter
Wilson, sport shooter, Olympic gold
medallist (2012), 34.
“We don’t have education, we have inspiration;
if I was educated I would be a damn fool.”
Bob Marley, reggae pioneer, in the
documentary Time Will Tell (1992)
Nature notes
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