The squelchy, grey, self-serving, leftish puddle of inanity

Nesta came out with more anti-obesity bollocks at the weekend. I wrote about this pointless organisation for The Critic.

 

This is an organisation whose core purpose is supposed to be innovation and yet it failed to see a new generation of weight-loss drugs coming and when it finally acknowledged the arrival of semaglutide, it expressed concerns that it could “deepen the emphasis in the popular discourse on a “personal responsibility” narrative”. As Andrew Orlowski has recounted, Nesta got the opportunity to develop a touchscreen smartphone before Apple did, but cocked it up at every turn. In their early years, they funded “a man who is building a radio-controlled Harrier jump jet, a team preparing to travel to the Arctic to film the Northern Lights in 3D and an internet project offering psychological advice online.” These days they dish out grants to the likes of Tortoise Media and Open Democracy.

Everything the state touches dissolves into the same squelchy, grey, self-serving, leftish puddle of inanity. Whatever your view of heat pumps and food taxes, they are not the products of blue sky thinking. A quarter of a century after being set up as a Dragons Den for Britain’s most brilliant minds, Nesta has become essentially a May-ite think tank.