UK innovation.  Talk about your oxymorons.  The UK being on the cutting edge of much of anything outside the arts died (or at least was on life support) before I was born.  The Canadians have an old joke about how they could have had it all: British government, French culture, and American ingenuity.  Instead they ended up with French government, American culture, and British ingenuity.  Ideas and innovations have been thin on the ground in the UK for a long time, even in the financial sector.  Maggoty Trencher's political and economic policies just followed the Austro-Chicago banksters' lead, and the vaunted London banks just went along with whatever Wall Street's latest pitch was.  Since the 50s, the Ueberklass and its media and academic pets have been blaming the rise of labour for the "loss of competitiveness", but in reality it was the loss of an exploitable empire and the complete unwillingness of the Ueberklass to address it in any way other than to Look Back In Anger and wish they had their own private Connie Sachs mourning over her "lovely boys" who were born to rule an empire that was no longer there.