<i>The proposed new "entrepreneur visa" would allow people with great business ideas and the backing of serious investors to set up shop more easily in Britain.</i><p>The most important part. How much of funding to make it a serious investor?
Even w/ this visa London will be no more attractive as a startup hub than New York, both of which are dominated by over-paid financiers who have driven up the cost of living to unaffordable levels for normal folks, let alone boot-strapping entrepreneurs. And then there's the weather...
More detail on this over at TechCrunch Europe:
<a href="http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/uk-government-plans-east-london-tech-cluster-startup-visa-review-of-ip-law-200-million-in-finance-what/" rel="nofollow">http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/11/04/uk-government-plans-east...</a><p>Thread here: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867017" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1867017</a>
A definite plus move and the canny thing is locating it near the existing "Tech Triangle" - Shoreditch and moving Eastwards towards Stratford.<p>That part of London is cheap, well connected and has a large immigrant population. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in reality , but all the good signs are there.
There's been a visa like this for some years already in the UK. I guess he is just changing it, and taking credit.<p>Basically if you have a whole bunch of money available you can set up a business in the uk. You must hire a certain amount of people over a certain amount of years.