Nick D'Aloisio received over a million dollars when he was just seventeen. Stephen Fry, Ashton Kutcher and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing gave it to him to build an app, Summly. Learning this, I was f*cked off.
Did he not read the unspoken rule: young people are not allowed to overtake? No, Summly read it for him. Coming home from school in London, D'Aloisio built a machine that read textbooks and turned them into BBC Bitesize chunks. When he should have been squeezing spots and wondering how to get away with unwanted pregnancies thanks to his enviable name, he was, instead, being a genius.
An irritating little brother that learns from all your mistakes, D'Aloisio created a product that almost a million use. Branson's prodigy; saviour of Britain? Cameron wishes.
But when did a million dollars become so complicated? An algorithm that summarises news is complex stuff; the kind that anyone reading from Summly won't be able to do - that's you and I. Where's the hope for us?
I bought two programming for dummies books to see how hard it really was: the contents page had me stumped. I returned to the next episode of Breaking Bad, favouring the fictional life of drug dealing.
Del Boy, we miss you. Britain needs you back. Not a nation of D'Aloisio's, we want things simple and fast. If only Jamie Oliver did 30 Minute Deals. Where do you find these recipes of success? It's all tech this, tech that.
A Chinese café opened downstairs selling purple drinks called Bubble Tea. Long queues form every day, but no journalist says a thing. Beach Bums of Brazil grew fast from London Fashion Week, but no word has been written. Pop up camping is taking on Glastonbury, but no headlines are made.
Everyone is watching One Direction, not listening to the quiet stirrings of revolution. A small, merry band are tired of waiting; they know things don't sort themselves out. Pitch forks are raised and they're digging, digging for gold. Black soot is what they find, but they're British, they've used that once before.