Enemies of enterprise

SIR – The news that the family of the late Ray Dolby has generously given Cambridge University £85 million has provoked memories of an interview I recorded with the great man when I was the BBC’S industrial correspondent.

Dr Dolby had set up his company – today in the credits of almost any film made anywhere in the world – in Clapham as a postgraduate student.

Everything, he told me, about running a company in Britain was a problem. It was a problem getting permission to expand his premises; a problem even to get them redecorated. The biggest problem was finding and hiring production engineers.

It was no surprise to me when he moved headquarters to San Francisco.

His complaint about the scarcity of engineers in Britain has been echoed recently by Sir James Dyson. Nothing has changed in the past 30 or 40 years. Peter Smith

Ingatestone, Essex