A shortage of skilled workers. A crippling lack of cash. Business opportunities strangled – and more than a hint that the UK Government had got it wrong over its support for the technology cluster.

Had such a damning independent report been delivered about Cambridge, entrepreneurs and investors might have joined hands and headed for the hills – and given the landscape of Cambridge those hills are a long way off.

It happened to refer to Tech City. Produced by GfK, one of the world’s leading research companies, the report’s credibility could scarcely be challenged.

Almost 80 per cent of Tech City companies said a lack of skilled workers was restricting their growth; a third believed a lack of access to capital was hindering their business. A similar number said that as a consequence their company was missing significant business opportunities to expand. Over 40 per cent said they were finding it hard to hold onto the staff they did recruit. “Our research shows Tech City is at a tipping point,” said GfK.

Steve Leith, who heads up Grant Thornton's early stage technology team in Tech City, said: “Whilst there is an increasing flow of angel capital, we see a growing gap for businesses requiring investment of £500,000 to £2 million. This is in stark contrast to the development of the funding community in the US where the cycle of tech entrepreneurs reinvesting in startups is fully developed and the VC community has a greater appetite for risk.

“UK Government supported initiatives such as the MMC London Fund and GrowthAccelerator may prove part of the solution, but more will be needed to fulfil Tech City's potential, and avoid a loss of talent and investment opportunities to the Silicon Valley dollar.”

Tech City’s business leaders have mixed feelings about the effectiveness of the UK Government’s support so far and believe there has been more PR than action from Government. This ‘hype’ is seen as negative - pushing up rents and salaries and attracting global firms that have poached the best talent.

No-one is being smug here because this is a problem for UK plc. As we reported this week, Cambridge is losing hundreds of research and technology jobs to India within one plc alone – AVEVA – because the company says its expansion plans are being stunted by infrastructure problems that are just not being addressed, let alone tackled.

Serial entrepreneurs Mike Lynch and David Cleevely have each recently called for Tech City and Cambridge to work together to optimise their respective but synergistic strengths. That would be a start.

More than at any time in its history as a trading nation the UK needs to forge one powerhouse supercluster that presents a dynamic and united face to the world. One that would be taken seriously by the megapowers of the business world – not a fragmented collection of clusters doing their own thing and diluting the force of the collective.

Until the debate is taken out of a geographic context and becomes an issue central to national economic strategy then all of the UK’s technology clusters could eventually become candidates for the sick ward.

Despite the excellence of the Cambridge cluster’s best companies, there are still far too few of them. It’s the global reputation of Cambridge University for perennially producing world-class science and technology – as well as producing generations of brilliant students and future employees – that is keeping Cambridge in the game globally. In the long term that could prove a dangerous over-reliance.

The self sufficiency of the Cambridge and London technology clusters is apparent from details released by the UK government today on bids received under the new £350 million regional growth funding pot.

Of all the regions of the UK, the least number of projects and lowest bid amounts are from London at the foot of the table and the East of England, which is second bottom.

No doubt the ‘visionaries’ who scrapped regional development agencies in a bid to address what the Tories called a North-South opportunity divide will be delighted to see the North West out in front of the queue with the begging bowl, hotly followed by the Yorkshire and Humber and South West regions.

Nick Clegg and Vince Cable trumpeted the fact that 309 applications for the new £350 million funding pot had been received. They said it demonstrated a strong business appetite for government cash – not in these parts, it doesn’t.

Collectively the UK bidders are asking for £1.88 billion so clearly the majority are in for a major disappointment. Or the Government will do exactly what it shouldn’t do – scattergun smaller amounts across the largest number of projects and programmes rather than pumping big money into one or two real gamechangers that represent stand-out opportunities to create lots of jobs and commercialise the most important science and technology.

London business enterprises have submitted only one programme and five projects – bids together worth just £32m – two per cent of the total UK ask. East of England businesses have submitted two programmes and 11 projects, collectively valued at £47m – four per cent of the total UK ask.

So the two strongest economic heartlands of the UK, dynamic but disillusioned, are going it alone. And once again the Government is weaning the weak instead of feeding the strong and incentivising them to nurture the weak.

Feedback from companies in the Cambridge technology cluster repeatedly throws up the same response: ‘Small amounts of government funding won’t get us where we need to go – and, anyway, we can’t afford the wait.’

So they stick with the VCs and business angels who understand the pressures inherent in commercialising science & technology fast before a window of opportunity slams shut.

The regional growth fund applications, far from being a green light for growth, are actually a red alert. They evidence a vast chasm between how businesses are really funded and achieve growth and the Government’s perception of the commercial world.

The parlous state of the national economy ought to demonstrate that the debate has moved far beyond a North v South, East v West agenda. This is not about geographic boundaries.

Strong economic management is surely about championing and funding the best universities, the best businesses, the most enterprising entrepreneurs regardless of whether they are located in Pudsey or Pratt’s Bottom.

It is high time for government by inside knowledge rather than government by gazetteer.

At first sight it looked harmless enough: An open letter from Mike Lynch to the management of HP on the day of the US technology giant’s annual meeting.

It’s hard to shed the impression that major corporations are actually holding back the tide of technology advance like latter-day commercial Canutes.

Failure to commercialise a stack of IP has sent a second Cambridge technology cluster business in the space of 72 hours crashing into the wall.

Located midway between the technology and financial capitals of Europe – Cambridge and London – Stansted Airport will pass into new, almost certainly foreign, ownership early in 2013 and hand the incoming patrons an incredible opportunity.

The UK airport was bullied into a fire sale by the Competition Commission, which buckled to a self-interested lobby arguing that BAA had an unhealthy London monopoly in its ownership portfolio.

If HP bosses had paid a team of consultants to come up with a paradigm for wrecking a business they could not have bettered the template used in the disembowelment of Autonomy.

Cambridge has come a long way since the first vestiges of a settlement were discovered here 3,500 years ago.

A Cambridge UK entrepreneur emailed me recently to say he was living a hand to mouth existence as what appears to be an excellent clean technology continues to struggle to gain traction with investors. He didn’t know where to turn.

BlueGnome’s acquisition by genotyping giant Illumina provides a further testimony to the world-class calibre of Cambridge UK technology and BioMedTech innovation – but it holds considerably more promise for the future welfare of the cluster than the last US move into light blue territory.

Cambridge and East of England businesses are exporting more goods and services to Germany than the United States for the first time since comprehensive records were kept in the UK.

There has been much loud wailing from India’s media about the country’s lack of success in the London Olympics – six medals compared to America’s 104, China’s 87, Russia’s 82 and GB’s 65.

The results from the March 27 UK census, published yesterday, underline the pace of population growth in Cambridge and its sub-regions that is likely to put intolerable strain on future service provision and infrastructure.

When a delegate mentions the quality of a Cambridge University programme in the UK in the same reverential breath as Stanford in the US you know something is being done right.

On the face of it, the £24 million bait dangled by the Government to encourage development of a smart city demonstrator appeared one of the best technology initiatives ever to emerge from the UK’s corridors of power – and Cambridge looked prime to take advantage.

HP’s bungled handling of Cambridge-based technology superstar Autonomy Corporation has raised two critical issues about UK-US acquisitions.