What Do We Do Now?

I still feel gloomy about the prospects for this country's economic future. We are being told how well - amid all the gloom - our manufacturing sector is doing. Yes, they may be improving a bit but from a base so low that its is almost irrelevant. Politicians seem to have come to the conclusion that a bit more manufacturing will be a good thing. They are not quite sure why and even less do they understand where we should be concentrating our efforts. The trouble is that for the last 30 or 40 years [at least] we have allowed manufacturing to decline. Indeed, in Mrs Thatcher's era we positively encouraged it. But look at some of ludicrous situations we now find ourselves in. For example, about 40% of our electricity is still generated using coal. We have about 400 years worth of coal buried underground in the UK, yet most of the coal for these power stations is brought in from Poland, USA and Australia. Why is this? Fundamentally, because Mrs Thatcher did not like Arthur Scargill, the General Secretary of the Mineworkers Union and we closed almost all the coal mines. Mrs Thatcher's attitude is surely a good enough reason for doing serious damage to our balance of payments, destroying many jobs in the UK and stimulating the creation of jobs in other countries. Sooner or later we will, at great expense, have to re-open the mines as world fuel sources become more and more expensive or unobtainable.

There is a problem in getting sensible policies out of this Coalition - or any government for that matter - for the simple reason that almost all the ministers are either lawyers or classicists who have never had a proper job. They know nothing of science, engineering, technology or manufacturing industry and are never likely to get beyond all embracing platitudes like Harold Wilson's "white hot technological revolution." In an e-mail correspondence with my MP recently, he highlighted the fact that the government planned in a year or two to invest £200 million in new manufacturing. First it's a tiny amount - do they understand the sheer magnitude of what needs to be done? We chucked about £800 billion at the banks - and what do they do with it? Primarily, they made sure that they could carry on getting paid buckets of money.

The people of Britain have a great and natural instinct for making things. That is why the Industrial Revolution started here. But we began to fall behind when education became an increasingly important part of technological progress. And it carries on today. We send 50% of kids to university to study rubbish subjects while giving primary subjects ever decreasing status. We need very well qualified people with good degrees in science, engineering and technology not in hair dressing or media studies. This is only the start. Then we have to invest, directly or indirectly, into new technologies that can create products which we can sell to the world.

The recent decision of American pharmaceutical company, Pfizers, to close their facility at Sandwich in Kent is a serious blow and should make the government look very vigorously now at what the prospects are in so many fields. If we cannot keep Pfizer here, we are in real trouble.

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