Around the time of the last UK recession in the early 1990s, the then property correspondent of the Financial Times, Michael Brett, published a book entitled "Property and Money". Amongst other valuable advice, this recommended that one should only believe about 10% of what property developers said. Many individuals and organisations are now no doubt wishing that not only they but governments around the world, and not least our own, had followed this guidance.
Moving forward to the present day, I was surprised to see the contents of a press release from a consulting group concerned with "Nimbyism" published without, apparently, any journalistic comment in the main section of last weekend's FT. It should be clear by now that most people have adopted Michael Brett's view of property developers and extended this to a range of other development protagonists, not least our present government.
In this week's FT, much comment is given over to "The Future of Capitalism" series, which started with an article by Martin Wolf on Monday quoting former US President Ronald Reagan : (I paraphrase) Question : "What are the nine most frightening words in the English language ?" Answer : "I'm a government official and I'm here to help". Now this is advice the property development sector, and notably, house-builders should have heeded.
For, as yesterday's free paper the "Metro" stated, again based on a press release (this time from the National Housing Federation) : "The housebuilding industry is lurching towards bust - with a real possibility that the number of new homes built in 2009/10 could slump to the lowest level since the 1920s". Some may remember that our former Chancellor of the Exchequer and now Prime Minister only a few years ago proclaimed "No more boom and bust".
No comment !
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Lord Mandelson and the New Labour Market
The UK Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform has recently made some disparaging comments on British companies (unable to run enterprises like the Royal Mail) and workers (unwilling to perform jobs which are done by foreign labour). Whilst there may be some grains of truth in these sentiments, the problems are ones in whose creation successive New Labour governments have played a pivotal role.
For instance, the cronyism for which New Labour is famous has become increasingly ingrained in British management culture, reducing the commercial and industrial gene-bank which Lord Mandelson has identified as deficient in the skills to run the Royal Mail. Cronyism has always been a significant feature of British business and public institutions, and the governments of Blair and Brown have re-inforced this structural problem, which has made no small contribution to the current UK banking crisis.
With regard to the apparently increasing reluctance of British workers to undertake certain types of employment, the fact is that the culture of New Labour (and of this country) stigmatises many essential jobs as unworthy for aspirational indigen(t/e)s. However, this is not the full story. Many employers prefer foreign workers for a host of reasons, including, in some cases, their inability to speak English, and, therefore, articulate health, safety and other genuine concerns.
Many of us would welcome a labour market based far more on genuine merit, however grand or, quite simply, essential the positions involved. Many of us believed that the election of a New Labour Government in 1997 would bring this much hoped for meritocracy. How wrong we were to expect the architects of New Labour like Lord Peter Mandelson to deliver this, or very much else of any real worth for that matter.
For instance, the cronyism for which New Labour is famous has become increasingly ingrained in British management culture, reducing the commercial and industrial gene-bank which Lord Mandelson has identified as deficient in the skills to run the Royal Mail. Cronyism has always been a significant feature of British business and public institutions, and the governments of Blair and Brown have re-inforced this structural problem, which has made no small contribution to the current UK banking crisis.
With regard to the apparently increasing reluctance of British workers to undertake certain types of employment, the fact is that the culture of New Labour (and of this country) stigmatises many essential jobs as unworthy for aspirational indigen(t/e)s. However, this is not the full story. Many employers prefer foreign workers for a host of reasons, including, in some cases, their inability to speak English, and, therefore, articulate health, safety and other genuine concerns.
Many of us would welcome a labour market based far more on genuine merit, however grand or, quite simply, essential the positions involved. Many of us believed that the election of a New Labour Government in 1997 would bring this much hoped for meritocracy. How wrong we were to expect the architects of New Labour like Lord Peter Mandelson to deliver this, or very much else of any real worth for that matter.
Please "Shut Up" the Upper Miserable Class
There's some people whose personal lives I'd very much like to hear less about, and, collectively, I'd label these the "Upper Miserable Class". A good example of this is the Myerson family (New Labour supporters and second home in the same seaside town as Gordon and Sarah Brown, if you get my drift). Personally, I don't much like Jonathan Myerson's writing, which has far too much air time on BBC Radio 4 for a start, and the mere mention of his name switches the programme off for me. Thankfully, I'd never been forced fed anything by his wife, Julie, until lately that is. Now the story of the couple's addict son and family life is all over the media, as Julie Myerson has written a book about her errant offspring. Said youth has responded by describing his mother to a newspaper journalist as "insane". For all I know, this description may - along with his father's tedious tinkerings with public life - hold the key to the family's obvious problems, so please, as far as I'm concerned, "shut up" the lot of them !
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)