SOME POSSIBLE LESSONS FROM KIDS COMPANY

It seems difficult to escape the downfall of Kids Company, although many people might wish to. However, as I suspect something will emerge phoenix-like from the ashes, here are some possible lessons for the future from a detached observer:

1. There may be considerable social capital in having complementary health/education centres, run by charities, the state (if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister) or a combination of both in deprived neighbourhoods which offer a range of free services for vulnerable children and their families. In addition to therapies and support such as meals, these might provide lessons in practical areas like nutrition, cookery and financial management.

2. Such centres should be subject to appropriate forms of assessment so that their impact upon users and the wider community can be understood. If state-funded, value for money criteria should be applied.

3. Ministers and civil servants should be more aware that whilst celebrity figures may be good at attracting media attention and funding to their causes, they are sometimes poor managers and administrators. Having said this, the state and its agents, including the National Health Service, have also shown themselves to be frequently deficient in administrative and management capability, as well as poor custodians of public funds.

4. Unfortunately, the availability of relatively large sums of money for good causes, when perceived to be incompetently run, will attract people who have less than altruistic motives and others who see an opportunity to exploit.

5. The state and charitable sectors are as much - if not more - prone to cronyism than commercial business. This needs to be widely recognised and measures put in place to ensure that people from outside the insidious public-funded networks which increasing dominate British society are involved in how money is spent. Charitable governance needs to be reviewed and some organisations should consider whether they are best served by being a charity, social enterprise or both.

6. No organisation seeking to be sustainable over the long-term should become so dependent on a single source of funding that the withdrawal of this is likely to result in its demise. Kids Company is not alone in finding that the end of public money also means curtains for the charitable recipient.

Media reports indicate that the fate of Kids Company will be subject to inquiries by both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82397fae-3dd8-11e5-b98b-87c7270955cf.html#axzz3iJVF60F7 Lets hope lessons are learnt by all those involved.

TRANSPORT: FINANCIAL TIMES CHANGES PLATFORM

According to the print edition of today's FT, "..HS2 should reach Birmingham in 2016", although the same report in the paper's online version - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4c7f36aa-5883-11e4-942f-00144feab7de.html#axzz3GyGfswxp - states that: "Ths article has been change to reflect the fact that HS2 should reach Birmingham in 2026, not 2016". As someone prone to typos, I can take a little satisfaction that the mighty media also occasionally fall victim to these.

However, the article also suggests that the FT may have changed platform on HS2, and this report is somewhat more circumspect than last week's as the following extract shows:

"Martin Blaiklock, a consultant on infrastructure and energy project finance, said the extra capacity needed could be built more cheaply. “[HS2] is very high-risk. There may well be alternatives available. The public are not convinced as to benefit of HS2. It is a gravy train for consultants, involving banks, lawyers and government officials,” he said.

The article also points out that:

"Northern councils have their own £15bn road and rail plan to better connect their cities and want it delivered before HS2. It includes a new high-speed line between Leeds and Manchester. Journey times across the North are twice as slow as those into London. 

The government wants to create a “northern powerhouse” to rival London by improving links between the biggest cities in the region. Jim O’Neill, the economist, who coined the term, “ManSheffLeedsPool”, told the FT: “For people to have to wait for HS2 to do that, I don’t see the logic. And I think and I hope that the people who sponsor it will have accepted that principle.”

Not content with an article on the transport shortcomings of "ManSheffLeedsPool...the inelegantly named northern region running between Liverpool to Hull..", today's FT also has an editorial entitled "A modest proposal to get Britain's cities moving" which identifies investment in the Trans-Pennine express rail link as a key project for the Chancellor's "Northern Powerhouse", along the lines of a Centre for Cities report published last week.

Transport is indeed a subject that keeps the commentators peddling. However, as many policy-makers still live in the kind of alternative universe where HS2 trains could be scheduled to serve Birmingham ten years in advance of the construction of the necessary rail infrastructure, and without all the necessary development consents in place, I remain to be convinced that a high-quality rail network and sustainable transport system within and between English regional cities will arrive on time.

THE UK'S PROPOSED NEW EU REGIONAL AID MAP

Map A - Proposed UK Regional Aid (Assisted Areas) 2014-2020

Map B: Assisted Areas (excluding Northern Ireland) 2006-13

On 20 April 2014, Business Minister Michael Fallon announced a proposed new regional aid package for the UK giving potential access to European Union funding - http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140430/wmstext/140430m0001.htm The Minister's announcement included the following comments:

"The Commission’s regional aid guidelines (RAG) define the parameters for assisted areas for 2014 to 2020. Under the guidelines the UK’s overall regional aid coverage may cover a maximum of 27.05% of the UK population, an increase on the 23.9% coverage in 2007-14.

Working within the guidelines, assisted areas coverage has been granted based on the potential to use regional aid to encourage economic growth through levering private sector investment, as well as the economic need of the locality. A strong principle underpinning the map is for coverage to focus on areas that are able to use the flexibility provided: many parts of the UK do not have the scale of industrial or development sites necessary to exploit assisted area status.

There was a high level of demand for assisted areas status, and given the limited population coverage available, we have targeted those areas that can benefit most. The UK’s industrial heartlands are central to the map, and a wide range of different sized manufacturers are included, from the high-tech sectors at the core of our industrial strategy to the more traditional industries that still provide vital employment to many communities. Support will also be available for additional disadvantaged coastal areas. Sites and businesses that can support growth in less advantaged localities have been included, as well as many that will make significant contributions to growth at a regional and national level."

The devil, as they say, is in the detail and included amongst the proposed areas identified is a greenfield site to the north-east of Worcester, near Junction 6 of the M5 motorway. A technology park proposal for this location was refused a £18 million grant from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills Regional Growth Fund last year following due diligence. The project is a controversial one which has been opposed by local communities because of its environmental impact and by Birmingham City Council and others because of its potential for undermining economic regeneration at Longbridge and elsewhere in the West Midlands conurbation.

With this "case study" in mind, and when comparing the UK Assisted Areas Map (A) for 2014-20 with than of the period for 2006-2013 (Map B), it does seem that the industrial regeneration impetus of regional policy which favoured older urban areas with major brownfield sites is being eroded in favour of promoting greenfield development, whether this represents sustainable value for money or just the present geography of political influence is a subject to which I shall return.

LABOUR'S NEW OUTBREAK OF COMMON SENSE?

I've enjoyed reading the early conspiracy thrillers of Eric Ambler over the summer. A twentieth century novelist of the sensible Left, Ambler writes in straightforward and unpretentious style which may be one of the reasons why his work is experiencing a comeback.

Ambler's novels are full of shysters - defined in the Wikipedia as "someone who acts in a disreputable, unethical, or unscrupulous way, especially in the practice of law, politics or business." This may be another reason why his novels speaks to the present age.

This brings me to the subject of the British Labour Party. The biggest challenges for Ed Miliband, I would suggest, will be to demonstrate that he also belongs to the sensible Left and that he can keep the shysters at bay. Labour also needs to encourage a straightforward and unpretentious public discourse, even if this has become alien to modern British political culture.

Although it is still early days, there seems to be some evidence that the party could renew itself along these lines. On the national scene, recent straight-talking on the proposed high speed rail link between London and the north of England, notwithstanding that Labour came up with this idea in the first place, is to be applauded.

Similarly in my local area of Worcester, a Labour-run coalition involving the Lib-Dems and Greens has started to make sensible-sounding proposals to re-prioritise urban regeneration and sustainable transport planning. Let's just hope the shysters don't derail these!

Returning to the novels of Eric Ambler, these have another lesson for the contemporary British Labour Party: the need for an objective national understanding of international politics, particularly those of Europe. I may be over-optimistic, but it strikes me that this is something which a Labour-led coalition government might just be able to deliver.

PS. Since my posting, a fellow participant in the recent Coursera Introduction to the Law of the EU The Law of the European Union: An Introduction | Coursera has provided the following link to an article in the New York Times about Britain's relationship with Europe: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/23/opinion/cohen-britains-brussels-syndrome.html?hp&_r=0

URBAN POLICY IN THE AGE OF AUSTERITY

Usually sceptical of the think tank sector's increasing output, I nevertheless feel that The Work Foundation may have published an important report this week. Entitled "People or Place - Urban Policy in the Age of Austerity", this report considers the history of urban and regional policy and programmes, including the present government's partial abandonment of these. I say partial because the "Regional Growth Fund" is evidence that they still exist, in name anyway. However, RDF appears to favour more prosperous areas over poorer ones which is certainly a reversal of earlier policy objectives for urban and regional planning. The Work Foundation's report has focused on the situation in Birmingham and the West Midlands. This may be one reason why it has received little coverage from London-biased media.

THE DAVE CAM CHANNEL NEEDS TO WISE UP

Although the Prime Minister is highly intelligent, a natural tendency to talk down to people means that he often manifests a dual public persona, or cross between "Dave the Vague" and "Dave the Wide-Boy". We also know that he can be totally ruthless. Both personae were in play last week as "Dave the Diffident", an unmediated version of "Dave the Vague", which has some similarity to the manner adopted by Harold Macmillan, ruthlessly sacked various ministers and vaguely informed the House of Commons of a "form of review" of "airport capacity" (See below) Meanwhile, "Dave the Wide-Boy" proclaimed that he would "get planners off people's backs" and the nation's potentially dodgy extensions off the ground in a manner more reminiscent of Del Boy Trotter.

In the midst of all this, I had a dream - and I jest not - about being given a lift by former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan around the M25 and environs where some new and rather ugly development was taking shape. The journey ended, however, in an unregenerated inner urban neighbourhood. What could this vision presage, I wondered, except the continuing inability of the present government, like the previous one, to properly tackle the regeneration of Britain's inner city and older industrial areas, particularly in the Midlands and North of England?  I was, nevertheless, curious about the significance of the Bond figure. Upon reflection, I think this was Brosnan as he appeared in "The Ghost Writer", apparently in a role based on that of former prime minister Blair.

I've since reflected that Colin Firth, an actor able to take on tragic and comic roles in equal measure, might one day play Dave Cameron very well. In the meantime, it behoves the Prime Minister to both wise up the content of his public pronouncements, and, given the obvious inferiority of his comic persona to that of London Mayor Boris Johnson (a figure even the creme de la creme of British comedy creators could not dream up), to seriously consider enhancing the No 10 sense of humour department, through the engagement of some new speech writers as well as technical advisers.

INQUIRY'S TERMS OF REFERENCE WILL BE KEY

Following some week long speculation, the Prime Minister yesterday announced that "a form of review" would be conducted in to airport capacity around London. The chairman of this enterprise has been identified as Howard Davies. This must be regarded as a curious choice as Mr Davies was last in the news when he resigned as Director of the London School of Economics in 2011, as a consequence of donations from a charity linked to the former Gaddafi regime in Libya. One can only presume that friends in the right places felt Howard Davies was in need of guaranteed work for the next three years, as the airport "review" is not due to report until after the 2015 General Election. Would that more of us had such connectivity!

Connectivity will also be a key issue for the airport inquiry, as will its terms of reference. Unfortunately, Mr Cameron lived up to his reputation for being "Dave the Vague" when he informed the House of Commons of a review intended to "bring parties together and make a decision about airport capacity". My guess is that the terms of reference will be too narrowly drawn and thereby enable the "Heathrow Hub" concept to emerge as the solution to an ill-defined problem. Due to an inability to manage powerful stakeholder interests, the UK government is seriously impaired when it comes to strategic planning, an incapacity compounded by the appointment of people with questionable credentials for arriving at objective-based recommendations on major spatial projects.

UK GOVERNMENT TO HOLD AIRPORTS INQUIRY

News that the UK Government is likely to announce the creation of an independent commission to consider options for future airport capacity in South East England is, on balance, to be welcomed.

The options would seem to be as follows:

• Restrict capacity/demand manage air travel favoured by Green Party and environmentalists
• Restrict capacity in South East with new high speed rail link to regional airports in Midlands/North
• Heathrow Hub with expanded capacity
• Additional capacity at Gatwick and/or Stanstead
• Additional capacity at other existing airports in South East
• New Thames Estuary airport, for which there are a number of different options

It is important that the above options are considered in the context of the need for integrated transport solutions, including rail access, and the legal requirement for Strategic Environmental Assessment.

Since this blog was posted, The Independent on Sunday has revealed that a mystery consortium is drawing up plans for a new, four-runway airport close to Heathrow, with sites in Berkshire and Oxfordshire potentially in the frame.

EUROPE WILL BE WINNER OF LONDON 2012

During a year when Euroscepticism is very much in vogue, I'll wage a bet that Europe will be the winner of London 2012. Britain may win the medal count amongst European partners, but the continent looks set to have a majority of countries amongst the top ten performers and is likely to be the ultimate victor of the 2012 Olympics.

So whilst the UK may have beaten its main rival Germany in equestrian sports, with outstanding performances by our dressage and showjumping teams, it is the German horse industry which could secure more international business from the Olympics than our own. This has much to do with the dominance of northern European warmbloods in the sports horse market, reflecting the superior organisation of breeding in countries like Germany and the Netherlands. The German equestrian sector is also particularly well positioned for export markets as shown in their website: www.ghindustry.com

In addition, other European countries will be the undoubted beneficiaries of foreign tourists discouraged from coming to Britain during the Olympic year, at a time when the continent is already providing a greater attraction for the international visitor market. There is also the question of how many Britons will choose to holiday abroad.

So whilst national pride is rightly running high, it behoves British politicians and the media to curb the Eurosceptic spirit which has run riot in recent months, and focus instead on creating a lasting legacy from the London 2012 Olympics which extends well beyond the capital. In this context, the development of a national facility capable of staging the World Equestrian Games is something that requires serious consideration. The UK is currently without one despite being a global leader in horse sports, whereas a number of European countries have long-established centres of excellence, which bring together a major international competition circuit with valuable trade and visitor markets.

DETROIT: EXEMPLAR OF URBAN RENEWAL?

I was very surprised, or rather gobsmacked, to hear Centre for Cities chief executive Alexandra Jones cite Detroit as an exemplar of urban renewal on BBC Radio 4's today programme this morning. "The Lost City of Detroit" is identified probably more than other western metropolis with the phenomenon of urban abandonment and mass dereliction.

The policy of "grassing over" such abandoned areas, referred to by Ms Jones as an example of successful urban renewal, is one which most contemporary regeneration practitioners would not advocate for UK towns and cities. Although the disastrous "Pathfinder Programme" of New Labour, now abandoned by the Coalition, did indeed demolish and grass over parts of some older urban areas in the Midlands and north of England by way of following the model used by some US states.

So whilst the Centre for Cities does produce some very useful information on the state of UK urban areas, I would seriously question whether it lives up to the self-proclaimed title of "non-partisan.....policy research unit". Instead, the organisation seems to be engaged in re-packaging - perhaps grassing over - discredited programmes strongly associated with the previous government.

UK'S "OUT-OF-CONTROL CONSUMERIST ETHOS"

A very interesting article appeared in yesterday's Guardian, some extracts from which follow;

"The recent riots in London and other big cities were the product of an "out-of-control consumerist ethos" which will have profound impacts for the UK economy, a leading City broker has said.

The report by the global head of research at Tullett Prebon, Tim Morgan, ....details recommendations to resolve what it sees as a political and economic malaise: new role models, policies to encourage savings, the channelling of private investment into creating rather than inflating assets, and greater public investment.

It warns: "We conclude that the rioting reflects a deeply flawed economic and social ethos, recklessly borrowed consumption, the breakdown both of top-end accountability and of trust in institutions, and severe failings by governments over more than two decades."

"The dominant ethos of 'I buy, therefore I am' needs to be challenged by a shift of emphasis from material to non-material values. David Cameron's 'big society' project may contribute to the inculcation of more socially-oriented values, but much more will need to be done to challenge the out-of-control consumerist ethos.

"The government, too, needs to consume less, and invest more. Government spending has increased by more than 50% in real terms over the last decade, but public investment has languished.....""

RIOTS - COMPREHENSIVE INQUIRY REQUIRED

A wide ranging inquiry into this week's riots and disorder in London, English cities and towns is needed, of the kind now being called for by Labour leader Ed Miliband. A House of Commons inquiry conducted by the Home Affairs Select Committee will not have adequate scope to deal with all the contributory factors in this week's outbreak of violent unrest and looting, although it will no doubt have an important role in considering police intelligence and actions. A Royal (or Public) Commission may be a more suitable vehicle for the wider inquiry which will need to examine larger societal issues, such as the use of digital media technology and networks, as well as important area-based factors, including local deprivation and inequality, in the civil disorder.

Prime Minister David Cameron must not shy away from an in depth examination of the state of the national psyche, because it is precisely the shadow side of his "Big Society", in its tribalism, existential status anxiety, greed, absence of individual volition in the face of peer group pressure, addictions to quick fixes, and propensity to mass hysterias which needs to be confronted at the present time. These shortcomings are by no means confined to those young, and older, people who actually participated in criminal activities this week, but are increasingly part of wider socio-economic behaviour, and colluded in by business, the media and political classes.

RE-COMMITMENT TO REGENERATION NEEDED

That a senior minister from the Communities Department was busy railing against a left-wing conspiracy he percieved amongst countryside conservation groups, who object to proposed changes to the planning system, just as unprecedented rioting broke out in London, is evidence of the growing reality gap between much of government and England's major urban areas.

This is not to say that the Coalition, or Conservative politicians, are more to blame for the outbreak of violent unrest, arson and looting than the previous administration and now political opposition. For the structural under-employment, worklessness and social breakdown of many urban communities was largely by-passed during Britain's boom years, except in so far as the aspirations of their growing young populations were raised unrealistically by the consumer society they have now turned upon through collective acts of theft and destruction.

Urban regeneration during New Labour was largely housing and retail-led, with city centres like those of Birmingham and Manchester becoming ever-expanding shopping malls, whilst deprivation in many immediately adjoining areas continued to be a major problem due to the ongoing decline of industries which once provided mass employment. The same is true across much of London. That shopping centres should now become the focus for unrest is not surprising, although the actions of the past few days remain inexcusable.

Whilst these are not riots of the kind experienced in the 1980s, with modern gang culture clearly playing a much more significant role than collective social and political grievance, some of the key underlying causes of earlier violent unrest have, nevertheless, not only remained untackled but increased over the last twenty five to thirty years. Amongst these is not just the quantitative decline of manufacturing employment, but the relocation of this to areas outside major cities.

This process was facilitated by the planning policies of Conservative governments during the 1980s, and is once again being encouraged by Coalition proposals currently subject to public consultation. In addition, the government's Regional Growth Fund appears to favour speculative greenfield development, ill-defined as "growth", of the kind which could well lead to a further exodus of employment from major urban areas, and, indeed, the inner parts of smaller cities.

Instead of these potentially disastrous measures, the Coalition must make a re-commitment to the regeneration of England's major cities, with the creation of skilled-employment a priority. Only when young people there have the prospect of work that offers the possibility of a genuine livelihood, and where their skills and contributions secure the respect of peers and the wider community, will the need to turn to collective criminality be sustainably reduced.

Management of deep-rooted economic problems through increased policing and social programmes of the kind pursued by New Labour may have the short-term affect of supressing the symptoms of malaise, but make the situation worse in the longer-term. However, much of the most sensible comment in the run up to the 2011 riots has come from "Blue Labour" Peer Maurice Glasman, someone who could well be part of a possible political solution, along with "Red Tories" and senior Liberal-Democrat MPs like Simon Hughes.

The present government, meanwhile, must make regeneration centre stage again, and the work of ministers and civil servants within the Department for Communities and Local Government needs to be re-prioritised accordingly. With Parliament re-called tomorrow, this British summer can no longer accommodate a political silly season.

ENERGY CONSERVATION AND RENEWABLES

Jeremy Leggett, the founder and chairman of company Solarcentury, has made some of the most sensible comments on "the greenest government ever" during the past week.

Whilst welcoming the Coalition's new targets for cuts in UK carbon emissions by 2025, Mr Leggett has also pointed out the present government's "emerging record" on the environment is "actually starting to look worse than their predecessors"(Cameron falls short on his green promise, Financial Times, 18 May 2011).

Meanwhile, Japan is still coming to terms with the consequences of nuclear disaster, including major electricity shortages. Energy conservation is now regarded as one of the country's most important tasks, along with harnessing plentiful geothermal power opportunities.

For renewables to make a contribution to energy production of the scale aspired to by the non-nuclear green movement, the starting point is cleary conservation, something their recent great misfortune has brought home to the Japanese.

The development of renewables then has to be locationally-appropriate, something which has not fully registered with promoters, largely due to the availability of inappropriate financial incentives.

In addition, a truly renewable energy future would depend on unprecedented international co-operation, with energy transmission supergrids deployed to distribute power from different regions of the globe according to the availability of supply and demand.

These are the sorts of issues which politicians, policy-makers, those concerned with implementation as well as the media should be headlining. Instead we have the much-feted "Jam Tomorrow Generation" (see my post of 11 May) fiddling as usual whilst the planet burns.

Thames Cable Car: A River Crossing Re-Imagined

Above Image - Cologne Cable Car (Wikipedia Media Commons)

Yesterday's announcement that Transport for London is to fund a cable car crossing of the River Thames between the Greenwich Peninsula and Docklands in readiness - hopefully - for the 2012 Olympics is an interesting development in the history of plans for East London river crossings.

Proposals for cable car projects in the London Thames Gateway go back many years - I can remember schemes put forward in the late 1980s - but next year's Olympic Games seem to the final catalyst to implementation.

The need for improved access in the transport corridor served by the Blackwall Tunnel has long been recognised, but additional road capacity has been opposed for environmental reasons, not least increased air pollution.

Transport for London's support for an aerial passenger crossing should, therefore, be viewed as a progressive development in moving people around the capital, although it is still questionable whether the full potential of the Thames itself has yet been re-harnessed.

Reflections On The Revolutions Near Europe

As David Cameron returns to Britain from his travels in the Middle East, perhaps he has reflected on the recent revolutions near Europe as manifestations of "The Big Society" in action. For events in North Africa and elsewhere seem to reflect the aspirations of citizens to replace "Big Man" politics and corrupt government bureaucracies, long supported by countries like our own, with something akin to the kind of democratic government enjoyed in most of Europe.

In some respects, these revolutions also read like a sequel to Christopher Caldwell's well-written and thought provoking book "Reflections on the revolution in Europe" which gives an account of immigration into countries such as Britain, France and Germany following World War 2. The book proposes that a European Islamic revolution is already underway and poses a threat to the cultural values of the West: a view which, needless to say, is widely challenged.

My own view is that the course of history in "Greater Europe" - extending to North Africa, the Near East and Russia - as I shall call it, is certainly at something of a watershed. Indeed, water will be one of its key resource issues, but I am less concerned with the role of Islam than with the wider economic and environmental challenges, as well as opportunities, posed by population and resource factors.

These economic and environmental challenges now need to be firmly grasped not only by political leaders and governments throughout Greater Europe, but also by "Big Society" - to use Mr Cameron's touchstone - movements within countries and across the region. The alternative scenario is likely to be more akin to that which preceded the Second World War, rather than the one which emerges in Christopher Caldwell's "Reflections".

To conclude, if the "Booming Noughties" resembled the "Roaring Twenties", the next decade may have more in common with the 1930s. This situation calls for a very different kind of politics, particularly in Greater Europe. It also calls for a very different kind of media coverage, particularly from organisations like the BBC, whose reporting of European issues has been lamentably weak and Anglo-centric in recent years*.

*Postscript March 14 - The appointment of Chris Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust might help tackle this problem.

HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM !

This message comes not from a space, or rather not from space as Houston might have once understood this, but from built space on the ground. In short, Houston has too much new space, although in fact this is not a new problem. Th city has always had a tremendously speculative property market, and it has not been unusual for large amounts of commercial space to lie empty. However, the sheer volume of speculative real estate development in recent years, combined with the sub-prime crisis, whose aftershocks are still reverberating around the United States, has created unprecedented difficulties for home owners. To mix metaphors even more, many of these properties are "under water", a North American term for negative equity, and citizens around the country are having to get to grips with this, the ongoing problem of mortgage foreclosures and associated debts. The title of this post comes from a briefing for people in the Texas city of Houston who are thus afflicted.

The situation in the UK is different because speculative real estate development is regulated through a planning system which just about survived the previous administration and may, or may not, fare better with the present one. The appointment of Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor last week is a timely reminder that had his good wife Yvette Cooper, Housing Minister for several years under New Labour, had her way the situation over here might be more akin to the US, Ireland and Spain. For what Balls means by "growth", and we shall be hearing a great deal more from him on the subject, is an over-developed construction and and real estate sector, notably in the form of speculative house-building on green field sites. This is precisely the kind of growth the United States experienced during the so-called boom years. Meanwhile, the managed decline of former industrial cities was encouraged, a policy which New Labour also embarked upon with the disastrous "Pathfinder Programme", now fortunately abolished by the Coalition Government. The last thing this country needs is US-style planning !

Postscript: "A Man in Full" by the American writer Tom Wolfe remains, in my view, one of the best accounts of the property cycle in the United States. Without wishing to divulge details of the novel's plot, I would also add that the hero's "journey" in one key respect resembles Tony Blair's.

Construction, Construction & Construction

Although the last government started out with the mantra "Education, Education, Education", by the end of its time in office many people thought that "Construction, Construction, Construction" was more apposite. Not that there's anything new about close links between UK national governments and local authorities and the building industry, it was just that New Labour embarked on this relationship with far too little heed to the financial costs involved. "Building Schools for the Future" is a very good example of such overly-aspirational spending.

My previous post may have seemed unsympathetic to areas like Sandwell in the West Midlands, whose school re-building programme has apparently been cut by the new administration. In fact, this is precisely the kind of deprived area which should continue to provide a focus for government spending on regeneration, including education projects. However, there are almost certainly funding mechanisms which offer better value for money than the BSF model.

In this context, a key challenge for the Coalition will be re-contracting the relationship between government and the UK construction industry to reflect current economic and financial conditions. Much public - and private - building in recent years has created over-designed and costly constructions which are often neither fit for purpose nor aesthetically attractive, and its may well be that the architecture of austerity will not only be more sustainable but also leave a superior built legacy for future generations.

Please see also my post @ http://janetmackinnon.wordpress.com/ - Regional Policy and Regeneration: Confusion, Confusion and Confusion ? Or maybe just another example of the continuing overly close links between government and construction sector.

The Battle for Tristramgrad (aka Stoke-on-Trent)

This is the coat of arms of the city of Engels (Saratov Oblast) in the Russian Federation, evoking sentiments surrounding hard-working labour symbolised in the bull bearing his heavy load. Enter the Hon Tristram Hunt, recent biographer of Engels, undisputed pretty boy of the academic media set, and now the Labour Party's candidate for the apparently safe seat of Stoke-on-Trent Central. I'm not a fan, incidentally, and nor, apparently, are many Labour supporters in Stoke, according to the secretary of the local party, who intends to stand as an independent candidate. However, the selection of Tristram Hunt does raise some interesting issues.

Stoke-on-Trent, like Liverpool under the Thatcher Governments of the 1980s, has been the victim of New Labour policies in the noughties. These have included the imposition of education programmes and demolition of much perfectly good housing and other building stock. There has been a loss of population and employment, and, most significantly, a pervasive loss of confidence in the area both amongst its own residents and external interests, notably the very central government whose policies have exacerbated problems arising largely from industrial restructuring within Stoke and its surrounding sub-region in the North Midlands. In the midst of all this, Stoke and other parts of the North Midlands have fallen victim to another political problem, headed by another Cambridge historian, albeit not one so pretty as Tristram Hunt: Nick Griffin of the British National Party.

The question now is whether New Labour "Patrician Socialism" of the kind embodied in Hunt (an apparent favourite of Lord Mandelson) can deliver the kind of transformation required in Stoke-on-Trent, or whether the Labour Party needs to recast itself post General Election as a party of (as distinct from for) the people again. Peter Mandelson aside, Tristram Hunt does have a number of attributes in his favour, including a wide ranging knowledge of the kind of historical developments which contributed to the rise of cities like Stoke, or Five Towns, during the Victorian period. The real possibility that Hunt is the right man to preside over a new renaissance of the North Staffordshire Conurbation cannot, therefore, be overlooked. Against this, is a real danger that any renaissance will still leave many people behind, contributing further to a disaffected rump of voters who will opt for the BNP. With all this in prospect, Labour supporters of Stoke-on-Trent may choose a local independent candidate, something which may in turn split the vote in favour of the not-so-pretty Mr Griffin.

Whatever the outcome, "The Battle for Tristramgrad" has the makings of drama to which many a nineteenth century novelist would have aspired : a dashing hero with dubious connections, an ugly rival with even more dubious connections, and a hitherto unknown man of the people, deeply connected to the local community, but without the right connections to make him New Labour's candidate and perhaps, therefore, without the connections to deliver the modern regeneration which has hitherto eluded Stoke.

A UK Strategy for Enterprise & Industry

Whilst attending a conference on the subject of energy and climate change a couple of months ago, I commented that what the UK needed to properly tackle these issues was a good old-fashioned industrial strategy. Now I want to address the issue of climate change at my other blog - http://janetmackinnon.wordpress.com/ - and focus here on the issues of UK enterprise and industry.

Following my conference contribution - not greatly welcomed by some of the organisers it afterwards transpired ! - I was approached by a youngish man who, I seem to remember, worked for a government funded-agency involved in energy conservation. I had used the analogy of the Greater London Industrial Strategy, produced shortly before the abolition of the Greater London Council in the mid-1980s, and about the time I started my career in area regeneration. The young man told me that he partly agreed with what I'd said, but felt I needed to be more private-sector orientated.

This comment surprised me for 2 reasons. On a personal level, I've been self-employed for some 80% of my working life, and, therefore, in this "private sector". Secondly, the young man seemed to have forgotten - and this is very worrying because I suspect he is not alone - that a large part of the UK banking sector is now publicly owned, and the sector as whole has now been bailed out by our Government to the tune of £850 billion as mentioned in my previous post.

With this level of government intervention - unimaginable in the days of old "Red" Ken Livingstone's GLC - I would suggest that a comprehensive UK strategy for enterprise and industry is required at the present time more than at any other since the end of World War II. This should clearly identify the role of strategic sectors, such as banking and energy supply, in the context of wider economic, social, security, and environmental objectives.

Of course such as strategy would involve partnership between the public, private and non-governmental sectors. However, elected government should take the lead - as the GLC did - so that the citizens of this country can have some influence and accountability in the process. This would, of course, require a considerable cultural change, because it is precisely the absence of real accountability which has brought us to the state in which we all presently find ourselves.