What is it about mobile phone companies?
They handle the sale of upmarket lifestyle technology through contracts which involve long-term relationship management.
And they behave like they’re shifting slightly dodgy used cars.
“So how much is this car?”
“To you mate, just £18.50 a month.”
“£18.50 a month? Brilliant – where do I sign?”
“Just 'ere mate – and do it sharpish.”
“Righto – deal done then!”
“Er, well, sort of.”
“Sort of? What do you mean?”
“Well, when I said £18.50 a month I meant £19.”
“What!? But I just signed to pay £18.50!”
“Shoulda looked at the small print, mate.”
“What do you mean?”
“Says I can put the price up once every 12 months. So I have.”
“But I’ve only just signed!”
“Sorry mate – rules are rules.”
“That’s outrageous. I want to cancel the contract.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I’ve got you by the short and…sorry, I meant there’ll be a cancellation charge.”
“So you sign me up on one price, put it up immediately and then hit me with a cancellation fee if I try to leave…that’s unfair.”
“I don’t make the rules, mate. I just shift the…sorry, I just handle the lifestyle technology relationship.”
I think it’s safe to say that conversations not dissimilar to this are being held with O2 and Orange/EE (whatever their name is) across the country right now.
Here we are in the run up to Christmas and people are buying mobile phones by the boatload as presents.
And wait, what’s this? The phone companies in question have decided that this would be an appropriate moment to impose a 3.2 per cent price rise on people who sign up. Strange, that.
So, what extra services and benefits are we getting for this tidy little increase? Er, nothing.
I walked away from Virgin Mobile because of the shabby manner in which they responded to a technical fault with my daughter’s Blackberry - ‘we won’t honour the warranty because she must have tampered with it’ (she was 12).
Here I am two weeks into an 02 contract and I learn that it will be £13 more than I signed up for. At what point, I wonder, was this decision made? And is O2 advising customers when they sign up for that 18 or 24 month deal that the price they are quoted will go up in a couple of months?
I asked O2 that question on Twitter. They said that “Since the announcement all customers will be told”.
But what about people who aren’t customers yet – will prices be changing in shops? “No, as they will not take effect until February…”
In other words, they won’t tell you until after you’ve signed up. So for O2, it’s the gift that keeps on giving.
You have been warned.
Tuesday 18 December 2012
Sunday 11 November 2012
BBC's elephant stumbles again
Several lessons to learn from the BBC Newsnight fiasco, none of them new.
The biggest is that there is no industry on earth which has the capacity to gaze at its own navel better than the media. It sensationalises the sensational and usually draws a grotesquely self-important conclusion. Meanwhile, a child abuse scandal remains unresolved.
It is a story of elephantine management structures which, every now and then, will stumble in a big way. Happens in all big organisations, but in the BBC it's always going to be a very public fail. It doesn't mean the BBC is shot. It does mean it needs some robustly savvy people at senior levels who aren't afraid of speaking out or sounding alarm bells. That's unusual in any bureaucracy, where self-preservation usually reigns, and the higher the salary the rarer it gets. Poor old George Entwistle got cut off from reality.
It is a story, too, of over-excited investigative journalism which wasn't subject to enough wise and sceptical cross-examination. One of the most telling incidents in this sorry episode was an encounter between Iain Overton, of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and Michael Crick, ex-political editor of Newsnight. The BOIJ did the legwork in the Newsnight probe into a child abuse scandal in North Wales and Overton told Crick all about it on the eve of transmission when they met at a social bash. Crick was already familiar with the story, which had been sifted over before. A journalist who has been around a bit, he also knew there was more to it than met the eye. After Overton breathlessly tweeted that a former Tory politician was about to be unmasked as a serial abuser, Crick tweeted a warning.
It's a story of holier than thou. In the media, the BBC is known as a self-regarding organisation which tends to look down on the little people in other TV organisations and newspapers. There was more than a hint of relish in its coverage of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, which focused on the failings of national newspapers (some of whom had been ceaseless critics of the BBC). Unsurprisingly, newspapers are now devoting quite a few column inches to serial blundering at the BBC. La vengeance se mange tres-bien froide, you might say.
It's another illustration of social media's ability to run with a snippet of information and turn it into something poisonously inaccurate. Some of the speculation was clearly political, and people who should have known better (Tom Watson MP, Commons' Speaker's wife Sally Bercow, and Guardian columnist George Monbiot) should hang their heads in shame. Even now, some of the reaction is over-heated and partisan.
In July and August, the BBC demonstrated that it can be the best broadcasting organisation on earth, with peerless coverage of the Olympics. But it isn't peerless all of the time - beneath professional production, some of its routine programming on TV and radio is ploddingly unoriginal and box-tickingly tedious, and there's the sense sometimes that its multi-channel breadth is diluting standout quality.
It doesn't tune in well to some aspects of life, pigeonholing the middle class and the affluent. Despite everything Robert Peston and Stephanie Flanders have done, it still struggles to understand the business mindset beyond the political-corporate prism. Where there should be insights into owner-managers and family firms, we have the entrepreneur as entertainer (Dragons Den and The Apprentice) or reports about workers, bosses, unions and factories which sound like they're straight out of the seventies. This doesn't reflect economic or business reality.
It is prone to corporate hubris, too. Its decision to spend an absolute fortune creating a trophy presence in Salford while abandoning a production base in Birmingham (the UK's second city) was boom-era grandstanding. This money could have achieved so much more if it had been invested in people.
The BBC's Tower of Babel bureaucracy lets it down time and again. Yet it has been the birthplace and the nurturer of immense creative talent. It is a national and international centre of media excellence, a cultural beacon. Its journalism usually sets a consistently high standard.
If these blunders serve any purpose, it will be to make sure that - whatever the competitive pressures, whatever the management nonsenses - nothing is broadcast unless it meets those standards.
The biggest is that there is no industry on earth which has the capacity to gaze at its own navel better than the media. It sensationalises the sensational and usually draws a grotesquely self-important conclusion. Meanwhile, a child abuse scandal remains unresolved.
It is a story of elephantine management structures which, every now and then, will stumble in a big way. Happens in all big organisations, but in the BBC it's always going to be a very public fail. It doesn't mean the BBC is shot. It does mean it needs some robustly savvy people at senior levels who aren't afraid of speaking out or sounding alarm bells. That's unusual in any bureaucracy, where self-preservation usually reigns, and the higher the salary the rarer it gets. Poor old George Entwistle got cut off from reality.
It is a story, too, of over-excited investigative journalism which wasn't subject to enough wise and sceptical cross-examination. One of the most telling incidents in this sorry episode was an encounter between Iain Overton, of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and Michael Crick, ex-political editor of Newsnight. The BOIJ did the legwork in the Newsnight probe into a child abuse scandal in North Wales and Overton told Crick all about it on the eve of transmission when they met at a social bash. Crick was already familiar with the story, which had been sifted over before. A journalist who has been around a bit, he also knew there was more to it than met the eye. After Overton breathlessly tweeted that a former Tory politician was about to be unmasked as a serial abuser, Crick tweeted a warning.
It's a story of holier than thou. In the media, the BBC is known as a self-regarding organisation which tends to look down on the little people in other TV organisations and newspapers. There was more than a hint of relish in its coverage of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, which focused on the failings of national newspapers (some of whom had been ceaseless critics of the BBC). Unsurprisingly, newspapers are now devoting quite a few column inches to serial blundering at the BBC. La vengeance se mange tres-bien froide, you might say.
It's another illustration of social media's ability to run with a snippet of information and turn it into something poisonously inaccurate. Some of the speculation was clearly political, and people who should have known better (Tom Watson MP, Commons' Speaker's wife Sally Bercow, and Guardian columnist George Monbiot) should hang their heads in shame. Even now, some of the reaction is over-heated and partisan.
In July and August, the BBC demonstrated that it can be the best broadcasting organisation on earth, with peerless coverage of the Olympics. But it isn't peerless all of the time - beneath professional production, some of its routine programming on TV and radio is ploddingly unoriginal and box-tickingly tedious, and there's the sense sometimes that its multi-channel breadth is diluting standout quality.
It doesn't tune in well to some aspects of life, pigeonholing the middle class and the affluent. Despite everything Robert Peston and Stephanie Flanders have done, it still struggles to understand the business mindset beyond the political-corporate prism. Where there should be insights into owner-managers and family firms, we have the entrepreneur as entertainer (Dragons Den and The Apprentice) or reports about workers, bosses, unions and factories which sound like they're straight out of the seventies. This doesn't reflect economic or business reality.
It is prone to corporate hubris, too. Its decision to spend an absolute fortune creating a trophy presence in Salford while abandoning a production base in Birmingham (the UK's second city) was boom-era grandstanding. This money could have achieved so much more if it had been invested in people.
The BBC's Tower of Babel bureaucracy lets it down time and again. Yet it has been the birthplace and the nurturer of immense creative talent. It is a national and international centre of media excellence, a cultural beacon. Its journalism usually sets a consistently high standard.
If these blunders serve any purpose, it will be to make sure that - whatever the competitive pressures, whatever the management nonsenses - nothing is broadcast unless it meets those standards.
Wednesday 7 November 2012
SouthReef: From Dublin to Dubai
SouthReef will go down as a globe-trotting metaphor for the property crash.
It started in Nottingham, got its funding from Ireland, ended up in the hands of an Irish government agency, and is now owned by an Isle of Man entity with a UK subsidiary which is funded by a consortium from the United Arab Emirates.
It will also take the prize for the most unfortunate time to launch a major property development. Construction started in April 2007, just four months before the sub-prime crisis began to explode all over the banking system.
What was once touted as an excellently designed gateway project has stood like a sorry relic ever since, with an unfinished tower and only partially occupied offices.
So, here we are, fully six years after the scheme began, and a finish looks like it’s finally in sight. Who’s bought the project from the Irish Government’s National Asset Management Agency (based, ironically, in Old Canal Street, Dublin)? That’s complicated. Nottingham One Developments is a Derbyshire-registered UK subsidiary of a company of the same name registered in the Isle of Man.
But control actually lies in sunny Dubai, where the new project’s funders are based. Their interest is being managed by former Lendlease executive Colin Wright, who has a string of major Middle East projects under his belt.
The multi-million sum involved in this deal hasn’t been disclosed, nor has the amount Nottingham One’s Dubai backers are investing. But I’m told it is, by their standards, a small project. The signals they were giving out suggest it should be fairly straightforward for them to make it work financially (and I doubt they paid NAMA top dollar).
It looks like they are building up a portfolio of what you might call distressed projects which have still got solid potential. And they are buying at the bottom of the market.
So what was once going to be apartments, offices, restaurants and a hotel will now be a simple residential and office complex. Some of the money involved will come back to Nottingham – Arup are project managing completion and the stout chaps at CPMG have been brought in to redesign the tower for residential use. As of yesterday, a main contractor hadn’t been appointed.
Nevertheless, the sound of hammers will be heard pretty quickly at the Canal Street site: the project is (unsurprisingly) being rebranded Nottingham One, and the SouthReef signs will be knocked down and binned.
SouthReef was the brainchild of architect-turned-developer Andy Grogan and Charlie Fish, of the family building dynasty, Thomas Fish. It isn’t the only name to have disappeared during the six year life of the project: Thomas Fish itself collapsed part way through, only to be bought out by Chek Whyte. His empire, too, would later hit the skids.
Nottingham City Council initially welcomed the scheme because it gave one of the southern gateways of the city something more modern and imposing than the weary old banqueting suite it replaced. It has been desperate to see the site make progress because it regards the whole area – with the empty eastside zone nearby – as unfinished business.
When Nottingham One is completed, probably in late 2013 or early 2014, it will be the first piece in what the council regards as a southern jigsaw: the money it has won under the terms of the City Deal should help it breathe life into the lace market, Hockley and perhaps even Eastside.
With Nottingham One tidying up Southside, this leaves only the thorny issue of Broadmarsh cluttering up the southern gateway to the city. The latest on that long, drawn out saga is one for another day.
It started in Nottingham, got its funding from Ireland, ended up in the hands of an Irish government agency, and is now owned by an Isle of Man entity with a UK subsidiary which is funded by a consortium from the United Arab Emirates.
It will also take the prize for the most unfortunate time to launch a major property development. Construction started in April 2007, just four months before the sub-prime crisis began to explode all over the banking system.
What was once touted as an excellently designed gateway project has stood like a sorry relic ever since, with an unfinished tower and only partially occupied offices.
So, here we are, fully six years after the scheme began, and a finish looks like it’s finally in sight. Who’s bought the project from the Irish Government’s National Asset Management Agency (based, ironically, in Old Canal Street, Dublin)? That’s complicated. Nottingham One Developments is a Derbyshire-registered UK subsidiary of a company of the same name registered in the Isle of Man.
But control actually lies in sunny Dubai, where the new project’s funders are based. Their interest is being managed by former Lendlease executive Colin Wright, who has a string of major Middle East projects under his belt.
The multi-million sum involved in this deal hasn’t been disclosed, nor has the amount Nottingham One’s Dubai backers are investing. But I’m told it is, by their standards, a small project. The signals they were giving out suggest it should be fairly straightforward for them to make it work financially (and I doubt they paid NAMA top dollar).
It looks like they are building up a portfolio of what you might call distressed projects which have still got solid potential. And they are buying at the bottom of the market.
So what was once going to be apartments, offices, restaurants and a hotel will now be a simple residential and office complex. Some of the money involved will come back to Nottingham – Arup are project managing completion and the stout chaps at CPMG have been brought in to redesign the tower for residential use. As of yesterday, a main contractor hadn’t been appointed.
Nevertheless, the sound of hammers will be heard pretty quickly at the Canal Street site: the project is (unsurprisingly) being rebranded Nottingham One, and the SouthReef signs will be knocked down and binned.
SouthReef was the brainchild of architect-turned-developer Andy Grogan and Charlie Fish, of the family building dynasty, Thomas Fish. It isn’t the only name to have disappeared during the six year life of the project: Thomas Fish itself collapsed part way through, only to be bought out by Chek Whyte. His empire, too, would later hit the skids.
Nottingham City Council initially welcomed the scheme because it gave one of the southern gateways of the city something more modern and imposing than the weary old banqueting suite it replaced. It has been desperate to see the site make progress because it regards the whole area – with the empty eastside zone nearby – as unfinished business.
When Nottingham One is completed, probably in late 2013 or early 2014, it will be the first piece in what the council regards as a southern jigsaw: the money it has won under the terms of the City Deal should help it breathe life into the lace market, Hockley and perhaps even Eastside.
With Nottingham One tidying up Southside, this leaves only the thorny issue of Broadmarsh cluttering up the southern gateway to the city. The latest on that long, drawn out saga is one for another day.
Thursday 1 November 2012
Where does Heseltine leave our LEP?
The big question about Lord Heseltine's report into regional growth yesterday is whether it will ever become government policy.
It is a proposal to spend money on a grand scale at the grassroots of the economy, and from some angles looks suspiciously like revisiting what organisations like emda and the Government Office for the East Midlands used to do.
Fair enough, it was a government-commissioned report and Lord Heseltine would not have attached his name to it without some commitment from David Cameron and George Osborne to do something with it.
What does George Osborne, the man who holds the purse strings, want to do? Study it in depth. That could mean working out how some of it could be done without it looking like a u-turn, or it could mean kicking it into the long grass.
A sceptical jury is out on which of the two it means.
There is a lot of simple common sense in 'No Stone Unturned', the name Heseltine gave his search for a way of unlocking regional economic growth. Spending money at the grassroots of the economy is best decided at the grassroots, he suggests. But rather than exhuming old quangos and giving them another name he suggests the work could be done by existing bodies - notably the Local Enterprise Partnerships like our own Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire D2N2, and the Chambers of Commerce (which happens to operate across the same turf up here).
More ambitiously, he also suggests councils should be restructured into two tiers (a sort of city and county arrangement), and that civil servants should be reorganised to serve the economy rather than their department. He's taking on vested interest and political turf here, much of which is quite happy to serve itself.
One way or another, our LEP is heading towards a turning point. There will be a review into its future in the spring and it can't come soon enough. With next-to-no budget and a resource of borrowed time, it has failed to make an impact. While Derby has shown signs of believing it could help their economic development efforts, Nottingham has been dismissive - with a £60 million City Deal under its belt, perhaps it feels it can afford to be.
This leaves us wandering into that miserable world of political rivalry between Derby and Nottingham, a sorry turf which acts as nothing more than another bad advert for politics. It surfaced yesterday in the cool reception given to the announcement that the new LEP chair was another Derby business figure, Peter Richardson.
Put to one side the fact that Richardson is a straight-talker who has considerable respect among business across both counties. Nottingham said nothing about his appointment officially, but it is unlikely to be seen as evidence that the LEP gives an equal proportion of its time to both cities. Whether that's a fair assessment or not, it is one Richardson will have to address.
The LEP is being given just enough money by government to establish a full-time secretariat, and it has a hand in one or two major projects. Will next year's review decide how to give it a real sense of purpose? Or will it wonder whether there's any point continuing? Where government goes with the Heseltine report could play a decisive role.
It is a proposal to spend money on a grand scale at the grassroots of the economy, and from some angles looks suspiciously like revisiting what organisations like emda and the Government Office for the East Midlands used to do.
Fair enough, it was a government-commissioned report and Lord Heseltine would not have attached his name to it without some commitment from David Cameron and George Osborne to do something with it.
What does George Osborne, the man who holds the purse strings, want to do? Study it in depth. That could mean working out how some of it could be done without it looking like a u-turn, or it could mean kicking it into the long grass.
A sceptical jury is out on which of the two it means.
There is a lot of simple common sense in 'No Stone Unturned', the name Heseltine gave his search for a way of unlocking regional economic growth. Spending money at the grassroots of the economy is best decided at the grassroots, he suggests. But rather than exhuming old quangos and giving them another name he suggests the work could be done by existing bodies - notably the Local Enterprise Partnerships like our own Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire D2N2, and the Chambers of Commerce (which happens to operate across the same turf up here).
More ambitiously, he also suggests councils should be restructured into two tiers (a sort of city and county arrangement), and that civil servants should be reorganised to serve the economy rather than their department. He's taking on vested interest and political turf here, much of which is quite happy to serve itself.
One way or another, our LEP is heading towards a turning point. There will be a review into its future in the spring and it can't come soon enough. With next-to-no budget and a resource of borrowed time, it has failed to make an impact. While Derby has shown signs of believing it could help their economic development efforts, Nottingham has been dismissive - with a £60 million City Deal under its belt, perhaps it feels it can afford to be.
This leaves us wandering into that miserable world of political rivalry between Derby and Nottingham, a sorry turf which acts as nothing more than another bad advert for politics. It surfaced yesterday in the cool reception given to the announcement that the new LEP chair was another Derby business figure, Peter Richardson.
Put to one side the fact that Richardson is a straight-talker who has considerable respect among business across both counties. Nottingham said nothing about his appointment officially, but it is unlikely to be seen as evidence that the LEP gives an equal proportion of its time to both cities. Whether that's a fair assessment or not, it is one Richardson will have to address.
The LEP is being given just enough money by government to establish a full-time secretariat, and it has a hand in one or two major projects. Will next year's review decide how to give it a real sense of purpose? Or will it wonder whether there's any point continuing? Where government goes with the Heseltine report could play a decisive role.
Wednesday 31 October 2012
Heseltine's wake-up call for LEPs
It only seems like yesterday that the East Midlands Development Agency closed its doors (only for a load of civil servants to walk in through the back and do something which bears a vague resemblance to some of its work).
Anyway, here we are four months on and Lord Heseltine is announcing proposals which also bear a startling resemblance to things regional development agencies used to do, putting tens of billions of government money in the hands of local organisations and devolving decision-making to local level.
What on earth is going on?
Well, some pigeons are coming home to roost for one thing. The coalition government's decision to scrap all of England's nine regional development agencies was the kind of one-size-fits-all politics which flew in the face of well-established regional variations in the economy.
It assumed, too, that all RDAs were an expensive waste of space. As Ken Clarke privately admitted even before the election, they were not. The RDAs in the north west, south and south west did not cover themselves in glory. Ours, however, grew into something professional and well-run. And the RDAs in Yorkshire and the North East made a vital contribution to their economies.
Whatever the government's numbers may tell us, it is questionable whether any money was really saved by closing them. Besides the costs of getting rid of people and unwinding contracts in some RDAs, these agencies contained valuable expertise about regional economies and an ability to get funding out into the economy (something this government has made a real horlicks of). This valuable asset was allowed to walk out of the door.
Government's theory was that local economies should be weaned off the state spoon and learn to stand on their own two feet. The first sign that this theory was wildly idealistic surfaced when Lord Heseltine (yes, him again) came up with the Regional Growth Fund, an acknowledgment that putting money into pump-priming business growth at regional level might not be such a daft idea after all.
We also had the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships, an attempt to encourage business to get involved in initiatives which might help develop their local economies.
And, of course, we've had a team of civil servants responsible for monitoring and advising on the implementation of government policy at regional level taking over the offices formerly occupied by emda.
Now, the eagle-eyed among you might just have spotted a bit of a theme here: organisations and initiatives involved in developing the economy at something other than a national level. We won't say regional because, of course, that has all stopped.
Sort of.
Let's stop being facetious for a minute. Lord Heseltine's announcement today is a big issue for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The brutal truth is that its Local Enterprise Partnership. D2N2, has struggled to make any kind of meaningful impression where it counts. It isn't the go-to organisation for business, councils don't rate it, MPs never mention it and Whitehall wonders what's happened to it.
LEPs were always going to struggle to gain traction because they had a budget around about the size of a packet of KP ready-salted. Yet some have managed to persuade local authorities they were worth backing (Northants got its hands on £2 million). The view is that D2N2 and others have failed to establish any authority.
Lord Heseltine's proposals suggest this needs to happen fast. He has clearly identified these organisations as a route through which government money could be channelled into regional economies. This is a major opportunity, therefore, for a business-led organisation to be in the forefront of investment decisions about their own economies.
D2N2 now has to demonstrate that it can grasp this opportunity and work with city and county councils in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to get a fair share of the cash. This hasn't happened so far with the Regional Growth Fund (where the money the East Midlands got was way below other regions).
So D2N2 and our local politicians have some ground to make up.
Lord Heseltine's announcement suggests that government has effectively admitted that the work RDAs did was not a totally unaffordable waste of time, and that city regions can and should be real engines for growth.
Nottingham and Derby have an unfortunate and inglorious history of letting small-town political rivalry get in the way of grown-up cooperation. The view in business is that they need to get over themselves.
While Lord Heseltine's report represents a potentially big opportunity it is also a political headache. Coverage in the national newspapers today has offered an insight into the political nonsenses the report faces: not for the first time, the Guardian went into full-on 'challenge to the prime minister' mode, The Times - bizarrely - suggested the report's most significant finding was about Heathrow airport, the Telegraph reported the politics but not the detail.
Yet in doing so they more or less made Heseltine's point for him: an awful Westminster-centric myopia - there for all to see in the online era - has left political decision-making increasingly distant and increasingly irrelevant to regional priorities.
In other words, we have to grab what we can.
Anyway, here we are four months on and Lord Heseltine is announcing proposals which also bear a startling resemblance to things regional development agencies used to do, putting tens of billions of government money in the hands of local organisations and devolving decision-making to local level.
What on earth is going on?
Well, some pigeons are coming home to roost for one thing. The coalition government's decision to scrap all of England's nine regional development agencies was the kind of one-size-fits-all politics which flew in the face of well-established regional variations in the economy.
It assumed, too, that all RDAs were an expensive waste of space. As Ken Clarke privately admitted even before the election, they were not. The RDAs in the north west, south and south west did not cover themselves in glory. Ours, however, grew into something professional and well-run. And the RDAs in Yorkshire and the North East made a vital contribution to their economies.
Whatever the government's numbers may tell us, it is questionable whether any money was really saved by closing them. Besides the costs of getting rid of people and unwinding contracts in some RDAs, these agencies contained valuable expertise about regional economies and an ability to get funding out into the economy (something this government has made a real horlicks of). This valuable asset was allowed to walk out of the door.
Government's theory was that local economies should be weaned off the state spoon and learn to stand on their own two feet. The first sign that this theory was wildly idealistic surfaced when Lord Heseltine (yes, him again) came up with the Regional Growth Fund, an acknowledgment that putting money into pump-priming business growth at regional level might not be such a daft idea after all.
We also had the emergence of Local Enterprise Partnerships, an attempt to encourage business to get involved in initiatives which might help develop their local economies.
And, of course, we've had a team of civil servants responsible for monitoring and advising on the implementation of government policy at regional level taking over the offices formerly occupied by emda.
Now, the eagle-eyed among you might just have spotted a bit of a theme here: organisations and initiatives involved in developing the economy at something other than a national level. We won't say regional because, of course, that has all stopped.
Sort of.
Let's stop being facetious for a minute. Lord Heseltine's announcement today is a big issue for Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. The brutal truth is that its Local Enterprise Partnership. D2N2, has struggled to make any kind of meaningful impression where it counts. It isn't the go-to organisation for business, councils don't rate it, MPs never mention it and Whitehall wonders what's happened to it.
LEPs were always going to struggle to gain traction because they had a budget around about the size of a packet of KP ready-salted. Yet some have managed to persuade local authorities they were worth backing (Northants got its hands on £2 million). The view is that D2N2 and others have failed to establish any authority.
Lord Heseltine's proposals suggest this needs to happen fast. He has clearly identified these organisations as a route through which government money could be channelled into regional economies. This is a major opportunity, therefore, for a business-led organisation to be in the forefront of investment decisions about their own economies.
D2N2 now has to demonstrate that it can grasp this opportunity and work with city and county councils in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to get a fair share of the cash. This hasn't happened so far with the Regional Growth Fund (where the money the East Midlands got was way below other regions).
So D2N2 and our local politicians have some ground to make up.
Lord Heseltine's announcement suggests that government has effectively admitted that the work RDAs did was not a totally unaffordable waste of time, and that city regions can and should be real engines for growth.
Nottingham and Derby have an unfortunate and inglorious history of letting small-town political rivalry get in the way of grown-up cooperation. The view in business is that they need to get over themselves.
While Lord Heseltine's report represents a potentially big opportunity it is also a political headache. Coverage in the national newspapers today has offered an insight into the political nonsenses the report faces: not for the first time, the Guardian went into full-on 'challenge to the prime minister' mode, The Times - bizarrely - suggested the report's most significant finding was about Heathrow airport, the Telegraph reported the politics but not the detail.
Yet in doing so they more or less made Heseltine's point for him: an awful Westminster-centric myopia - there for all to see in the online era - has left political decision-making increasingly distant and increasingly irrelevant to regional priorities.
In other words, we have to grab what we can.
Thursday 4 October 2012
Nottingham's Creative Quarter: It's better than b******s!
You might say it was when they talked about the money, or the skills, or the mentoring. And all of those things matter.
But for me the defining moment of the Creative Quarter workshop held in Nottingham was the moment when someone near the front delivered the judgement: “This isn’t bollocks.”
Too right.
I’m not being flippant (not much, anyway). This was unvarnished evidence that an audience of people who’ve seen economic initiatives come and go like trains in the night thought that Nottingham’s plans to develop a whole new quarter of the city actually made sense.
And so they should. For there are two key differences between the Creative Quarter plan and the now-wearily familiar CGIs of dreamboat developments that were wheeled out to wow us during the credit boom: this one’s tapping into an existing heritage – and it’s got money behind it.
Friday’s workshop at the Antenna creative hub saw people talk about Nottingham’s industrial past, the potential for social and environmental returns, inclusiveness, even the difference extending Nottingham’s political boundaries might make (yes, that one again).
But the single most important byte of information was contained on a Powerpoint slide flashed up by John Yarham, the City Council’s director of economic innovation. What did it show? £37 million for a venture capital fund, £20 million for a technology grant fund, £8 million of investment in infrastructure, money for start-ups, and business rate incentives.
As I’ve blogged before, when we talk about the creative quarter and the money lined up behind it, we’re really talking about a broad sweep of activities which range from programing, data analytics and life sciences through to creative design, digital content and media. All have knowledge at their heart, all have been present to varying degrees in the Nottingham economy for decades.
The audience at Friday’s event came largely from the creative design and media end of that spectrum. Some tuned in very quickly to the huge implications of the Creative Quarter initiative (Susi Henson, with some tough business experiences under her belt, spotted rent rises immediately), others were wondering how to connect with it, a few wanted to weld it to their own cultural cause.
It’s bigger than that, and the political and economic imperatives underneath it mean it will inevitably do some things a few people in the room won’t like. That’s business.
Yet there were some fascinating contributions to the debate about what Nottingham’s Commercial Quarter is going to be driven by. Adam Bird, the Esendex CTO whose idea of downtime is a quick 100 miles on a bicycle, banged on about business stepping up to the bar and collaborating in the name of economic progress.
This wasn’t woolly idealism, but the product of Bird’s own experience of what it takes to nurture an environment attractive to the techies which firms like his can collectively feed off.
This is about more than well-paid jobs: it’s about events they like to gather at, surroundings they feel at home in and facilities they value. It is understanding that these people look for a fulfilling way of life rather than a Perspex tech palace with ultraband bragging rights.
So it’s wrong to dismiss Bird’s approach as wishful thinking which ignores hard-headed commercial reality. It’s anything but: businesses who want to make the most of the commercial quarter – whether it’s being a part of it or selling services into it – need to understand that. Some of the businesses that grow or set up there will be familiar, traditional animals. Others may have a different cultural feel.
Councillor Nick McDonald, who leads the city council portfolio on jobs, skills and business, also made a number of interesting observations. The Creative Quarter has to deliver politically, and this is why it actually covers a broad range of business and a hefty chunk of the city – including Eastside, a stalled regeneration zone which should have been full of gleaming flats and offices by now if you believed the noughties CGIs.
It’s also the reason why a central component of the Creative Quarter/City Deal hooks into the massive issue of skills and youth employment. This is a nasty problem which has been darkening our corridors for far too long and all initiatives of this kind must have a component which answers the question: what does the future hold for our kids?
This tracks back to Adam Bird’s point: businesses cannot criticise an economy if all they’re going to do is take something out of it. If they think GCSEs are meaningless and don’t rate the skills of job applicants…well, do something about it.
While some involved in the workshop were nervous about attaching too much expectation to an initiative which, as Confetti's Craig Chettle put it, is still in the foothills, McDonald was happy to admit that Austin (home of ‘Keep it Weird’) was part of the inspiration, and pointedly said that Nottingham had been too inward-looking in the past and shouldn’t be ashamed to brag a bit.
There is, potentially, a massive amount to brag about at the moment. Besides the Creative Quarter and the wider City Deal, we have the tram expansion (£600m), the A453 widening (£140m), the transport interchange (£60m), the enterprise zone.
Very few cities can offer such a portfolio of opportunity for the next generation.
Nick McDonald said one of the reasons why the city had been shy about shouting about itself abroad was that overseas ‘jollies’ tended to up on the front page of the Nottingham Post.
The surprise would be if the opportunity presented by the Creative Quarter doesn’t make headlines at MIPIM and beyond. It’s a big story.
But for me the defining moment of the Creative Quarter workshop held in Nottingham was the moment when someone near the front delivered the judgement: “This isn’t bollocks.”
Too right.
I’m not being flippant (not much, anyway). This was unvarnished evidence that an audience of people who’ve seen economic initiatives come and go like trains in the night thought that Nottingham’s plans to develop a whole new quarter of the city actually made sense.
And so they should. For there are two key differences between the Creative Quarter plan and the now-wearily familiar CGIs of dreamboat developments that were wheeled out to wow us during the credit boom: this one’s tapping into an existing heritage – and it’s got money behind it.
Friday’s workshop at the Antenna creative hub saw people talk about Nottingham’s industrial past, the potential for social and environmental returns, inclusiveness, even the difference extending Nottingham’s political boundaries might make (yes, that one again).
But the single most important byte of information was contained on a Powerpoint slide flashed up by John Yarham, the City Council’s director of economic innovation. What did it show? £37 million for a venture capital fund, £20 million for a technology grant fund, £8 million of investment in infrastructure, money for start-ups, and business rate incentives.
As I’ve blogged before, when we talk about the creative quarter and the money lined up behind it, we’re really talking about a broad sweep of activities which range from programing, data analytics and life sciences through to creative design, digital content and media. All have knowledge at their heart, all have been present to varying degrees in the Nottingham economy for decades.
The audience at Friday’s event came largely from the creative design and media end of that spectrum. Some tuned in very quickly to the huge implications of the Creative Quarter initiative (Susi Henson, with some tough business experiences under her belt, spotted rent rises immediately), others were wondering how to connect with it, a few wanted to weld it to their own cultural cause.
It’s bigger than that, and the political and economic imperatives underneath it mean it will inevitably do some things a few people in the room won’t like. That’s business.
Yet there were some fascinating contributions to the debate about what Nottingham’s Commercial Quarter is going to be driven by. Adam Bird, the Esendex CTO whose idea of downtime is a quick 100 miles on a bicycle, banged on about business stepping up to the bar and collaborating in the name of economic progress.
This wasn’t woolly idealism, but the product of Bird’s own experience of what it takes to nurture an environment attractive to the techies which firms like his can collectively feed off.
This is about more than well-paid jobs: it’s about events they like to gather at, surroundings they feel at home in and facilities they value. It is understanding that these people look for a fulfilling way of life rather than a Perspex tech palace with ultraband bragging rights.
So it’s wrong to dismiss Bird’s approach as wishful thinking which ignores hard-headed commercial reality. It’s anything but: businesses who want to make the most of the commercial quarter – whether it’s being a part of it or selling services into it – need to understand that. Some of the businesses that grow or set up there will be familiar, traditional animals. Others may have a different cultural feel.
Councillor Nick McDonald, who leads the city council portfolio on jobs, skills and business, also made a number of interesting observations. The Creative Quarter has to deliver politically, and this is why it actually covers a broad range of business and a hefty chunk of the city – including Eastside, a stalled regeneration zone which should have been full of gleaming flats and offices by now if you believed the noughties CGIs.
It’s also the reason why a central component of the Creative Quarter/City Deal hooks into the massive issue of skills and youth employment. This is a nasty problem which has been darkening our corridors for far too long and all initiatives of this kind must have a component which answers the question: what does the future hold for our kids?
This tracks back to Adam Bird’s point: businesses cannot criticise an economy if all they’re going to do is take something out of it. If they think GCSEs are meaningless and don’t rate the skills of job applicants…well, do something about it.
While some involved in the workshop were nervous about attaching too much expectation to an initiative which, as Confetti's Craig Chettle put it, is still in the foothills, McDonald was happy to admit that Austin (home of ‘Keep it Weird’) was part of the inspiration, and pointedly said that Nottingham had been too inward-looking in the past and shouldn’t be ashamed to brag a bit.
There is, potentially, a massive amount to brag about at the moment. Besides the Creative Quarter and the wider City Deal, we have the tram expansion (£600m), the A453 widening (£140m), the transport interchange (£60m), the enterprise zone.
Very few cities can offer such a portfolio of opportunity for the next generation.
Nick McDonald said one of the reasons why the city had been shy about shouting about itself abroad was that overseas ‘jollies’ tended to up on the front page of the Nottingham Post.
The surprise would be if the opportunity presented by the Creative Quarter doesn’t make headlines at MIPIM and beyond. It’s a big story.
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Nottingham's hidden creative heritage
A few weeks back I blogged about the potential for a serious creative quarter in Nottingham, dwelling on remarks made by venture consultant and commentator Lucy Marcus, who suggested this wasn’t something that state intervention could manufacture.
In short, her point was that a creative quarter would happen only if the creative industries in Nottingham had enough momentum to make it happen - money can help, but it can't invent it.
In view of the fact that Nottingham City Council wants to use part of its £60 million City Deal to develop a creative quarter, this is an important question.
Nottingham's creatives are certainly trying to deliver an emphatic answer. And it may be that there’s more of a heritage of creative and technical achievement in the city that conventional analysis suggests.
Outside the realms of industrial classification, most people will tend to see the creative industries as either something artistic, perhaps wandering into fields of design, or 'tech’ – which is stuff like computer programing, isn’t it?
That’s not wrong. But it doesn’t come close to doing justice to the breadth and depth of creative, technical, research and scientific activity which takes place in the city right now.
Or, more importantly, of acknowledging how long it’s been happening for and understanding where its strength really lies.
In design terms, our creative heritage is epitomised by Sir Paul Smith. And this was, once, an international centre for the textile trade. Through Nottingham Trent, it still produces graduate talent in this field. It's a tough game to make money in, though.
Nottingham’s right to a place at the top table in life sciences and pharmaceutical discovery is well-established, based on the discovery work that used to be done by the likes of Boots (Ibuprofen was discovered here) and the research carried out by the University of Nottingham in particular.
But something else has happened since then that might not be as well recognised. Thanks to the emergence and growth of businesses like Experian and the arrival of the bank Capital One, we now have the best part of a 20-year track record in a field known as data analytics.
This is the story of Experian, founded here and now a global leader in the fields of forecasting and analysis around consumer and business financial behavior. Its multi-faceted demographic tool, Mosaic, is almost a map of the way we live now.
It's the story, too, of Capital One, the US bank which set up its European headquarters in Nottingham. It is very much a can-do corporate, all the way from being a regular in the great places to work charts through to giving its own analysts time to indulge new ideas.
The end result of their presence can be seen and felt in three areas: in other financial services businesses, like Ikano, tapping into a talent pool; in start-ups like HD Decisions, launched by people who found their feet in the two biggies; and in knowledge graduates - people whose degrees deliver skills suitable for programing, analysis and software tools and apps - deciding to stay in Nottingham.
Along with the existing science research, these firms have become another reason for specialist legal and accounting expertise to maintain a presence here.
I was chatting last week to Mark Onyett, the engineer and ex-Capital One exec who co-founded the credit and risk software and services firm TDX (on course to be the city's next £100 million business).
Onyett's journey and his entrepreneurial outlook put him in a strong place to understand the kind of message the city needs to be giving out to the students, start-ups, businesses and backers who might drive the creative and tech sector here.
Again, this is a knotty issue. Identifying a distinctive message won't be easy in a world where local authorities everywhere are fixating on their own mini-me of Shoreditch and Silicon Roundabout. But Onyett thinks we're more plausible than most.
"I'm not sure I'd go for Maid Marian Roundabout!" he says. "It's got to be about the future. How about something like 'For the next generation, come to Nottingham'?"
Next generations don't just appear and you can't invent them, even with a wodge of money. They evolve from what's already been happening.
And that's the point about Nottingham: creative and tech has been happening here for longer than we think. Only now are we beginning to realise what we've got.
In short, her point was that a creative quarter would happen only if the creative industries in Nottingham had enough momentum to make it happen - money can help, but it can't invent it.
In view of the fact that Nottingham City Council wants to use part of its £60 million City Deal to develop a creative quarter, this is an important question.
Nottingham's creatives are certainly trying to deliver an emphatic answer. And it may be that there’s more of a heritage of creative and technical achievement in the city that conventional analysis suggests.
Outside the realms of industrial classification, most people will tend to see the creative industries as either something artistic, perhaps wandering into fields of design, or 'tech’ – which is stuff like computer programing, isn’t it?
That’s not wrong. But it doesn’t come close to doing justice to the breadth and depth of creative, technical, research and scientific activity which takes place in the city right now.
Or, more importantly, of acknowledging how long it’s been happening for and understanding where its strength really lies.
In design terms, our creative heritage is epitomised by Sir Paul Smith. And this was, once, an international centre for the textile trade. Through Nottingham Trent, it still produces graduate talent in this field. It's a tough game to make money in, though.
Nottingham’s right to a place at the top table in life sciences and pharmaceutical discovery is well-established, based on the discovery work that used to be done by the likes of Boots (Ibuprofen was discovered here) and the research carried out by the University of Nottingham in particular.
But something else has happened since then that might not be as well recognised. Thanks to the emergence and growth of businesses like Experian and the arrival of the bank Capital One, we now have the best part of a 20-year track record in a field known as data analytics.
This is the story of Experian, founded here and now a global leader in the fields of forecasting and analysis around consumer and business financial behavior. Its multi-faceted demographic tool, Mosaic, is almost a map of the way we live now.
It's the story, too, of Capital One, the US bank which set up its European headquarters in Nottingham. It is very much a can-do corporate, all the way from being a regular in the great places to work charts through to giving its own analysts time to indulge new ideas.
The end result of their presence can be seen and felt in three areas: in other financial services businesses, like Ikano, tapping into a talent pool; in start-ups like HD Decisions, launched by people who found their feet in the two biggies; and in knowledge graduates - people whose degrees deliver skills suitable for programing, analysis and software tools and apps - deciding to stay in Nottingham.
Along with the existing science research, these firms have become another reason for specialist legal and accounting expertise to maintain a presence here.
I was chatting last week to Mark Onyett, the engineer and ex-Capital One exec who co-founded the credit and risk software and services firm TDX (on course to be the city's next £100 million business).
Onyett's journey and his entrepreneurial outlook put him in a strong place to understand the kind of message the city needs to be giving out to the students, start-ups, businesses and backers who might drive the creative and tech sector here.
Again, this is a knotty issue. Identifying a distinctive message won't be easy in a world where local authorities everywhere are fixating on their own mini-me of Shoreditch and Silicon Roundabout. But Onyett thinks we're more plausible than most.
"I'm not sure I'd go for Maid Marian Roundabout!" he says. "It's got to be about the future. How about something like 'For the next generation, come to Nottingham'?"
Next generations don't just appear and you can't invent them, even with a wodge of money. They evolve from what's already been happening.
And that's the point about Nottingham: creative and tech has been happening here for longer than we think. Only now are we beginning to realise what we've got.
Tuesday 4 September 2012
Same old survey, same old problem
Nottingham's status as a retail destination faces some significant challenges.
But yet another survey from the Local Data Company claiming a third of shops are empty isn't one of them.
To repeat, LDC's assessment of the shop vacancy rate has always run ahead of trading reality because it uses a one-size-fits-all counting method.
It's version of Nottingham's retail core is that provided by a Government map. Very convenient for a survey which wants to say it applies the same standard everywhere, but also risky: for Nottingham, the boundaries are out of date and reflect neither the reality nor the dynamism of a trade like retail.
LDC includes streets distant from the centre which long ago ceased to be viable retail locations. Some of the 'empty' units it counts aren't even being actively marketed by their owners.
Those owners include retail giants like CSC, which isn't even pushing some of the empty sections of Broadmarsh because they await redevelopment.
Surveys by the property consultancy FHP and Nottingham City Council suggest the actual vacancy rate may be somewhere between 12 and 17 per cent.
That more shops are empty in a prolonged downturn isn't a Nottingham issue. It's a national issue brought on by the fact that there was too much retail space during the boom.
Retail is not only finding it's level, it's changing because of the impact of online shopping.
This doesn't mean Nottingham doesn't face some significant challenges as a retail and leisure destination. It has to get the future of its two shopping malls sorted, it needs retailers like Apple and Hollister sooner rather than later, it needs a compelling tourist destination to enhance its appeal as a place to come and spend a day.
LDC's survey is almost certain to keep heading in one direction.
But it may not be the same direction as retail reality in Nottingham.
But yet another survey from the Local Data Company claiming a third of shops are empty isn't one of them.
To repeat, LDC's assessment of the shop vacancy rate has always run ahead of trading reality because it uses a one-size-fits-all counting method.
It's version of Nottingham's retail core is that provided by a Government map. Very convenient for a survey which wants to say it applies the same standard everywhere, but also risky: for Nottingham, the boundaries are out of date and reflect neither the reality nor the dynamism of a trade like retail.
LDC includes streets distant from the centre which long ago ceased to be viable retail locations. Some of the 'empty' units it counts aren't even being actively marketed by their owners.
Those owners include retail giants like CSC, which isn't even pushing some of the empty sections of Broadmarsh because they await redevelopment.
Surveys by the property consultancy FHP and Nottingham City Council suggest the actual vacancy rate may be somewhere between 12 and 17 per cent.
That more shops are empty in a prolonged downturn isn't a Nottingham issue. It's a national issue brought on by the fact that there was too much retail space during the boom.
Retail is not only finding it's level, it's changing because of the impact of online shopping.
This doesn't mean Nottingham doesn't face some significant challenges as a retail and leisure destination. It has to get the future of its two shopping malls sorted, it needs retailers like Apple and Hollister sooner rather than later, it needs a compelling tourist destination to enhance its appeal as a place to come and spend a day.
LDC's survey is almost certain to keep heading in one direction.
But it may not be the same direction as retail reality in Nottingham.
Saturday 25 August 2012
Winking at the moon
If there was an icon of human potential in my childhood then I guess it was two things: the Saturn V rocket and Commander Neil Armstrong.
I'm old enough to have seen the fuzzy, barely legible black & white broadcasts of the Apollo program, and to have stared in wonder at those first footsteps on the moon.
The Apollo 11 mission and Armstrong's giant leap for mankind made you believe that the world could be about the art of the possible.
Armstrong literally had the world at his feet. Yet the true mark of the man was that even though his 'first' was something no one else could ever repeat, he never exploited it personally.
Only as an advocate of scientific research and exploration did he ever speak out.
The news that he's died at 82 has a real poignancy to it, partly because it feels like a piece of my childhood has gone, but also because we're still waiting for the next big thing in terms of human space travel.
The message his family put out is a perfect tribute to a great yet modest man:
"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
I can't see the moon right now but the next time it's out we should all remember July 1969.
I'm old enough to have seen the fuzzy, barely legible black & white broadcasts of the Apollo program, and to have stared in wonder at those first footsteps on the moon.
The Apollo 11 mission and Armstrong's giant leap for mankind made you believe that the world could be about the art of the possible.
Armstrong literally had the world at his feet. Yet the true mark of the man was that even though his 'first' was something no one else could ever repeat, he never exploited it personally.
Only as an advocate of scientific research and exploration did he ever speak out.
The news that he's died at 82 has a real poignancy to it, partly because it feels like a piece of my childhood has gone, but also because we're still waiting for the next big thing in terms of human space travel.
The message his family put out is a perfect tribute to a great yet modest man:
"For those who may ask what they can do to honor Neil, we have a simple request. Honor his example of service, accomplishment and modesty, and the next time you walk outside on a clear night and see the moon smiling down at you, think of Neil Armstrong and give him a wink."
I can't see the moon right now but the next time it's out we should all remember July 1969.
Sunday 19 August 2012
MIPIM: What next for Nottingham?
Back in March, I was lucky enough to hitch a ride to MIPIM, the international property, investment and economic development expo which takes place in the agreeable surroundings of Cannes.
I went with Team Nottingham, the informal group of surveyors, architects, civil engineers and other property professionals who kept the city's flame burning on the international stage after the city council decided it could no longer justify a yacht in Cannes harbour at a time of cutbacks.
While I can guess at the politics behind this decision, it left Nottingham looking a bit small town compared to the UK's other big cities. Team Nottingham has tried to overcome that for the past couple of years by paying for key officers from the council's development and inward investment teams to come with them.
Their presence added value to discussions about potential deals, and helped put the city in the spotlight when a major inward investment was announced and an award for being a key European business city was handed over.
But how will Nottingham tackle MIPIM next year? Getting your presence right takes months of planning and it has to take some key decisions very soon.
The first is what Team Nottingham is. Should it remain an informal group of property businesses using the city's name and opportunities as a hook to try to develop relationships and opportunities? Or should it go back to being what every other city at MIPIM is - an official delegation led by a figurehead where business and officials unite around a purposeful message?
And can Team Nottingham stay at the compact size it's been for the past couple of years?
The answers aren't straightforward. And it isn't just the existing Team Nottingham that has some thinking to do. The city council has to decide whether it's serious about one of the single biggest inward investment events in the world.
With a £600m tram expansion, a £140m fast road to the motorway, a £60m City Deal, a £60m transport interchange, an Enterprise Zone and a major push for a creative quarter all signed off, a half-hearted presence would be like building a moonshot and leaving it on the launch pad.
In short, it has some serious bragging rights and tangible opportunities rather than me-too CGIs. And worries about council staff being seen near flash yachts can be forgotten. What Mipim is - and isn't - is now well understood where it matters.
It clearly wants to influence the future direction of Nottingham's presence at MIPIM. So what is it bringing to the table in terms of resources and ideas?
As for the current Team Nottingham, it will struggle to maintain its compact size, especially if the city council comes back on board properly. The council can't support a closed club, and the Team sorely needs greater resources if it is going to raise its profile. More team members ought to mean more resources whether that's cash or in kind.
This is a sensitive issue for some Team Nottingham members, who probably feel the work (and money) they put in to keeping the whole show going for the last couple of years entitles them to either sectoral exclusivity or a better deal than latecomers.
The biggest question of all is what kind of profile Nottingham wants at MIPIM. Derby appeared to have a bigger budget and a slicker presence in March. But that presence was very traditional and ended up looking and sounding similar to a number of other English provincial cities, who seem to think samey CGIs and weary 'open for business' slogans are all you need.
Nottingham mustn't fall into that trap. Nor does it need to: it has some genuinely unique opportunities in the shape of tangible, properly financed projects rather than political pipedreams. A shoestring presence and me-too messages will sell those opportunities short.
There has been the odd hint sometimes that the city council doesn't see this kind of event as important, as if it is blinded by the glitz and doesn't appreciate the number of high-level decision-makers who lie behind the show - decision makers whose millions deliver jobs and growth.
Sure, there are aspects of the show which seem overblown and distasteful. But that is only one part of it and isn't where the real business gets done.
The city doesn't need to spend a fortune ( though the price of hotels and apartments means a yacht is actually a cost-effective presence). It can be smart rather than showy. But MIPIM is a stage - and Nottingham has to come out from the wings and step into the spotlight.
Come next March, Nottingham, and it's show time.
I went with Team Nottingham, the informal group of surveyors, architects, civil engineers and other property professionals who kept the city's flame burning on the international stage after the city council decided it could no longer justify a yacht in Cannes harbour at a time of cutbacks.
While I can guess at the politics behind this decision, it left Nottingham looking a bit small town compared to the UK's other big cities. Team Nottingham has tried to overcome that for the past couple of years by paying for key officers from the council's development and inward investment teams to come with them.
Their presence added value to discussions about potential deals, and helped put the city in the spotlight when a major inward investment was announced and an award for being a key European business city was handed over.
But how will Nottingham tackle MIPIM next year? Getting your presence right takes months of planning and it has to take some key decisions very soon.
The first is what Team Nottingham is. Should it remain an informal group of property businesses using the city's name and opportunities as a hook to try to develop relationships and opportunities? Or should it go back to being what every other city at MIPIM is - an official delegation led by a figurehead where business and officials unite around a purposeful message?
And can Team Nottingham stay at the compact size it's been for the past couple of years?
The answers aren't straightforward. And it isn't just the existing Team Nottingham that has some thinking to do. The city council has to decide whether it's serious about one of the single biggest inward investment events in the world.
With a £600m tram expansion, a £140m fast road to the motorway, a £60m City Deal, a £60m transport interchange, an Enterprise Zone and a major push for a creative quarter all signed off, a half-hearted presence would be like building a moonshot and leaving it on the launch pad.
In short, it has some serious bragging rights and tangible opportunities rather than me-too CGIs. And worries about council staff being seen near flash yachts can be forgotten. What Mipim is - and isn't - is now well understood where it matters.
It clearly wants to influence the future direction of Nottingham's presence at MIPIM. So what is it bringing to the table in terms of resources and ideas?
As for the current Team Nottingham, it will struggle to maintain its compact size, especially if the city council comes back on board properly. The council can't support a closed club, and the Team sorely needs greater resources if it is going to raise its profile. More team members ought to mean more resources whether that's cash or in kind.
This is a sensitive issue for some Team Nottingham members, who probably feel the work (and money) they put in to keeping the whole show going for the last couple of years entitles them to either sectoral exclusivity or a better deal than latecomers.
The biggest question of all is what kind of profile Nottingham wants at MIPIM. Derby appeared to have a bigger budget and a slicker presence in March. But that presence was very traditional and ended up looking and sounding similar to a number of other English provincial cities, who seem to think samey CGIs and weary 'open for business' slogans are all you need.
Nottingham mustn't fall into that trap. Nor does it need to: it has some genuinely unique opportunities in the shape of tangible, properly financed projects rather than political pipedreams. A shoestring presence and me-too messages will sell those opportunities short.
There has been the odd hint sometimes that the city council doesn't see this kind of event as important, as if it is blinded by the glitz and doesn't appreciate the number of high-level decision-makers who lie behind the show - decision makers whose millions deliver jobs and growth.
Sure, there are aspects of the show which seem overblown and distasteful. But that is only one part of it and isn't where the real business gets done.
The city doesn't need to spend a fortune ( though the price of hotels and apartments means a yacht is actually a cost-effective presence). It can be smart rather than showy. But MIPIM is a stage - and Nottingham has to come out from the wings and step into the spotlight.
Come next March, Nottingham, and it's show time.
Friday 10 August 2012
Virgin Mobile gets into a sticker situation
What is it about Virgin and its unfailing ability to rescue miserable defeat from the jaws of a simple victory?
If you’ve seen Simon Dare’s blog, you will have come across a succession of problems with Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile, where an issue crops up, Virgin promises faithfully and sincerely to intervene at the highest level…and nothing much happens.
Add my daughter’s Virgin Mobile to the list. In one fell swoop Virgin has ensured that it will lose a customer and that poor old Blackberry, whose commercial woes are bad enough as it is, will be avoided like the plague.
In the process, it’s also hidden behind unfair and unreasonable assumptions, but we’ll come on to that.
My eldest daughter has a Blackberry Curve on a contract bought through the Virgin Mobile shop on Clumber Street. It’s gone without a hitch until this summer, when the phone started to freeze regularly.
The Virgin shop said this wasn’t uncommon and suggested we try to update its software. Bad move: it froze permanently and wouldn’t reboot. Still, it was under warranty.
So, I called Virgin technical support and they decided it should be sent off for either replacement or repair. It would, I was assured, be a straightforward process which would take only a few days.
As Simon Dare’s experiences have shown, ‘straightforward’ doesn’t mean the same thing to Virgin’s customer service procedures as it does to you or me.
Today, I took a call from Donna in customer support (who was unfailingly polite, by the way). She explained that the manufacturer (i.e., a Blackberry technician) had looked at the phone and seen a mark on a sticker inside the back of the phone.
On that basis, Virgin concluded that someone might have gained “unauthorised access” to the phone, there was a risk a “third party” might have fiddled with it, and – who knows – may be they caused the fault? Therefore, The Warranty Will Not Be Honoured. Hurrah for Virgin Mobile – that’ll be a flat fee of £50 to have your phone repaired, please!
No. It won’t.
Let’s dissect this ludicrous scenario.
1) I have no idea what the mark on the sticker was. Virgin could get hold of a photo of the mark but said it wasn’t their policy to show the photos to customers! The only way I could see it was if they sent the phone back to me, still broken. Fail Number 1
2) The user of the phone is my 13 year-old daughter. While she’s certainly intelligent, she doesn’t know one end of a circuit board from another and, as far as I’m aware, has yet to study electrical engineering. The idea that she – or anyone else – “tampered” with it somewhere between comedy and defamation. Fail Number 2
3) Virgin Mobile has no evidence that the phone has actually been tampered with. It has simply concluded that this “might” have happened. And with a mountain of non-evidence in its possession it has decided not to honour the contract. Great business ethics, eh? Fail Number 3
4) £50 to repair a two year-old basic Blackberry? They’re worth buttons…Fail Number 4
5) I asked Donna to escalate my complaint, so she went away and spoke to someone. The answer was depressingly, pathetically predictable: rules are rules. Fail Number 5
6) Congratulations – you’ve finally reached the end of the process and the customer has been lost! Fail Number 6.
I put across the insanity of this whole scenario to Donna, but she – and her supervisor – appeared to be imprisoned inside a process which had decided that the chance of a quick £50 based on some threadbare assumptions was better than keeping a customer.
This isn’t a story with a happy ending. Simon Dare’s experiences tell me nothing will come from Virgin Mobile (unless you know otherwise, Graeme Oxby). And my daughter has a spare phone, not her Blackberry. They’ve let down a child.
We are, at least, wiser in two ways. The contract with Virgin Mobile won’t be renewed because it can’t be relied upon and its idea of customer service appears to be that the customer is guilty and will serve Virgin Mobile. It decided to walk away from a warranty on the basis of unfair and unreasonable assumptions for which it did not have conclusive supporting evidence.
A lawyer would rip it to shreds. So, I suspect, would an electronics engineer.
And my daughter’s next phone won’t be a Blackberry. They appear to wear out and be prone to strange marks on that immensely complicated component called ‘the sticker inside the back’. These marks can cause your phone to be unusable and expensive, it seems.
Bye-bye Virgin Mobile. It’s not been nice doing business with you.
If you’ve seen Simon Dare’s blog, you will have come across a succession of problems with Virgin Media and Virgin Mobile, where an issue crops up, Virgin promises faithfully and sincerely to intervene at the highest level…and nothing much happens.
Add my daughter’s Virgin Mobile to the list. In one fell swoop Virgin has ensured that it will lose a customer and that poor old Blackberry, whose commercial woes are bad enough as it is, will be avoided like the plague.
In the process, it’s also hidden behind unfair and unreasonable assumptions, but we’ll come on to that.
My eldest daughter has a Blackberry Curve on a contract bought through the Virgin Mobile shop on Clumber Street. It’s gone without a hitch until this summer, when the phone started to freeze regularly.
The Virgin shop said this wasn’t uncommon and suggested we try to update its software. Bad move: it froze permanently and wouldn’t reboot. Still, it was under warranty.
So, I called Virgin technical support and they decided it should be sent off for either replacement or repair. It would, I was assured, be a straightforward process which would take only a few days.
As Simon Dare’s experiences have shown, ‘straightforward’ doesn’t mean the same thing to Virgin’s customer service procedures as it does to you or me.
Today, I took a call from Donna in customer support (who was unfailingly polite, by the way). She explained that the manufacturer (i.e., a Blackberry technician) had looked at the phone and seen a mark on a sticker inside the back of the phone.
On that basis, Virgin concluded that someone might have gained “unauthorised access” to the phone, there was a risk a “third party” might have fiddled with it, and – who knows – may be they caused the fault? Therefore, The Warranty Will Not Be Honoured. Hurrah for Virgin Mobile – that’ll be a flat fee of £50 to have your phone repaired, please!
No. It won’t.
Let’s dissect this ludicrous scenario.
1) I have no idea what the mark on the sticker was. Virgin could get hold of a photo of the mark but said it wasn’t their policy to show the photos to customers! The only way I could see it was if they sent the phone back to me, still broken. Fail Number 1
2) The user of the phone is my 13 year-old daughter. While she’s certainly intelligent, she doesn’t know one end of a circuit board from another and, as far as I’m aware, has yet to study electrical engineering. The idea that she – or anyone else – “tampered” with it somewhere between comedy and defamation. Fail Number 2
3) Virgin Mobile has no evidence that the phone has actually been tampered with. It has simply concluded that this “might” have happened. And with a mountain of non-evidence in its possession it has decided not to honour the contract. Great business ethics, eh? Fail Number 3
4) £50 to repair a two year-old basic Blackberry? They’re worth buttons…Fail Number 4
5) I asked Donna to escalate my complaint, so she went away and spoke to someone. The answer was depressingly, pathetically predictable: rules are rules. Fail Number 5
6) Congratulations – you’ve finally reached the end of the process and the customer has been lost! Fail Number 6.
I put across the insanity of this whole scenario to Donna, but she – and her supervisor – appeared to be imprisoned inside a process which had decided that the chance of a quick £50 based on some threadbare assumptions was better than keeping a customer.
This isn’t a story with a happy ending. Simon Dare’s experiences tell me nothing will come from Virgin Mobile (unless you know otherwise, Graeme Oxby). And my daughter has a spare phone, not her Blackberry. They’ve let down a child.
We are, at least, wiser in two ways. The contract with Virgin Mobile won’t be renewed because it can’t be relied upon and its idea of customer service appears to be that the customer is guilty and will serve Virgin Mobile. It decided to walk away from a warranty on the basis of unfair and unreasonable assumptions for which it did not have conclusive supporting evidence.
A lawyer would rip it to shreds. So, I suspect, would an electronics engineer.
And my daughter’s next phone won’t be a Blackberry. They appear to wear out and be prone to strange marks on that immensely complicated component called ‘the sticker inside the back’. These marks can cause your phone to be unusable and expensive, it seems.
Bye-bye Virgin Mobile. It’s not been nice doing business with you.
Thursday 2 August 2012
Government fiddles while economy burns...
There’s an ominous lead story in today’s Financial Times which suggests “senior government figures” are discussing whether they should buy out the remaining privately-held shares in Royal Bank of Scotland and fully nationalise it.
This would be an enormous step and, in a government led by the Conservatives, a surprising one.
It’s important to note right from the start that the story doesn’t quote a single named minister, but a series of euphemisms for high-level sources – ‘ministers and officials’, ‘some at the top of government’, and ‘one official’.
This smells to me like a story that has been floated by either political advisers to a minister, a senior Whitehall mandarin, or even a Lib Dem member of government.
These discussions are said to be drive by government ‘exasperation’ at the barriers banks continually put in the way of lending money to business.
That exasperation is almost certainly shared by business.
But I’d be amazed if this government nationalised any bank unless we lapse into another global economic crisis.
It flies in the face of Tory philosophy, would be hugely complicated, and the idea that government could force a state-owned bank to do things other banks won’t or can’t throws up all sorts of competition issues – never mind leaving the taxpayer exposed to much greater risk.
It would also take ages before the nationalisation process was complete and the state-owned bank was able to miraculously turn the financial tap on.
Nor would it alter three fundamental problems faced by our economy.
The consumer appetite for credit which lay behind so much of the boom expansion just isn’t there. Consumer credit markets have been shrinking. Some of that may be because cheap credit is not available, but so many people are still paying down debt.
Many businesses are reluctant to borrow, particularly that breed of privately-owned firm which hates the whole concept of ‘working for the bank’. For some of them, one of the key issues is not so much the cost of borrowing as the cost of basic facilities.
Then there is the stupefying spectacle of the eurozone’s inexorable crawl towards the next bit of sticking plaster, with one fix after another leaving markets pretty much convinced that the EU looks likely to fall apart like a melting icecap.
The problem for government is that, despite all this, it needs to be seen to do something. It’s actually floated plenty of initiatives – ranging from the Regional Growth Fund to yesterday’s Funding For Lending programme.
But they are progressing at a glacial pace – partly because government itself dismantled some of the very structures which used to get money spent at the grassroots (think East Midlands Development Agency).
Neither is it marketing and communicating some of these initiatives properly (here again, it got rid of the long-established Central Office of Information, which had a presence across the regions).
Banks are a problem. So is the expectation that there are quick fixes to enormous structural economic problems which go well beyond these shores – throwing money at our economy won’t make a key export market any better.
But nationalising RBS would be a government fiddling while our economy burns.
This would be an enormous step and, in a government led by the Conservatives, a surprising one.
It’s important to note right from the start that the story doesn’t quote a single named minister, but a series of euphemisms for high-level sources – ‘ministers and officials’, ‘some at the top of government’, and ‘one official’.
This smells to me like a story that has been floated by either political advisers to a minister, a senior Whitehall mandarin, or even a Lib Dem member of government.
These discussions are said to be drive by government ‘exasperation’ at the barriers banks continually put in the way of lending money to business.
That exasperation is almost certainly shared by business.
But I’d be amazed if this government nationalised any bank unless we lapse into another global economic crisis.
It flies in the face of Tory philosophy, would be hugely complicated, and the idea that government could force a state-owned bank to do things other banks won’t or can’t throws up all sorts of competition issues – never mind leaving the taxpayer exposed to much greater risk.
It would also take ages before the nationalisation process was complete and the state-owned bank was able to miraculously turn the financial tap on.
Nor would it alter three fundamental problems faced by our economy.
The consumer appetite for credit which lay behind so much of the boom expansion just isn’t there. Consumer credit markets have been shrinking. Some of that may be because cheap credit is not available, but so many people are still paying down debt.
Many businesses are reluctant to borrow, particularly that breed of privately-owned firm which hates the whole concept of ‘working for the bank’. For some of them, one of the key issues is not so much the cost of borrowing as the cost of basic facilities.
Then there is the stupefying spectacle of the eurozone’s inexorable crawl towards the next bit of sticking plaster, with one fix after another leaving markets pretty much convinced that the EU looks likely to fall apart like a melting icecap.
The problem for government is that, despite all this, it needs to be seen to do something. It’s actually floated plenty of initiatives – ranging from the Regional Growth Fund to yesterday’s Funding For Lending programme.
But they are progressing at a glacial pace – partly because government itself dismantled some of the very structures which used to get money spent at the grassroots (think East Midlands Development Agency).
Neither is it marketing and communicating some of these initiatives properly (here again, it got rid of the long-established Central Office of Information, which had a presence across the regions).
Banks are a problem. So is the expectation that there are quick fixes to enormous structural economic problems which go well beyond these shores – throwing money at our economy won’t make a key export market any better.
But nationalising RBS would be a government fiddling while our economy burns.
Monday 16 July 2012
Has Nottingham bought itself a new future?
So, here we are toiling away in the midst of recession. Low growth, high costs and to cap it all summer’s been rained off. Dreary doesn’t even come close.
Don’t you just wish you were somewhere that had prospects?
Fantasise for a minute – just imagine what business would be like if you were in a place where someone was spending a bit of money - £500m here, £140m there, with the odd £60m thrown in somewhere else.
In this climate? You are having a laugh...
Well, if you still think that’s fantasy land, the joke’s on you: it’s actually Nottingham. Now.
The £500m is the vast civil engineering project that will turn the one-line tram into a fully-fledged three-line network. It’s underway now.
The £140m is the [scandalously overdue] scheme to turn Nottingham’s southern link to the M1, East Midlands Airport and the East Midlands Parkway railway station into a fast dual carriageway. It starts in January.
The £60m? Well, it’s actually £120m – one £60m sum is earmarked for the transformation of Nottingham Railway Station into a transport interchange connecting rail, road and tram, the other £60m is the combined sum Nottingham can lever to deliver the schemes which comprise a Government-approved City Deal programme.
So let’s just tot all that spending up for a minute: that’s £760 million of confirmed investment in your city. When Capital Shopping Centres finally get round to revamping Broadmarsh and the Vic Centre (2014, according to an analysis last month) it will take that figure up to around £1 billion.
One. Billion. Pounds.
Doesn’t seem quite so dreary out there now, does it? At least I hope it doesn’t – and this is the point: I’m really not sure people have woken up to what’s about to happen here.
Okay, it won’t happen overnight. Large-scale schemes take large-scale planning and the wheels of an advanced, mature democracy turn irritatingly slowly (particularly in Whitehall, currently way out in the lead for the ‘Plain Useless at Getting the Money Out’ prize).
But these projects will create jobs before, during and after they are completed.
The infrastructure investments offer the prospect of turning Nottingham into one of the best business locations in Britain for connecting commerce, customers and workforce.
In some ways it’s the City Deal and the Growth Plan which supports it that offers the most tantalising prospect, because it provides an answer to a big question: Where does Nottingham’s economy go from here?
The slow decline of traditional manufacturing here meant the city didn’t suffer an economic shock. But this slow transition left it far too dependent on the service sector/public sector, which together accounts for more than 80% of jobs.
You can’t grow business services when business isn’t growing and the public sector is actually contracting. So we have to grow in a new direction.
We already have some established traction in life sciences which was present through Boots’ old drug discovery activities, has been continued in university R&D programmes, and is being commercialised on a substantial scale at BioCity.
There are substantial research activities, too, in sustainable environmental technologies and a kernel of promising ‘clean tech’ businesses.
There are also clusters of coders and programmers in this city, working in fields ranging from advanced, niche data analytics through to the production of blockbusting computer games. Digital content, they call it.
So, massive investment, promising new industries. What’s the missing link?
There are a three of them, actually.
One is an education system which manufactures the raw material these and other businesses need – skilled, well-qualified kids who leave schools and colleges with attributes which satisfy employers, rather than the insanity of a system which allows kids to pick dud subjects which satisfy nothing other than a meaningless educational KPI.
The second is encouraging enterprise through meaningful advice from people who’ve done it. Formal training goes only so far – wise words from people who’ve tasted failure to find success counts for much more.
Finally, Nottingham’s massive potential should be supported by a big, bold message. We have a story to tell about big things that are going to happen and major opportunities that will emerge.
Have we just bought ourselves a new future? You decide.
Don’t you just wish you were somewhere that had prospects?
Fantasise for a minute – just imagine what business would be like if you were in a place where someone was spending a bit of money - £500m here, £140m there, with the odd £60m thrown in somewhere else.
In this climate? You are having a laugh...
Well, if you still think that’s fantasy land, the joke’s on you: it’s actually Nottingham. Now.
The £500m is the vast civil engineering project that will turn the one-line tram into a fully-fledged three-line network. It’s underway now.
The £140m is the [scandalously overdue] scheme to turn Nottingham’s southern link to the M1, East Midlands Airport and the East Midlands Parkway railway station into a fast dual carriageway. It starts in January.
The £60m? Well, it’s actually £120m – one £60m sum is earmarked for the transformation of Nottingham Railway Station into a transport interchange connecting rail, road and tram, the other £60m is the combined sum Nottingham can lever to deliver the schemes which comprise a Government-approved City Deal programme.
So let’s just tot all that spending up for a minute: that’s £760 million of confirmed investment in your city. When Capital Shopping Centres finally get round to revamping Broadmarsh and the Vic Centre (2014, according to an analysis last month) it will take that figure up to around £1 billion.
One. Billion. Pounds.
Doesn’t seem quite so dreary out there now, does it? At least I hope it doesn’t – and this is the point: I’m really not sure people have woken up to what’s about to happen here.
Okay, it won’t happen overnight. Large-scale schemes take large-scale planning and the wheels of an advanced, mature democracy turn irritatingly slowly (particularly in Whitehall, currently way out in the lead for the ‘Plain Useless at Getting the Money Out’ prize).
But these projects will create jobs before, during and after they are completed.
The infrastructure investments offer the prospect of turning Nottingham into one of the best business locations in Britain for connecting commerce, customers and workforce.
In some ways it’s the City Deal and the Growth Plan which supports it that offers the most tantalising prospect, because it provides an answer to a big question: Where does Nottingham’s economy go from here?
The slow decline of traditional manufacturing here meant the city didn’t suffer an economic shock. But this slow transition left it far too dependent on the service sector/public sector, which together accounts for more than 80% of jobs.
You can’t grow business services when business isn’t growing and the public sector is actually contracting. So we have to grow in a new direction.
We already have some established traction in life sciences which was present through Boots’ old drug discovery activities, has been continued in university R&D programmes, and is being commercialised on a substantial scale at BioCity.
There are substantial research activities, too, in sustainable environmental technologies and a kernel of promising ‘clean tech’ businesses.
There are also clusters of coders and programmers in this city, working in fields ranging from advanced, niche data analytics through to the production of blockbusting computer games. Digital content, they call it.
So, massive investment, promising new industries. What’s the missing link?
There are a three of them, actually.
One is an education system which manufactures the raw material these and other businesses need – skilled, well-qualified kids who leave schools and colleges with attributes which satisfy employers, rather than the insanity of a system which allows kids to pick dud subjects which satisfy nothing other than a meaningless educational KPI.
The second is encouraging enterprise through meaningful advice from people who’ve done it. Formal training goes only so far – wise words from people who’ve tasted failure to find success counts for much more.
Finally, Nottingham’s massive potential should be supported by a big, bold message. We have a story to tell about big things that are going to happen and major opportunities that will emerge.
Have we just bought ourselves a new future? You decide.
Monday 18 June 2012
A manufactured crisis?
The state of manufacturing in the UK is a bit of a bugbear of mine.
This is the sector which was, of course, decimated in the 1980s when that awful Maggie Thatcher went round Britain with a wrecking ball and took down every factory she saw – especially those in places like the North East and the West Midlands.
Which means that, today, Britain doesn’t make anything anymore and we’re all doomed (again).
Except she didn’t, and we’re not.
Putting political rhetoric to one side, a close examination of the history of manufacturing would tell you four things.
1) That traditional manufacturing’s decline began to take hold in the 1960s. It happened because our own manufacturers were, quite simply, under-invested, inefficient, making many poor quality products compared to global rivals, and focusing too heavily on disappearing markets.
2) That manufacturing when Margaret Thatcher came to power represented 25.8 per cent of the UK’s industrial output and had fallen to 22.5 per cent by the time she left Downing Street.
3) That manufacturing’s share of UK GDP began to fall noticeably from the late 1990s onwards.
4) That this fall was in part relative – in other words, its share of GDP became smaller partly because other industries (notably financial services) grew faster.
It’s hard to get that point across because politicians with axes to grind (if they can find a factory to grind them) peddle the myth that the policies of different governments led to the UK’s industrial ruin - which is tosh. For starters, Government doesn’t own any industry it could ruin (it did that in the 1960s and 70s).
Where government unquestionably has contributed to industrial decline is in the recording of it. Whatever you think of the East Midlands Development Agency (RIP), one of the most valuable things it did was record the size and shape of the regional economy.
Its last set of numbers would tell you, for example, that ‘decimated’ manufacturing actually makes up nearly a quarter of East Midlands output. Not bad for a dead industry, eh?
Since emda was consigned to a filing cabinet (the one marked ‘rename this policy and use it again in 10 years’), industrial statistics have been compiled by the Office for National Statistics.
Now, the ONS is a much-maligned body which has been used and abused by politicians for years. It is protected from interference now and churns out useful data by the bucketload.
On the downside, its website is almost impossible for members of the public to navigate and its figures about manufacturing record not GDP but GVA – a similar but subtly different measure of the value of what we all produce. So you’ll get different and slightly confusing analyses of where manufacturing’s at.
To cut to the chase, despite the myth-mongering, manufacturing is worth substantially more to the UK economy now than it was in the past. We’re a world leader in areas like aerospace, automotive, transport, computer processing, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, nanotechnology etc.
Locally, we have substantial supply chains and multi-million university R&D programmes feeding into manufacturing giants like Rolls-Royce, Bombardier, Toyota, Airbus, Boeing. Alliance Boots and Imperial Tobacco between them employ thousands making things in Nottingham alone.
This is, in other words, something worth pondering over next time you’re on a train. Like, for example, the channel tunnel loco. Its gear sets are fettled right here in Nottingham by ZF Services UK.
We (and especially politicians) continually make the mistake of believing that successful manufacturing must be big, easy to see and employ hundreds if not thousands. Try telling that to Promethean Particles in Nottingham. They are a world-leader in the manufacture of nanoparticles.
There is nothing exceptional about the relative decline of manufacturing in the UK – barring the likes of Japan and Germany, it’s happened in almost all big economies. In our case it may have been accelerated not so much by government policy as our own preference for spending our money rather than saving it, and for our reluctance to do low paid jobs.
This means much of our economy is focused on sating consumer demand and less money is sloshing round in savings accounts waiting to be recirculated as business investment.
Manufacturing now takes a smaller share of GDP in many developed countries because they’ve followed a similar path. And increasing consumer spending is often a sign of a fundamentally wealthy economy which wants to indulge itself. Is that wrong?
But manufacturing isn’t dead. It wasn’t decimated in the 1980s. We still design and manufacture some of the best things in the world. And even in some parts of volume production we can still compete with the best.
Manufacturing is not what it was, we ought to do more of it. A plant which churned out accurate memories of our industrial past might be a start.
This is the sector which was, of course, decimated in the 1980s when that awful Maggie Thatcher went round Britain with a wrecking ball and took down every factory she saw – especially those in places like the North East and the West Midlands.
Which means that, today, Britain doesn’t make anything anymore and we’re all doomed (again).
Except she didn’t, and we’re not.
Putting political rhetoric to one side, a close examination of the history of manufacturing would tell you four things.
1) That traditional manufacturing’s decline began to take hold in the 1960s. It happened because our own manufacturers were, quite simply, under-invested, inefficient, making many poor quality products compared to global rivals, and focusing too heavily on disappearing markets.
2) That manufacturing when Margaret Thatcher came to power represented 25.8 per cent of the UK’s industrial output and had fallen to 22.5 per cent by the time she left Downing Street.
3) That manufacturing’s share of UK GDP began to fall noticeably from the late 1990s onwards.
4) That this fall was in part relative – in other words, its share of GDP became smaller partly because other industries (notably financial services) grew faster.
It’s hard to get that point across because politicians with axes to grind (if they can find a factory to grind them) peddle the myth that the policies of different governments led to the UK’s industrial ruin - which is tosh. For starters, Government doesn’t own any industry it could ruin (it did that in the 1960s and 70s).
Where government unquestionably has contributed to industrial decline is in the recording of it. Whatever you think of the East Midlands Development Agency (RIP), one of the most valuable things it did was record the size and shape of the regional economy.
Its last set of numbers would tell you, for example, that ‘decimated’ manufacturing actually makes up nearly a quarter of East Midlands output. Not bad for a dead industry, eh?
Since emda was consigned to a filing cabinet (the one marked ‘rename this policy and use it again in 10 years’), industrial statistics have been compiled by the Office for National Statistics.
Now, the ONS is a much-maligned body which has been used and abused by politicians for years. It is protected from interference now and churns out useful data by the bucketload.
On the downside, its website is almost impossible for members of the public to navigate and its figures about manufacturing record not GDP but GVA – a similar but subtly different measure of the value of what we all produce. So you’ll get different and slightly confusing analyses of where manufacturing’s at.
To cut to the chase, despite the myth-mongering, manufacturing is worth substantially more to the UK economy now than it was in the past. We’re a world leader in areas like aerospace, automotive, transport, computer processing, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, nanotechnology etc.
Locally, we have substantial supply chains and multi-million university R&D programmes feeding into manufacturing giants like Rolls-Royce, Bombardier, Toyota, Airbus, Boeing. Alliance Boots and Imperial Tobacco between them employ thousands making things in Nottingham alone.
This is, in other words, something worth pondering over next time you’re on a train. Like, for example, the channel tunnel loco. Its gear sets are fettled right here in Nottingham by ZF Services UK.
We (and especially politicians) continually make the mistake of believing that successful manufacturing must be big, easy to see and employ hundreds if not thousands. Try telling that to Promethean Particles in Nottingham. They are a world-leader in the manufacture of nanoparticles.
There is nothing exceptional about the relative decline of manufacturing in the UK – barring the likes of Japan and Germany, it’s happened in almost all big economies. In our case it may have been accelerated not so much by government policy as our own preference for spending our money rather than saving it, and for our reluctance to do low paid jobs.
This means much of our economy is focused on sating consumer demand and less money is sloshing round in savings accounts waiting to be recirculated as business investment.
Manufacturing now takes a smaller share of GDP in many developed countries because they’ve followed a similar path. And increasing consumer spending is often a sign of a fundamentally wealthy economy which wants to indulge itself. Is that wrong?
But manufacturing isn’t dead. It wasn’t decimated in the 1980s. We still design and manufacture some of the best things in the world. And even in some parts of volume production we can still compete with the best.
Manufacturing is not what it was, we ought to do more of it. A plant which churned out accurate memories of our industrial past might be a start.
Friday 18 May 2012
Nottingham: Creating the Creative City?
Last year, I did an interview with Adam Bird, the Chief Technology Officer of the Nottingham-based technology company Esendex, and Toby Reid, the former civil engineer and one-time entrepreneur who is now director at BioCity Nottingham.
The interview centred around a discussion of Nottingham’s nascent tech community, exploring the kind of people and businesses who make it tick, and seeking to understand the kind of lifestyle and environment that encourages people like them to put down roots in a particular place.
At the time, the geeks and techies were feeling a bit unloved, as if Nottingham’s leaders were too busy wondering where the next office block might come from to notice that they had the potential gold dust that is knowledge and intellectual property growing under their very noses.
Since then, they’ve got noticed. Esendex was one of the first businesses to become part of the Invest in Nottingham’s Club’s creative class, a group of poster boys and girls for the emerging knowledge-based business community.
It’s the way of news that not all the work you put into a story makes it into print, and one of the shortcomings of the article was the omission of another interview I did to get an informed ‘outside’ perspective on what Nottingham needed to do to nurture and grow more creatives.
The interview was with Lucy Marcus, the American-born (but UK domiciled) technology investment consultant who is also a sought-after commentator on business and business ethics. She’s known to quite a few people in Nottingham through her links with BioCity’s investment fund.
I came across my notes again the other day, and what leapt out during the conversation with her was the answer she gave to the question of what the city’s authorities should be doing to support its creative class.
I’ll let the original unpublished article below do the talking. It’s something not just for creatives and technology companies to dwell on, but also Nottingham City Council, which is still working on its Economic Growth Strategy.
Put simply, it should think extremely carefully before it makes any commitment to create growth itself. And may be it should pick up the phone and give Lucy a call.
Here’s the article, see what you think – feedback would be welcome.
Lucy P. Marcus has long experience of the difficulties businesses face when they try to get recognition for creative original thinking.
The chief executive of Marcus Venture Consulting, she advises early stage technology companies on the best way to connect with venture capital. She also chairs the Mobius Life Sciences Fund at BioCity.
Marcus also has a unique perspective on the Nottingham economy. Born in the USA, she was a high flyer who worked for the US Government before coming to the UK.
Her verdict on the city’s emerging creative community is that it’s an important part of the Nottingham economy – but must find its own way ahead.
“I think one thing that would puzzle me a little is why it would be a big thing for them to get the city on board,” she told Business Post.
“A creative entrepreneurial spirit and the eco-support system for it is not something which can be engineered. It just happens.
“The lifestyle around it is important, the universities can feed into the development of it, but its development will tend to be organic rather than structured. Entrepreneurs are all about doing it themselves.”
Marcus says the sector must have some momentum and “density” if Nottingham is going to become recognised by potential financial backers as a centre for the growth of creative technological businesses. “It’s got to be obvious that there is a lot going on here,” she says.
Nationally, talk about the growth of creative business has been made fashionable by a cluster of web-based technology businesses in London’s Shoreditch that have become collectively known as Silicon Roundabout.
“People were priced out of London and they found a place with cheap rents and good facilities where creatives could gather,” says Marcus.
“Nottingham has got the DNA to make this happen. We have the universities, we have the graduates. If we make it attractive for them to stay, if there are companies for them to work for, then they will stay.
“But if it’s going to happen it will happen naturally – you can’t manufacture a sector through city policy.”
I’m going to revisit this issue from time to time, because it’s an important one. In the meantime I’d also recommend those who are interested in this kind of thing sample a couple of chunky pieces of brain-food.
One is Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, the book which was probably the first serious analysis of this new breed. It first came out years ago, but is well worth revisiting for first principles.
The second is a more recent tome, urban economist Edward Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City. This, I think, raises some really big questions about the way Nottingham views itself and the world it’s part of.
The interview centred around a discussion of Nottingham’s nascent tech community, exploring the kind of people and businesses who make it tick, and seeking to understand the kind of lifestyle and environment that encourages people like them to put down roots in a particular place.
At the time, the geeks and techies were feeling a bit unloved, as if Nottingham’s leaders were too busy wondering where the next office block might come from to notice that they had the potential gold dust that is knowledge and intellectual property growing under their very noses.
Since then, they’ve got noticed. Esendex was one of the first businesses to become part of the Invest in Nottingham’s Club’s creative class, a group of poster boys and girls for the emerging knowledge-based business community.
It’s the way of news that not all the work you put into a story makes it into print, and one of the shortcomings of the article was the omission of another interview I did to get an informed ‘outside’ perspective on what Nottingham needed to do to nurture and grow more creatives.
The interview was with Lucy Marcus, the American-born (but UK domiciled) technology investment consultant who is also a sought-after commentator on business and business ethics. She’s known to quite a few people in Nottingham through her links with BioCity’s investment fund.
I came across my notes again the other day, and what leapt out during the conversation with her was the answer she gave to the question of what the city’s authorities should be doing to support its creative class.
I’ll let the original unpublished article below do the talking. It’s something not just for creatives and technology companies to dwell on, but also Nottingham City Council, which is still working on its Economic Growth Strategy.
Put simply, it should think extremely carefully before it makes any commitment to create growth itself. And may be it should pick up the phone and give Lucy a call.
Here’s the article, see what you think – feedback would be welcome.
Lucy P. Marcus has long experience of the difficulties businesses face when they try to get recognition for creative original thinking.
The chief executive of Marcus Venture Consulting, she advises early stage technology companies on the best way to connect with venture capital. She also chairs the Mobius Life Sciences Fund at BioCity.
Marcus also has a unique perspective on the Nottingham economy. Born in the USA, she was a high flyer who worked for the US Government before coming to the UK.
Her verdict on the city’s emerging creative community is that it’s an important part of the Nottingham economy – but must find its own way ahead.
“I think one thing that would puzzle me a little is why it would be a big thing for them to get the city on board,” she told Business Post.
“A creative entrepreneurial spirit and the eco-support system for it is not something which can be engineered. It just happens.
“The lifestyle around it is important, the universities can feed into the development of it, but its development will tend to be organic rather than structured. Entrepreneurs are all about doing it themselves.”
Marcus says the sector must have some momentum and “density” if Nottingham is going to become recognised by potential financial backers as a centre for the growth of creative technological businesses. “It’s got to be obvious that there is a lot going on here,” she says.
Nationally, talk about the growth of creative business has been made fashionable by a cluster of web-based technology businesses in London’s Shoreditch that have become collectively known as Silicon Roundabout.
“People were priced out of London and they found a place with cheap rents and good facilities where creatives could gather,” says Marcus.
“Nottingham has got the DNA to make this happen. We have the universities, we have the graduates. If we make it attractive for them to stay, if there are companies for them to work for, then they will stay.
“But if it’s going to happen it will happen naturally – you can’t manufacture a sector through city policy.”
I’m going to revisit this issue from time to time, because it’s an important one. In the meantime I’d also recommend those who are interested in this kind of thing sample a couple of chunky pieces of brain-food.
One is Richard Florida’s Rise of the Creative Class, the book which was probably the first serious analysis of this new breed. It first came out years ago, but is well worth revisiting for first principles.
The second is a more recent tome, urban economist Edward Glaeser’s The Triumph of the City. This, I think, raises some really big questions about the way Nottingham views itself and the world it’s part of.
Thursday 17 May 2012
The Great, the Good and the Ghastly at an inquiry losing the plot
I don’t normally like writing about my trade. I’m a reporter and I’m not meant to be the story.
The past year has made that difficult, though. Reporting of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards is everywhere.
Personally, I’ve had enough of it – not the issues it raises, but the inquiry. Its grim relentlessness now has an almost medieval quality, with people and behaviour being pulled apart on a rack to no beneficial effect. Outside London medialand I think the rest of the country has probably had enough, too. I make no comment on the rights or wrongs. They are self-evident and were established months ago.
But the one thing you have to remember whenever you see the reporting of the Leveson inquiry is that not one of the national newspapers or broadcasting organisations continually putting it at the top of their news lists are disinterested parties.
Other national newspapers would love to see News International given a commercial caning because it opens the door for them. Some have behaved no better.
Some of the brickbats being hurled in the direction of NI and its employees past and present also have a political dimension. Murdoch & co clearly cosied up to the current government, so that relationship is also being used as a stick to beat a stumbling coalition.
It was at the insistence of a former Gordon Brown aide, Tom Watson MP, that stinging personal criticism of Rupert Murdoch was inserted into a Parliamentary report, transforming a rational judgement into cheap politicking.
The BBC, too, has given the inquiry a prominence which doesn’t always reflect levels of public interest. One of its main competitors is Sky, in which Murdoch-controlled News Corporation is the largest shareholder.
It isn’t bias. But it’s certainly navel-gazing, probably a bit self-satisfied. And it’s now tedious.
The Leveson Inquiry has properly dwelt on some shocking behaviour by newspapers. But nothing new is now emerging, and it rumbles on and on, day after day, with counsel cross-examining witnesses in a manner which has at times descended to the level of gruesome parody.
The giggles which greeted the ‘revelation’ that David Cameron signed off texts to an editor ‘LoL’ sit ill with the ghastly truth about the hacking of a murder victim’s phone. Has the inquiry lost the plot?
While ordinary people were genuinely shocked to hear about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone after she had gone missing, they are less concerned about politicians and celebrities (at least one of whom is now known to have made an error of fact while giving evidence to the inquiry).
Politicians have long felt they get a raw deal from national newspapers, who sit waiting for them to trip-up, demand instant results from policies just out of the oven, and make a three-course meal of minor problems.
The boot is now on the other foot and is being used to administer a good kicking. Which tells you that the two are, arguably, made for each other.
Similarly, celebrities who have benefited financially from fame driven at least partly by press publicity have decided they want the publicity strictly limited. Is that fair or is it hypocritical?
Celebrities are often very ordinary underneath. Ordinary people are fallible. Fallibility is part of everyday life. You can’t seal it off. But nor should you go looking for it with a zoom lens.
The press faces many problems. Frankly, its conduct is not the biggest challenge because outside the goldfish bowl of London most newspapers behave well and do a decent job.
Its biggest challenge is the disruptive change wrought by the internet, and the apparent belief that news costs nothing to produce.
That side of the industry is where do or die decisions will be made.
About that, the Great and the Good and the Ghastly who have paraded, performed and pronounced at the Leveson Inquiry have had nothing to say.
The past year has made that difficult, though. Reporting of the Leveson Inquiry into press standards is everywhere.
Personally, I’ve had enough of it – not the issues it raises, but the inquiry. Its grim relentlessness now has an almost medieval quality, with people and behaviour being pulled apart on a rack to no beneficial effect. Outside London medialand I think the rest of the country has probably had enough, too. I make no comment on the rights or wrongs. They are self-evident and were established months ago.
But the one thing you have to remember whenever you see the reporting of the Leveson inquiry is that not one of the national newspapers or broadcasting organisations continually putting it at the top of their news lists are disinterested parties.
Other national newspapers would love to see News International given a commercial caning because it opens the door for them. Some have behaved no better.
Some of the brickbats being hurled in the direction of NI and its employees past and present also have a political dimension. Murdoch & co clearly cosied up to the current government, so that relationship is also being used as a stick to beat a stumbling coalition.
It was at the insistence of a former Gordon Brown aide, Tom Watson MP, that stinging personal criticism of Rupert Murdoch was inserted into a Parliamentary report, transforming a rational judgement into cheap politicking.
The BBC, too, has given the inquiry a prominence which doesn’t always reflect levels of public interest. One of its main competitors is Sky, in which Murdoch-controlled News Corporation is the largest shareholder.
It isn’t bias. But it’s certainly navel-gazing, probably a bit self-satisfied. And it’s now tedious.
The Leveson Inquiry has properly dwelt on some shocking behaviour by newspapers. But nothing new is now emerging, and it rumbles on and on, day after day, with counsel cross-examining witnesses in a manner which has at times descended to the level of gruesome parody.
The giggles which greeted the ‘revelation’ that David Cameron signed off texts to an editor ‘LoL’ sit ill with the ghastly truth about the hacking of a murder victim’s phone. Has the inquiry lost the plot?
While ordinary people were genuinely shocked to hear about the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone after she had gone missing, they are less concerned about politicians and celebrities (at least one of whom is now known to have made an error of fact while giving evidence to the inquiry).
Politicians have long felt they get a raw deal from national newspapers, who sit waiting for them to trip-up, demand instant results from policies just out of the oven, and make a three-course meal of minor problems.
The boot is now on the other foot and is being used to administer a good kicking. Which tells you that the two are, arguably, made for each other.
Similarly, celebrities who have benefited financially from fame driven at least partly by press publicity have decided they want the publicity strictly limited. Is that fair or is it hypocritical?
Celebrities are often very ordinary underneath. Ordinary people are fallible. Fallibility is part of everyday life. You can’t seal it off. But nor should you go looking for it with a zoom lens.
The press faces many problems. Frankly, its conduct is not the biggest challenge because outside the goldfish bowl of London most newspapers behave well and do a decent job.
Its biggest challenge is the disruptive change wrought by the internet, and the apparent belief that news costs nothing to produce.
That side of the industry is where do or die decisions will be made.
About that, the Great and the Good and the Ghastly who have paraded, performed and pronounced at the Leveson Inquiry have had nothing to say.
Monday 14 May 2012
Greek myth turns tragic for us all
If you’d asked me a few months back, I’d have said the problems in the Eurozone looked like they’d quietened down nicely.
Yes, some painful targets were being put in place to rein in spending deficits and pay back the absolute mountains of debt that Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal racked up in the years of plenty, but provided they swallowed this deeply unpleasant hangover cure things wouldn’t get worse.
More importantly, a lull in the crisis would give the European economy time to get back on an even keel and start generating some growth.
Well, they’ve now spat the cure back out again. Or, to mix metaphors, they want to have their cake and eat it.
Last week, I watched a marvellous TV documentary about the eurozone crisis in Greece presented by former Tory minister Michael Portillo. Greece, you’ll remember, is the country where the government lied about its budget deficit to gain entry to the euro, where tax avoidance is a national sport, and where government borrowed squillions to host the 2004 Olympics, building a series of statement facilities which now lie unused (and unpaid for).
Portillo spoke to a handful of ordinary Greeks and asked them whether it might not be better to accept they had been living a lie, realise they could never pay back this towering debt and leave the euro. To a man, they said no. And anyway it was the government’s fault, not theirs. (To be fair, a similar attitude still surfaces here: we blame government for allowing the banking crash, and banks for irresponsible lending, we blame government now for cutbacks…even though it was us who borrowed all that money. But at least we’ve swallowed our medicine…so far).
Even in France – a big economy which lags Germany because of overblown public spending – voters decided they didn’t want austerity. With great respect to La France, they haven’t even sniffed it yet.
The European Union only has itself to blame here. It should never have allowed Greece into the euro when, deep down, everybody in Berlin and Brussels knew Athens’ accounting was just another Greek myth.
And the fundamental flaw in the whole euro project was that it assumed countries were willing to sacrifice a central part of their sovereignty – financial independence – for the greater good of Europe.
The politicians might have been, but the results of various elections in Greece, France and Italy have demonstrated that, when it comes to the crunch at least, voters are not.
The politicians made this assumption partly because they thought the Eurozone would always deliver reasonable growth and because the impact of a one-size-fits-all interest rate on a financial crisis in a range of economies had never been crash-tested.
It has now. And it looks to have failed.
May be it would have been different if voters across Europe weren’t feeling the pinch. But this isn’t the first time that European leaders have been caught running well ahead of the people they represent with hugely ambitious policies no one had voted on.
There is no clean and easy way out of this. Greek banks have been propped up by cash injections from the European Central Bank and from central banks in other countries. Banks across the continent are exposed to the Greek, Italian and Spanish economies.
If Greece goes back to the drachma it will trade at fractions of the value of the euro, the price Italian, Spanish and Portugese governments pay to borrow will rocket, and banks will hoard cash again.
So if Greece limps out of the euro with a default the losses will be felt by us all.
Holidays in in the Aegean will suddenly be very cheap. And by crikey we’ll need one…
Yes, some painful targets were being put in place to rein in spending deficits and pay back the absolute mountains of debt that Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal racked up in the years of plenty, but provided they swallowed this deeply unpleasant hangover cure things wouldn’t get worse.
More importantly, a lull in the crisis would give the European economy time to get back on an even keel and start generating some growth.
Well, they’ve now spat the cure back out again. Or, to mix metaphors, they want to have their cake and eat it.
Last week, I watched a marvellous TV documentary about the eurozone crisis in Greece presented by former Tory minister Michael Portillo. Greece, you’ll remember, is the country where the government lied about its budget deficit to gain entry to the euro, where tax avoidance is a national sport, and where government borrowed squillions to host the 2004 Olympics, building a series of statement facilities which now lie unused (and unpaid for).
Portillo spoke to a handful of ordinary Greeks and asked them whether it might not be better to accept they had been living a lie, realise they could never pay back this towering debt and leave the euro. To a man, they said no. And anyway it was the government’s fault, not theirs. (To be fair, a similar attitude still surfaces here: we blame government for allowing the banking crash, and banks for irresponsible lending, we blame government now for cutbacks…even though it was us who borrowed all that money. But at least we’ve swallowed our medicine…so far).
Even in France – a big economy which lags Germany because of overblown public spending – voters decided they didn’t want austerity. With great respect to La France, they haven’t even sniffed it yet.
The European Union only has itself to blame here. It should never have allowed Greece into the euro when, deep down, everybody in Berlin and Brussels knew Athens’ accounting was just another Greek myth.
And the fundamental flaw in the whole euro project was that it assumed countries were willing to sacrifice a central part of their sovereignty – financial independence – for the greater good of Europe.
The politicians might have been, but the results of various elections in Greece, France and Italy have demonstrated that, when it comes to the crunch at least, voters are not.
The politicians made this assumption partly because they thought the Eurozone would always deliver reasonable growth and because the impact of a one-size-fits-all interest rate on a financial crisis in a range of economies had never been crash-tested.
It has now. And it looks to have failed.
May be it would have been different if voters across Europe weren’t feeling the pinch. But this isn’t the first time that European leaders have been caught running well ahead of the people they represent with hugely ambitious policies no one had voted on.
There is no clean and easy way out of this. Greek banks have been propped up by cash injections from the European Central Bank and from central banks in other countries. Banks across the continent are exposed to the Greek, Italian and Spanish economies.
If Greece goes back to the drachma it will trade at fractions of the value of the euro, the price Italian, Spanish and Portugese governments pay to borrow will rocket, and banks will hoard cash again.
So if Greece limps out of the euro with a default the losses will be felt by us all.
Holidays in in the Aegean will suddenly be very cheap. And by crikey we’ll need one…
Thursday 10 May 2012
The questions a vote left behind
So no directly-elected mayor for Nottingham. Not for the forseeable future, anyway.
Last week’s vote against having one can be read any number of ways, but the turnout in the Arboretum ward – a paltry 8.45% - offers a clue: one way or another, many voters just aren’t bothered about it.
May be they thought there wasn’t a lot to bother about. This wasn’t a well-sold or well-explained campaign, and (despite some daft rumours) wasn’t well-financed, either.
The mood music seems to be that there are bigger fish to fry. Which is pretty much what the Nottingham East MP, Chris Leslie, suggested before the vote.
A wise city council leadership won’t claim this as an emphatic endorsement of the current leader-and-cabinet system, though - 57% for No and 43% for Yes doesn’t tell us that.
Labour worked harder than the Yes campaign to mobilise a No vote, and won a postal vote with a turnout north of 65%. That’s an astonishing number against attitudes otherwise dominated by indifference.
But many of its voters look to have stayed at home on the day, which doesn’t suggest passionate endorsement of everything that comes out of Loxley House.
I said in previous blogs that there was an extremely important message underneath the backing for the Yes campaign, and it still stands. Though it wheeled out a couple of ‘trusties’, the No campaign was not able to demonstrate widespread business backing for the status quo. Such backing does not really extend beyond the pragmatism of a working relationship.
Influential sections of the city aren’t happy with the way things are run, whether it’s the service they get from the city council or the alleged failure to bat for Nottingham nationally and internationally. Their view, as Tim Garratt has pointed out elsewhere, is that the city doesn’t properly punch its weight and can sometimes be a three-course meal to work with.
That strikes me as harsh. There have been some massive successes – making the tram extension project happen against a background of significant public sector cutbacks was immense. No one can take that away from Labour.
But how did an ability to make such giant strides also translate into 10 whole years of stumbling around Broadmarsh? And of a once-in-a-lifetime development boom sailing straight past Eastside and Waterside? Even now, there is a major project in the city which has gone bafflingly quiet.
The relationship between the city leadership and Whitehall has been hit-or-miss. Notable achievements have been mixed with childlike spats (on both sides) and a stubborn refusal on the city’s part to come clean about some of its spending.
The result of these bouts of churlishness is the poke in the eye Nottingham got when it applied for a comparatively small amount of money to invest in ultra high-speed broadband. What should have been a straightforward economic decision became a political one.
Local MPs have hesitated to raise Nottingham’s case in the House of Commons because they know the city’s attitude is going to be thrown back at them. Some were also livid at the conduct of the No campaign, particularly after ‘leafletgate’. There have been long-running frictions between the Labour party nationally and the party in Nottingham.
Away from politics, these grudging undercurrents are what bother some very senior business people – that, and an apparent belief that community comes first. If it comes first, why not invest more heavyweight political capital in attracting the investment and the programmes that could deliver the growth community needs, they wonder? If the council really wants the jobs and growth it so regularly campaigns for, why doesn’t it back the people who can deliver it to the hilt?
Life before May 2010 is gone. There will be no return to big government spending, no Building Schools for the Future budget to wield, even if a blundering coalition throws in the towel tomorrow. And there is no regional development agency to give a paternalistic steer or oil the wheels of an investment inquiry.
One of the most telling – if coded - contributions to the mayoral debate came from Alan Simpson, the former Labour MP for Nottingham South. He dismissed the idea of a mayor out of hand, but offered sharp criticism of the city council, which he claimed lacked visionary leadership and risked dumping Nottingham into the second division.
Simpson is not an entirely disinterested party – he didn’t get on with the city leadership. But his criticism plays to another issue for Nottingham: it may have a vision in parts, but it doesn’t have a clear story to tell.
Let’s be clear – there is a lot happening in Nottingham and a lot is going to happen. The infrastructure development pipeline is significant, investment will take place in upgrading the city’s retail offer, we do keep appearing on the inquiry list for significant inward investments.
But these big opportunities beg a far more assertive approach to economic development which tells a compelling and original story about a powerful conurbation which leads a region – one where a walk through the door immediately tells you that you are in the company of ambitious people who know how to make things happen.
As someone said to me at MIPIM, the people, the opportunities and the conurbation are all there. But where is that single, powerful, unified vision?
If Nottingham really is serious about its place in the universe then there are some big decisions to make.
So how Nottingham organises itself as an economic entity will come back on to the agenda at some stage. If it is to compete for the government’s City Deal money it has to demonstrate there is a mechanism for joint action between neighbouring local authorities.
Businesses want a figurehead, and a compelling story about a big conurbation which is easy to work with. MPs wish some of the city’s politicking was driven by big picture vision rather than small-town spats. Some civil servants simply expect more of what should be a regional capital
We have some massive opportunities in this city. There are people who can deliver. There is a track record of achievement. Is the way forwards really that difficult?
Last week’s vote against having one can be read any number of ways, but the turnout in the Arboretum ward – a paltry 8.45% - offers a clue: one way or another, many voters just aren’t bothered about it.
May be they thought there wasn’t a lot to bother about. This wasn’t a well-sold or well-explained campaign, and (despite some daft rumours) wasn’t well-financed, either.
The mood music seems to be that there are bigger fish to fry. Which is pretty much what the Nottingham East MP, Chris Leslie, suggested before the vote.
A wise city council leadership won’t claim this as an emphatic endorsement of the current leader-and-cabinet system, though - 57% for No and 43% for Yes doesn’t tell us that.
Labour worked harder than the Yes campaign to mobilise a No vote, and won a postal vote with a turnout north of 65%. That’s an astonishing number against attitudes otherwise dominated by indifference.
But many of its voters look to have stayed at home on the day, which doesn’t suggest passionate endorsement of everything that comes out of Loxley House.
I said in previous blogs that there was an extremely important message underneath the backing for the Yes campaign, and it still stands. Though it wheeled out a couple of ‘trusties’, the No campaign was not able to demonstrate widespread business backing for the status quo. Such backing does not really extend beyond the pragmatism of a working relationship.
Influential sections of the city aren’t happy with the way things are run, whether it’s the service they get from the city council or the alleged failure to bat for Nottingham nationally and internationally. Their view, as Tim Garratt has pointed out elsewhere, is that the city doesn’t properly punch its weight and can sometimes be a three-course meal to work with.
That strikes me as harsh. There have been some massive successes – making the tram extension project happen against a background of significant public sector cutbacks was immense. No one can take that away from Labour.
But how did an ability to make such giant strides also translate into 10 whole years of stumbling around Broadmarsh? And of a once-in-a-lifetime development boom sailing straight past Eastside and Waterside? Even now, there is a major project in the city which has gone bafflingly quiet.
The relationship between the city leadership and Whitehall has been hit-or-miss. Notable achievements have been mixed with childlike spats (on both sides) and a stubborn refusal on the city’s part to come clean about some of its spending.
The result of these bouts of churlishness is the poke in the eye Nottingham got when it applied for a comparatively small amount of money to invest in ultra high-speed broadband. What should have been a straightforward economic decision became a political one.
Local MPs have hesitated to raise Nottingham’s case in the House of Commons because they know the city’s attitude is going to be thrown back at them. Some were also livid at the conduct of the No campaign, particularly after ‘leafletgate’. There have been long-running frictions between the Labour party nationally and the party in Nottingham.
Away from politics, these grudging undercurrents are what bother some very senior business people – that, and an apparent belief that community comes first. If it comes first, why not invest more heavyweight political capital in attracting the investment and the programmes that could deliver the growth community needs, they wonder? If the council really wants the jobs and growth it so regularly campaigns for, why doesn’t it back the people who can deliver it to the hilt?
Life before May 2010 is gone. There will be no return to big government spending, no Building Schools for the Future budget to wield, even if a blundering coalition throws in the towel tomorrow. And there is no regional development agency to give a paternalistic steer or oil the wheels of an investment inquiry.
One of the most telling – if coded - contributions to the mayoral debate came from Alan Simpson, the former Labour MP for Nottingham South. He dismissed the idea of a mayor out of hand, but offered sharp criticism of the city council, which he claimed lacked visionary leadership and risked dumping Nottingham into the second division.
Simpson is not an entirely disinterested party – he didn’t get on with the city leadership. But his criticism plays to another issue for Nottingham: it may have a vision in parts, but it doesn’t have a clear story to tell.
Let’s be clear – there is a lot happening in Nottingham and a lot is going to happen. The infrastructure development pipeline is significant, investment will take place in upgrading the city’s retail offer, we do keep appearing on the inquiry list for significant inward investments.
But these big opportunities beg a far more assertive approach to economic development which tells a compelling and original story about a powerful conurbation which leads a region – one where a walk through the door immediately tells you that you are in the company of ambitious people who know how to make things happen.
As someone said to me at MIPIM, the people, the opportunities and the conurbation are all there. But where is that single, powerful, unified vision?
If Nottingham really is serious about its place in the universe then there are some big decisions to make.
So how Nottingham organises itself as an economic entity will come back on to the agenda at some stage. If it is to compete for the government’s City Deal money it has to demonstrate there is a mechanism for joint action between neighbouring local authorities.
Businesses want a figurehead, and a compelling story about a big conurbation which is easy to work with. MPs wish some of the city’s politicking was driven by big picture vision rather than small-town spats. Some civil servants simply expect more of what should be a regional capital
We have some massive opportunities in this city. There are people who can deliver. There is a track record of achievement. Is the way forwards really that difficult?
Monday 30 April 2012
Elected Mayors:Campaign hits a low
Nottingham Labour looks to have shot itself in the foot with its latest attempt to persuade city residents to vote against having a directly elected mayor.
While the party nationally actually has official candidates in some cities where an elected mayor has already been signed off, the branch in Nottingham has set its face against even the concept of one.
And not by half.
It has variously suggested that an elected mayor would cost £1million, would struggle to work with the city council, and might even be easily corrupted. For good measure, it’s slung a bit of mud at the yes campaign by questioning not what it’s said but who is paying for it.
Even supporters of the current leadership have privately expressed disappointment at the no campaign's failure to sketch out the existing system’s successes or an alternative vision for moving the city forwards.
Some of those concerns have now come out into the open in the wake of the appearance of leaflets bearing Nottingham Labour's imprint which critics claim are naked scare tactics.
The leaflets claim that having an election for a mayor risks allowing far right organizations like the BNP or English Defence League take power in Nottingham. But they don’t use quite so many words. One leaflet says: ‘Racists Want a £1m Extra Mayor!’. So that’s telling you...
The BBC says some of those leaflets have been distributed near mosques. While they are clearly from Nottingham Labour they don't bear the details of a named publisher, which is naughty under electoral law.
The likelihood of the BNP winning a mayoral vote in Nottingham is somewhere close to hell freezing over on the probability scale. And the EDL couldn't actually field a candidate because it isn't a political party.
So what is Nottingham Labour’s no campaign up to?
City council leader Jon Collins says it's irresponsible not to point out the risks attached to a mayoral vote. But these supposed risks would surely affect everyone - why point them out only to certain communities?
The reaction among some of Labour's own party members and supporters has been one of contempt. Writing on the left-leaning website Labour List, Jo Tanner, the national director of a Labour yes campaign, said such scare tactics were “not what I expect from the Labour party I joined”.
She went on: “I could talk about the breach of election law which demands that materials should feature an imprint by a named person. I could talk about the total distortion of the facts, that in 2011 the BNP received 760 votes [in Nottingham] compared to the Labour Party’s 112,325.
“For me, though, it is the impression this sends to the people of Nottingham – and beyond – of the Labour Party, of the depths to which some of our number will sink.”
The tone of Jon Collins’ response on Labour List suggests he realises there is a case to answer, but – despite Jo Tanner’s emphatic statistical evidence – he insists the risk is real.
I don't know who sanctioned these leaflets or what process concluded they were an appropriate tactic. But they risk being seen as an aggressive and distasteful attempt to exploit fear among some communities. Whatever the result, it's unlikely these leaflets will be forgotten.
They are, though, consistent with a no campaign which has made a series of controversially negative claims, and appears to be targeted not at the city's movers and shakers but at certain communities.
The no campaign may well find itself in the winning camp next Friday morning, through a combination of voter apathy about an issue which does not immediately solve day-to-day hardships and Nottingham Labour's famed ability to get the vote out (particularly a postal one).
But even those movers and shakers sympathetic to the city leadership will not view this as a victory. The yes campaign has attracted significant discreet backing from people who believe that, for all its undoubted community-level achievement, the city council has failed to spell out a vision of where Nottingham needs to be in the future.
While ministers might be expected to say Nottingham will miss the cities' boat without a mayor (this is a government initiative, remember), senior civil servants in Whitehall have also suggested the city appears to be confirming itself in the role of a "second division" player, confirming the earlier analysis of former Nottingham MP Alan Simpson.
Their concern is that the city council - despite the presence of some genuinely talented and committed public servants - doesn't appear to have an over-arching vision for Nottingham's economic future, and isn't seen knocking on departmental doors in Whitehall to press for help delivering it.
Other cities are, partly because they always have done, partly because they are responding to a widely held cross-party consensus that cities should be drivers of economic growth across their surrounding area.
This is why the tone struck by the no campaign has gone down badly in some influential quarters. It has failed to address the ambitions and concerns which lie behind some of the support for the yes campaign.
These are people who think growing the city economically and geographically presents the best long-term opportunity to overcome its notorious – but misleading – figures for poor education, poor skills and crime. In their eyes, a campaign built around ‘no change’ is the wrong answer to the questions the mayoral campaign has raised.
I don't think those questions will go away even if the idea of an elected mayor is rejected on Thursday. Government has also left the door open to further discussion about the city's boundaries, which probably hold the real key to addressing Nottingham's long-term economic and social ambitions.
If, of course, its leadership believes this kind of big picture vision really matters. For those whose views about the city transcend political allegiances, this latest leaflet is not an optimistic sign.
While the party nationally actually has official candidates in some cities where an elected mayor has already been signed off, the branch in Nottingham has set its face against even the concept of one.
And not by half.
It has variously suggested that an elected mayor would cost £1million, would struggle to work with the city council, and might even be easily corrupted. For good measure, it’s slung a bit of mud at the yes campaign by questioning not what it’s said but who is paying for it.
Even supporters of the current leadership have privately expressed disappointment at the no campaign's failure to sketch out the existing system’s successes or an alternative vision for moving the city forwards.
Some of those concerns have now come out into the open in the wake of the appearance of leaflets bearing Nottingham Labour's imprint which critics claim are naked scare tactics.
The leaflets claim that having an election for a mayor risks allowing far right organizations like the BNP or English Defence League take power in Nottingham. But they don’t use quite so many words. One leaflet says: ‘Racists Want a £1m Extra Mayor!’. So that’s telling you...
The BBC says some of those leaflets have been distributed near mosques. While they are clearly from Nottingham Labour they don't bear the details of a named publisher, which is naughty under electoral law.
The likelihood of the BNP winning a mayoral vote in Nottingham is somewhere close to hell freezing over on the probability scale. And the EDL couldn't actually field a candidate because it isn't a political party.
So what is Nottingham Labour’s no campaign up to?
City council leader Jon Collins says it's irresponsible not to point out the risks attached to a mayoral vote. But these supposed risks would surely affect everyone - why point them out only to certain communities?
The reaction among some of Labour's own party members and supporters has been one of contempt. Writing on the left-leaning website Labour List, Jo Tanner, the national director of a Labour yes campaign, said such scare tactics were “not what I expect from the Labour party I joined”.
She went on: “I could talk about the breach of election law which demands that materials should feature an imprint by a named person. I could talk about the total distortion of the facts, that in 2011 the BNP received 760 votes [in Nottingham] compared to the Labour Party’s 112,325.
“For me, though, it is the impression this sends to the people of Nottingham – and beyond – of the Labour Party, of the depths to which some of our number will sink.”
The tone of Jon Collins’ response on Labour List suggests he realises there is a case to answer, but – despite Jo Tanner’s emphatic statistical evidence – he insists the risk is real.
I don't know who sanctioned these leaflets or what process concluded they were an appropriate tactic. But they risk being seen as an aggressive and distasteful attempt to exploit fear among some communities. Whatever the result, it's unlikely these leaflets will be forgotten.
They are, though, consistent with a no campaign which has made a series of controversially negative claims, and appears to be targeted not at the city's movers and shakers but at certain communities.
The no campaign may well find itself in the winning camp next Friday morning, through a combination of voter apathy about an issue which does not immediately solve day-to-day hardships and Nottingham Labour's famed ability to get the vote out (particularly a postal one).
But even those movers and shakers sympathetic to the city leadership will not view this as a victory. The yes campaign has attracted significant discreet backing from people who believe that, for all its undoubted community-level achievement, the city council has failed to spell out a vision of where Nottingham needs to be in the future.
While ministers might be expected to say Nottingham will miss the cities' boat without a mayor (this is a government initiative, remember), senior civil servants in Whitehall have also suggested the city appears to be confirming itself in the role of a "second division" player, confirming the earlier analysis of former Nottingham MP Alan Simpson.
Their concern is that the city council - despite the presence of some genuinely talented and committed public servants - doesn't appear to have an over-arching vision for Nottingham's economic future, and isn't seen knocking on departmental doors in Whitehall to press for help delivering it.
Other cities are, partly because they always have done, partly because they are responding to a widely held cross-party consensus that cities should be drivers of economic growth across their surrounding area.
This is why the tone struck by the no campaign has gone down badly in some influential quarters. It has failed to address the ambitions and concerns which lie behind some of the support for the yes campaign.
These are people who think growing the city economically and geographically presents the best long-term opportunity to overcome its notorious – but misleading – figures for poor education, poor skills and crime. In their eyes, a campaign built around ‘no change’ is the wrong answer to the questions the mayoral campaign has raised.
I don't think those questions will go away even if the idea of an elected mayor is rejected on Thursday. Government has also left the door open to further discussion about the city's boundaries, which probably hold the real key to addressing Nottingham's long-term economic and social ambitions.
If, of course, its leadership believes this kind of big picture vision really matters. For those whose views about the city transcend political allegiances, this latest leaflet is not an optimistic sign.
Wednesday 25 April 2012
A political recession?
So, the UK is back in recession. Let’s all panic and head for the hills…
Or is it? There are four possible responses to today’s news that an initial estimate suggests the UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in the first three months of 2012.
One is political: government policy has failed and the coalition “cut too far and too fast”. The usual hot air, in other words.
The second is geographical: while London, the south and east have steamed ahead, the rest of the country never really climbed out of recession anyway (the further north you go, the more the economy becomes dependent on public money).
The third is scientific: quite a few economists and statisticians simply don’t believe the ONS figures because this general measure has been consistently at variance with what surveys about specific business sectors say. The ONS’s methodology may be a bit flawed.
The fourth is from business: how come the Office for National Statistics says the economy contracted 0.2 per cent when the Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber’s own survey of the same period said business had regained nearly everything it lost last year?
It really does pay to put the politics to one side, because in a climate like this it generates far more heat than light.
Not for the first time I should also point out that today’s figure is merely an initial estimate based on an analysis of only 40 per cent of the data which ultimately goes into a GDP figure. It will be revised at least three times, and for technical reasons the first quarter of a year is often harder to judge than others.
There is particular concern about the ONS’s assessment of the construction industry. It says weakness here is one of the key reasons for the fall back into recession. Yet the industry itself suggests the picture is not that bad.
And on the very same day that the ONS fingered weak manufacturing as another contributory factor for technical recession, the CBI said there were signs of a bounce back in manufacturing activity during the same period.
Indeed, the CBI has gone on record this morning with its usual diplomatic language, saying it is "surprised" by the ONS figures.
That's putting it mildly. There is a clear conflict between what the ONS is suggesting and what some industries are saying themselves.
Unarguable facts are that our economic recovery is very sluggish and geographically patchy: some sectors are doing better than others, some parts of the country are better than others, some of what we have lost won’t come back because the economy has changed, Eurozone economies still haven’t properly sorted their debt issues.
One more unarguable fact: businesses themselves are sick to the back teeth with supposed media ‘recession porn’ – an obsession with negative economic news.
So the fight over recession is largely political. As tough as it is, business is getting on with the job.
Or is it? There are four possible responses to today’s news that an initial estimate suggests the UK economy contracted by 0.2 per cent in the first three months of 2012.
One is political: government policy has failed and the coalition “cut too far and too fast”. The usual hot air, in other words.
The second is geographical: while London, the south and east have steamed ahead, the rest of the country never really climbed out of recession anyway (the further north you go, the more the economy becomes dependent on public money).
The third is scientific: quite a few economists and statisticians simply don’t believe the ONS figures because this general measure has been consistently at variance with what surveys about specific business sectors say. The ONS’s methodology may be a bit flawed.
The fourth is from business: how come the Office for National Statistics says the economy contracted 0.2 per cent when the Derbyshire & Nottinghamshire Chamber’s own survey of the same period said business had regained nearly everything it lost last year?
It really does pay to put the politics to one side, because in a climate like this it generates far more heat than light.
Not for the first time I should also point out that today’s figure is merely an initial estimate based on an analysis of only 40 per cent of the data which ultimately goes into a GDP figure. It will be revised at least three times, and for technical reasons the first quarter of a year is often harder to judge than others.
There is particular concern about the ONS’s assessment of the construction industry. It says weakness here is one of the key reasons for the fall back into recession. Yet the industry itself suggests the picture is not that bad.
And on the very same day that the ONS fingered weak manufacturing as another contributory factor for technical recession, the CBI said there were signs of a bounce back in manufacturing activity during the same period.
Indeed, the CBI has gone on record this morning with its usual diplomatic language, saying it is "surprised" by the ONS figures.
That's putting it mildly. There is a clear conflict between what the ONS is suggesting and what some industries are saying themselves.
Unarguable facts are that our economic recovery is very sluggish and geographically patchy: some sectors are doing better than others, some parts of the country are better than others, some of what we have lost won’t come back because the economy has changed, Eurozone economies still haven’t properly sorted their debt issues.
One more unarguable fact: businesses themselves are sick to the back teeth with supposed media ‘recession porn’ – an obsession with negative economic news.
So the fight over recession is largely political. As tough as it is, business is getting on with the job.
Monday 23 April 2012
Elected Mayors: The Vision Thing
 |
| Nottingham: trying to find a vision? |
There’s been a fascinating contribution today to the debate about whether Nottingham should vote for a directly elected mayor.
It’s from a Labour politician, and it’s in the ‘anti’ camp. But it doesn’t mention anything about ‘£1m Tory extra Mayors’ on ‘fatcat salaries’.
Infact, some are bound to view this support for the campaign against an elected mayor as a devastating critique of some of the people behind it.
The contribution comes from Alan Simpson, who was the Nottingham South Labour MP up until the last election, when he retired and the seat was taken by Lilian Greenwood.
Simpson was never a great mate of the city leadership, and there will be a few in Labour who think his piece settles a few old scores.
But there will be a lot of people involved in business, in particular in property and development, who will agree wholeheartedly with some of Simpson’s observations - even if they are actively supporting the pro-elected mayor campaign.
Indeed, those criticisms are probably the reason why they support it.
You can see Alan Simpson’s piece here. To cut to the chase, he argues that an elected mayor simply doesn’t address what he claims is the big issue in Nottingham politics: its lack of ambition and vision. While he acknowledges some significant achievements (like the tram), he points the finger at the city council leadership over its refusal to publish full details about finances and a lack of genuine, big picture imagination. He also takes a swipe at the Tories and the Lib Dems for ineffectual opposition (though I suspect city boundaries count against them).
Simpson says: “Good governance demands strong Opposition as well as visionary leadership. Nottingham has neither. This is the Council’s Achilles Heel. To demolish the case for a mayor, it must open its own books and then be more imaginative.”
He describes Nottingham as a “second division” city, and adds pointedly: “…we have to break from a culture of contentedness that holds the city back. Pride and ambition are not qualities you can claim for yourself, without inviting ridicule.”
This plays to one of the central criticisms of the ‘anti’ campaign: that its relentless focus on the negative demonstrates exactly that point about the absence of the vision thing. Where it could be pointing to achievement and ambition under the current system, or painting a picture of a dynamic future, it instead drones on about the cost of a mayor, the risk of corruption and who’s paying for the yes campaign.
The case for an elected mayor isn’t proven, and Simpson says cities need real power rather than real figureheads. In that context, he thinks an elected mayor would be a sideshow.
But in Nottingham the ‘marmite’ flavour of the current leadership and its failure to give voice to an alternative vision leave the Yes campaign in a potentially strong position. What is most likely to count against the Yes camp is an issue which should cause serious concern on both sides – voter apathy towards politics and politicians. The turnout looks like being low.
Nottingham has a tantalising opportunity to develop an ambitious and genuinely challenging vision for the future, and Alan Simpson’s painfully blunt critique suggests one is sorely needed – whichever system we have.
I go back to the point I made in my last blog: Nottingham needs to think bigger in terms of its boundaries. Simpson suggests those boundaries also appear to encircle the council’s vision like a philosophical wall – that the city’s very horizons are just not wide enough.
You decide which way is best to unlock the potential. It’s YOUR city.
Monday 16 April 2012
Elected mayors: Small debate, big issue
If you listen hard you can just about hear what passes for a debate about whether or not Nottingham should be one of those cities which has an elected mayor.
As far as I can see, much of the debate is in the blogosphere, which is probably a sign that the subject has so far caught the interest only of what you might call the chattering classes – business people, politicians and those who think stuff like this matters.
I’m not aware there is any great groundswell of interest in this debate. Chris Leslie, the MP for Nottingham East and Shadow treasury secretary, probably hit the nail on the head when he suggested that, whether you think it’s a good idea or not, people will struggle to see the structure of local government as a priority. Most will think it’s policy that matters – what you do, rather than how you do it.
That’s no reason not to talk about it, though, and the debate so far has been poor. The City Council’s position – that it would cost £1 million for a ‘Tory extra mayor’ – sidesteps the issue of whether an elected figurehead for the city would be a good thing or not and focuses on the usual tribal antagonism.
I’m not sure that’s a smart move, since it risks reinforcing the prejudices some people hold about the way the city is currently run. It’s too adversarial and doesn’t offer an alternative vision. The ‘debate’ appears to be heading to a depressingly reductive conclusion.
For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced that an elected mayor is the solution to all of Nottingham’s development problems. As I wrote in a column for the Nottingham Post (and as others have already observed), it is the city’s administrative boundaries – which go back decades – which really hold it back because they have put the control of one economic entity in the hands of a series of different councils.
This makes the development of that economic entity overly-complicated, and leaves the city council in particular spending far too much time making excuses for poor educational attainment, poor skill levels and poor crime figures.
The apparent severity of every single one of those problems is a direct result of an artificially tight boundary which excludes the suburban affluence and prosperity which balance those numbers in most other cities. It also puts an undue pressure on the city council to produce artificial evidence of swift progress 'solving' a problem which can never be sorted quickly.
A bigger city with impressive demography and achievement, a powerful economic entity which could be developed as a coherent force would put Nottingham in a far stronger position on the national and international stage. Its smallness and its knotty ‘problems’ would fade overnight.
Everybody in Nottingham knows this to be true, and so I suspect does the Department for Communities and Local Government. But a very wise civil servant told me that no one will do anything about it. National politicians won’t touch local government reorganisation because it would be complicated, expensive and take years to sort – in other words, they couldn’t take any credit for it in time for an election.
Local politicians won’t touch it out of a similar self-interest. A bigger city including affluent suburbs would almost certainly water down Labour’s tight control of the council, while also rendering numerous power centres in surrounding boroughs and districts redundant. And turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, do they?
So there is a bit of an irony in suggestions that the push for elected mayors is an attempt to free cities from their shackles and present them with an opportunity to make high-profile progress. It may well be – but only up to a point in Nottingham’s case.
Still, is something better than nothing? Without in any way being partisan, there has been significant concern in business circles for a long time about the city’s failure to punch its weight. That Broadmarsh remains undeveloped more than a decade after it was first mooted is a disgrace, and a portfolio of ambitious CGIs brought forth a grand total of nothing in two major regeneration zones during a once-in-a-lifetime development boom. Only now is the city’s planning department shaking off its reputation as a hurdle to development.
The city council will quite justifiably point to a good tram network which is going to be expanded still further as a clear example of its ability to deliver genuinely ambitious infrastructure projects which have the capacity to encourage the transformation of communities.
You can’t argue with that, and I wonder whether we really make enough of a £600m mass transit system and the economic benefits it might bring.
But if we can deliver that, why can’t we deliver other major projects?
To me, that begs two questions which may shed light on the mayoral debate. What are the city’s political priorities, and does it invest anywhere near enough time and effort in heavyweight engagement with senior civil servants and senior politicians in London?
If Nottingham can deliver a tram project, why couldn’t it muscle Broadmarsh over the line before Westfield walked away, and why couldn’t it get the wheels in motion on Eastside and Waterside? Why did we get poked in the eye over the super-connected cities project, a silly decision which smacked of wanting to teach Nottingham a political lesson? Are we really serious about big, visionary development?
Nottingham City Council’s political leadership holds strong and very clearly-defined views and has demonstrated a laudable commitment to tackling some serious social issues. It provides certainty where the ‘opposition’ is hopelessly disorganised.
But it sometimes appears to want to engage with the outside world only on its own terms. As my wise friend put it to me, you don’t get Whitehall buy-in by shouting in the Market Square.
Is this another reason why what we think is a big city is seen as small by others?
When you look at some of the UK’s really big cities, they are usually associated with big personalities who knock heads together and use powerful connections to get things done for their cities. Think Sir Richard Knowles and Sir Albert Bore, political leaders in Birmingham, Sir Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein, respectively the leader and chief executive in Manchester (the knighthoods are a clue to just how well-connected and respected these people are), Keith Wakefield and Tom Riordan, the current custodians in Leeds.
There’s also Sir Michael Lyons, the former Birmingham City Council chief exec who went on to become chairman of the BBC. And before that? He was chief exec of Notts County Council…
How about Nottingham? Up until Jane Todd’s arrival the chief executive’s office in Nottingham appeared to have a revolving door, and its leadership, while utterly committed to tackling problems in Nottingham, seems ambivalent about relationships outside it.
An elected mayor for Nottingham could be seen as a political fix, an attempt to cure the boundary issue by imposing another structure which sits above the old, boundary-driven muddle beneath.
But it may well be worth a try. Government has dropped heavy hints that it will use these offices to distribute resources and if Nottingham isn’t even sitting round the table we won’t be appearing in any announcements. That’s a hard, political fact. It leaves us stuck in second gear, still comparing ourselves to Derby and Leicester when we should be talking about where we are in relation to the likes of Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield.
In that context, a debate about whether the city should have a “£1m Tory extra mayor” on a “fatcat salary” is hardly taking the visionary high ground of a big city. It risks being seen as a wearily tribal 'our way or no way' approach.
We have some huge opportunities in our city – no one should be in any doubt about that. But they can only be exploited through relationships outside the city. Have we really got the structure to deliver that?
You decide.
 |
| Can you hear the debate? |
As far as I can see, much of the debate is in the blogosphere, which is probably a sign that the subject has so far caught the interest only of what you might call the chattering classes – business people, politicians and those who think stuff like this matters.
I’m not aware there is any great groundswell of interest in this debate. Chris Leslie, the MP for Nottingham East and Shadow treasury secretary, probably hit the nail on the head when he suggested that, whether you think it’s a good idea or not, people will struggle to see the structure of local government as a priority. Most will think it’s policy that matters – what you do, rather than how you do it.
That’s no reason not to talk about it, though, and the debate so far has been poor. The City Council’s position – that it would cost £1 million for a ‘Tory extra mayor’ – sidesteps the issue of whether an elected figurehead for the city would be a good thing or not and focuses on the usual tribal antagonism.
I’m not sure that’s a smart move, since it risks reinforcing the prejudices some people hold about the way the city is currently run. It’s too adversarial and doesn’t offer an alternative vision. The ‘debate’ appears to be heading to a depressingly reductive conclusion.
For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced that an elected mayor is the solution to all of Nottingham’s development problems. As I wrote in a column for the Nottingham Post (and as others have already observed), it is the city’s administrative boundaries – which go back decades – which really hold it back because they have put the control of one economic entity in the hands of a series of different councils.
This makes the development of that economic entity overly-complicated, and leaves the city council in particular spending far too much time making excuses for poor educational attainment, poor skill levels and poor crime figures.
The apparent severity of every single one of those problems is a direct result of an artificially tight boundary which excludes the suburban affluence and prosperity which balance those numbers in most other cities. It also puts an undue pressure on the city council to produce artificial evidence of swift progress 'solving' a problem which can never be sorted quickly.
A bigger city with impressive demography and achievement, a powerful economic entity which could be developed as a coherent force would put Nottingham in a far stronger position on the national and international stage. Its smallness and its knotty ‘problems’ would fade overnight.
Everybody in Nottingham knows this to be true, and so I suspect does the Department for Communities and Local Government. But a very wise civil servant told me that no one will do anything about it. National politicians won’t touch local government reorganisation because it would be complicated, expensive and take years to sort – in other words, they couldn’t take any credit for it in time for an election.
Local politicians won’t touch it out of a similar self-interest. A bigger city including affluent suburbs would almost certainly water down Labour’s tight control of the council, while also rendering numerous power centres in surrounding boroughs and districts redundant. And turkeys don’t vote for Christmas, do they?
So there is a bit of an irony in suggestions that the push for elected mayors is an attempt to free cities from their shackles and present them with an opportunity to make high-profile progress. It may well be – but only up to a point in Nottingham’s case.
Still, is something better than nothing? Without in any way being partisan, there has been significant concern in business circles for a long time about the city’s failure to punch its weight. That Broadmarsh remains undeveloped more than a decade after it was first mooted is a disgrace, and a portfolio of ambitious CGIs brought forth a grand total of nothing in two major regeneration zones during a once-in-a-lifetime development boom. Only now is the city’s planning department shaking off its reputation as a hurdle to development.
The city council will quite justifiably point to a good tram network which is going to be expanded still further as a clear example of its ability to deliver genuinely ambitious infrastructure projects which have the capacity to encourage the transformation of communities.
You can’t argue with that, and I wonder whether we really make enough of a £600m mass transit system and the economic benefits it might bring.
But if we can deliver that, why can’t we deliver other major projects?
To me, that begs two questions which may shed light on the mayoral debate. What are the city’s political priorities, and does it invest anywhere near enough time and effort in heavyweight engagement with senior civil servants and senior politicians in London?
If Nottingham can deliver a tram project, why couldn’t it muscle Broadmarsh over the line before Westfield walked away, and why couldn’t it get the wheels in motion on Eastside and Waterside? Why did we get poked in the eye over the super-connected cities project, a silly decision which smacked of wanting to teach Nottingham a political lesson? Are we really serious about big, visionary development?
Nottingham City Council’s political leadership holds strong and very clearly-defined views and has demonstrated a laudable commitment to tackling some serious social issues. It provides certainty where the ‘opposition’ is hopelessly disorganised.
But it sometimes appears to want to engage with the outside world only on its own terms. As my wise friend put it to me, you don’t get Whitehall buy-in by shouting in the Market Square.
Is this another reason why what we think is a big city is seen as small by others?
When you look at some of the UK’s really big cities, they are usually associated with big personalities who knock heads together and use powerful connections to get things done for their cities. Think Sir Richard Knowles and Sir Albert Bore, political leaders in Birmingham, Sir Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein, respectively the leader and chief executive in Manchester (the knighthoods are a clue to just how well-connected and respected these people are), Keith Wakefield and Tom Riordan, the current custodians in Leeds.
There’s also Sir Michael Lyons, the former Birmingham City Council chief exec who went on to become chairman of the BBC. And before that? He was chief exec of Notts County Council…
How about Nottingham? Up until Jane Todd’s arrival the chief executive’s office in Nottingham appeared to have a revolving door, and its leadership, while utterly committed to tackling problems in Nottingham, seems ambivalent about relationships outside it.
An elected mayor for Nottingham could be seen as a political fix, an attempt to cure the boundary issue by imposing another structure which sits above the old, boundary-driven muddle beneath.
But it may well be worth a try. Government has dropped heavy hints that it will use these offices to distribute resources and if Nottingham isn’t even sitting round the table we won’t be appearing in any announcements. That’s a hard, political fact. It leaves us stuck in second gear, still comparing ourselves to Derby and Leicester when we should be talking about where we are in relation to the likes of Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield.
In that context, a debate about whether the city should have a “£1m Tory extra mayor” on a “fatcat salary” is hardly taking the visionary high ground of a big city. It risks being seen as a wearily tribal 'our way or no way' approach.
We have some huge opportunities in our city – no one should be in any doubt about that. But they can only be exploited through relationships outside the city. Have we really got the structure to deliver that?
You decide.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)