THE "I AGREE WITH NIGEL" EFFECT Is this Alice in Wonderland politics?
Antidote politics are alive and well and living in the UK. How on earth a party with no seats in Parliament could go from fringe to over 25% of the vote last night is real Alice in Wonderland politics.
In many ways the two major parties are dinosaurs sticking largely to dogmatic strategies - with hardly a fag-paper between them if truth be known (unless the unions force Labour firmly into their corner) . The TV debates before the last election were illuminating for the "I agree with Nick" asides. In 'normal' times, and had the Conservatives won an outright victory, it would have been the Liberal Democrats who would have surely swept up 'protest votes' , instead they have been swept aside.
On the basis that UKIP will claim representation in future debates (if they happen) then the "I agree with Nigel" phrase count will be fascinating if nothing else. And we could be seeing the start of a realignment the political parties in this country.
Meanwhile, we hear politicians and others trot out fact after fact about the state of Britain - that if said often enough and loud enough become accepted fact. Nobody stops to question the veracity of the claims. For example:
'We don’t make anything anymore' True, we make different things to the economy post-war, but nett manufacturing rose in 35 of the 50 years from 1958 to 2007. The economic crash of 2008 didn’t help, but British car plants are expected to produce more cars this year than last, bucking the European trend. JCB has just reported a record year, and Jaguar Land Rover can hardly keep up with demand and now run a 24-hour production.
But like Rolls Royce, which is the world’s second largest producer with an order book worth £60 billion, many operate in unheralded sectors such as Airbus wings; oil field equipment, jet engines - and more high profile, UK is the home of most Formula One teams.
'Welfare goes to shirkers’ High profile ‘shirkers’, unmarried with 17 children all by different people, living in a ‘posh’ house with a 56” plasma TV and outdoor jacuzzi grab the headlines, but make for lazy comment.
The inconvenient truth is that 52% of welfare goes on pensions for old people (like me) as a right of citizenship and a further 19% goes on child benefit. It is reckoned that the pensions bill is at least five times that of the benefits bill for shirkers
'UK is becoming a concrete jungle' We have one of the highest population densities in the world - 672 Britons per square mile.
Yet more than 93 per cent of Britain is classified as rural, not urban. And even in our cities, 54% of the land-area is ‘greenspace’ (parks, sportsgrounds and allotments) - and that doesn’t allow for garden wihich make up another 18 per cent of urban land. All good news for purveyors of land-based equipment!
'Young people don’t want to work' What an insult to those centres of excellence that are now turning out the young influential movers and shakers of the future, those who will make our industry tick. Forget those telegenic wannabee’s from The Apprentice, just look at the likes of the JCB Academy at Rocester and Harper Adams University. These establishments are producing graduates and apprentices that are fit for purpose. Degrees in philosophy, media studies or Egyptian art are fine, but they don’t fine-tune those who gain such qualifications for many real job opportunities.
The fact that 98% of Harper Adams graduates find work in the first six months, or that virtually 100% of the JCB Academy gain formal apprenticeships sends out a clear message to the FE sector that specialisation pays.
