Last year was widely seen as the first year of the 'new electric car era'.

The first volume electric cars were launched in the form of the Chevvy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, and these dominated the headlines at the major auto shows.

'Electric power is the future' - that's if you believed Renault/Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn who kept saying that electric cars will make up 10% of sales by 2020.

The financial crisis and recession hit the UK hard. The recovery in output for the overall economy has been painfully slow.

UK manufacturing has seen a stronger a rebound but a lasting scar from the financial crisis is the fractious relationship between the manufacturing and financial services sectors.

This is the blog version of my column from the print edition of the Birmingham Post, February 1st 2012

A knighthood freshly shredded, bonuses dumped (well, two bonuses), - RBS/NatWest is back to centre stage again where it would rather not be. Because therein lurks the real problem that won't go away.

The problem? The growing realisation that the pretence is not working. The simple fact is that RBS/NatWest is dead private meat. It will never actually be private again. Some people have got to get used to this.

The taxpayer will never get out (as the loss on sale to the private sector would run into tens of billions of pounds) and any talk about the "return" on capital invested here is a laughable proposition.

Those who seek to judge in simplistic terms that the taxpayers' £45 billion can be assessed against the current market value of the product they bought are co-conspirators in the desperately hopeful pretence.

To be precise, the estimated current market value of the £45 billion we are into is probably now no more than £21 billion (and that's being generous).

Ian Callum, RDI, Director of Design, Jaguar Cars and founder Chairman IDEA Birmingham recognised that innovative cultures and approaches drive results when receiving his Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University yesterday.

Speaking to over 2000 people - those just graduated, their families and friends assembled in the ICC Birmingham, Ian said, "IDEA Birmingham is about bringing creativity and industry together. It made this region what it is today and it is what we need to embrace further as a region, and it is what this country needs to embrace."

Today IDEA Birmingham launches Birmingham's first Design EXPO in over 100 years, running from 15th-22nd June at the Birmingham Mailbox, and the 2012 Design Awards, at www.ideabirmingham.co.uk.

On the 6th March EEF will be hosting the first ever National Manufacturing Conference, in partnership with The Manufacturer. Ahead of this we'll be discussing some of the key issues for UK manufacturing on this blog. The first of these is how to engineer growth through exports.

Growing up in the 1960s I can recall the fact that among the older generation there was still a deep-seated feeling of hostility against Germany. The end of the second word-war war in which over 50 million people had died had only been over for just twenty years.

People in Birmingham could remember the horror of nightly bombing raids and, worse, the utter depravity of the concentration camps. How could the Germans ever be forgiven? As history has shown, we did indeed forgive and Germany is now one of our European partners.

The word 'partner' suggests equality but, as we know, economically, Germany is streets ahead of us.

I'm often asked by companies for advice on how to tackle a new market and among the many routes to market, Licensing is definitely worth considering.

Licensing is essentially the granting of a 'Right' by the owner of the intellectual property to another business or individual to do something that, without that permission, would infringe the owner's Intellectual Property Right.

It's particularly useful for those who recognise the value in their intellectual property (IP) be it inventions, trademarks, industrial or even architectural designs. Or creative products such as music, art or film. These can all provide income for a company by giving others permission to use its IP in return for a royalty payment.

Today's business world is fast changing and many companies that seek new markets for their products face constraints within their own organisations - such as lack of skill sets or resources to meet market opportunities, little local knowledge of these markets, shortage of capital to invest in the venture, or simply not enough time in the day!

Licensing is relatively quick to set up and can generate rapid revenue streams - all with the added attraction that it is a relatively 'hands off' solution.

There are all sorts of licensing arrangements depending on who you want to use your IP and where.

"It's none of your bloody business!" No - not you - didn't mean to offend. Just feeing mildly irritated by the tone of the new Start up Britain campaign. The strap line that runs 'There's a business in everyone. What's the business in you?' And (apart from sounding a little less than grammatical - should it be 'Which is the business in you ?' murmurs a passing pedant) it seems to beg for the surly reply I offered above, don't you think ?

Many readers will be aware of the oft-cited figure that over a million jobs were lost in manufacturing under the last Labour government. A number of factors came together to accelerate and extend a 'natural' process of deindustrialisation so that even 'healthy' manufacturing activities were lost.

I've been arguing for ages, for example, that the over-valuation of sterling over the late 1990s and early 2000s hammered our export sectors - and put a huge dent in our automotive and transport clusters here in the midlands. In so doing it seriously unbalanced our economy and contributed to the later problems experienced when financial services went belly up.

Last week was an exciting week for energy lawyers. It saw the Court of Appeal reject DECC's appeal against an earlier High Court ruling, which decided that quick and drastic cuts to solar feed-in tariffs (FiTs) proposed in a now infamous consultation late last year were illegal.