Recently by Anna Blackaby

An update on a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago after interviewing the boss of Midland-based electric van manufacturer Modec.
As the LDV saga continues to rumble on, with the 7,000 jobs depending on the firm's survival still on the line, a leading lawyer has called on the government to extend the tax breaks it offers businesses for electric and other low-emission cars to include electric vans.
Specifically he proposes that the government extend enhanced capital allowances (ECAs) to cover electric commercial vans.
ECAs enable a business to claim 100 per cent first-year capital allowances on their spending on qualifying plant and machinery.
They enable businesses to write off the whole of the capital cost of their investment against their taxable profits of the period during which they make the investment.
Tim Stocks, head of the Financial Institutions and Markets team at European law firm Taylor Wessing LLP, said: "A key plank of the proposed buyout of LDV is to turn the company into an electric van manufacturer. If the government gives a cast-iron guarantee that the Budget will extend the ECA rules to vans this should result in orders from customers who would receive the benefit of ECA's on such purchases. In this way the buyout team could secure advance orders for its new electric vans.
"This simple legislative change would eradicate the need to risk taxpayers' money, would save hundreds of British jobs and would demonstrate a real commitment to advancing the green agenda.
"As a knock on effect, it would help those businesses who purchase the new electric vans to save on tax and fuel costs."
Tax breaks for electric commercial vehicles have been a success story abroad in stimulating demand.
Coventry-based Modec recently revealed it had bulging order books for its electric vans - virtually all of which were destined for export to countries which had already introduced similar tax breaks for electric vans, such as Ireland and the US.

Later on this week I will be on the panel of an event called West Midlands Attacking the Recession organised by NESTA - the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts - an independent body with a mission to make the UK more innovative.
The main discussion point will be how the UK/West Midlands can maintain its innovative capacity and how can we encourage and support individuals and businesses to innovate in order to drive the economy forward.
So I'm using this blog post is an appeal for suggestions and input for that discussion from Midland companies out there on the ground that are at the forefront of innovation.
Last week I spoke to the head of NESTA Jonathan Kestenbaum ahead of the event and he told me how he believed Birmingham has what it takes to lead innovation in the UK despite the current economic downturn.
I am lucky in that the platform pages I look after - sustainable industries and creative industries - have some strong marketforces behind them, ie the twin drives towards a low carbon economy and the digital economy - and as such there is a lot less doom and gloom around than in other sectors at the moment.
We've got so much innovative capacity here in the Midlands, from OEMs like Jaguar Land Rover and Modec making electric vans in Coventry to engineering firms like Zytek in Lichfield which makes state-of-the-art parts for electric vehicles, not to mention the exciting work being done on hydrogen vehicles in our universities.
Plus the creative industries pages constantly throw up good news from the growing number of small digital firms in Birmigham that are flourishing as the drive towards digitial continues regardless of the recession.
So this is an appeal for people to flag up to me particular companies where innovative things are happenign under the radar that I might not be aware of yet in any sector - not just digital or low carbon.
It's an opportunity to blow our own trumpets about what we have here. But it's also an opportunity to consider the problems these young but growing sectors have and the kinds of problems they face in the wake of the current downturn as well as how they can best be supported.
And if anyone fancies coming along it's being held this Friday 13th March 2009 at 8 am at The Studio, 7 Cannon St, Birmingham, B25EP

I have a new hobby. It's not one that is going to get me out of the house much, it probably won't help me make new friends and it's certainly not very relaxing. But it is strangely compelling.
My new pastime is tracking down initiatives used by overseas governments to stimulate a hi-tech low-carbon economy, which Gordon Brown has trumpeted as our saviour from the current grinding fiscal gloom.
Once identified, I then start my mental stopwatch to measure the time that elapses before our government finally catches up and takes similar steps.
And if I were blessed with a mathematical brain I would work out a complex algorithm to show how far behind the low-carbon curve the UK will be when we eventually emerge from recession.
Last week another of these measures was brought to my attention.
In an interview with Modec, the Coventry-based makers of electric commercial vehicles, the company's chairman Lord Borwick spoke of Modec's bulging order book - virtually all of which is destined for export or for overseas firms present in the UK.
Why, when we have such a great example of Midland innovation and engineering right here on our doorstep, is all of it going abroad?
Of course exporting our knowhow is a great thing and should be applauded in its own right and granted, the scale of Modec's production is tiny compared to other big-name vehicle makers in the region.
But it would surely be best if Modec could sell to both the UK and overseas markets and as well as helping our balance of trade, Modec's products could push us some way towards meeting the UK's ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050.
The reason most of Modec's production goes abroad is that other countries have introduced tax breaks for companies investing in electric vehicles.
For example in Ireland businesses which purchase electric vehicles are able to write off 100 per cent of the cost against tax. France, Germany and the US all have similar schemes. Even in Republican Texas, the spiritual home of fossil fuel, a $5,000 subsidy is being considered for people investing in electric hybrid cars.
As Lord Borwick put it: "If you look at America there is an urgency about doing something that was never there before.
"But in Britain we always had the idea about green things but others are surpassing us by actually doing something."
Last week on this blog, I compared the government's slowness to act on vehicle scrappage schemes to its decade-long reluctance to introduce another demand-stimulating green measure - feed-in tariffs.
I am now officially adding tax breaks for electric commercial vehicles to that list of things that let the grass grow under our feet while engineering jobs are slowly disappearing into the ether.
Ssshh - can you hear that stopwatch? Tick tick tick.

This week has not been a good week for the creative industries in Birmingham. It is the last week for the retail side of Jibbering Records, a record shop and music promotions company based in Moseley.
The downturn on the high street has played a major part in Jibbering deciding to shut up shop, and the closure of its record store on Alcester Road will mean Moseley will lose another independent shop, and with it part of the community identity and vibrancy that gives the area its distinctive character.
Digbeth, like Moseley, is also a "creative" hub for the city with hundreds of innovative businesses occupying places like the Custard Factory, the newly-opened Fazeley Studios and The Bond.
A smattering of bars and clubs serve the area with a non-mainstream option for nights out.
The Rainbow is one of these.
But this week Kent Davis, landlord of the pub, said that if it were to receive a noise abatement order, the pub would be forced to close as it could not afford to pay for the structural work needed to prevent noise escaping from the venue.
Mr Davis said the council's Environmental Health department had been called out on several occasions based on the complaints of just one resident living in newly-built flats in Digbeth.
This is despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of local residents do not have any problem with noise - indeed being close to venues like The Rainbow has been a draw in encouraging people to move to the area. The chairman of the local residents association described the threat to The Rainbow as "flabbergasting".
Both Moseley and Digbeth are seen as hotbeds of "creativity" - that elusive element that Birmingham City Council has in said it is trying to promote.
I interviewed Clive Dutton, Birmingham City Council director of planning and regeneration, when Mary Portas, aka BBC 2's Mary Queen of Shops, was in town last year. She was invited by the council to advise on how Birmingham can better foster independent shops in the city.
At the time Mr Dutton said: "We have to think about the sort of place you want to emulate, the places all of us visit in our spare time."
"You tend to go to places that are different and what makes them different is the different kinds of leisure and shopping experience.
The Rainbow definitely falls into the category of a venue that is a bit "different" - sadly something that is getting rarer in Birmingham.
The approach of two council departments - environmental health and planning - just doesn't square.
I appreciate that environmental health are there to do a job, and any noise complaint triggers them down a trajectory that is laid down for them.
But this is an issue which needs to be addressed higher up at the council, which seriously needs to ask itself how it is actually fostering an independent and creative spirit in Birmingham.
The case of Jibbering Records goes to show that small independents are already battling the headwinds of a deep recession, which is surely also affecting the bottom line at The Rainbow.
In an economic environment like this, Digbeth could do without being crushed the myopic approach of a local authority. If not, we will be left with a Digbeth that is full of empty flats, empty pubs and empty council spin about "creativity".

Yesterday saw the loss of 600 jobs in the West Midlands as GKN, present in the region for over 100 years, announced the closure of two of its factories in the region, the latest in a string of automotive companies to send skilled Midland engineers to the dole office.

Contrasting sharply with the fortunes of the industrial sector, the fast food industry has had a bumper week - with Domino's Pizza announcing full-year profits up almost a quarter and outlining its "aggressive expansion plan" to open a further 50 stores, creating 1,500 jobs.

Earlier this week Kentucky Fried Chicken announced it was creating 9,000 new jobs as part of plans to open between 200 and 300 restaurants in the next three to five years as people lose the ability, or will, to cook for themselves.

The other big job creation stories of recent weeks have been the supermarkets, with Sainsburys, Aldi, Tesco et al combining to add around 30,000 jobs this year.

Obviously any story of job creation is welcome in these depressing times and I have no doubt if you have been made redundant and have a mortgage to pay, a job behind the counter at KFC is better than nothing.

But one glaring fact stands out about the kind of jobs we are losing and the kind of jobs we are creating which does not bode well for our future recovery when we come out of this downturn.

Every job that goes in manufacturing is effectively deskilling the whole country, while every job created in a fast food chain does not exactly enhance the skills base of UK plc.

If we are gradually losing the skills needed to make our own dinners - how are we going to make anything of any value to the rest of the world?

The government has hinted it is looking at vehicle scrappage schemes to support the ailing automotive sector, following in the footsteps of other European governments who have been quick to introduce similar drives.
Vehicle scrappage schemes offer a cash incentive for drivers of old, polluting bangers to trade them in for new fuel-efficient vehicles and are a solution backed by green groups like Friends of the Earth as well as manufacturers.
We have some of the best engineering resources in the world in the West Midlands who, with a bit of a shake-up, could make the region a world leader in green technology. But instead, small engineering firms are going bust on a daily basis and any demand stimulus is likely to be "too little too late" for many of them.
The scenario around vehicle scrappage schemes, and the government's dithering over embracing them, sounds depressingly familiar to the feed-in tariffs (FIT) legislation that has left the UK on the back foot over green technology.
Many European countries introduced a law getting on to a decade ago which would give small scale producers of renewable energy a viable price for the electricity they sell to the national grid. It kickstarted a renewables technology revolution in places like Germany, which has now become a world leader in the sector.
But as other countries were growing and nurturing their renewables technology sectors the UK government dismissed the measures as too "interventionist" as it forced the electricity companies to buy renewable electricity at a fixed price.
But then last year somebody in government suddenly realised it was ok to become "interventionist" as the failures of the free market had become woefully apparent, combined with the realisation that if UK manufacturing was to survive, it needs to be environmentally-focused.
So we now have a feed-in tariff law nearly ten years after the Germans introduced theirs. But, as always, the UK has done it half-heartedly with no clear timetable for the introduction of a FIT and too low a cap on the amount of energy the projects could produce, meaning the law is at present as good as useless.
Sounds familiar?
Gordon Brown recently had another of his famous parliamentary slips of the tongue - telling us we found ourselves in a depression. I don't want to be accused of adding to the downward spiral that will drag us down from a recession into a depression, but a look at the history of the Great Depression is certainly helpful.
Despite massive public works projects like the Hoover Dam, it was really the advent of the Second World War that jolted the world out of the depression when governments commandeered factories to turn them over to war technology.
The UK government needs to take more of a warlike approach to climate change - and the job saving/creation capacity it brings with it - and address the problem with the scale and urgency of a war effort.
Many green groups and economists have come together to propose something like this - for example the Green New Deal
The UK government needs to engage some clear, bold and fast thinking on stimulating demand for green technology instead of constantly playing catch-up with the rest of Europe, before it is "too little too late" for Midland manufacturing.