Recently by David Bailey

This week David Cameron laid into Regional Development Agencies. The Tories, it now seems, would strip RDAs of their transport and planning powers and might even scrap some of them completely, aiming to unravel Labour's regional agenda "piece by piece'.

Cameron went on to say that "the whole experiment with regional assemblies has been a complete mistake. The halfway house we've now got, where RDAs are being given planning powers, is a disaster too... there's a very strong case, at least in parts of the country, that RDAs should go altogether".

Hang on a minute. Scrapping RDAs could well lead to a recentralisation of policy making and delivery in London. Do the Tories really think that this will help the West Midlands economy?

Rather, this proposal seems to miss the point; a lot of good has actually been done by developing policies at the regional and local level rather than in Whitehall, and in providing strategic oversight regionally.

I still can't quite believe that the Baggies have won promotion by ending up as Champions, whilst also reaching the semi-finals of the FA Cup where 'we' (you can see I'm a Baggies fan) put in a very creditable performance.

In fact, we haven't won anything for ages, and the chance for an open-top civic victory parade and party to celebrate our dizzying heights seemed a no-brainer. Well not to the PR chiefs down the Hawthorns who thought it was all too much hassle.

Being a Baggies fan, even a fairly lazy one like me who only makes a handful of matches a year, isn't exactly fun for much of the time. You're either biting your nails hoping to make promotion or the play-offs, or biting your nails hoping to avoid the drop.

Such is the reality of yo-yo football. Of course, it's all hugely exciting, but like others I do crave the boredom of mid-table mediocrity and safety. Until that happens it would make sense to celebrate our victories as they don't come around too often (my dad was still talking about that 68 Cup Final well into the 90s).

News in the Post today (read Duncan Tift's article here) that Shanghai Auto (SAIC) remains committed to the Longbridge site comes as welcome news given the uncertainty created in the wake of the recently announced StadCo pullout from MG TF production.

That MG TF production will finally restart in July this year also comes as some relief after lengthy delays given concerns over the quality of parts coming from China.

Let's get things in perspective, though. The TF is basically a 15-year old design with nearly all of the parts brought in from China. It is not a sustainable project beyond the very short term. And with StadCo leaving, we now basically see a screwdriver operation with very few linkages into the local economy and fewer benefits than we'd hoped for in terms of economic development.

That Shanghai are going ahead at all is the crucial thing, though. This keeps them interested in a site whether further production and R&D may come in time. It's here where the case needs to be made to SAIC. And there is a strong case to be made.

Things don't look too positive over attempts to restart MG car production at Longbridge. The announcement last week that StadCo is pulling out of producing car bodies (probably because of delays, unecrtainties and limited volumes if and when cars are ever actually made), has left other suppliers wondering what is going on and whether production is now feasible at all.

I'm sure that there have been some people at Nanjing who have been genuine in wanting to restart small scale MG car production at Longbridge. However, it is a small firm with few resources and doesn't really have much of a track record in developing and producing quality cars. It has had 3 years since it acquired MG Rover and has yet to get its act together at Longbridge. Little wonder people are growing increasingly sceptical of it really making a go of this.

Its takeover by Shanghai at the start of this year raised hopes that the bigger firm could now commit resources and bring R&D back to Longbridge. Well, the StadCo pullout has blown a big hole in that plan and urgent answers are now needed as to what is going on.

Ideally, of course, we'd like to see car manufacturing and R&D come back to Longbridge. It's just that many are wondering if this will ever happen.

News last week that house prices fell by 2.5% last month (and 5% in the West Midlands) was probably the moment the penny dropped for most people that the credit crunch really is serious.

Indeed, the sub-prime fuelled financial crisis engulfing the world is seen by many as the worst since the 1930s. The US Federal Reserve has had to organise a bail-out of one major US bank and the government there will later this year inject a $150 billion fiscal stimulus package into the economy in an attempt to get it moving (and let's leave aside the fact that the absurd Stability and Growth Pact would probably constrain most Eurozone governments from engineering such a fiscal boost).

Britain shares some of the worst features of the US economy (a house price bubble, some reckless bank lending and a consumption binge that has seen savings rates fall and the trade deficit widen), albeit perhaps in a less intense form.

I'm having a quick gelato in between lectures at the University of Bologna and hopefully have enough time for a quick blog...

I'm awaiting exit polls as the polls shut here just a couple of hours ago. Yesterday I accompanied my Italian in-laws down to the polling station and was bowled over by the site; hoards of people queuing up to do their civic duty and to vote. And this is meant to be a low turnout; maybe as low as 80% (yes, eighty percent! Politicians back home would die for that).

Maybe the more proportional electoral system has something to do with it, or maybe having the polls open on a Sunday also helps (I never quite why understood why we have to do it on a Thursday). Or maybe it's just the Italian zest for life (whether football, clothes, cars or ice-cream) that makes them want to go and vote... they certainly do it often enough; they're voting for what will be their 63rd government since the Second World War.

News today that that StadCo will no longer produce MGTF bodyshells at Longbridge for Nanjing raises some urgent questions as to Nanjing's intentions at the site. In particular, is MGTF production still going ahead?

StadCo and Nanjing said simply that "Stadco and NAC jointly confirm that for commercial reasons, production of bodyshells for the MGTF by Stadco will cease. Both parties are working to ensure minimum disruption to the workforce." They added that "consultations with elected employee representatives will commence immediately and every effort will be made to assist those affected by this announcement".

Until today, StadCo had been seen as a key partner for Nanjing in its efforts to restart small scale MGTF production at Longbridge, and had shifted body-shell production there from its site in Coventry (StadCo had always made the body shells for the MGTF, back under MG Rover days).

Quite where this leaves MGTF production is the big question.

Ford's imminent announcement of a sale of Jaguar and Land Rover (expected next week) to Tata is welcome news and comes as no surprise.

Tata is a huge Indian conglomerate with a turnover getting on for $22 billion. Its deep pockets have allowed it to outbid rivals constrained by the recent credit crunch.

Ford are flogging off some prize assets after a record $12 billion loss in 2006 and a downward spiral of sales of gas guzzling SUVs and pick-up trucks in the US prompted by the high price of oil.

Indeed, Ford's US sales were down by some 12% last year and Toyota has just replaced it as the number 2 producer in the US for the first time.

To its credit, Ford has invested heavily in both Jaguar and Land Rover. Yet it lost lots of money.

Partly this is down to exchange rates, with sterling at a twenty five year high against the dollar of over $2. This has made selling to the key US market very difficult and has impacted badly on Jaguar sales there.

This wasn't helped by Ford's inability to understand the European luxury car market.