Recently in Business Category

High Speed 2 presents great opportunities to redress the UK's North-South imbalance. But it can only capitalise on these opportunities if it's part of a bigger agenda than getting people from A to B.

In an article about High Speed 2 in Friday's London Evening Standard, Andrew Neather asserted that getting to the Bull Ring ("but hey! did you really want to go?") in less than an hour wasn't worth the £30bn ticket, echoing Paul Dale's blog though from a perspective much closer to St Pancras and HS1.

Kraft Chief Exectuive Irene Rosenfeld has sent a letter to Business Secretary Lord Mandelson insisting that the proposed takeover of Cadbury is "good news for British manufacturing" and promising to act with "respect for Cadbury's heritage, people and identity".

While it is a personal letter, and I don't believe it has been publicly released yet, it is in effect the promise Kraft is making to the British government and Britain as a whole.

Here is what it says:

Rt Hon Lord Mandelson
Secretary of State
Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0ET
19 January 2010

Dear Secretary of State:

Further to my letter to you of December 10th, you will know that this morning we announced the detailed terms of our Final Offer for Cadbury and that the board of Cadbury unanimously recommends Cadbury Securityholders to accept the terms of this Offer.

I am confident that the combination of Kraft Foods and Cadbury is good news for both companies. As we have said, the Offer reflects our view of the strength of Cadbury's business, its brands and the future potential for growth. I also believe that, over the long term, this is good news for British manufacturing and will enable us to accelerate growth beyond what the two companies could achieve alone.

I recognise the concerns of the UK government and I can again assure you of our intentions to proceed with sincere respect for Cadbury's heritage, people and identity.

Yours sincerely,

Irene B Rosenfeld

The Centre for Cities report : University Challenge: Growing the knowledge economy in Birmingham was published yesterday. It's a disconcerting read, shaking what the city believes about itself.

Manufacturing output static. The regional output gap at £15bn. 30% workless in the region, close to 40% in Birmingham.* Of the employed in 2008, only 15% in manufacturing, a figure which has fallen a further 11% this year. (see WMRO)

The seemingly relentless grip of old-style manufacturing on our psyche may shift at last.

Having raised the issue of food security (along with a low-cost, convivial alternative-style means of regeneration) as a topic for their Annual Conference last week with publication of Roger Levett's essay in Fit for Purpose (see blog entry), the WMRO appears to have promptly ignored it all.

Food after all, appears as if by magic. When the Conference delegates ate their lunch, I'll bet they thought little, if at all, about the fragility of the just-in-time systems that got it there, let alone where on earth it originally came from.

Or, as pertinently, where it all went to. This includes what the food companies chuck at source or in transit, the freegan stuff the supermarkets discard, the 30% we throw away, and the dung we produce.

There was on-line comment and a flurry of emails after last week's entry Green shoots of recovery. This was about Roger Levett's essay on guerrilla spud-growing in the WMRO publication West Midlands: Fit for the Future.

I was led to the eloquent and engaging talk by the architect Carolyn Steel at the 2009 TED Conference in Oxford. She wrote Hungry City: How food shapes our lives.

The WM Regional Observatory has published a 10-essay collection under the title West Midlands: Fit for the future: Positioning the region for economic recovery.

These essays are to be discussed at their Annual Conference on 20th October.

Only one contribution, however, adds something surprising, even startling to the debate. It is by Roger Levett.

But let's start with the Foreword by Ian Austin MP. I quote: we know what we need to do to make the region the workshop of the world again.

We know? Eh? Workshop of the world? Which century is this man in? Or is he merely pandering to some vague nostalgia about what went on in Matthew Boulton's time?