What price Engineering in a nation of shopkeepers?

In 1644 John Milton, made out a case in his Areopagitica for freedom of speech. In passing, he observed great energy and potential in the English people:

Lords and Commons of England, consider what nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a nation not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to.

Almost two hundred years later, as British engineering swept the world, Robert Stephenson's London and Birmingham Railway Company established its engineering works halfway between the two cities at Wolverton in Buckinghamshire. In its day the works serviced and even built locomotives, some of which ended up in Australia, but its main task was the design and building of railway carriages, for which it was, in its day, the largest works in the world.

Even after Dr Beeching's cuts, something of the former glory remains, operated by a company called Railcare which boasts on its website

considerable expertise in Vehicle and Component overhaul, Incident Repair and Spares and Logistics, Railcare offers customers a total Rolling Stock solution.

The word "solution," outside a chemical context, usually means Corporate Bullshit Bingo. Even with an order book rumoured to be full from October, the enterprise is now on the financial rocks, and on 31 July the accountants moved in.

Next comes the butcher's bill, beginning with some 100 engineering jobs. It may be that productive activity can be saved in Wolverton, or it may be that Tesco's, having already taken over half the site, will end up with the rest. Who can tell?

Four questions arise:

1. How much of an economy should manufacturing represent?
   Somewhere in every advanced nation someone has to be making things in the real world. The almost complete destruction of British manufacturing industry in the past thirty years has been driven by the idea that wealth creation is fundamentally about manipulating money in ingenious ways, rather than producing tangible goods and services. Surely we can’t run the whole economy on smoke and mirrors.
2. What is the value of skilled labour?
   When engineering jobs go, the the country loses far more than simply manufacturing capacity. It degrades a whole economy to replace high value jobs with low paid low skill jobs, especially if these are temporary.
3. Lions led by donkeys?
   When business is all about financial ingenuity not engineering capability, be very afraid. The god that has usually failed in the past fifty years is not engineering, but management.
4. What’s the difference between spending and investment?
   In an economy that seems to be constructed around debt, much of it lodged in a mortgage bubble that will burst the moment interest rates climb anywhere near their historic levels, it seems incredible that money cannot be found to invest in productive long term industry.

Milton’s vision gives way to a nightmare where a tiny number of well-heeled financial manipulators with associated drones and loan sharks bob around in a sea of temporary schemes, paupers (in or out of work) and former skilled workers, all up to their eyeballs in debt. 

What sort of a future is that supposed to offer?

Unto them that hash up small things...

...shall a Mighty Project be Given! Today’s the day for a big announcement — the route for HS2, a projected high speed London-Birmingham rail link through Buckinghamshire that has stirred strong feelings from our neighbours in the Chilterns, mainly on environmental grounds. Of course any large infrastructure project has to go somewhere, and there may be some tweaks in the mix after months of consultation, or not.

Historically, however annoyed people are, there have been thought to be few votes in transport. I remember a Community Forum years ago in Bracknell where groups were asked what really mattered to them and everyone was amazed that people said the main thing holding them back in their lives and businesses was the weakness and patchiness of UK transport in comparison with most other Western European nations.

There are some bright spots in the English transport firmament, but to achieve the kind of consistent system they have in Germany or Scandinavia you need to take a consistent approach over many years. Short-termism is the name of the UK game, in investment of all kinds.
This makes, inevitably, for a Great Car society, because at least people can get around that way even if is slow, expensive and ecologicaly questionable.

So is One Big Sexy project the answer? The fact is that any transport network is only as strong as its weakest link. There’s real weakness in English transport at its most local level, including lack of integration with infrequent and unreliable bus services. You can’t get to work five miles away in Wycombe from here for 9·00 a.m. by public transport because all the buses are dong the school run, so people jump in the car. If we really have £27Bn to spend, there are almost certainly other ways to increase the capacity of the network (double deckers, someone suggested) more dramatically, along existing lines.

Finally, the project seems to rely on the good times rolling again financially by 2016. They may, but rumbles abound about the Private Finance Initiative, a “privatisation good, government money bad” means the UK government has used for a while to finance infrastructure instead of public bonds.

The general effect is turning out much like trying to pay off your mortgage on your credit card.

For example a Christmas Tree for the Treasury costs £40 in cash, or £875 by PFI! The gross sums indicate that the UK has received benefit of £60BN from PFI for a cost to the Taxpayer of £260BN. The commitments extend in some cases thirty years into the future. Hmmm. And people wonder how we got into debt... Only from the most short-term of perspectives can it be that brilliant to pile on another £27BN of debt to our grandchildren for ten minutes off the time to Birmingham. You’d think.