Keir Starmer is inviting the world to the UK to invest here, but he's looking for the wrong type of investment. We don't need his ‘big ticket' schemes that will become white elephants as we head for a world where sustainability will matter most of all. What we really require is investment in the diverse skills that the people of this country have but which need development – and there's no sign he's going to deliver that.
The audio version is here:
The transcript is:
This week, Keir Starmer has had an investment summit. At that summit, he's been trying to induce foreign companies to come to invest in the UK. And my question is “Why hasn't he been talking about the investment that needs to be made by the UK in the people of this country?” Because that is most certainly not what was on the agenda at his investment summit.
He wants big new ports, he wants big new infrastructure, he wants digital warehouses, he wants whatever it is that makes things and despoils the countryside by the sound of it, and he's going to scrap every regulation that stops him getting what he wants. Or so he says. But the reality is, I don't think that's going to make much difference to this country.
Why? Because the people of this country are not being invested in. Let me explain.
I had a very interesting eavesdropping session recently. I do eavesdrop when I'm sitting in things like coffee shops and so on. I quite enjoy listening to what people are talking about. It's how I learn what's going on in the real economy. And I think it's important to understand just what people are discussing about the local economy so that I can understand what is going on.
On this occasion, there was somebody who runs an employment agency talking to a potential employer. Only what became very clear was that the people the employment agency supplied were never going to be on the books of the employer.
They were always going to remain on the books of the employment agency, so it was going to be the employer who hired out the services of staff.
What sort of staff were we talking about? Tractor drivers. Now, I live in a particularly rural area, around Ely in Cambridgeshire, where there are an almighty lot of fields, and we still have a use, therefore, for tractor drivers, and they are immensely valuable people. Without them, our local economy would not work.
Their jobs have admittedly disappeared in large numbers over the years because of the increasing size of tractors and increasing mechanization. And these days they're even threatened entirely because of the rise of AI, because it is expected that at some time in the future, lots of work done on the fields by tractors, combined harvesters and so on, will simply be programmed into GPS and everything will run from there.
But right now, we definitely need tractor drivers; people with very decided skills working on very difficult farms around this part of the world because we have very soft soil which requires a particular ability.
And you have to know a whole range of skills. They have to know how to plough, how to seed, how to hoe, how to literally be involved in the harvest process and a great deal more. They also have to know how to handle complex chemicals because they will be in many parts of the year, literally applying those chemicals, and therefore have to be qualified in them and on and on.
My point is that this is a skilled job, which we really need. So, you would expect farmers to want to invest in the people who work for them so they would truly understand the needs of the organisation that they were working for.
Instead, they're going to hire people by the hour from an employment agency to come and sit in their tractor, whatever it might be, and do what is required of them for the briefest period possible to maximise the return to the farmer. But as a consequence, the tractor driver won't know the peculiarities of that farm.
They won't know that that particular corner of the field, for example, is not ploughed because that's where the goldfinch nests, and the farmer wants to keep them.
They won't also understand the vagaries of the landscape. And there will be vagaries in all the landscapes around here. The bits that you need to take care of. The bits which can't be ploughed for all sorts of reasons. That won't be known because they won't have accumulated that knowledge. They won't have been invested in, in other words. They might know how to drive a John Deere or a New Holland or whatever it is - the things that always cause the traffic jams in my part of the world - but in reality, they will have not got the real skills that let them add value in the places where they work.
And that, to me, is actually quite frightening because that skill is being destroyed as a result. It isn't there anymore; it's not being passed on. And this skill is required. The landscape is not capable of being used in the way that it is being treated, as if it is merely a material input into the food production process. It is itself a living organism that needs to be cared for. And once upon a time, farmers and all their employees used to do that. But you can't if you're hired by an employment agency and charged out by the hour to somebody who wants to minimize their costs.
Now, as a result, key skills are being lost. And that will get worse when AI replaces the tractor driver altogether.
And the same problem is being replicated all over the place, throughout the economy. Skills that have been valuable for generations and which would still be valuable if we understood the true nature of worth - the thing that matters to us as human beings - are being destroyed by the financialization of all the relationships that go on around the workplace.
We aren't investing in the right things.
We are not investing in enduring knowledge.
We aren't investing in that deep understanding of process that lets anyone add value in the organisation in which they work.
Keir Starmer wants to bring in all those high-ticket items that look flash and can have big logos on them and which he can turn into videos which will, no doubt, at the next election, be broadcast to us all to try to persuade us to vote for Keir Starmer again.
It's much harder to feature investment in the tractor driver in that way. But we need investment in tractor drivers and everybody else with similarly unsung skills right across our economy. Because unless we do that, we do not have a future economy.
Starmer doesn't understand what really makes our economy, our society and our well-being tick. He's going for the wrong things. He's going, as I've said, for big ticket. And what we should be looking for is small, continual, ongoing investment in people, because that's what makes the difference to our society, and we've forgotten to do it.
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Co-operative. Farming co-op that delivers the people needed to the farmers. Bunch of farmers could own the co-op and the people with specific skills are employed, full time by the co-op. Good god, how hard could that be?
Moving to your last para: “Starmer doesn’t understand”……..you could have left it at that – an ex-human rights lawyer – turned to the dark side and knowing very little outside of his narrow expertise..
Agreed, to both ideas
What you say is correct. I think its been a problem in the past as well where big projects like the Eden project in Cornwall get funding because they are visible and high profile whereas more smaller projects which would be more sustainable do not. Its a significant problem. What sort of policies do we need to make the change?
A belief in the local
I’m going to split my comments into two posts because they make different points.
But looking at Farming, and almost any other manual job, and I will add of course that while their formal training may have been lacking jobs like farm and railway workers always required a high level of skill even if it was not recognised and the ability to plug away outdoors in bad weather at a heavy physical task, something that never gets the recognition it deserves.
If you havnt though watch Clarksons Farm, OK Clarkson is very annoying and a prat which probably makes it very watchable. But look at his two sidekicks, Gerald Cooper the 70 something dry stone waller and general Gofer and 20 something Kaleb Cooper, memorably described by Clarkson as ‘The Amoeba’ and try and get your head around everything they both know, buildings, machinery, crops, animals etc and you realise that what we might think of as a ‘manual’ worker these days has an impressive level of brains as well as brawn – and in Kalebs case a Wikipedia entry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaleb_Cooper
Much to agree with
My father was the County Librarian of Scotland’s biggest county but despite his relatively lofty position, he took his turn manning the issue desk at headquarters branch on a Saturday morning. I would take advantage of this to get a lift into town to go swimming at the local baths. I was waiting for Dad to finish one day, and saw him chatting to a couple of chaps at said issue desk. After they left, he said to me that the first of this pair was a schoolteacher and had gone off with an armful of “LCC”. This was a disparaging term for “love ,crime and cowboy”, books that he bought on behalf of the library by weight – no attempt to select by author, content etc – this choice was left to the bookseller, who was well aware of what was required. The second chap, he said, was a shepherd who lived in an isolated but-n-ben, a regular customer who went away with books on philosophy, astronomy and such like. He was an interesting man with deep knowledge of his enviroment and could express his knowledge and experience clearly, even although he was not an “educated” man. You may draw your own conclusions!
🙂
Two things – extending Mr Jeffress’ point:
.
Mobiot’s book Regenesis, Chapter 4. Tolly (& his team) work 8 hectares in the Thames valley. The soil is poor but they get yields equal to that of farmers on good land. 500 familes get 0.25 tonne of fruit and veg per year per family. No fertiliser of any sort is used – not even animal dung. Tolly is self-taught.
Gwnyfor Evans: Land of My Fathers – page 448 – discussed who won the Chair and Crown @ the National Eisteddfod. Evans remarked that one year chair was won by a man. “the learned adjudicators taking it for granted that the poem was the work of an academic”. The man was a Pembrokeshire quarry man.
The society we live in no long values learning, experience, talent (unless it is the sort suitable for something imbecilic on the telly).
Much to agree with
Look folks, modern politicians are not practical people. Their practicality is limited to words only.
They are good at moving theories about but have no idea – increasingly actually – about how things actually work. But they see themselves as managers.
Stymied is a shining example of this.
Politicians should serve as enablers to society but because of corruption enable only the top slice of society these days.
Oh, and themselves of course – because that is what all this about now – using politics to enrich yourself. I think Tony Blair led the way on that.
Richard,
I emailed you last night about this and while I dont think I inspired this post its close enough.
The UK Fertility rate is dropping, its now about 1.49 children per woman, well below the ‘steady state’ rate of 2.08. The same thing is happening across the world.
So if we have fewer children firstly we can afford to spend more on them and secondly as they are an increasingly scarce resource surely we can afford to have them not reach their full potential.
Not only that but can we afford what one US writer called ‘Million Dollar Men’ ie the ones that didnt and instead ended up in lives of crime and addiction, at great expense to Society.
This was made yesterday morning….
But thanks for the mail anyway
I think a low fertility rates are, generally, a good thing (although it can be overdone). That’s because almost all our environmental problems are exacerbated, if not caused by, too many people.
Of course, low fertility results in an aging population, which is a potential problem. But it cannot be solved by trying to ensure an ever growing population, which is unsustainable.
Which comes back to care, education and training. If we are going to have fewer people, and we must, then we need to maximise their utility (whilst bearing in mind that they are people, with needs and who need care). So much potential is wasted. Not just drug abusers (many of whom are probably self medicating for lack of care). Not our overcrowded prisons (why do we put so many people in prison; it’s anachronistic and there are better ways). But the shear failure to let everyone reach their potential. More education, at all levels, is a must. It’s been allowed to run down for too long, with school buildings (and hospitals) literally crumbling. Sadly this government shows no sign of addressing the issue (their priority seems to be wooing inward investment and hoping for trickle down). I hope they will yet step up to the plate.
And an apology – I seem to have been ranting a bit this morning. It is so frustrating to see everything going to hell in a handcart when it doesn’t have to be this way.
Rant away…
I totally agree. Thanks for highlighting another important issue.
You’re right Starmer is going for the wrong things, the big ticket items. Given that inward investment does not increase the money within the UK, then the money for these investments must be instead of spending elsewhere. The inward investors are using their wealth to distort the priorities for this country, unresisted by our supine government.
What matters is people, and that’s where we should be investing.
Apparently 40.6% of GPs were born outside the UK (from The Times), of whom 35% report nationality other than British (NHS staff from overseas: statistics – UK Parliament). I am, of course, delighted that they are here. We badly need them, and more, GPs. But, why on earth are we relying on foreign doctors? It seems a tad immoral if they come from poorer countries who badly need their services. Why are we not training enough of our own? We have lots of well qualified young people who would like to be doctors but can’t get a place to train. And that’s in spite of the huge student debts they build up, which encourages them to go abroad after training. What is wrong with our crazy country?
And that, of course, is just doctors. We need to educate and train people for all sorts of other professions and skills, and we’re not doing so. Why not?
Poaching, in the short term, is cheaper. This appeals both to those politicians who believe there’s a limited supply of money and also to those who know that to be untrue but wish to maintain the fiction anyway. Neither have to worry about the long term as they know they won’t be in post or power for long.
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Yesterday, which I have just received summaries of from City trade bodies, including former employers, was not a surprise if one considers who has been advising the government (and shadow cabinet before, Blair, Mandelson and their owners) and and who the “douceurs” are aimed at, future employers after Labour is ousted in 2029.
In opposition and in talks with the City, not even the City, but private equity and US firms, Labour made it clear that it had no time and saw no reason to involve small business, civil society, unions, regions / nations etc.
That’s about it…
Your last para now turned into a tweet – thank you for the inspiration
The practice of using agency staff also destroys the investment that people have in the oganisation they work for as has been evident in so many institutions. A consistent well managed team will invariably be more productive and able to develop their skills and knowledge. So much of that has been destroyed by putting work out to tender.
I also agree that so many so called “manual” jobs are not recognised for the skills they require.
“Skills that have been valuable for generations…. are being destroyed by the financialization of all the relationships”
Yes. I see this very day in my line of work (ship’s crews) – everybody wants fully trained, experienced captains and engineers, but very few are willing to pay to train them or give them a chance to gain that experience.
I only got where I am today because people invested in me. Why has that fallen so far out of fashion?
This desire for ‘foreign investment’ is just an extension of the privatisation agenda isn’t it?
We have a government that believes ‘there is no [government] money’ so it has to be imported from the private sector (and foreign private sector at that) in the vain pretence that these investors are philanthropists offering their wealth to support society.
It’s nonsense. Since Thatcher’s day we have seen (surely) that this is nonsense. Investors are in it for the returns, they aren’t philanthropists. These so-called ‘big ticket’ projects will cost us dear.
‘Big racket’ projects would be nearer the mark.
Thank you, Richard.
Just read your tweet.
I must confess that this mass exclusion works from top to bottom and bottom up. Many of the new intake of Labour MPs, wannabes and advisers (whether SPADs or still at party HQ) are versed in politics and / or PR only and see no world, life, communities etc. beyond SW1. Some represent seats whence they came, but that was just a parachute for a safe seat. I’m looking at you, the MP for Ainsty and Selby and one of Streeting’s gang. My MP, Laura Kyrke-Smith, is little better, one of David Miliband’s gang.
I have attended events facilitated by the Labour in the City Network and noticed how few are City professionals, but many work as lobbyists and PR types with some connection to the City. They have little insight and, frankly, none of the technical expertise the likes of Richard, John S and Mike have, so we get lots of platitudes, cliches, reheated Thatcherism – and long hops from an ignorant MSM.
Thanks
Investment has to be paid for over many years. Why should those repayments go to private investors and foreign owned entities? Why not UK government investment? Obvious, surely?
I’ve heard this referred to as taskification, complex work is broken up into tasks, for which pay can be lowered and lowered. The problem is, breaking work into tasks leaves those doing them bored out of their minds, and clueless as to how all of the tasks fit together. The only benefit, short-term is more profit. Ultimately, the downsides are as you highlight here. I remember reading a newspaper article about someone who had survived, lost in the jungle for two weeks, and what a marvel this was. Until you realise that he was surrounded by countless creatures that do exactly the same, far better, for their entire lives. It’s scary the skills and knowledge we’ve lost over centuries.
Thank you, Richard.
I just reread your post and comments and thought of something further to your eavesdrop. It would be good if you could pop into the Red Lion or Blue Boar and listen not just to the SPADs and wannabes, but the hacks who hold court for them, too. I have had the opportunity a few times before covid and listened bemused, infuriated and alarmed in equal measure. If free, I would love to join you.
You make me think of how, apparently, Johns Bird and Fortune came up with material, some pub in the Surrey Hills.
Oddly, not that far from there tonight
Bird and fortune did a whole skit on train leasing based on my work and Rory Bremner did as well at one time.
Thank you, Richard.
When people work, they produce, often generating assets (products, infrastructure, etc) that have value.
When people don’t work, not only is nothing of value produced, but it costs money to support unemployed people.
It seems to me that it makes sense that if someone is not employed, then it is in the interest of the state to employ them.
Which brings me to the the idea of having a government job guarantee, which has these additional benefits:
1 Communities get what they need
2 People are valued and improve self-esteem
3 Workers pay taxes
4 Workers improve their skills
5 No benefits/welfare are needed
Further information:
Pavlina Tcherneva — The Case for a Job Guarantee, discussion at Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EmlviHQT7M
Job Guarantee at The Gower Initiative for Modern Money Studies.
https://gimms.org.uk/job-guarantee/
The Case for a Job Guarantee (Jun 2020) by Pavlina R. Tcherneva (Author)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Case-Job-Guarantee-Pavlina-Tcherneva/dp/1509542108
Thanks
Curious, then, that neither we nor more dedicated folk like IDS aren’t chasing down the children of the wealthy to free them of the awful vice of worklessness…or perhaps it’s time to wheel this out again;
“Why is Economania so upset by the cuts in social security?
Quite apart from the inhumanity of it, it’s damaging to the economy. If you’re in the UK, that’s your economy, so you should be upset too.
When, back in the 1880s, then German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck proposed what his critics called state socialism and we’ve come to know as social security, we understand he did so because, by giving small but regular amounts of money to the unemployed, the sick and disabled, and those too old and infirm to work, those people were turned into economic assets.
Necessity dictated they spend the money they were given, increasing the velocity of money in the economy and creating an environment which encouraged corporate investment.
Normal taxation, then as now, took care of any potential problems with inflation.
This created what’s now known as a virtuous circle, one we should, if we had any education and sense, be emulating. Instead, we’re cutting benefits.
This has the effect of reducing the velocity and amount of money in circulation, damaging the economy.
Remember, the claimant spends it with the butcher who spends it with the baker who spends it with the candlestick maker. Social security is security for the whole neighbourhood as, when govt’s doing its job, despite the onset of hard times they know there’ll still be money circulating in the economy overall.
Further, money that isn’t spent or ‘loaned’ into the economy isn’t ever actually created, so it’s wildly misleading to misrepresent austerity as savings, just as it is to represent savings as something the national economy needs when what we use for money, government IOUs we remind you, can be & are created to order.”
Still at https://www.economania.co.uk/various-authors/why-social-security.htm
Richard,
Do you have any idea why this October 2018 report from SPERI about the cost of the City of London is no longer available? https://taxjustice.net/press/press-release-city-of-london-costs-uk-4-5tn-in-lost-economic-growth/
Thank you.
Leah
The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) rose by 1.7% in the 12 months to September 2024, down from 2.2% in August.
On a monthly basis, CPI was little changed in September 2024, down from a rise of 0.5% in September 2023.
The largest downward contribution to the monthly change in both CPIH and CPI annual rates came from transport, with larger negative contributions from air fares and motor fuels; the largest offsetting upward contribution came from food and non-alcoholic beverages.
Core CPIH (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 4.0% in the 12 months to September 2024, down from 4.3% in August; the CPIH goods annual rate fell from negative 0.9% to negative 1.4%, while the CPIH services annual rate fell from 5.9% to 5.6%.
Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) rose by 3.2% in the 12 months to September 2024, down from 3.6% in August; the CPI goods annual rate fell from negative 0.9% to negative 1.4%, while the CPI services annual rate fell from 5.6% to 4.9%.
“…Core CPI (excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco) …..”
I can see why discretionary spending on alcohol and tobacco are excluded from ‘Core CPI, but food and energy?
What is CPi actually measuring if these things are removed from the calculation?
A fix to suggest oppression by imposing high interest rates must continue
I was involved in design and creativity in marketing for most of my life. In 1990 I was running my own marketing/design business when we invested in Apple Macintosh computers. We were at the forefront of this new design technology, ahead of the local typographic and print services and witnessed over a twenty year period the impact technology had on the entire process. We used to employ typographic designers purely to layout and specify text to be pasted down onto the dartboards that made up the foundation stone of everything that went to print. The Mac disposed of them in small agencies overnight, and with that went a lot of the highly skilled craft and design nuance in typography.
Then the reprographic industry caught up, and with the dawning of Photoshop designers could place colour photography directly into digital files along with the typography which they themselves created (albeit automated and un nuanced). This was then sent directly to a machine that output 4 or 5 colour composite printing film that could be used to produce the printing plates.
This process bypassed an important and hghly skilled set of professional stages, firstly photographs often needed optimising before committing to the reproduction phase, these tasks were undertaken by highly skilled retouchers and repro professionals who would over or under expose images to optimise the intensity of colour and richness of reproduction in the final print. These massively skilled people were the invisible geniuses behind the glossy photo gravure printing trade, artists who were never recognised for their skills by anyone outside the print trade.
Designers understood their skills and relied upon them to enhance and produce the near perfect reproduction of their design aspirations, all gone at a stroke as the printing process became fully digitised.
Then came digital photography, cheap as chips and accessible to anyone. So the quality of photography going into commercial print was now in the hands of designers rather than highly skilled (and pretty expensive) photographers. Again we lost a whole raft of highly skilled trade photographers. A massive depletion of “invisible” skills that had previously gone into all the printed material – from magazines, brochures, packaging, shop graphics, advertising hoardings and so on. The subsequent de skilling of all these areas are plain to see as an old graphics man of 75.
But the young generations today have no idea in what they have never experienced through these skills and their consumption of visual media through a phone or computer screen allows even further degradation of visual representation even further.
So what’s the result of all this tech, massively fewer highly skilled professionals passing on vitally important skill and knowledge that enhanced our visual perception of anything printed, a loss of richness, nuance, creativity and depth of knowledge.
Automation de-skills us more rapidly than we know until it hits us like a brick wall, and we’re face this ever more rapidly and widely.
So where do we go in our search for richness and depth of skills in the future? Surely it has to be in those vital areas of human to human interaction. The nurturing skills of caring, nursing, helping, teaching, training, maintaining, creating, entertaining, the human skills that so often we under value in the face of consuming so much of what – in truth – we don’t really need or really value.
It all points towards a future that doesn’t need mindless unsustainable capital growth at its centre, but one where people working and playing together in health and wellbeing is the guiding principal, one that is more in harmony with human coexistence and less threat to our global environment. And our politicians need to understand that. And some already do and they are all in the Green Party!
Thanks
A little story – my son is trying film photography right now because he knows having to pay per image makes him think very hard about what he is doing – and the payback is in the improvement in his thinking processes. He’s using a camera I used as a teenager, which is where I learned basics of photography which our modern cameras can do for him, but which he realises he needs to know the way I do.