Sir Keith Burnett, Vice Chancellor at Sheffield University has written a piece for The Guardian (HERE) about the role of the state in bringing products to market. Not surprisingly, he thinks it should be a big one. But he makes the usual fundamental error:
"Firstly, a progressive industrial strategy promotes innovation in new products and processes. We are pretty good at this. Then you need a system to accumulate money and land to build the factories that make the products. We are not so good at that"
No, we are not "pretty good" at innovation in new products and processes. This is the problem. If companies were as good as he thinks there would be no difficulty in raising finance and expertise to bring products to the market. Government would do a terrible job and spend a fortune helping to develop and promote completely unsaleable products. Let us not forget at some point very intelligent and well paid people stood around things like the Sinclair C5, the Austin Allegro and lots of other junk and proclaimed them world beaters. UK manufacturers simply cannot recognise dogs. Unfortunately, the consumer can and that's why we buy German and Japanese in such quantities.
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