Wednesday 17th March 2010

One last chance to get it Right?

Never before have had I found myself so profoundly worried for the long-term future of the UK economy. Britain is in serious economic trouble. Not only have we just had the longest and deepest recession on record, but our recovery is one of the weakest in the developed world.

Our political and economic leaders have allowed us to run up unprecedented levels of debt, whilst selling off our assets and deserting our manufacturing sector.
They have poured billions into the banks who are now failing in their duty to provide funds at sensible rates to mortgage applicants and businesses, but continue to pay obscene bonuses to the chosen few.

Those same self-serving individuals take no responsibility for their gross incompetence. Our politicians appear to believe that all they have to do is increase taxes and cut services, whilst protecting their own lifestyles of course, and everything will be OK again.

We are staring economic disaster in the face. It is irrefutable that we need to pay down the debt and we must start now. In doing so, however, we must invest in key sectors such as housing to create jobs and keep people in decent low carbon housing. This will go some way to protecting the UK manufacturing of building materials, which is vital if we are to create real wealth in the future. This will also ensure we retain and develop employment opportunities which will prove a vital factor in our long-term recovery.

We have learnt to our cost that we cannot rely on our political and economic leaders to act properly and shrewdly to manage our economy. We must stand up and fight now to engage the new Parliament and GET BRITAIN BUILDING!

2009

So it’s goodbye to yet another Housing Minister!

Spare the tears for Margaret Beckett. True she inherited a housing industry on its knees but she has done the sum total of nothing to change this situation. Her attitude has been appalling and one could be forgiven for believing that she had no real interest in the job in the first place, perhaps preferring lifestyle in her beloved caravan.

As we welcome John Healey to the crease as the new Housing Minister, we must hope that we have at least found a Minister who will work with us to deal with the very serious issues that face us and that are at the very heart of the creation of sustainable communities where people have jobs and decent homes to live in.

Welcome aboard, John. Let’s hope we can together “Get Britain Building”.

You can't spin us out of this one!

Having achieved cross party support from Westminster, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, you may believe that the instigators of the “Get Britain Building” campaign are feeling pretty pleased with the progress so far.

Not so, we are instead enormously frustrated with a political system that seems almost totally ineffective and seems to believe that re-presenting the same old plans and money is the answer to preventing the catastrophic decline in our industry and the economy as a whole.

The budget came and went with nothing but a few scraps for the UK’s single most important industry and still we remain on course to lose some 450,000 jobs by the end of 2009!

Instead the Government introduces scrapage schemes to support the sales of foreign produced cars and have the audacity to say that they did this to find favour with those few consumers they interviewed in a series of focus groups. It is clear that the Government is far more interested in sound bite politics that play to the gallery, rather than solving the underlying economic problems, saving UK jobs and fueling the long-term recovery we so desperately need.

Enough is enough. We need urgent action before it's too late. The time has come for our leaders to stand up and be counted and really deliver a build program based on a cut in VAT, investment in existing homes and 75,000 new social homes.