Skinflint's City Diary
I am sorry if I seem always to be criticising — perhaps a glance at my portrait above may explain my carping nature — and promise to try and find something nice to say about somebody. Soon. In the meantime let me direct your attention to the last meeting of ministers, the leaders of unions and industry at the National Economic Development Office.
They agreed that the country must make better use of its manpower and investment. My goodness, you must be thinking, that must have taken some argument to get agreement on such an outre notion. You would be right. Sir Ronald McIntosh, director general of the National Economic Development Office, said "the significance of today's meeting was that it showed ability and willingness to carve out common ground".
But that was not all, not by a long chalk. Those chaps at the council meeting must hve been at each other's throats all day because they also decided that there ought to be more industrial investment, if industry bought more capital equipment there would be more people producing the machinery so there would be lower unemployment; but more investment means less money elsewhere (nothing gets past these brains); retained earnings are an important source of finance (the amount has approached two thirds of total in the past); the channel for cash ought to suit the people using it.
An impressive list of surprising opinions you must admit. Let us suggest more controversial ideas for future council arguments; Britain ought to export more; all things considered, all other factors remaining constant, taking it all round, it might be nice to have a lower rate of inflation; it would be jolly to combine more leisure with higher productivity and increased living standards; industrial machinery should produce goods. But perhaps these are too difficult to command agreement.
NEDO itself put in a paper to say that inflation was a major block to investment, but curiously it also argued for lower government spending to allow more funds for ,industry, and then went on to admit that shortage of cash is not the major problem. Which all makes the paper seem like another collection of truisms and platitudes collected with such avidity that they ignore the fact that some are contradictory. Certainly one can agree that industrial investment has been too low for too long. Governments have accused industry of being pusillanimous and inept, and industry has said national policy has fluctuated so wildly that markets and profits were quite unpredictable. Both are probably right, so one way to break the deadlock is for government to given an undertaking that come hell or high water, unemployment or sterling crises, it will stick to its policy for say three years. Then industry would have one fewer variable to contend with but it would have to promise to stop screaming for government action to inflate or disinflate, etc.
In the meantime we shall await the words of NEDO and of the council members with eager apathy. Watch this space a month from now for further revolutionary concepts.
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