In my own small way I suppose I am 'a member of the business community' so I am oddly annoyed when I read in the paper that 'business leaders' want the government to do something, especially when virtually everything these self styled unelected 'business leaders want is the diametric opposite of what I want. Why is this I wonder? Well it could be because the average time horizon of most of these businessmen is a maximum of say three years while mine is, anyway when I plant an oak tree, two hundred years. You get my point I hope. So when these drips warn Cameron against doing anything which might jeopardise our relationship with Europe they don't have the long term interests of the country at heart but purely the next couple of years P&L account. Similarly of course when they complain about immigration controls they are worrying about the supply of cheap labour drying up not of the long term social costs which uncontrolled immigration brings.
In any event the track record of 'business leaders' is abysmal. A trawl through the newspapers of the past would reveal the 'business leaders' have very little judgement about what is good for the country or indeed for business. Business leaders for instance were loud in their desire for us to join the euro. Enough said, but it would be better for their businesses if these self important prats concentrated their efforts on running them rather than telling the Prime Minister how to run the country.
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Thursday, 10 January 2013
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- Francis Fulford
- Francis Fulford is a writer, broadcaster and television personality. He lives at Great Fulford, a beautiful country estate in Devon that has been the home of the Fulford family since around 1190.
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Hear Hear Francis!
ReplyDeleteA starting point would be to stop the asymmetry in their compensation : to make failure as fiscally penalising as fiscally rewarding as their successes are. That needs amendments to corporate and legal codes.
We are fundamentally different from Europe, and particularly in the post war era.
Britain and our former colonies believe in market solutions for our problems. We are a race of entrepreneurs and inventors - our glorious past bears testimony to that. The continent is fundamentally different: the market is seen as an enemy of sorts. Deeply ironic, and at the same time hugely ignorant given the collapse of "socialism" right on their own doorsteps 24 years ago!
I'll leave you with an example of how that works in practice:
the rationale for the single currency was for consumers to be able to use their money across Europe. But by as early as 1986 the market had found solutions to this: technology was utilised in ATMs, allowing people to withdraw money from their own bank accounts across the country and indeed national borders.
Case 2: fluctuating exchange rates made corporate planning across the Eurozone more difficult - for example a British company wanting to build a factory in Spain. Once again the market in London found solutions: creating interest rate and currency swaps - insurance protection for moves in rates and exchanges rates.
So two major reasons for the single currency solved - without a single Brussell's bureaucrat involved.
Instead of recognizing these important breakthroughs the bureaucrats proceeded with deluded single currency notions, leading to today's shocking social problems in Europe.
Instead of lobbying Mr Cameron it would be nice to see our captains of industry publicly lobbying the European Union to respect the importance of the private sector in developing the prosperity of its member nations.
Keep up the fight!