• Privacy policy
  • T&C’s
  • FAQ
  • Meet the Team
  • About The London Economic
  • Advertise
TLE ONLINE SHOP!
NEWSLETTER
SUPPORT THE LONDON ECONOMIC
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
  • TLE
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Food
  • Lifestyle
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech/Auto
No Result
View All Result
The London Economic
No Result
View All Result
Home Business and Economics Economics

Winners and Losers of the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement

We are in an era of massive step change. In our politics, in our health and life expectancy, in our working habits, in our living arrangements, in our climate, in our communications, in our security, in the way we do business, in everything. Almost. It is clear there is one area where there is no […]

Guest Contributor by Guest Contributor
November 24, 2016
in Economics

We are in an era of massive step change. In our politics, in our health and life expectancy, in our working habits, in our living arrangements, in our climate, in our communications, in our security, in the way we do business, in everything. Almost. It is clear there is one area where there is no change: our ability to respond to it effectively when it comes to the Autumn Statement.

Yet again we get tinkering dressed up as major policy initiatives. How does this sit with the current seismic shift in people’s voting habits? We might behave like idiots most of the time, but that is because we’re busy trying to make sense of our mad surroundings without going bankrupt either morally or financially. That takes up about 99% of our time. Occasionally we unwittingly club together and vote in tune with how we actually feel about what the other idiots who we put in charge are doing for us. We should not be shocked if our next PM is a purple hedgehog named Barry, were it to run on an anti- establishment ticket.

The whole framework of tax and spend is generally acknowledged to be woefully out of synch with all the changes going on, yet we only see tinkering, and no amount of incremental change will ever get us back ahead of the curve. £1 billion for our road network? It needs £12 billion just for the current repair backlog. Anyone who has to travel more than 10 miles on our roads without a police escort knows instinctively where UK plc’s productivity is leaking away. Pick any area: business taxation, personal taxation, health, housing, education, transport…we only tinker. It isn’t enough, and it is why today we’ll not shift that productivity needle.

Taking productivity as the key example of how far behind the curve of change we remain, for all the fiddling attempts at continuous improvement by successive governments over the years, UK plc sits bottom of the G7 together with the widest gap between the UK and the G7 since records began 25 years ago. How is it possible that we are apparently less productive even than those countries which take 3 hour lunch breaks, or snooze through their afternoons?

Productivity is always going to flounder in any organisation that merely tinkers with this and that, hoping but always failing to manage around people’s sensitivities yet ultimately pleasing no one, and challenging nothing.

The UK’s best proposed ‘step change’ national remedy for productivity has been to commit to squandering something like £50 billion so that we can get from Birmingham to London a full 20 minutes faster than we do now. We all know this won’t happen, of course, because leaves/snow/flooding/industrial action (delete as appropriate) will render it impossible, but to have common sense now might make someone look foolish, so we plough on regardless, and tinker with a few other things to make it look like we’re doing something, like fill in a pothole here and there, or electrify a stretch of 19th century railway line. Meanwhile, the Chinese are building a Maglev from Beijing to the moon.

Let’s not get too high up on that horse! In how many businesses do we find managers tinkering with what they perceive as incremental improvement, and when it gets too hard to squeeze more from less, in goes that big Capex request for a new IT system, or new machine? How many ever invite a true independent challenge to the way they think, or their ambition?

RelatedPosts

Mario Draghi: Italy’s chance to reboot its economy

‘Worst economic crisis of any major economy’ as UK economy shrinks at fastest rate for 300 years

UK to be worst-hit G7 economy in first quarter as 2.5 million could be unemployed by end of year

Traders in meltdown as Reddit forum leaves hedge fund on the brink of bankruptcy

Winners do it. Winners don’t deceive or satisfy themselves with incremental improvement or tinkering with this or that, because they recognise that change will overtake them. Winners have a vision of the desired end state, and put in place a strategy and actions that will get them there as quickly as possible. This approach is successful, and is the method followed by that Japanese roadworks team that recently repaired a massive sink-hole within one week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnXNefDarjM .

 

People in glass houses…

Creating that kind of culture starts with asking “what does good look like?”. It seems strange that no one ever seems to ask this question of UK plc. It is clear that the results of doing so could be as transformational for the UK as they typically are for a business that undertakes the same exercise. The critical success factor is to ask the question independent of vested interests, be they party political, personal or departmental. This is true in business, too.

 

“What does a highly productive nation look like?” That’s the right question to ask!

Take but one example important to any business: getting goods and services from origination to customer at lowest cost. If the logistical means is by road, and we mapped the average route, would your ideal trip involve tens of miles of obstacles, restrictions and bottlenecks? Would your solution for it allow privately controlled entities to interfere with your ambition, when it was within your power to not just stop them, but enable them? Mmm, thought not. How about questioning why the movement is necessary in the first place?

It is immediately clear that by asking the right questions you can arrive at the right, and frankly most obvious answers. However, it is equally clear that this cannot be easy, because whatever answers we are getting right now are not working, and we tend not to get a consensus. In parallel with business, the powers that be might well consider themselves well informed, smart people, but they need a different voice in their ears from the ones they are surrounded by, and certainly less partisan.

To illustrate with a different example, it is unsurprising that when a financier, a housebuilder and a landowner are asked for solutions to the housing crisis, their answer involves working on ways to indebt more people, for ever greater amounts, rather than challenging the very cost base and cost drivers that have created this generation’s ridiculous and dangerous asset bubble in the first place.

With no one asking the right questions and painting the full picture, it is no wonder that there appears no strategy or coordinated plan of action for achieving better performance – the leaders have no idea what good really looks like; we just lurch from one group’s pet project to the next, with occasional pockets of small temporary improvement when money gets thrown at it.

Worse still, this behaviour contributes to overwhelming disengagement, of voters who have long since lost confidence in politicians, and of employees where the same behaviour is observed to be mirrored in business.

On the strength of this year’s Autumn Statement, I for one shall be voting for Barry the Hedgehog.

richard-shipperbottomby Richard Shipperbottom – Co Ceo Applied Acumen


Featured image: Foreign and Commonwealth Office CC Image License.

Since you are here

Since you are here, we wanted to ask for your help.

Journalism in Britain is under threat. The government is becoming increasingly authoritarian and our media is run by a handful of billionaires, most of whom reside overseas and all of them have strong political allegiances and financial motivations.

Our mission is to hold the powerful to account. It is vital that free media is allowed to exist to expose hypocrisy, corruption, wrongdoing and abuse of power. But we can't do it without you.

If you can afford to contribute a small donation to the site it will help us to continue our work in the best interests of the public. We only ask you to donate what you can afford, with an option to cancel your subscription at any point.

To donate or subscribe to The London Economic, click here.

The TLE shop is also now open, with all profits going to supporting our work.

The shop can be found here.

You can also SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER .

Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism Support fearless, free, investigative journalism

Subscribe to our Newsletter

View our  Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

Trending fromTLE

  • All
  • trending

What If We Got Rid Of Prisons?

Stress, fear and homelessness: The threat looming over families confronted with eviction

File photo dated 07/11/03 of a prison cell.

The Other Prison Pandemic

Latest from TLE

Copyright: © Mikael Buck / Hyundai / Hope & Glory PR

More than half of Brits are feeling more optimistic than at any point over past year

File photo dated 11/02/10 of the then First Minister Alex Salmond and then Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during First Minister's Questions at the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh. Former first minister Alex Salmond, giving evidence before the Committee on the Scottish Government Handling of Harassment Complaints , has said there has been "calculated and deliberate suppression of key evidence". Issue date: Friday February 26, 2021.

Sturgeon suffering from handling of Salmond affair, polls suggest

Watch – Emotional video celebrating female frontline heroes during past year

Credit;SWNS

Wildlife expert who turned garden into haven for endangered species ordered to tear it down by council

About Us

TheLondonEconomic.com – Open, accessible and accountable news, sport, culture and lifestyle.

Read more

Address

The London Economic Newspaper Limited t/a TLE
Company number 09221879
International House,
24 Holborn Viaduct,
London EC1A 2BN,
United Kingdom

Contact

Editorial enquiries, please contact: jack@thelondoneconomic.com

Commercial enquiries, please contact: advertise@thelondoneconomic.com

SUPPORT

We do not charge or put articles behind a paywall. If you can, please show your appreciation for our free content by donating whatever you think is fair to help keep TLE growing and support real, independent, investigative journalism.

DONATE & SUPPORT

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.




No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Business
  • Sport
  • Entertainment
  • Film
  • Lifestyle
  • Food
  • Property
  • Travel
  • Tech & Auto
  • About The London Economic
  • Meet the Team
  • Privacy policy

© 2019 thelondoneconomic.com - TLE, International House, 24 Holborn Viaduct, London EC1A 2BN. All Rights Reserved.