The London Stock Exchange has been in the news for precisely the wrong reasons in the past few days. Following the announcement that the very successful, reputedly abrasive, chief executive was leaving one significant shareholder took a very public stance to assert that the chairman should go and the chief executive should remain. Rumours swirled about clashes of personality, secret payoffs and dirty work at the crossroads. After entertaining the speculative journalists for a couple of weeks it is now announced that both chairman and chief executive are to go: the chief executive soon, the chairman in 2019. The publicity has been unsettling, and the Exchange is now said by some to be a vulnerable takeover target; with the owner of the New York Stock Exchange said to be a keen potential buyer.
There is no doubt that, despite regulatory and chauvinistic forces preventing a proposed merger with the German stock exchange, the chief executive has been very successful, multiplying the share price very significantly: he will no doubt leave with very significant financial reserves to underpin his aim to grow vines.
Over the decades, there have been many examples of chief executives who dominate and build up hugely successful companies; often for them to be ruined within a few years after the great man stands down. One of the most spectacular in my lifetime has been Arnold Weinstock of the English Electric Company. Over the spectrum from domestic appliances to world-class warplanes, this conglomerate company built a steady reputation for business success and thus declaring decent dividends. For most of the couple of decades while Weinstock ruled the company in a highly individual and essentially conservative way, the chair was occupied by the complementary character Lord Nelson of Stafford whose emollient, confident handling of the formal business of the company [including shareholder relations] left the chief executive the space he needed to manage in his own way.
After Weinstock's retirement there came in people who teachers in Business Schools would undoubtedly rate higher than Weinstock on all the measures of formal competence that are emphasised by academic commentators [especially those in third-rate British business schools]. With major reorganisation, changes of name and restructuring, the next generation of managers destroyed the business in a very few years.
What is left of the 'clever end' of the old English Electric Company, the aeronautical facilities in the north-west of England that have survived until now within more recently cobbled-together conglomerates, are being reduced - and are very much under threat of closure - as a consequence of cuts to the defence budget, combined with the increasingly prudish opposition to the sale of aircraft and arms to regimes that purists consider to be oppressive. There is a very present danger that the United Kingdom will soon forfeit any capacity to build military aircraft: while Brexit [if the buffoons have their way] will lead to the slow exclusion of UK manufacturers from Airbus.
Lords Weinstock and Nelson together took a major part in enabling the UK to be at the very forefront of defence technology: and one of the ways in which they helped this process was by including the defence-oriented projects within a larger conglomerate that made significant profits from its consumer electrical goods. Thus the some of the defence contracts, for some of the time, could be priced at less than full cost because of internal subsidy by the company. This pricing structure also applies to the suppliers of components for the major projects in the defence arena. It is extremely important in France, where the heavily-state-supported viability of the aircraft industry is maintained with constant nudging from the state.
Britain has lost both the Weinstocks and the appetite to enable them to maintain their niche in the "military-industrial complex" which is essential for any state that hopes to be a power in the world [or even in the neighbourhood]. Before the last dregs of the potential to restore the complex have drained away, it behoves the wider public to recognise what we have had, and are so close to losing for ever.
Showing posts with label defence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label defence. Show all posts
Thursday, 30 November 2017
Sunday, 26 November 2017
The Prime Duty of the State
It has been a primary axiom of government for millennia that the first duty of a government is to defend itself and its people from enemies who would wish to despoil either the public or the personal assets of the members of the community. This requires maintaining a sufficient police system to keep private individuals safe and secure, and sufficient armed forces, sufficiently well equipped, to secure the position of the nation in the world.
Some states are democratic in nature, some are autocratic; and these differences mean that the means by which governments fulfill their primary duty vary enormously. In Britain, we have been lucky to have a generally democratic and fair system; with a reasonable status among nations: though we now know that these are significantly in danger.
People are decreasingly confident that the system is fair, and that the state has added to the duties of defence and law-and-order the obligations to educate the nation in a fair and sufficient system of schools and higher institutions and the obligation to maintain systems of health provision and social care that meet the recognised needs of an ever-changing population. This past week's budget has again shown the utter failure of a regime of Osbornian austerity to correct the disastrous mistakes of the Thatcherites or the idle complacency of the Blair-Brown era. The promise to patch and mend the schools and the health service, and to ignore [for the time being] the increasingly urgent needs of social care and the police and the military, are generally recognised to be not good enough.
As if to epitomise this situation, the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace today will be provided by the Royal Navy. Some beancounters in the Admiralty and the Army have recognised that so many of the navy's submarines and surface ships are stuck in harbour because of poor maintenance and a shortage of sailors and of supplies that some seventy sailors can be scraped together to relieve the pressure on the diminished Household Division.
This is not a vainglorious bleat about Britain's lost glory. It is not even a hint that we should try to restore the Empire. But it is recognition - shared with a significant cohort of Tory MPs - that the cuts in defence are dangerous. The more the police is diminished, set against the terrorist threat, the more the army and the navy may be needed to "come to the aid of the civil power" as substitute police and firefighters. If those troops are not there, the nation is in danger.
Against this argument, the government is bleating that the UK has the biggest defence budget in Europe. So, when did Russia cease to be in Europe? Putin has almost completely rebuilt the front-line Russian forces, replacing the decrepit rabble that Yeltsin left behind and raising national morale hugely. France spends less through the formal military budget than the UK; but by other means it maintains the capability to design and build now warplanes, warships, tanks and guns. Yet again, the excuses that civil servants are supplying to minister to defend the indefensible has become embarrassing. In the twenty-first century, Britain cannot aspire to rule the waves: but we must avoid sinking beneath them.
Some states are democratic in nature, some are autocratic; and these differences mean that the means by which governments fulfill their primary duty vary enormously. In Britain, we have been lucky to have a generally democratic and fair system; with a reasonable status among nations: though we now know that these are significantly in danger.
People are decreasingly confident that the system is fair, and that the state has added to the duties of defence and law-and-order the obligations to educate the nation in a fair and sufficient system of schools and higher institutions and the obligation to maintain systems of health provision and social care that meet the recognised needs of an ever-changing population. This past week's budget has again shown the utter failure of a regime of Osbornian austerity to correct the disastrous mistakes of the Thatcherites or the idle complacency of the Blair-Brown era. The promise to patch and mend the schools and the health service, and to ignore [for the time being] the increasingly urgent needs of social care and the police and the military, are generally recognised to be not good enough.
As if to epitomise this situation, the Queen's Guard at Buckingham Palace today will be provided by the Royal Navy. Some beancounters in the Admiralty and the Army have recognised that so many of the navy's submarines and surface ships are stuck in harbour because of poor maintenance and a shortage of sailors and of supplies that some seventy sailors can be scraped together to relieve the pressure on the diminished Household Division.
This is not a vainglorious bleat about Britain's lost glory. It is not even a hint that we should try to restore the Empire. But it is recognition - shared with a significant cohort of Tory MPs - that the cuts in defence are dangerous. The more the police is diminished, set against the terrorist threat, the more the army and the navy may be needed to "come to the aid of the civil power" as substitute police and firefighters. If those troops are not there, the nation is in danger.
Against this argument, the government is bleating that the UK has the biggest defence budget in Europe. So, when did Russia cease to be in Europe? Putin has almost completely rebuilt the front-line Russian forces, replacing the decrepit rabble that Yeltsin left behind and raising national morale hugely. France spends less through the formal military budget than the UK; but by other means it maintains the capability to design and build now warplanes, warships, tanks and guns. Yet again, the excuses that civil servants are supplying to minister to defend the indefensible has become embarrassing. In the twenty-first century, Britain cannot aspire to rule the waves: but we must avoid sinking beneath them.
Wednesday, 11 October 2017
More British Self-Destruction
BAE systems is one of Britain's outstanding engineering companies; with a great deal of its success based on the supply of 'defence' equipment to the British and many foreign governments. The flow of government orders to the company has stimulated countless innovations, some of which have been widely diffused in industry worldwide. Like all defence suppliers, BAE systems depends on a massive complex of components suppliers, and it is itself a very significant contributor to other firms' final products.
This week it has been announced that the major parts of its aircraft assembly capability are to be closed. This follows a recent joint announcement by France and Germany that are to go it alone, together, on the construction of a next-generation fighter aircraft. It is unsurprising that Brexit Britain is not to be a partner in this venture, as we were in the Eurofighter which is to cease production [in the UK] as soon as the existing run of orders is completed.
The largest concentration of job losses is at the two airfield based assembly plants at Salmesbury and Warton, in Lancashire. Warton is west of Preston, Samlesbury is to the east: Preston has always been a major centre of engineering, and the modern aviation capability was developed there by the English Electric Company, which had taken over the Dick, Kerr works that had been a major builder of tramcars and then of electric and diesel-electric railway engines while the higher level aircraft division was developed. Probably the highest level to which that firm aspired was in the nineteen-sixties with the development of a revolutionary fighter, designated the P1, that was confidently expected to become the world's leading 'plane for the 'seventies and beyond. Rumours circulating in Lancashire at the time indicated that British politicians were being browbeaten by the Americans into ordering US-designed rivals to the P1, while the British Treasury got cold feet about the cost of taking the design beyond the existing prototype to a full production version. So the project was abandoned: and that was regarded at the time as a major retreat from advanced science. This feeling of shamefaced abandonment of the 'best of British' was compounded by the fact that another very promising project, TSR2, was also abandoned.
Thus the UK was tied in to European joint fighter 'planes; which at least were assembled in this country while civil aviation was centred on Toulouse and the British industry became a components supplier to the Airbus and later to Bombardier when Short Brothers was sold to that Canadian firm. The facilities at Warton and Samlesbury, taken together, are Britain's last chance to retain the capacity to build aircraft. The present government, in thrall to the austerity lobby, are almost certain to let this capability - and the massive human skills base that contributes so much to it - be binned.
Meanwhile the Navy is being provided with the two biggest vessels it has ever had: aircraft carriers for which it is most unlikely that there will be so really effective aircraft for several years. The government is contracted to buy American 'planes that will need massive adjustment [paid for by the UK] to be even partially effective in operating from the carriers. To pay that bill, cuts so deep in the rest of the military are being imposed that this country's entire defensive capability is at risk.
A government with will and imagination would charge BAE with a project to build a completely new generation of vertical take-off and landing [VTOL] planes, for which a global market could be generated once the planes were proven in service on the carriers.
Instead, the short-sighted submissive wastrels who cannot frame a Brexit negotiation with the EU will wring their hands at the loss of jobs and of technological capacity: and blunder on with the policy of austerity and the actuality of dismantling the economy on which the entire population depends.
This week it has been announced that the major parts of its aircraft assembly capability are to be closed. This follows a recent joint announcement by France and Germany that are to go it alone, together, on the construction of a next-generation fighter aircraft. It is unsurprising that Brexit Britain is not to be a partner in this venture, as we were in the Eurofighter which is to cease production [in the UK] as soon as the existing run of orders is completed.
The largest concentration of job losses is at the two airfield based assembly plants at Salmesbury and Warton, in Lancashire. Warton is west of Preston, Samlesbury is to the east: Preston has always been a major centre of engineering, and the modern aviation capability was developed there by the English Electric Company, which had taken over the Dick, Kerr works that had been a major builder of tramcars and then of electric and diesel-electric railway engines while the higher level aircraft division was developed. Probably the highest level to which that firm aspired was in the nineteen-sixties with the development of a revolutionary fighter, designated the P1, that was confidently expected to become the world's leading 'plane for the 'seventies and beyond. Rumours circulating in Lancashire at the time indicated that British politicians were being browbeaten by the Americans into ordering US-designed rivals to the P1, while the British Treasury got cold feet about the cost of taking the design beyond the existing prototype to a full production version. So the project was abandoned: and that was regarded at the time as a major retreat from advanced science. This feeling of shamefaced abandonment of the 'best of British' was compounded by the fact that another very promising project, TSR2, was also abandoned.
Thus the UK was tied in to European joint fighter 'planes; which at least were assembled in this country while civil aviation was centred on Toulouse and the British industry became a components supplier to the Airbus and later to Bombardier when Short Brothers was sold to that Canadian firm. The facilities at Warton and Samlesbury, taken together, are Britain's last chance to retain the capacity to build aircraft. The present government, in thrall to the austerity lobby, are almost certain to let this capability - and the massive human skills base that contributes so much to it - be binned.
Meanwhile the Navy is being provided with the two biggest vessels it has ever had: aircraft carriers for which it is most unlikely that there will be so really effective aircraft for several years. The government is contracted to buy American 'planes that will need massive adjustment [paid for by the UK] to be even partially effective in operating from the carriers. To pay that bill, cuts so deep in the rest of the military are being imposed that this country's entire defensive capability is at risk.
A government with will and imagination would charge BAE with a project to build a completely new generation of vertical take-off and landing [VTOL] planes, for which a global market could be generated once the planes were proven in service on the carriers.
Instead, the short-sighted submissive wastrels who cannot frame a Brexit negotiation with the EU will wring their hands at the loss of jobs and of technological capacity: and blunder on with the policy of austerity and the actuality of dismantling the economy on which the entire population depends.
Saturday, 3 June 2017
Using Science
It is a common assumption in the contemporary world that science provides solutions to otherwise-intractable problems, such as disease, hunger and climate change; as well as presenting governments and individuals with ethical and practical dilemmas. On balance, it is the general view that humanity has gained more than it has lost [and suffered] from the innovations that science has brought to use over the past few centuries. It is also a widely held view that the more science, and the better the science, that a country can produce determines that state's place in the hierarchy of wealth [per capita and in the aggregate] in the world and in the strength of its defences.
Some states, most notably North Korea, have developed nuclear and ballistic capabilities almost to the exclusion of all other factors, such as the general nutrition of the population. This is generally seen as a 'bad thing', and today the USA and China are jointly sponsoring proposals at the United Nations to increase sanctions against North Korea.
The United Kingdom has a very special record in scientific and technological innovation, which extends from the sixteenth century to the present day, and from biomedical sciences to astrophysics and a huge range of advanced engineering. One aspect of the development and application of scientific invention that is easily forgotten in the contemporary context is that a major component of British scientific advance has been the deployment of that science by the state.The defence requirements for newer and more destructive weapons has funded much of the innovation that has been funded over the centuries, and the current unprecedented level of cuts in defence expenditure is having a significantly detrimental effect on research and development, which is only partially mitigated by the income the defence industries receive from contracts in the USA and Saudi Arabia, in particular. Cuts in the real spending of the health service are already impacting on revenues to the big pharmacological companies, and there have been rumblings that the companies will have to take major trials of innovative drugs to countries where the hospitals can afford to buy them. The catalogue of British innovations that have been sold off to foreign investors because of a pathetic joint failure by the British state, the banking sector and large corporations to invest in their development is depressingly long.
Donald Trump's promises to spend a trillion dollars on US infrastructure projects will greatly improve flow of cash to innovative firms who will bring more modern techniques to bear in waterway management, road construction and maintenance, bridge-building and so forth. Meanwhile, the president's determination to maintain the defence of the USA will necessarily provide funding for new ideas and a stimulus to further exploration of what may become possible. The funds that the rich put into medical research, through their foundations and personall as users of innovations, will maintain a momentum in American pharmacology that will magnify the gap by which that country pulls away from the UK.
The Conservative policy of cuts and caution will accelerate the relative decline of Britain. The state has always been the most massive investor in science and technology, through the defence department and in nationalised sectors [from energy generation to the health service]. In proposing renationalisation of utilities the Labour party has not mentioned this aspect of the case, but it is powerful: inadvertently, the Labour manifesto is massively more friendly to scientific and technological advance than is the Conservatives'. The crass 'anti-business' imputations of Mrs May's ramblings reinforce one's impression of her complete incomprehension of how the economy works. Donald Trump's mercantilism may be sounder that the blathering of the Econocracy: Mrs May has demonstrated her economic illiteracy most convincingly. The way that politicians have come together across Europe - and, indeed, across the continents - to lecture to Donald Trump about his recent decision on the Paris Accord shows the extent of the grip that the Econocracy has over the mindset that pervades politics. I am looking forward to seeing what alternative Mr Trump will put forward for the renegotiation of the Paris deal: it may well make his critics look pretty silly.
Some states, most notably North Korea, have developed nuclear and ballistic capabilities almost to the exclusion of all other factors, such as the general nutrition of the population. This is generally seen as a 'bad thing', and today the USA and China are jointly sponsoring proposals at the United Nations to increase sanctions against North Korea.
The United Kingdom has a very special record in scientific and technological innovation, which extends from the sixteenth century to the present day, and from biomedical sciences to astrophysics and a huge range of advanced engineering. One aspect of the development and application of scientific invention that is easily forgotten in the contemporary context is that a major component of British scientific advance has been the deployment of that science by the state.The defence requirements for newer and more destructive weapons has funded much of the innovation that has been funded over the centuries, and the current unprecedented level of cuts in defence expenditure is having a significantly detrimental effect on research and development, which is only partially mitigated by the income the defence industries receive from contracts in the USA and Saudi Arabia, in particular. Cuts in the real spending of the health service are already impacting on revenues to the big pharmacological companies, and there have been rumblings that the companies will have to take major trials of innovative drugs to countries where the hospitals can afford to buy them. The catalogue of British innovations that have been sold off to foreign investors because of a pathetic joint failure by the British state, the banking sector and large corporations to invest in their development is depressingly long.
Donald Trump's promises to spend a trillion dollars on US infrastructure projects will greatly improve flow of cash to innovative firms who will bring more modern techniques to bear in waterway management, road construction and maintenance, bridge-building and so forth. Meanwhile, the president's determination to maintain the defence of the USA will necessarily provide funding for new ideas and a stimulus to further exploration of what may become possible. The funds that the rich put into medical research, through their foundations and personall as users of innovations, will maintain a momentum in American pharmacology that will magnify the gap by which that country pulls away from the UK.
The Conservative policy of cuts and caution will accelerate the relative decline of Britain. The state has always been the most massive investor in science and technology, through the defence department and in nationalised sectors [from energy generation to the health service]. In proposing renationalisation of utilities the Labour party has not mentioned this aspect of the case, but it is powerful: inadvertently, the Labour manifesto is massively more friendly to scientific and technological advance than is the Conservatives'. The crass 'anti-business' imputations of Mrs May's ramblings reinforce one's impression of her complete incomprehension of how the economy works. Donald Trump's mercantilism may be sounder that the blathering of the Econocracy: Mrs May has demonstrated her economic illiteracy most convincingly. The way that politicians have come together across Europe - and, indeed, across the continents - to lecture to Donald Trump about his recent decision on the Paris Accord shows the extent of the grip that the Econocracy has over the mindset that pervades politics. I am looking forward to seeing what alternative Mr Trump will put forward for the renegotiation of the Paris deal: it may well make his critics look pretty silly.
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
International Aid
Today's News in Britain features the last round in a long-running debate about the relative merits of 'defence' spending and the allocation of money for assistance to other countries for 'development'. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is again reiterating his commitment [and that of his government] to give at least 0.7% of the reported national income in donations to developing countries.
There is a growing groundswell of opposition to this spending. Although 0.7% is a small amount, there is a great deal of evidence that some of the money over the years has been stolen by kleptocratic rulers, a lot has been wasted, and some attracts criticism by being awarded to India that has established a space programme [which many people regard as evidence of affluence].
Under the present coalition government major components of Britain's military might have been abandoned. No government since that of Charles II [who ruled from 1660 to 1685] has so far reduced the country's capability to defend itself or to make the sort of intervention against anarchy that restored stability and hope in Sierra Leone just a few years ago. The 'illegal' war in Iraq that was waged by George W Bush and Tony Blair, and the counter-historical 'intervention' that is still costing lives in Afghanistan, have alienated a very large proportion of the home population from government foreign policy; while generating in the population a huge empathy with the armed forces that are placed under extreme strain exacerbated by inadequate resources.
There is an increasing lobby that argues that having the military capability to intervene beneficially in destructive situations around the world is a more valuable source of assistance to the causes of democracy and to global economic stability than are cash handouts that can so easily dribble away in corruption and waste. There is a strong suspicion that the dominant Conservative component of the coalition adheres to the aid budget as part of the publicity that has been devised to try to show that their party is no longer the 'nasty party'. Cameron asserts that unless major problems of conflict and mass migration are addressed by an outward flow of aid they will "come home to visit us". The Prime Minister would only need to take a short bus ride from Downing Street to see that uncontrolled immigration, extra-legal employment and poverty are rampant already in London; to an extent that could not be 'cured' by the reallocation of the whole of the overseas aid budget to these legal and social problems. Out-of-touch governments have allowed these massive socio-economic problems to emerge; and the present government shows no signs of awareness of them; so, obviously, they have no way of addressing them properly.
There is a growing groundswell of opposition to this spending. Although 0.7% is a small amount, there is a great deal of evidence that some of the money over the years has been stolen by kleptocratic rulers, a lot has been wasted, and some attracts criticism by being awarded to India that has established a space programme [which many people regard as evidence of affluence].
Under the present coalition government major components of Britain's military might have been abandoned. No government since that of Charles II [who ruled from 1660 to 1685] has so far reduced the country's capability to defend itself or to make the sort of intervention against anarchy that restored stability and hope in Sierra Leone just a few years ago. The 'illegal' war in Iraq that was waged by George W Bush and Tony Blair, and the counter-historical 'intervention' that is still costing lives in Afghanistan, have alienated a very large proportion of the home population from government foreign policy; while generating in the population a huge empathy with the armed forces that are placed under extreme strain exacerbated by inadequate resources.
There is an increasing lobby that argues that having the military capability to intervene beneficially in destructive situations around the world is a more valuable source of assistance to the causes of democracy and to global economic stability than are cash handouts that can so easily dribble away in corruption and waste. There is a strong suspicion that the dominant Conservative component of the coalition adheres to the aid budget as part of the publicity that has been devised to try to show that their party is no longer the 'nasty party'. Cameron asserts that unless major problems of conflict and mass migration are addressed by an outward flow of aid they will "come home to visit us". The Prime Minister would only need to take a short bus ride from Downing Street to see that uncontrolled immigration, extra-legal employment and poverty are rampant already in London; to an extent that could not be 'cured' by the reallocation of the whole of the overseas aid budget to these legal and social problems. Out-of-touch governments have allowed these massive socio-economic problems to emerge; and the present government shows no signs of awareness of them; so, obviously, they have no way of addressing them properly.
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