Letter From Abergele

Letter From Abergele

July 11 2010

I was right about Nick Servini

Well first of all my apologies for not writing but I have been wondering when the public will see what we have been saying and that is starting to happen. One of the problems in being an academic is that you can be too far ahead of the curve and we probably were on this one.

Thankfully the world cup has been a distraction but the last time I was on Radio Wales with Jamie and Lou I made the point that Nick Servini will be coming on our tellies and radio in Wales to announce job losses and it has started to happen. ( If you are not in Wales Nick Serrvini is the business correspondent for the BBC in Wales).

The answer has to be a long term strategy to educate the population to do higher level 'value added work'. Why do I argue this? A factory has just closed in South Wales, the factory is relocating to Mexico because the labour costs are cheaper. The Welsh labour force did nothing wrong, they worked well, they produced good quality products but the fact is that in Mexico they can be made cheaper and therefore the company gets more profit. Whilst this may appear to be greedy and it is, it is also a fact of life that sadly we have to get used to. Yet in Wales there are a small number of high tech companies that are at the cutting edge in bio technology. My own publishing company is selling books around the world. What is common between these two different sectors is the difficulty in finding people qualified to a high enough level in mathematics and science.

Yet the fact is the UK government is cutting back on the new school build, this is utter madness, short term thinking and is detrimental to ordinary people in Wales and across the UK as a whole. We need to spend more money on our young people not less. The idea that we can educate people for 21 st century jobs and motivate them when they are in nissen huts that are literally falling apart is hysterical.

How many Tories will send their children to the type of school where the woodwork on the windows is rotten? We have to invest, and to cut back this programme is naiive. Schools last for 100 years +, it is something that is done once every four or five generations. The Labour government were right to introduce this policy to educate our young people, this government is wrong yet again.