“In the 20 years that we have been researching competitiveness at IMD’s World Competitiveness Center, we have learnt one thing: no nation, however competitive, is immune to a collapse, especially when it stems from the financial sector. In the words of Benjamin Franklin: ‘even a small hole can sink a big ship…’&rdquo ; [Professor Stéphane Garelli, Director, and Suzanne Rosselet-McCauley, Deputy Director, of IMD’s World Competitiveness Center (May, 2008): full text here]

The highly-respected Lausanne-based Institute for Management Development (IMD) has just issued its 20th anniversary ‘World Competitiveness Yearbook 2008’ [see: ‘Britain slips down key economic league table’, The Times, May 14/15]. It is not a pleasant read for the UK.

In this annual assessment of national competitiveness, the UK has fallen one place from twentieth, to twenty-first, having been overtaken by Israel. But, more significantly, the IMD report downgrades the UK’s position against its global rivals on the crucial factor of economic performance, from seventh out of 55 countries to an alarming sixteenth.

And the cause of this decline? Yes, you have guessed it - the rising tax burden and worsening business environment. As ever, Carl Mortished of The Times pens an excoriating piece [‘Alistair Darling counts cost as party over for UK plc’ (The Times, May 14/15)]:

“Whether we like it or not, the flow of oil, food and raw materials will shift increasingly towards China and India, rather than towards America and Europe.

Life will become more expensive and more difficult for Europeans and Americans. As capital moves east, so will the jobs that service capital; the process is already under way in the expanding financial centres in the Gulf.

The relocation of service jobs has begun and it will probably accelerate as banks and financial institutions, battered by the recent credit crisis, look for new opportunities and cheaper ways of doing business.”

Key Indicators Of UK Problems

Just so. Let us consider for a moment the straws in the wind for the UK economy:

1. +The Bank of England has cut forecasts for growth sharply, stating that GDP will grow by an average of as little as 0.2 per cent over the rest of 2008. Annual growth is then predicted to hit a truly miserable low of 1 per cent in 2009;
   

2. +At 3 per cent, inflation is already a full percentage point above the Government’s target of 2 per cent. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, now estimates that inflation will climb to 3.7 per cent, and that it will remain high for at least two years. Further interest rate cuts are unlikely;
   

3. +Yesterday, the three-month London inter-bank offer rate [Libor] - the cost of borrowing in the wholesale funding market -  rose from 5.70 per cent to 5.84 per cent;
   

4. +The pound has fallen by 12 per cent against a basket of currencies since last summer, but especially so against the Euro;
   

5. +For a third month running, unemployment has risen (by 7,200), following a 4,200 increase in February and March;
   

6. +The number of new housing starts in the first quarter of 2008 fell by around 25 per cent compared to 2007;
   

7. +According to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), new home loans from January to March slumped to 142,000, only marginally above the 140,000 recorded in the first quarter of 1975;
   

8. +New home loans for first-time buyers and owners have plummeted by 48 per cent compared to the same month last year;
   

9. +Over the last four years, disposable income - the amount remaining in our wallets after tax, mortgages, and inflation - has been increasing at half the ideal rate of around two per cent, because wages have been eroded by higher taxes and increasing debt [see: ‘Financial crisis: Labour’s history is repeating’, The Daily Telegraph, May 15].
   

A Titanic Sinking Feeling

I could go on and on, about higher food, petrol, and energy prices. But the point is already painfully clear. When times were good  -“nice” to employ Mervyn King’s acronymic word - we could just about stomach nonsensical ‘Green’ trumpery over things like the Climate Change Levy and ‘Green’ taxes, which did nothing whatsoever about climate change, but which ‘sustained’ politicians in their pontificating about “Saving the Planet”.

By stark contrast, in the present challenging world economy, such follies, such self-inflicted burdens, have, recalling the words of Benjamin Franklin - “even a small hole can sink a big ship” - , morphed into the iceberg that could well help to hole H.M.S. Britannia below the water-line. 

When metro-media-anti-business folk witter on incessantly about the imponderables of ‘global warming’, I get a queasy, sinking feeling. We are sailing blindly into an economic iceberg. We are unthinkingly blunting our competitive edge in the world; we are imposing more and more burdens on industry and on business, especially on small businesses, while others do not; we are forcing retrogressive costs and taxes onto the poorer of society; we are neo-colonially hindering development; and, we are losing power and influence in a world in which, as Carl Mortished so tellingly reminds us:

“... the flow of oil, food and raw materials will shift increasingly towards China and India, rather than towards America and Europe.

Life will become more expensive and more difficult for Europeans.”

Indeed, it will. Self-indulgent ‘Green’ trumpery can have no place in the real-world economic battles that lie ahead. This is no computer model, and it is no comfort that France may fare worse than us. The political party which grasps this truth first, and is then straight and honest with the electorate about the limitations of ‘Green’ policies, will not only improve Britain’s position, but, in the longer run, could well hone its own competitive, political edge as the British public returns to basics.

It is time to state clearly that I, for one, will vote for the major party with least damaging ‘Green’ trumpery. We need a ‘Rational Party’, and urgently. We require a Captain who can see the looming economic threat - an iceberg that will not melt under ‘global warming’ hot air.

We have a titanic task before us.

People, wake up to this Anthropogenic Global Warming Bullshit.  That's all it is, BULLSHIT.

Global Warming Politics