PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

After years of trying to get known through my various activities, I am finally famous thanks to the AM for the Rhondda, Mr Leighton Andrews . In plenary session at the Assembly yesterday, he made the following statement: "I will focus my remarks on the Trinity Mirror Group, because, whichever way you look at it, in terms of the coverage of Welsh news on a national basis, it has something of a dominant position in the sector. I want to see a competitive news environment in Wales—competition for the BBC and ITV, as well as for Trinity Mirror. I have noticed over the last few months how close the Trinity Mirror Group is becoming to the Conservative Party, for example. I notice that someone called Professor Dylan Jones-Evans has a column in the Western Mail and in the Daily Post.... "There are plenty of economics professors who are not politically aligned in Wales, and there are plenty aligned to other parties, who also have interesting things to say about the economy; one or two...

LAST Wednesday I attended a fascinating talk at the Hilton Hotel in Cardiff, organised by the Royal Bank of Scotland, on the future of business in Wales. The speaker was Professor Richard Scase , and he gave an overview of the major global economic trends that would take place over the next 20 years and the impact of these upon the Welsh economy. Like many in the audience, I was overawed by the facts about China and India, and their growth as economic superpowers over the next 10 years. For those of you who were not there, consider the following. The increased wealth of China has meant that the rural poor has declined from 49m in 1997 to 28m in 2004, creating a more prosperous society that is demanding consumer goods and services. For example, the growth in retail sales in China is increasing at more than 10% every year, and there are now 650m phone-users and 100m internet-users across this vast country. The sales of cars are already over 1.1m units per annum and there will be 1.1bn ca...

Without reading the financial pages of the Sunday newspapers, I have now discovered the best investment of all. No, I have not taken guidance on how to buy stocks and shares in the businesses to be floated on the stock exchange but advice on how to buy more energy efficient light bulbs. As some of you might not know, around 30% of your domestic electricity bill is spent on lighting the home. The use of energy saving light bulbs can therefore help to reduce the typical domestic electricity bill by producing the same amount of light as a standard light bulb but using up to 67% less energy that traditional light bulbs. They also last 8 to 10 times longer and usually do not need to be replaced for seven years. At an average cost of around £3.00 each, they are more expensive to buy than a conventional light bulb. However, it is estimated that a single energy efficient light bulb will save around £6 per year per bulb on your electricity bills, and so they pay for themselves in half a year, b...

Fascinating article in the Times today by Gary Duncan, which finally bursts the bubble that public spending in the UK will continue at the high rates we have seen over the last few years. Of note is his argument that to curb spending (and maintain budgets for health and education), Gordon Brown may well keep freeze (or even cut) any increases in spending for other departments. What does this mean for Wales, especially at a time when there is pressure to provide additional matched funding from the public purse for the new 2007-2013 Objective 1 programme? I would certainly expect some smokescreen to be developed by the Assembly over this issue but, essentially, I would be shocked if there was one additional penny of funds from the Treasury to support this 'twice in a lifetime' opportunity. Given the state of the NHS in Wales and the needs for additional funding to be drawn down from other parts of the Welsh block grant, this is not surprising. However, if key areas of learning,...

In 1789, the great American politician Benjamin Franklin first used the famous phrase “'In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." I am sure that two hundred and seventeen years later, the Welsh tourism industry would find little irony in that statement following the Local Government Association’s recommendation that a ‘bed tax’ should be set to fund public transport schemes. The proposed 10% tax per night on all overnight accommodation, added to the 17.5% of VAT, would result in the UK becoming one of the highest taxed holiday destinations in Europe. This is because tourism in other European countries is charged a far lower level of VAT, such as the discounted rate of 5.5%in France. Such a tax would have a devastating impact in Wales, which is dependent upon tourism for over £2 billion of income every year and currently employs 100,000 people. This is an industry that has made huge strides to recover from disasters such as foot and mouth, and fa...

Yet another devastating piece of news for the Welsh economy, when it was announced that Dura Automotive would be cutting 270 jobs in Llanelli . This takes the total number of manufacturing jobs lost since April 2006 to 1600, nearly all of them in the Objective 1 region. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Assembly Government, despite having over 1500 civil servants in the enterprise department , has no strategy to manufacturing cutbacks, apart from closing the gate after the horse has bolted. It is no longer good enough to say that they are not prepared for further cuts and they need to urgently consult with all major manufacturing employers remaining in Wales to ascertain what can be done to ensure they remain in this country. I know that decisions for closure are usually made in overseas HQ, as clearly happened with Dura, but with a better early warning system, the Assembly can at least begin to discuss options, such as MBOs, well before any strategic decision is made to close...

Last weekend, I was invited to the Isle of Man TT races by my good friend, Clark Evans, a director of Jester Interactive Publishing . North Wales based Jester is the only Welsh games publisher and their TT Superbikes ” (above) has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide. I cannot describe what a fantastic weekend I had – it was one of those ‘you had to be there’ moments. All the racers were great guys, very approachable and totally different to the prima donnas we see in other sports these days. The atmosphere was electric, the weather was fantastic and I had one of the best weekends of my life. To top it all, I got to experience what very few outside of the organisation of the TT races have ever done, namely travelling in the Marshall’s Car to close the TT Superbike race down and officially open the roads back to the public. Now that might not sound exciting to many people, but I can tell you, legally hitting a speed of 150 mph on a normal road in a supercharged Jaguar is something I will ...