On July 8th, I wrote
"It seems that it is finally here. According to a survey from the British Chamber of Commerce, the UK is facing a serious risk of recession within months. The focus of the Assembly's Economic Development Department must change immediately. In economic terms, Wales is on a war footing and for the first time, we have some autonomy over how we react to this recession thanks to devolution. This is no longer about managing its usual economic priorities but about ensuring that the Welsh economy comes out of this situation better than other parts of the UK over the next couple of years. It is about survival, not growth; it is about consolidation, not expansion, and critically, it is about retaining highly skilled jobs rather than attracting new ones. The warnings are clear. Let us hope that our politicians have the courage to act accordingly.
Today, we get the official news from the ONS that we are in recession but it is clear that this has been coming for a long time as this blog has been pointing out time and time again.
Wales could have been preparing months ago to deal with this rather than burying its collective head in the sand and hoping that any downturn would go away.
I have been taking part in interviews where leading politicians remain more interested in defending their record rather than getting on with the job of dealing with the downturn. They, and their officials, still have not realised that we are currently living in a new world where the priority is getting on with the job of saving the economy and not playing political games.
Ii is time that the Welsh economy was being taken seriously and I hope the economic summit that took place a week ago was a real call to arms and not another PR exercise, although from what I am hearing, I am not overly optimistic that attitudes have changed. We shall see.
"It seems that it is finally here. According to a survey from the British Chamber of Commerce, the UK is facing a serious risk of recession within months. The focus of the Assembly's Economic Development Department must change immediately. In economic terms, Wales is on a war footing and for the first time, we have some autonomy over how we react to this recession thanks to devolution. This is no longer about managing its usual economic priorities but about ensuring that the Welsh economy comes out of this situation better than other parts of the UK over the next couple of years. It is about survival, not growth; it is about consolidation, not expansion, and critically, it is about retaining highly skilled jobs rather than attracting new ones. The warnings are clear. Let us hope that our politicians have the courage to act accordingly.
Today, we get the official news from the ONS that we are in recession but it is clear that this has been coming for a long time as this blog has been pointing out time and time again.
Wales could have been preparing months ago to deal with this rather than burying its collective head in the sand and hoping that any downturn would go away.
I have been taking part in interviews where leading politicians remain more interested in defending their record rather than getting on with the job of dealing with the downturn. They, and their officials, still have not realised that we are currently living in a new world where the priority is getting on with the job of saving the economy and not playing political games.
Ii is time that the Welsh economy was being taken seriously and I hope the economic summit that took place a week ago was a real call to arms and not another PR exercise, although from what I am hearing, I am not overly optimistic that attitudes have changed. We shall see.
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