PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

As I have been stuck in bed with a gammy foot for the last few days, I have already broken my promise not to go on the computer. Apart from watching the whole series of Porterhouse Blue on See Saw TV, what I have been doing is playing around with twitter, something I have been reluctant to do before now. However, as a number of my friends say I should link up all my social networking sites such as facebook, the blog and linkedin, twitter seems a natural progression and one which, honestly, I should have joined months ago. My twitter address is simple: @dylanjonesevans By the way, if any one has any advice on tweeting, then it would be most welcome.

As I haven't has a break since July, I am taking a whole two weeks off with no writing, blogging or work.  May I take this opportunity to wish everyone who reads this blog a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year. Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Currently in Linkoping, Sweden, acting as an external examiner for a Ph.D entitled “The Dynamics of Innovation and Knowledge-Based Regional Development”. It examines how geographical regions as diverse as Silicon Valley, California and Linköping, Sweden have been the sources of new technology and endogenously created innovations. In particular, it studies the dynamics of specific regions or clusters of businesses in developing the capability to engage in more innovative activities and new business formation and to experience higher employment growth than others. This dissertation’s main findings are that (a) regional leadership involving the building of alliances with triple-helix actors (government, industry, academia) is crucial for initiating a knowledge-based regional development process (b) a consensus space is a catalytic mechanism for ensuring the speed and effectiveness of regional development (c) lowering the barriers for the actors involved boosts participation and t...

Flintshire and Wrexham, the two counties in the North East of Wales, have always been seen as the industrial powerhouse of the Welsh economy. With global companies such as Toyota, Airbus and JCB located in the area it has, in the past, been rightly described as one of the main manufacturing regions of the UK. However, the region has performed the worst of all the areas in Wales over the last decade. If we examine what has happened to the prosperity of the region since 1999, we find that the relative GVA/head has fallen from almost parity (99.3 per cent) to 84.6 per cent in 2008. That is the largest drop in GDP/head of any part of Wales. Not surprisingly, overall GVA has grown by only 31 per cent during 1999-2008, the worst performance of any part of Wales. In contrast, the overall Welsh economy grew by 47.2 per cent over the same period. So what has happened? Back in 1999, the production sector accounted for 47.2 per cent of the Flintshire/Wrexham economy as compared to...

With the development of a second nuclear power station at Wylfa in Anglesey almost guaranteed, it is worth reading this article in this week’s Economist , which looks at whether “big is best” in the nuclear industry? In fact, the article suggests that the multi-billion pound cost of large nuclear power stations may be prohibitive to private investors in the long run and that the industry is now looking to new approaches. And rather than relying on huge, traditional reactors costing billions, it is turning to small, inexpensive ones, many of which are based on proven designs from nuclear submarines or warships. There are clearly challenges, as the article points out in some detail, but the greatest disappointment from reading the article is that the UK seems to be out of this technological race, with most of the development taking place in the USA, which has not seen a nuclear plant come on stream for fourteen years. Could this concept work? Well, it would seem that none othe...

There has been some discussion on the state of the Welsh economy following the release of the GVA data. Much of this has been on the state of the overall Welsh economy, although given my academic interest in regional economic development, I am starting to examine the data for West Wales and the Valleys which, unfortunately, is only available to 2008. Two of the more interesting long term findings are discussed here. As suggested last week, West Wales and the Valleys is the only region previously in receipt of Objective 1 funding which has seen its relative prosperity decline during the last decade. In contrast, Cornwall has now overtaken the region, despite being well behind us in 1999 and is continuing to grow. The question is why? In 2003, I was appointed as a special adviser to the Welsh Affairs Select Committee to examine European Structural Funds. At the time, the committee took evidence from representatives from the other three  regions on how they were managing ...

Earlier this year, I made the economic case for Powys , noting that it had fallen behind the rest of Wales during the last decade and should have been included as part of the Convergence region that qualified for £2billion of European funding. The data that has emerged from the Statistics Office last week has reinforced this view even more. In 1999, the GVA relative to the rest of the UK for Powys was 75.0 per cent, as compared to 77.3 per cent for Wales. Fast forward to 2008, and we see that Powys now has a relative GVA of 63.1 per cent as opposed to 74.1 per cent for Wales. Therefore, whilst the Welsh economy has grown by 47 per cent for the period 1999-2008, it has only grown by 31 per cent in Powys. Agriculture, in particular, has been hit hard, with a 75 per cent reduction in its contribution to the local economy. If, as some politicians have stated, West Wales and the Valleys is to receive a third round of funding, then there is now a clear an unequivocal case for Powys...

Yet another company is looking to break the monopoly of the large UK telecommunication businesses in providing access to superfast broadband. According to a recent press release , Arqiva has teamed up with Alcatel-Lucent to conduct a high speed (50Mbps+) trial of next generation Mobile Broadband technology in West Wales. The trial will deploy LTE technology in the Preseli Mountains using 800MHz radio spectrum, which has been freed up as part of a Digital Switchover from the old analogue TV spectrum. It mirrors an almost identical trial on the Caradon Hill area of East Cornwall, which is being conducted by Clear Mobitel. As Preseli Mountains communities are dispersed and have low population densities which can't be reached economically through existing fixed line ISP networks, the trial aims to demonstrate the economic and technical viability of a neutral-host wireless network (i.e. it will offer wholesale access to ISPs) as a route to extending broadband coverage into 'No...

It is incredible to consider that some Welsh politicians actually went on record yesterday to shamefully state that qualifying for a third round of money as one of the poorest regions in Europe as "good news". For crying out loud, should any self respecting Welsh person really believe we should be in this position after a decade of devolution? More relevantly, have any of them stopped to think why, despite spending the billions of pounds of European money over the last decade, the Welsh economy continues to go backwards? The fact that the private sector, mainly for narrow ideological reasons, has been largely excluded from developing projects during the last two rounds of European Structural Fund projects is probably one of the key reasons why very little economic progress has been achieved during this time. For example, one of the major investments during the Objective 1 period was the Technium programme and much has been written about the so-called "Fields of D...

I had a couple of phonecalls yesterday suggesting that the Director General for the Department of Economy and Transport was about to stand down from his position and was being moved sideways to oversee a "special project".  There have been no official confirmations yet from the Welsh Assembly Government but given the way the jungle drums are beating loud and clear, there is little reason to believe that this rumour is not true.  Given the criticisms that have been levelled at the senior management within the Department of Economy and Transport, including this article on Saturday , this revelation would not be a surprise.  It may even justify awarding Andrew Davies the AM of the Year title at Monday's Welsh Political Awards! One can only hope that Ieuan Wyn Jones now has the courage and foresight to avoid recruiting the successor from the rest of the senior management team in his department and will go out to open advert to fill one of the most important jobs in the We...

As I have been in London all day, I missed this morning's announcement regarding the GVA figures for Wales , which showed that we remain firmly rooted to the bottom of the UK prosperity league table. Having the detailed tables now to hand, I need to spend some time analysing the data before posting anything substantial on the figures and as I am currently reading a Ph.D dissertation that I am externally examining in Sweden next week, it is not a priority! However, the following table does demonstrate the regional disparities that exist in the UK and how the situation has become comparatively worse in recent years in Wales whilst improving in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The term "deja vu all over again" may be a famous US sporting quotation, but that is exactly the feeling within the upper echelons of higher education in Wales at the moment as talk of consolidation and mergers permeates the senior common rooms of Welsh universities. Take, for example,  this article from the Guardian in 2000 looked very carefully at the scenario developing in Wales at that time . A decade later, we now have a Minister for Education in Wales who is still carrying the torch for mergers, but in a far more forceful way than his predecessors.  The interesting aspect is whether the advice being given at the time by the top civil servant in the Department of Education still holds true in the Assembly Government today namely "They are independent institutions - we can't make them do things." Given the speeches emanating from DCELLS over the last few months, probably not!  Of course, Wales is not the only part of the UK to look at mergers as a way o...

The article from Saturday seems to have generated a number of emails from the heads of business organisations across Wales. One alerted me to an article on Friday in the Western Mail on Friday and the comments made by the WAG spokesman, namely  "The focus on six sectors who will get direct support is one part of the strategy and was developed after extensive consultation with business." Well, according to this individual, this is "blatantly untrue" and he refers to page 37 of the ERP document where it says "In 2008, we adopted the recommendation of the Economy and Transport Ministerial Advisory Group that we should align our activities to key sectors of the Welsh economy in order to improve the global competitiveness of Wales". The rest of the section on sectors describes how WAG adopted these recommendations. According to the note I was sent, it was alleged that "there was no consultation with businesses at all, and certainly no consultat...

Today, before reverting to the usual entry about the Welsh economy and Welsh politics, I am posting as a really proud Uncle after finding out that my nephew Gareth is slowly, but surely, climbing the football ladder. According to the Caernarfon and Denbigh Herald, "Porthmadog have boosted their squad with the signing of promising young midfielder Gareth Jones-Evans from Pwllheli. The 18-year-old has been one of the stand out players in the Welsh Alliance League over the past couple of seasons and was outstanding in Pwllheli’s Barritt Cup final victory over Gwalchmai last May. "Porthmadog manager Gareth Parry said of him: "He is one of the most promising young players in the area. He has trained with us for several weeks, creating an excellent impression." A couple of years ago, Gareth came down for trials with Cardiff City but, unfortunately, didn't make the cut. Hopefully, he will get another chance to shine soon, especially if he gets regular games...

If you believe the spin continuously emanating from officials within the Department of Economy and Transport within the Welsh Assembly Government, then the new Economic Renewal Programme (ERP) is not a product of civil servants’ imaginations but “of months of consultation with businesses, unions and academics”. In fact, press officers are keen to emphasise, in almost every Ministerial speech, article and public utterance, that the ERP is industry led and supported by the business community. For example, a recent submission on the ERP noted, “the close collaboration and consultation with partners was strength of Economic Renewal: a new direction”. Of course, whilst the CBI is a major supporter of WAG’s approach to focusing efforts on large anchor companies, repayable grants and broadband, it does not represent the views of all businesses in Wales. Indeed, given that WAG boasts that the consultation with the business community was one of the most extensive ever undertaken, then i...

Tim Montgomerie has referred to a fascinating piece in the New York Times about anonymous commentators, or trolls as blogging aficionados describe such individuals. As someone who blogs nearly every day,  the main issue is whether comments should be moderated or not so as to have an open and 'live' discussion. Certainly, this would have encouraged a quicker response to postings, especially over the Economic Renewal Programme which worthy of a wider debate and seems to have at least elicited a response from a number of those interested in the discussion. However,  during July, I had to resort back to comment moderation because of one individual who felt he or she had the right to print personal abuse that was, to put it lightly, based on some fantasy notion about my good self. Simply put, it had no place on a forum that has been developed to engender rational discussion about issues that affect every single one of us. Whether this individual has personal issues, wa...

Answer: £350,000 per job Come back LG, all is forgiven......!

In the midst of the announcement on tuition fees yesterday, I thought back to an article from the Guardian last March on the number of EU students coming to the UK.  According to the report, "Almost 118,000 students were admitted last year as numbers increased by almost five per cent, it was revealed. Students from European Union states count towards the strict cap on university places imposed by the Government – putting them in direct competition with applicants from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The disclosure – in figures published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency – comes amid unprecedented pressure on university admissions during the economic downturn.  In 2009, 588,689 people applied for undergraduate courses – a rise of almost nine per cent – but more than 100,000 failed to get in. According to figures, the number of EU students increased by 4.9 per cent to 117,660 in 2008/9.Ireland, Germany, France, Greece, Cyprus and Pola...

Earlier this month, I wrote about the fact that 70 per cent of all employment growth in Wales during the period 2003-2010, equating to 68,000 new jobs, had come from small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This unequivocally demonstrated that it was SMEs that have driven employment growth in Wales during the last decade, especially within our more deprived communities. However, as the proportion of employment within large firms continues to decrease within the Welsh economy, it is important that programmes are put into place that can enable the SME sector to become more competitive and, more importantly, to continue to grow and create employment. As the business community is all too aware, the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) has largely abandoned support to the SME sector as part of its economic renewal programme, a situation which may, ironically, lead to other organisations stepping up to the mark to fill the gap left by the civil service withdrawal of funding from such acti...

Following yesterday's announcement on tuition fees, I have been asked about my views on the subject. Actually, they have never changed in the last two decades and, regardless of the current Coalition Government. or any Government's policies, I have always made it absolutely clear that higher education is a vital part of any government's economic development toolset and should be considered as such. That may be naive in the current economic climate but it is something I passionately believe in which is not surprising, given that I have spent 26 years in the higher education sector. Yes, there are questions about the way universities are managed in Wales, the numbers going to university, the imbalance between undergraduate and graduate education, and their diminishing role in economic development (look at the failure to generate entrepreneurs from the sector for the Technium network as one example). However, principles are sometimes more important than pragmatism and ...