PROFESSOR DYLAN JONES-EVANS

First, Rhodri Glyn and now Peter Hain! As the Neath MP's research team has previously quoted from one of my articles , it should be of no surprise that the former Secretary of State's statement below to the House of Commons today seems to have been lifted entirely from articles posted on this blog! Read it and wonder! "Although Wales has done remarkable well these past eleven years, to become a world class economy able to compete with China and India will require radical changes, says Neath MP and former Secretary of State for Wales Peter Hain. Unless the private sector is grown significantly at a minimum of 1 per cent a year more than the British average, Wales will not catch up he argues. He today published an internet pamphlet on the Wales 20:20 website, and summarised it speaking in the St David's Day debate in the House of Commons, making a series of proposals: · an absolute priority to grow the private sector · future public spending to prioritise 'sharp'

Shock and awe!! It would seem that at least one Assembly Minister has listened to the ramblings from this blog regarding heritage and tourism last August . Now if only Rhodri Glyn can persuade Ieuan to read some of the articles on business support on this blog, we might get somewhere on the economy as well!!

As Sir Emyr Jones Parry begins his consideration of further powers for the Assembly, which may include increasing the number of AMs, it is worth reading the following letter from the Belfast Telegraph , which gives considerbale food for thought. A reflection on the news of a potential salary increase for Northern Ireland Assembly members. Northern Ireland has a population of 1,685,267 and elects 108 Assembly Members. That is one Assembly member for every 15,604 people.A Northern Ireland Assembly member's current basic salary is £43,101. Wales has a population of 2,903,085 and elects 60 Assembly members. That is one Assembly member for every 48,385 people.A Welsh Assembly member's current basic salary is £46,596. If Northern Ireland's level of representation was the same as Wales there would be no more than 35 Assembly members. If Wales had parity of representation with Northern Ireland there would be 186 Welsh Assembly members. Scotland has a population of 5,062,011 and ele

When the National Assembly for Wales was established in 1999, there seemed to be, for one brief moment, the opportunity for the creation of a new type of inclusive politics in this country where the government of the day would work alongside other parts of civic society, such as local authorities, the business community, academia and the voluntary sector, to create a new Wales of which we could all be proud. Eight years later, the early promise now seems like a distant dream, with an Assembly Government that now acts like just another Whitehall department, pulling up the drawbridge when criticised and ignoring the concerns of the rest of civic society in Wales. Only last week, at a meeting in Cardiff, the Welsh Local Government Association stated that their relationship with the Assembly Government had become ‘fragile’ and that councils had been treated ‘shamelessly’ by Cardiff Bay through increased centralisation of power. The relationship with the business sector is no better. For ex

Whilst many within the business world in Wales would have been surprised by the recent closure of the Cardiff Chamber of Commerce , they will have been stunned to read of the demise of Entrepreneur Action last week. The Cardiff-based enterprise agency was placed into liquidation after directors decided that they could not longer trade as a going concern. Given the close links between the company and the Assembly’s Economy and Transport division , I would expect that Assembly Members will be looking for answers as to why a business with a cast iron contract for millions of pounds with the public sector could end up in such a position. Certainly, the way that the Assembly has quickly washed its hands of the company should prompt an inquiry into why a £15 million programme of business support has failed. More importantly, it throws into doubt much of the current approach by the Assembly towards business support and, in particular, its strategy for the future. Policymakers within the Assem

A disturbing article in the Times yesterday about the way that Wales is changing for the worst and not the better under the technocrats we have running the Welsh Assembly. Sir Humphrey Appleby is clearly alive and well and living in Cardiff. "A coracle fisherman is ready to invoke a 400-year-old charter in an attempt to preserve the future of an ancient practice in the face of tightening government regulations. Dai Rees said that attempts by the Government to restrict the number of licences granted to coracle fishermen on the River Towy in West Wales was a threat to livelihoods and the country’s cultural heritage. Mr Rees, whose family have fished since the 1600s, said that he would invoke a charter signed by Elizabeth 1 that passed down through his family granting him the right to fish anywhere in the country. The Environment Agency said that coracle fishermen, who ply their trade by proceeding up rivers in pairs with a 30ft-wide net stretched between them, were threatening fish

Arguments over Europe have raged hard ever since we joined the Common Market in 1975, even resulting in the creation of a new political party whose only aim was to withdraw the UK from Europe. More recently, the biggest issue has been the creation of a new constitution for Europe which would give the European Union greater powers over a number of areas. After two and a half years of negotiation amongst member states, it was rejected by the voters in the Netherlands and France in 2005 and, seemingly consigned to the rubbish bin of failed political ideas. Shaken by these results and bowed by pressure from the Murdoch press, the then Prime Minister Tony Blair promised that if there was another constitution developed by the EU, then he would give British voters the right to vote on whether to accept it or not, as other countries had done. The EU is a hard creature to stop. Like the hydra from Greek mythology, you chop off one head and in its place come two more. It was therefore of little

Fascinating argument by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Daily Telegraph as to why the economy of the UK has been mismanaged during the last five years One: the UK current account deficit reached 5.7pc of GDP in the third quarter of last year, the worst of any major country in the world, bar Spain. "This is approaching Banana Republic status," said Albert Edwards from Société Générale. "Years of macro-mismanagement have dragged the UK economy to the edge of a precipice. The household sector is borrowing at a cyclically unprecedented 4pc of GDP. Basing economic growth on unsustainable asset price bubbles was always a recipe for disaster," he said. Two: we are a budget basket case as well, with a deficit of 3pc of GDP at the top the cycle. We enter slump without a fiscal shield. Even America is doing better. This deficit is beyond the legal limit of the Maastricht Treaty, not that Downing Street cares. Gordon Brown may have to care more about the bond vigilantes and cur

This week, the main economic headline was that claimant counts had fallen to their lowest levels since 1975 which, according to the Assembly’s press office, shows the vibrancy of the Welsh economy at a time when the rest of the UK is facing recession. Yet again, we are witnessing the old political trick of spinning one selective positive statistic which suits a government’s immediate needs, whilst the overall state of the Welsh economy is conveniently ignored. For example, if one examines the unemployment statistics more carefully, it can be seen that claimant count is only a small part of the picture. Indeed, the proportion of the working age adult population in Wales without a job has increased during the last four and a half year period and we now have 35,000 more of the economically inactive in Wales looking for a job (an increase of 39 per cent since 2003) and 11,000 more unemployed. The high level of economic inactivity is just one indicator of serious structural problems with

The only pub to make the list of CAMRA's pubs of the year for 2008 is the Borough Arms in Neath, which won the best pub in South and Mid Wales. Congratulations! This competition is announced at the beginning of Community Pubs week, which hopes raise the profile and importance of pubs in the community and encourage people of all ages and backgrounds to use community pubs more.

Not very good news for the university sector in Wales yesterday, which was hit by a drop in applicants of 10.7 per cent, with numbers decreasing from 59,705 in 2007 to 53,312 in 2008. In contrast, applications to English institutions were up 9.2 per cent, and Scottish institutions by 1.5 per cent. Whilst the number of applications by Welsh domiciled students were up by 4.0 per cent, applications from English students were down by over 15 per cent. Further details can be found at the UCAS website This will mean a serious financial hit to some institutions over the next few years, especially if this trend continues. I am waiting for further financial details at an an institutional level but rumours are that Cardiff has held its own but that the smaller universities are the ones to suffer. As a result, we could see some potential problems over the next couple of years, especially as a number of these universities have embarked on a very expensive estate refurbishing programme costing te

Earlier this week, the British Chambers of Commerce nailed their colours firmly to the mast by calling for interest rate cuts to continue to boost sluggish growth within the economy. This came just four days after the Bank of England reduced the cost of borrowing to 5.25 per cent. With firms across the UK being hit hard by the growing credit crunch, a slowdown in consumer demand and a weaker demand for goods, the Chamber believes that the time has come for the Bank of England to make further cuts to boost the business sector. Of course, it is not only the level of interest rates that are important but whether those cuts are then passed onto customers by the high street banks and, more importantly, whether our financial institutions are prepared to lend the money to businesses in the first place. Given this situation, there was seemingly good news last week regarding a new package of funding for businesses in Wales. The Welsh Assembly Government announced a £150 million deal with the Eu

Article from the Western Mail's business section this morning, which quotes yours truly.... Productivity per job in Wales is lower than any other part of the UK, official statistics have revealed. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics, Wales had the lowest output per filled job with a value of 86.2, based on a UK average of 100. Wales also had the lowest Gross Value Added (GVA) per head in the UK as well as the second lowest GVA per hour worked, with Northern Ireland bottom. GVA measures the contribution to the overall economy by each individual. The most productive parts of the UK were London, the south east of England and England as a whole. Economist Dylan Jones-Evans, director of the National Entrepreneurship Observatory, yesterday argued Wales’ jobs creation in the 21st century has been too heavily in the retail sector. He said, “This is not surprising. If you look at where the majority of jobs have been created in Wales, all the stats show that they hav

Good news for Wales today in that Purolite is investing £3 million to expand its research and development centre in Wales, UK. Purolite is a leading global manufacturer of ion exchange resins, which are used in a wide variety of applications including food and drink manufacture, potable water, industrial water, pharmaceuticals, precious metals and water treatment. The 20,000 sq ft centre in Llantrisant has also been designated the European headquarters of Purolite, and will provide finance, sales and marketing support for the company's European operations. Whilst politicians will no doubt rush to take the praise, this development is testament to the hard work that Geraint Jones and his International Business Wales team in the USA have been doing since his appointment. It should also be of little surprise that Geraint was formerly head of Barclays Wales and not a career civil servant.

Earlier this week, I spent a tiring but fascinating twenty four hours in Sweden, where I had been asked to be the ‘opponent’ for a Ph.D examining public sector support for new ventures. Whilst there for only a short time, I had the opportunity to catch up with my good friend Professor Magnus Klofsten, who has been responsible for the development of one of the most successful university entrepreneurship programmes in Europe. I wrote my first book with Magnus eleven years on technology, innovation and enterprise (above) During the last fifteen years, hundreds of ‘spin-offs’ have emerged from his courses at Linkoping University with five technology-based start-ups having been successfully floated on the Swedish Stock Exchange with a collective market capitalisation of around £100 million. This clearly demonstrates that if the right start-up programme is in place, success can follow, especially if the relevant support is provided to the entrepreneur right from the start of the new business

It would seem that another myth has been shattered regarding the Welsh economy. According to a press release from the Welsh Conservatives, manufacturing jobs in Wales have been lost at a faster rate under Labour than the last Conservative government, An average of 5,666 jobs a year were lost in the sector between 1999 and 2007, according to information obtained by the party . i.e. there are 51,000 fewer jobs in the manufacturing sector in Wales since the creation of the National Assembly This compares with an annual average loss of 5,116 in the 18 years of Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 . Indeed, the decline looks set to continue - since the Assembly election in May, hundreds of manufacturing job losses have been announced all across Wales, including Corus, Llanwern – 220 Jobs Graphoprint, Flintshire -170 jobs Dolgarrog Aluminium, Conwy – 170 jobs Alphasteel, Newport – 400 jobs Dennis Ruabon, Wrexham – 80 jobs Settan and Durward, Llandrindod Wells – 150 jobs

One of the most effective newspaper campaigns in terms of readers’ responses was the Daily Post’s fight to save local post offices in North Wales. Through a sustained effort over a number of months, its petition collected 40,000 signatures and attracted support from organisations across the region. Given this, it is outrageous how the British and Welsh Assembly Governments continue to conveniently ignore the decimation of the post office network across Wales. Worst still, civil servants are refusing to give any further information on the scale of the proposed closures here in North Wales until after this year’s local elections in May, leaving post office staff all across the region in limbo regarding their future employment. At the moment, it would seem that the best we can hope for is the closure of around 60 post offices across North Wales, which will have a devastating effect on the ability of local people, especially the elderly, to access many services which they depend upon. Of c

Off to Sweden to examine a Ph.D at 5am Tuesday morning. In the meantime, I was interviewed for Radio Cymru regarding a new report, launched today by the Institute for Family Business , which has revealed, for the first time, the full extent of the contribution that family firms make to the UK economy. Key findings from the report include: Family firms produce over 30% of GDP - a huge contribution to UK plc · The sector accounts for over 40% of private sector employment, providing jobs to 9.5 million people - one job in three throughout the UK The family business sector contributes around £73bn pa in taxes to the Exchequer, or 15% of the Government's tax revenues Family firms account for 65% of the total 4.5 million private sector enterprises in the UK economy Family businesses power innovation and enterprise in the UK - firms in the sector act as a crucial breeding ground for entrepreneurial talent and start-ups The family business sector is highly competitive with other sectors -

The majority of Wales is classed amongst the poorest parts of Europe and within this so-called ‘Convergence’ area, there are further pockets of real economic and social deprivation that desperately requires additional support to aid regeneration. To address this need, the first Assembly Government allocated £136 million towards a new initiative known as Communities First. Its aim was to provide opportunities for those living in the most disadvantaged areas of Wales. After six years, it can be argued that the programme has not met its potential. There have been notable successes, such as New Sandfields Aberavon, which has been extremely successful in delivering projects that make a real difference to its community. Not surprisingly, this innovative organisation was recently named as the only social enterprise to be featured in last year’s Fast Growth 50 list of the fastest growing businesses in Wales. On the other hand, the programme has been accused of adopting a top down approach that