THE MUPPET SHOW

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Yet another unsolicited email, this time from someone who runs a manufacturing business that is expanding internationally.

"I don't know if you have any inside track on what is happening with WAG/IBW etc but nobody seems to have a clue what the hell is going on". 


"We have built a strategy around what they sold us and it looks like we are being  abandoned (as is every other exporting SME). 


"These muppets seem to have forgotten about trade and are more interested in giving blokes in Ebbw Vale faster internet to surf dodgy web sites!"

A direct but accurate description of the chaos that currently passes for the Department of Economy and Transport as they try and rush through the Economic Renewal Programme.

I also gave a speech at the AGM of a £40 million turnover North Wales food manufacturing business last night. They had developed a plan for expansion in a rural area where jobs are hard to get and were told, a few weeks ago, that they no longer qualified for support despite having been told, months before, that they would get financial aid to create jobs.

Why on earth didn't WAG phase in the changes over time rather than adopting this guillotine approach that is hitting Welsh businesses hard?

During the week that David Cameron is over in India trying to create stronger trade links with one of the World's fastest growing economies, civil servants in Cardiff Bay are quickly dismantling IBW, the one organisation in Wales that would have been able to help Welsh businesses to export.

Many small businesses are just starting to find out that they have been abandoned by WAG and the analogy with the Muppet Show become more real with every story I get.

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