Rolled-up Trousers

The Hobbit to be filmed in Scotland?

Speculation is building that Time Warner and Sir Peter Jackson are set to ditch New Zealand as the location for the new Hobbit movies, the prequels to the wonderful Lord of the Rings movies which were filmed in that similarly sized country to Scotland.

A now resolved dispute with acting unions has led Warner Bros to claim they are worried about their £500m investment if it goes ahead there. Co-producer Philippa Boyens has said that Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada were now pushing to take the project.

A Scottish Government spokesperson has said in response:

“Scotland is an attractive and highly competitive film location with stunning scenery and a skilled workforce. If there are any opportunities regarding The Hobbit, we would want to see Scotland benefit – but we are currently not aware of any approach.”

Slightly disappointing statement. I would hope that 'Team Scotland', whether that be the Scottish Government, Creative Scotland, Scottish Enterprise, Visit Scotland or a combination of them were actively bidding for this rather than waiting for an approach. The film would be a massive coup for the country in terms of jobs in the short and medium term if the tourism generated by New Zealand in the wake of the Lord of the Rings movies is anything to go by.

That is if there is any realistic hope that it will move from NZ. Ms Boyens' claim of other countries bidding for the project is thrown into some doubt though if the Scottish position is anything to go by. Some analysts suggest that the film producers are angling for more incentives from the New Zealand government and this is their bargaining chip.

Even if Time Warner were looking for further tax breaks, the Scottish Government of course does not have the power to do that. Still it would be worth picking up the phone to see what could be done. Scotland is after all home to Torridon (pictured) which is considered to be Tolkien's inspiration for Middle Earth.

UPDATE: Gerri Peev points out that the strong New Zealand dollar may be driving the move. Other countries have been devaluing currencies to boost exports. I suspect though this is certainly not the kind of export NZ are looking for.

Mind your own business

35 business leaders intervened on the eve of Chancellor George Osborne’s comprehensive spending review, urging him to press full speed ahead with his cuts by arguing that any public sector job losses would be offset by the private sector.

The letter in the Telegraph on Monday is however at odds with their own personal records, where many of the firms they manage have been responsible for redundancies during the straitened times of the last few years.

They say in the letter:

“The private sector should be more than capable of generating additional jobs to replace those lost in the public sector, and the redeployment of people to more productive activities will improve economic performance, so generating more employment opportunities.”

Among the signatories to this are:

• BT chief executive officer Ian Livingston who has overseen the loss of some 35,000 jobs since 2008, with another 5,000 redundancies still feared
• GlaxoSmithKline chairman Sir Christopher Gent, where 4,000 jobs went in January, even after a year of profits which were made possible ironically enough by state spending on swine flu vaccinations
• Yell chairman Bob Wigley, where 1,300 jobs have been shed since 2008
• B&Q currently have 1,000 jobs at risk, and have not replaced 3,000 staff who have left since 2008. The DIY chain’s owner is Kingfisher whose chief executive Ian Cheshire signed the letter.
• Marks & Spencer saw job losses of 1,000 in January 2009. It didn’t stop chairman Sir Stuart Rose signing the letter.
• Car Phone Warehouse chairman Charles Dunstone, where 450 jobs were lost last year.
• Microsoft cut 150 jobs in the UK last year, and more are expected. MD Gordon Frazer signed the letter.

The list is long. 10% of the workforce has been lost at Aveva and Sage over the last few years, yet Nick Prest (chairman) and Paul Walker (chief executive) respectively saw no contradiction in their political statement. Arup have lost 20% (Philip Dilley, chairman).

Diageo CEO Paul Walsh is on the list, despite the well-publicised loss of 500 jobs in Kilmarnock last year. Whitbread (Anthony Habgood, chairman), who run Premier Inn and Costa coffee, shed 600 jobs last year, while Britvic (Gerald Corbett, chairman) shed 50 in Northern Ireland six months ago. Corbett is also chairman of SSL, who own Durex, and who also expect job cuts soon.

Maybe some of these captains of industry suffer from amnesia. The most breathtaking case must then belong to the executive chairman of Boots, Stefano Passina, who just two weeks ago announced 900 job cuts.

600,000 people are expected to lose their jobs in the coming period (and that's the Tory OBR's estimate), and the gentlemen above look set to contribute to the reemployment of not a single one of them, but still see fit to agitate for the increase in unemployment in addition to their own direct contribution to it.

They claim in the letter that:

“There is no reason to think that the pace of consolidation envisaged in the Budget will undermine the recovery.”

However, ASDA finance director Judith McKenna is on record saying: “The scale of public sector cuts and increased taxation is without doubt a concern to customers. While we hope for better times ahead, we're certainly not planning on that basis”. ASDA chairman Andy Bond, nevertheless signed the Telegraph letter. He can’t claim he’s not well advised.

Next chief executive Sir Simon Wolfson signed it, despite only last month (amnesia again) saying that the boom time was over for retailers for the foreseeable future due to spending cuts. Lord Wolfson is a Tory peer, and should have just signed the letter as such.

I agree with the September Sir Simon rather than the October Lord Wolfson. The private sector has already faced tough times over the last few years, and fewer people with money to spend due to increased joblessness means even less consumer confidence and demand moving forward. What these business leaders have signed up to is the strangest suicide note in history. Given the harm it does the public, it would also be the longest boycott list in history, if it wouldn’t just end up in more job losses.

The country is not a business. The state cannot callously cast aside and eliminate the people it puts out of work. It continues to pick up the bill, not just in economic terms, but social too. Unless they are willing to put their money where their mouth is and guarantee a job to everyone put out of public sector employment, they should keep quiet and start creating the jobs they speak of.

The 2032 arriving at Central Station is the slow train from London

  High speed rail lines north of Birmingham have been announced by the Conservatives at their annual conference. North to them means Manchester and Leeds.

They are a copy of the Labour plans announced in March – with one crucial difference. That is not even a cursory mention of Scotland being part of the network at some undetermined point in the unforeseeable future after 2032 (the year, not thirty-two-minutes-past-eight). Labour were careful not to totally alienate their base, Tory Transport Secretary Phillip Hammond felt he didn't need to, saying that the rail lines would join onto the existing West and East Coast Main Lines respectively once the HSR tracks finish.

A couple of further points to the ones I’ve made at length previously. Firstly, the snail’s pace of building the line. London to Birmingham won’t be completed till 2025, then it will take a further seven years to link Manchester and Leeds. Factor in the time-honoured British tradition of the project running over time, and it’ll be generations till this sees the light of day. If you take those twenty two years and work backwards from now, Maggie Thatcher was still in power. How much will things move on between now and the 2030s? Shouldn’t we be zooming around in solar powered hovercraft by then? Or teleporting?

Hammond himself cited the Chinese example who will build 12,000km of track in the same time it will take the UK to build 205km. This isn’t just to do with planning permissions, it’s about the level of investment being put in. The UK government will invest only £2bn a year of the £30bn required for it all. These are of course not insignificant sums of money, but we are continually told the lines will pay for themselves in the boost they represent to the economy. It should therefore be possible to do it faster, and to do more faster.

On the do more bit, I speak of the line being constructed in Scotland. This is where the environmental benefits kick in with the modal shift from air to rail. The UK government haven’t even studied the option in any depth. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that they have given up on the union between Scotland and England. It’s entirely possible that if there was a real proper campaign from Scottish business, media and politicians, things could still change. It seems though the UK government want the Scottish Government to pay for it without devolving crossborder rail, and crucially affording Scotland the economic powers to raise the necessary revenue. It will therefore be an end of the political line between England and Scotland that will connect the two up faster, and put Scotland speedily into the heart of Europe.

Labour are the political equivalent of Milton Keynes

There has also been a welcome shift since the election in Labour policy towards the economy. While not a u-turn like Iraq yet, it's being described in some quarters as a leftward drift, though I would characterise it as going round in circles. I was in Milton Keynes this week and the Labour Party in their current state could be described as the town’s political equivalent, and not because of the roundabouts. They're a bit of Milton Friedman and bit of John Maynard Keynes, but not quite being one or the other.

They should clearly be saying cuts in vital jobs and services are wrong and will lead us into another recession and possibly depression. We have to invest in our economy to grow it and get the tax take up – the drop in which after all is what caused the deficit in the first place. Someone from the thinktank Demos was on the telly this week though warning Labour against opposing the coalition government’s plans as the public wouldn’t accept any alternative was possible or credible. This standpoint turns the most crucial issue of this parliament into a political consideration rather than one of right and wrong.

What this attitude also ignores is that the coalition have spent a year softening the public for what they’re about to do, from Nick Clegg’s initial clarion call for “savage cuts”, a stream of press conferences about “irresponsible spending that can’t go on”, and leaks about what may be for the chop. Labour similarly have got to get on the front foot with a message about the economy. If as it seems, the Tory-LibDem plans are going to end in misery, it is going to be of no use to have hitched your wagon to their plans.

Labour should not be afraid to campaign against cuts. There is plenty of public unease out there looking for expression. This after all is the party that took us to war in the face of public opinion, the intelligence and international law. Ed Miliband may apologise for the most catastrophic blunder of the last government, but the economy is going to be the biggest one this time around.

I would say they shouldn't get it wrong a second time, but that horse may have already bolted. Because of them, the coalition government look set to be ensconced for the next five years. Labour have already fluffed their lines by contributing to the Tory mood music with their pre-election promise of cuts “deeper and tougher” than Thatcher’s.

There may not be any change now other than if there's huge social unrest. In Scotland, it is easier and more direct. The massive cuts over the next five years can be avoided by taking control of our economy through independence, and there will be an opportunity to vote for this next year.

This post was continued from here.

Labour attempt repentance on Iraq

If I were a Labour member, which clearly I am not, I would have backed Ed Miliband for leader. Between he and his brother, he has the capacity to speak human for some of the time. David for me is a bit too robotic.

I don’t sense a great deal of policy difference between the two, other than on Iraq. Ed says that he opposed the war at the time. If there were any evidence of this to the contrary, it would surely have been produced by Team David by now. The elder Miliband, Ed Balls et al were nevertheless clearly incredulous at Ed M’s position during the hustings however.

Ed is fortunate he wasn't an MP in 2003 as he would have undoubtedly voted for the war if he had been. Just like Harriet Harman, he would have just "went along with what Tony wanted". He wouldn't have been an evangelist either way, he would just have wanted to keep the peace as it were.

This brings us to the David Miliband–Harriet Harman vignette during younger brother’s speech. I don’t view Harman as a hypocrite for applauding the Iraq was "wrong” comments. Rather, it should be seen as an act of humility. One that needs to be taken further. For Miliband Sr to hold onto his position in the face of everything that has happened is stupendously stubborn. He whispered with fury “Why are you clapping? You voted for it”. As if no politician has ever performed a u-turn.

The incident sealed his departure from the front bench. It was clear he could not serve under his younger brother. There is no way Tony Blair or Gordon Browns’ speeches would have been interrupted like that. Even Ed Balls, Andy Burnham or Diane Abbot wouldn’t have seen a disrespect that was particularly reserved for younger brother.

Continued