A letter to the Editor of the Times which was published on 30th December 2011.
With economic forecasting having rather less predictive power than tips for the 3.30 at Newmarket, one must admire the confidence with which the Centre for Economics and Business Research makes its selections for the league table of major economies in 2020, eight years away (report, Dec. 26th). Russia and India are advanced to 4th and 5th places in the world, which would require an average annual rate of growth of almost 12 per cent, a figure not achieved even by China during a period – now ending – when the West has displayed an almost inexhaustible appetite for its goods.
Brazil is shown as overtaking Britain for 2011 although the GDP figures for Britain are not in, and official figures for Brazil are usually two to three years in arrears, even if one could rely on their being collected on the same basis to three significant figures as displayed in the Centre’s league table.
Perhaps the CEBR should try horse racing.
This is a substantial paper by Prof Stephen Bush on increasing UK manufacturing by 50%.
It was written on 2nd February 2010 for the UKIP policy group on “Jobs, Enterprise and the Economy” for the parliamentary election campaign.
To read the text of a summary or the pdf of the whole paper, please click on the link “Produce and Prosper” which will take you to the paper on the Britain Watch website.
A talk given to the Cheshire Branch of the European Federation of Women on 21st September 2000.
It compares and contrasts the two Continents.
To read the text please click on the link to the “External Relations” page of the Britain Watch website.
A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 29th January 1993.
Your report that Britain is being pressed to give up its permanent seat and veto on the UN Security Council needs a more robust response than your editorial (Jan. 27th).
If the level of current financial contributions were to be the criterion for membership, then both Russia and China would have to give up their seats before Britain did; the former because it has no foreign exchange to pay its $230 million assessment, the latter because it pays less than Spain or the Netherlands.
It would, however, be sensible and prudent for Britain to increase its contribution by the relatively paltry sum of £30 million and to act more conspicuously on behalf of the Commonwealth, to which it owed a great deal at the UN during the Falklands crisis.
At the same time, President Clinton should be reminded that it is not just cash to support a bloated UN bureacracy that matters, but a record of long-term willingness and ability to act physically in support of UN objectives. In this respect, Britain’s record, from Korea to Bosnia, is second only to that of the United States. Germany and Japan need to work their passage before making claims.
France and China were not victors in the Second World War as you state: they were the two principal defeated Allied countries, whose liberation was due to the victories of the other three permanent members of the Security Council. Stalin recognised this and opposed their membership of the Security Council for that very reason.
