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Lucy Nicholson reveals...
Meet the entrepreneur on a mission to cool down stresses execs over a hot stove at her base in Cumbria. EN reaches for the blue plasters as Lucy Nicholson reveals...
| Wheel of fortune |
| Wednesday, 20 December 2006 | |
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The Jim Hancock column.
Will the New Year bring nearer the prospect of hordes of media luvvies sipping lattes in quayside cafés in Salford, while gamblers in Blackpool stare pensively at roulette wheels in a giant casino? Two separate potential decisions – to bring BBC departments to Salford and locate the nation’s first regional supercasino in Blackpool – have an importance way beyond their economic and employment implications. These are eye-catching projects that will always beat the opening of enterprise parks in the publicity stakes. Verdicts in favour of Salford and Blackpool would send a signal to the South that we really are in business. Such a signal is much needed. It is easy to be distracted by the spectacular transformation of Manchester and the crane count in Liverpool; to look at the ambition of Preston and the business parks in Chester and to conclude that it’s no longer Grim Up North. However, figures recently revealed at a Northern Way conference suggest the North has a £30 billion output gap compared with the rest of England. With the London Olympics already sucking cash into a financial black hole, we need real signals that the North matters to the decision makers inside the M25. Although high profile, the BBC and casino decisions are small beer when looked at in the context of the huge north-south divide the Government pledged to narrow ten years ago. So how is it doing? Well, John Prescott said the other day he was “on course”. Presumably he meant on course like when he used to weave between tables serving gin and tonics as a ship’s steward! He was immediately rubbished by Professor James Simmie. He’s the academic actually commissioned by the Deputy PM to report on the north-south gap. Professor Simmie says it is widening, because the South gets the lion’s share of public spending on defence, health and university research which attracts clusters of hitech private companies. Simmie concludes that long-term growth in the South is a third above the national average. In the North it is a third below average. Speaking to regional journalists recently, Tony Blair said it was the gap between rich and poor, not North and South, that was the crucial issue. According to the PM, it’s important to look at the disparities within regions rather than pitting one region against another. It is obviously true that Prestbury and Hale need less attention than Toxteth or Burnleywood, but do we detect in Blair’s words a recognition that we are going to have to live with the broad north-south divide? The North West Development Agency has had some success but the Northern Way, invented by John Prescott after he failed to deliver elected regional government, seems to be under resourced for its objective of closing the gap in 25 years. So what will happen to regional policy in the New Year? For an answer to that, we have to look to Gordon Brown. Brown is a believer in regional policy. He backs RDAs as the key engines for promoting regional prosperity. But the Chancellor is running out of money and so is unlikely to be able to put much extra cash into regional funding. Indeed, to bring us full circle, it is reported that Gordon Brown is taking a tough line on the BBC’s licence fee increase because all public sector organisations are going to feel the pain in the next few years and he can’t see why Auntie should be exempt. BBC bosses are warning that a low licence fee settlement could see it abandon plans to move departments to Salford. In my opinion, the BBC’s £3bn budget should give it room to scrap some lower priority projects in its London HQ if it comes to the crunch. But, as ever, we are in the hands of those movers and shakers inside the M25. That’s also true with the casino where the Dome remains the favourite, despite the problems that the former ship’s steward got into with his cowboy friend, Philip Anschutz. Perhaps the luvvies and the gamblers should hold their breath.       |
