From Empire …

… to the new world of skills, enterprise and can do.

In a speech to the CBI, Gordon Brown said that decisions on key national infrastructure projects will be handed to a new independent body and streamlined. If that means that desperately needed improvements to the road, rail and airport network will be speeded up and free from the Government meddling in the details, hurray!

As more and more top ex-public servants ‘come out of the woodwork’, an article in The Telegraph at the weekend reveals just how much the Labour Government has tried to micro-manage the UK. It makes the fascinating contrast between today and the days of empire. At the height of the British Empire when we ruled a quarter of the world, there were just 99 staff in the Colonial Office which administered everywhere except for India, which had its own administration. How on earth did this work? Quite simply because there were local administrators in each territory who were trusted to get on with things. Without the benefit of modern communications there was little choice but to give them this responsibility.

Compare that 99 at the Colonial Office with 92,000 at HM Revenue and Customs today! At the CBI conference when the Prime Minister said Britain needed "the most far-reaching change in our occupational industrial and employment structures for more than a century", I don’t think he was referring to government, but perhaps he should have been.

Gordon Brown went on to say "If the best welfare is no longer the benefits you have today but the skills you gain for tomorrow then the inactive should, wherever possible, be preparing and training to get back into work." Not exactly plain English but I think we get his drift. He pointed out that we have six million unskilled workers in Britain today but it is likely that within a few years we will need only half a million. So what will the other 5½ million do? Well, it is predicted that we will need five million additional skilled employees within the next ten years, so those currently unskilled will need to be ‘upskilled’, to use a horrible piece of jargon.

So what do we mean by skilled? “We are not looking for students with a degree or even A levels, we are looking for young people who are reliable, hard working, trustworthy and can work as a team player; we would welcome anyone who is able to contribute and who would not be frightened to put forward ideas. We have a training policy to teach the skills needed and have a number of staff that have taken NVQs and other training opportunities. We are really looking for staff who are interested in developing to reach their full potential.” So said Westons Cider Human Resources manager at The Enterprise Imperative day earlier this year run by Midwest Rural Enterprise for teacher development.

This backs up comments from the Federation of Small Businesses that I reported two weeks ago in Random Ramblings, “that those managing a small company are not generally 'hung up' on education and are more interested in hiring people who have the basic necessary skills and who will fit in.” So it seems that the challenge for teachers is to instil in their students a need to develop a ‘can do attitude’ and a willingness to learn ... and keep on learning.


David Wike


Midwest Rural Enterprise is a community interest company supporting the Business Link Volunteer Mentor programme in the West Midlands. David Wike is a member of the mentor programme.