When world leaders from Macron to Trump have criticised the Chinese government response it is clear it is not going to be business as usual with Beijing.
Meanwhile, images of a broken seal on a Wuhan lab refrigerator that kept 1500 virus strains have emerged
Honestly! This daily mail stuff is ignorant scaremongering. It is a heat insulation seal. It isn't to secure the viruses. A bit of common sense applies after all you break that seal much more spectacularly every time you open the door.
There's obviously a concerted effort going on now to fix the narrative that it's only China to blame, now that there's a risk of people getting angry with western governments.
The timing of anonymous reports of secret reports from December, the stories planted in tame newspapers and journalists, it's classic stuff. The sudden concern about human rights, and animal rights, in people who previously showed no concern (in many cases more likely to go on bizarre anti vegan and anti ECHR rants).
I say screw China!
But the buck stops at no. 10 (and in the White House for the US).
This is a load of wank. Sorry. I keep waiting for the bit where Brexit gets the blame, as the heroic Beijing Remainers strive to solve the British bug
Underneath that's exactly what he's thinking.
Because he's obsessed by Brexit and that's how he thinks.
... and yet you're the ones mentioning it.
We're pointing out what lies underneath it all.
It's as obvious as hell, and that's been further reinforced by some podium-star Remainers coming on this thread this morning to shout "right-wing bullshitters" in unison.
You would be more convincing if you weren't talking about brexit in response to an article that doesn't contain even the slightest whiff of brexit.
anyone who defends this Government's handling of this crisis puts themselves in the same nefarious pit as the Chinese Government.
When has the British government lied about the nature of the disease, denied its human transmissibility or persecuted those who have publicised it?
There is and will be plenty to learn about how the Government and its scientific advisors reacted to the evolving situation, but to put it in the same league as the Chinese dictatorship is fatuous.
On a non political note whipping up Sinophobia will have some nasty social effects. My husband is ethnically Chinese (born in Hong Kong) and he got some pretty unpleasant treatment during the China only stage of Corona virus.
Sadly a lot of people aren't knowledgeable enough to know the nuances of being ethnically Chinese and the number of times that my husband has been harangued at social events to justify Chinese government policy despite never having set foot on the mainland is incredible.
Criticising the Chinese government's response to the pandemic is perfectly legitimate as is looking at whether we might want to think the extent to which we've outsourced our production. However talking about leaked viruses without evidence and using terms like Wuflu has real world consequences for innocent people.
Same as antisemitism -- you're Jewish, stop killing Palestinians. You're Chinese, stop eating bats. Most people don't think like that but it only takes one to ruin your day and a handful to ruin your life.
The other dimension here is that the Chinese government is itself indulging in the same deflection that some Western governments are doing towards it. There appears to be deep levels of unhappiness in China about how the epidemic played out. The Chinese government cares more about domestic opinion than what people think internationally.
An excellent article. The Chinese regime is deeply unpleasant. It is oppressive, murderous, deceitful, inefficient and interested only in its own survival - just like dozens of other regimes we happily do business with each and every day. The Saudi Arabian government - which murders journalists, treats women as second class citizens, funds terrorist groups and is in the process of developing a nuclear bomb that will further destabilise an already highly unstable region - is about to buy Newcastle United FC.
We clearly need to be much more circumspect in our dealings with China. It’s not a country to be trusted. But it is not a country we can shun either. Like Saydi Arabia, we need what it offers.
The Saudis have oil. Though that may not be the boon it once was. China is a rising superpower, plainly of far greater significance. The truth is we're still in world where most autocracies have relatively little clout.
"Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement."
No sign yet. They've just awarded the T31 frigate propulsion system to Germany (Renk, MTU, Man) and the HVAC system to Norway (Novenco).
Perhaps strangely, high-value defence work is one area I would be happy to outsource. Relying on guaranteed, profitable orders from the MOD helped make our manufacturing companies lazy and complacent.
Having half a dozen companies competing for PPE contracts is something different again.
There’s also a huge difference between autarky and near shoring.
It is a reasonable bet that Norway and Germany are unlikely to attempt to become a global hegemony. Moreover, there is scope for shorter supply lines in the event of disruption.
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
State subsidies, ownership, or [drum-roll] student loans. Or rather, loans with income-contingent repayments. HMG will bankroll your new PPE production line and you only pay us back if it goes on to make a profit. (And I expect the Treasury will work on something like that for any future Job Retention/furlough subsidies.)
I wonder who the first political casualty of Wuflu will be? I think we'll shortly have Hancock's testicle shaped head on a platter which will be a laugh.
My husband is ethnically Chinese (born in Hong Kong) and he got some pretty unpleasant treatment during the China only stage of Corona virus.
That's obviously wrong, and in my experience ex-pat Chinese can be some of the Middle Kingdoms fiercest critics.
I wonder though if excessive fear of sinophopia may be partly to blame?
The media could and should make it clearer that the CCP has much to answer for, while pointing out that ordinary Chinese citizens were the first to suffer.
Following a recent pb header, HMG has appointed the former Head of Olympics Deliverance as its PPE tsar, complete with wartime analogy.
Just as Lord Beaverbrook spearheaded the wartime efforts on aircraft production, the appointment of Lord Deighton will bring renewed drive and focus to coordinate this unprecedented peacetime challenge.
Meanwhile wrestling with what to do about father in home with CV19. The home is not communicating at all well, which suggests they are struggling. Phone calls mostly not answered, when you do get through you get carefully worded replies and emails not replied to.
Contemplating busting Dad out, although not sure is that is wise, legal or because of prescriptions etc technically possible.
On one thing I'm now very clear: there is no authoritarian regime or country however vile or nasty that political opponents here in the UK would ever unite against.
They'd far rather use it to pursue domestic political squabbles. Just as the native Celtic tribes of Britannia did in the face of the Roman Invasion.
Good piece, there's a lot that justifies a boycott of China (not least the Uighur genocide) but it's weird to want to do it over something the Chinese already want to fix
Have they fixed the wet markets?
Yep, they hired security guards to stop people taking photos.
So, the line is the Government was wrong because it followed scientific advice, with the advice changing significantly in a short period of time?
What's the alternative? Ignoring scientific advice?
I'm not persuaded that's a sensible line.
The media's still viewing this through a political prism, when it's a medical/scientific story. The focus on u-turns and scalp-hunting questions seeking gotcha answers doesn't do much for me.
While he's right that it appears to be more (to an extent in hindsight) "Poor advice" rather than "ignored advice" Ministers still get to carry the can. What questions didn't they ask? Who did they get to play "devil's advocate" and so on.
Meanwhile, I assume those calling for Hancock's head will also be calling for the heads of his peers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where responsibility also lies?
There is no evidence that Covid-19 is an intentional attempt by the Chinese to bring the world to a standstill. Indeed, if it were, starting by rocking your own society to its foundations would be a pretty peculiar way of doing so.
Actually, if a country wanted to do something like this, I'd have thought starting it off in its own country would be the perfect way to do it. In fact, the lack of an outbreak in the rest of China is suspicious. If a country wanted to murder millions around the world, why would they be worried about losing a few of their own?
But I don't think the Chinese government is that way inclined. I suspect the real number of deaths in China is well over 100,000.
Brilliant: either the Chinese are lying about the incidence of CV-19 in the rest of the country, or they started it.
Either way, they're lying bastards.
Well, they are. Aren’t they? Otherwise why have they arrested and kidnapped coronavirus whistleblowers from the start? And why are they still doing so?
Because they have a tendency to do so to anyone who criticises the state in any manner ? All totalitarian states are repressive, and all lie. The one thing is not always evidence of the other.
Much of 2 involves onshoring critical supply chains and so forth. Our national resilience is piss poor and needs addressing urgently.
The problem is that taking manufacturing "in-house" doesn't make us less dependent on other nations.
We have few indigenous raw materials, so all we get is a false sense of security. The cars may be made in the UK, but if we produce no iron ore, nickel, copper, etc., then all we've done is moved the point of pain, while increasing the cost of cars to consumers.
But you have a diversified supply chain with freely traded commodity markets
That's true of oil and gas, but not of - for example - rare earths.
Ultimately, this is why city states end up rich. They have no choice but to choose free trade and interdependence. And that means they always make the economically rational choice, rather than one based upon "national interests".
We will choose to limit the choices of British firms and people. They may not choose who they buy from. Companies and consumers will have thrown off the shackles of the EU only to wear the shackles of the "national interest".
And it won't make us richer, because global pandemics happen every century. We'll be the people buying earthquake insurance just after the big quake.
Where is the scientific advice which says that it is a good idea to discharge coronavirus infected patients from hospitals into care homes ? Which is, disgracefully, still government policy.
Intriguing. I am trying to remember which cabinet minister who used to write for The Times - and who has a propensity for backstabbing - is most closely connected to Rupert Murdoch.
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
I’d be interested to see the maths. I suspect it might work ok.
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
I’d be interested to see the maths. I suspect it might work ok.
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
That's true of PPE, which has marginal capital requirements.
But is there a single semiconductor plant that serves only a single market? Perhaps in some commodity space like DRAM or Flash you might make it work (although Flash is not as commodity as it appears.)
Is it true of any part of automotive? Or batteries?
Or the components that Murata and Rohm make in electronics?
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
"Yet what Johnson rediscovered was a great British liberal tradition of making a lot of noise about science in order to cover up deliberate inaction, in the face of demands for a national and imperial strategy for agriculture and industry.....
One cannot magic an industry out of thin air, whether high end ventilators or batteries, but by referencing innovation one can pretend, for a while. And that is where the politics of Covid-19, and Brexit, are stuck, in cynical fantasies about innovation."
When world leaders from Macron to Trump have criticised the Chinese government response it is clear it is not going to be business as usual with Beijing.
Meanwhile, images of a broken seal on a Wuhan lab refrigerator that kept 1500 virus strains have emerged
Honestly! This daily mail stuff is ignorant scaremongering. It is a heat insulation seal. It isn't to secure the viruses. A bit of common sense applies after all you break that seal much more spectacularly every time you open the door.
There's obviously a concerted effort going on now to fix the narrative that it's only China to blame, now that there's a risk of people getting angry with western governments.
The timing of anonymous reports of secret reports from December, the stories planted in tame newspapers and journalists, it's classic stuff. The sudden concern about human rights, and animal rights, in people who previously showed no concern (in many cases more likely to go on bizarre anti vegan and anti ECHR rants).
I say screw China!
But the buck stops at no. 10 (and in the White House for the US).
Tame journalists like CNN?
There are tame journalists within all news organisations. That is the price of having sources in government.
It is too soon to judge the ultimate soundness of the UK’s early response. If history concludes that it was lacking, then the criticism levelled at the prime minister may be that, rather than ignoring the advice of his scientific advisers, he failed to question their assumptions.
Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson didn’t study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions.
Meanwhile wrestling with what to do about father in home with CV19. The home is not communicating at all well, which suggests they are struggling. Phone calls mostly not answered, when you do get through you get carefully worded replies and emails not replied to.
Contemplating busting Dad out, although not sure is that is wise, legal or because of prescriptions etc technically possible.
So play nice on PB, this thing isn’t over.
Has you father tested positive or got symptoms? TBH, I suspect you've got to live with it, and hope for the best. Common practice in Care Homes, or was when I was involved, was to encourage socialisation whenever possible, so I would suggest that if there's infection in the home, and was before (!) all the staff were properly kitted out with PPE, then he'd had a very good chance of being infected.
Sorry, but, as I've said before in the last ten years of my working life I was in and out of Care Homes on near enough a daily basis.
So, I wish you well, but quite frankly think you should continue your efforts to make contact, not bust him out; you'll only spread things. Probably.
[successful states] always make the economically rational choice, rather than one based upon "national interests".
From Mr Meeks' essay: "The risk that those stretched supply lines might be broken by very rare events has been borne by the rest of us. We just didn’t realise it."
We will choose to limit the choices of British firms and people. They may not choose who they buy from. Companies and consumers will have thrown off the shackles of the EU only to wear the shackles of the "national interest".
Hyperbole I would suggest. We just need to think more about cost internalisation.
SINGAPORE - An additional 596 cases of Covid-19 infection in Singapore were confirmed as of noon on Sunday (April 19), the Ministry of Health said. This brings the total number of cases in Singapore to 6,588.
The majority of these cases are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.
Much of 2 involves onshoring critical supply chains and so forth. Our national resilience is piss poor and needs addressing urgently.
The problem is that taking manufacturing "in-house" doesn't make us less dependent on other nations.
We have few indigenous raw materials, so all we get is a false sense of security. The cars may be made in the UK, but if we produce no iron ore, nickel, copper, etc., then all we've done is moved the point of pain, while increasing the cost of cars to consumers.
But you have a diversified supply chain with freely traded commodity markets
That's true of oil and gas, but not of - for example - rare earths.
Ultimately, this is why city states end up rich. They have no choice but to choose free trade and interdependence. And that means they always make the economically rational choice, rather than one based upon "national interests".
We will choose to limit the choices of British firms and people. They may not choose who they buy from. Companies and consumers will have thrown off the shackles of the EU only to wear the shackles of the "national interest".
And it won't make us richer, because global pandemics happen every century. We'll be the people buying earthquake insurance just after the big quake.
Rare earths are a strategic concern. Did the US ever reopen their site?
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
I’d be interested to see the maths. I suspect it might work ok.
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
That's true of PPE, which has marginal capital requirements.
But is there a single semiconductor plant that serves only a single market? Perhaps in some commodity space like DRAM or Flash you might make it work (although Flash is not as commodity as it appears.)
Is it true of any part of automotive? Or batteries?
Or the components that Murata and Rohm make in electronics?
No, and particular high end processors. There, you have only three nations (the US, Korea and Taiwan) who possess the technology and manufacturing expertise. Though China is attempting to become the fourth, and the US has plants elsewhere (Eire, for example).
Batteries, yes. Large plants are being built to serve single markets (China; the US - or Europe if you accept it’s a single market). The raw materials, obviously not (for now).
Consequences of anti-China feeling in a post-Brexit world? An FTA with China was the one potentially significant trading arrangement win, relative to the EU stock of trade deals. I'm guessing that won't happen soon.
Problem is if you repulse China, can't get anything to work with the US and have previously rejected the EU, you don't have much left. Not clear what the way forward is with the current crowd in No 10. A sensible government (and I think I include Kier Starmer in this category) would quietly mend relationships with the EU.
On China I suspect it will be more or less business as usual with a few token pushbacks (eg Huawei in 5G). We will find we need their money.
Interesting piece. It is remarkable how quickly the policy landscape has changed. What once were crazy Corbyn ideas like a British industrial strategy and not selling off state assets to China, are now sensible and mainstream.
It makes sense to me that we should have a state owned or part owned facility that can rapidly produce millions of vaccine doses as required. Now is the time to invest in that. If there is a vaccine, everyone is going to want to produce at once.
Meanwhile wrestling with what to do about father in home with CV19. The home is not communicating at all well, which suggests they are struggling. Phone calls mostly not answered, when you do get through you get carefully worded replies and emails not replied to.
Contemplating busting Dad out, although not sure is that is wise, legal or because of prescriptions etc technically possible.
It is too soon to judge the ultimate soundness of the UK’s early response. If history concludes that it was lacking, then the criticism levelled at the prime minister may be that, rather than ignoring the advice of his scientific advisers, he failed to question their assumptions.
Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson didn’t study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions.
That might have been ‘scientists’ reasoning’, but in what way was that scientific reasoning, as opposed to just another opinion ? Which events have more or less proven wrong.
I've no time for politicians, but blaming them for things they have no influence over is, even for me, unfair. I used to be annoyed when they said they wanted scientific advice to be 'on tap' not 'on top'. Yet it's the journalists who now want to be consulted on which expert is correct.
Usually a graduate in PPE (the wrong sort) or expressive dance or something similar, they decide they're fitted to pronounce on competing scientific theories. You get far more sense from the viewers questions, untarnished by Mr Thicko, your local media man.
Most of the news is coronavirus porn, so they're forced to fill up those gaping holes with things they understand. U-turns, horror stories and cartoon characters. No wonder their own ratings have hit rock-bottom.
To be fair, the women are slightly more logical, and as a man, that's embarrassing. Please keep any journalist with dangly bits between their legs off the screen for the duration.
[successful states] always make the economically rational choice, rather than one based upon "national interests".
From Mr Meeks' essay: "The risk that those stretched supply lines might be broken by very rare events has been borne by the rest of us. We just didn’t realise it."
We will choose to limit the choices of British firms and people. They may not choose who they buy from. Companies and consumers will have thrown off the shackles of the EU only to wear the shackles of the "national interest".
Hyperbole I would suggest. We just need to think more about cost internalisation.
"Throwing off the shackles of the EU" is certainly hyperbole
May be Gove is stating the truth rather than “taking a line”?
The media have taken a line - they assume automatically that the whole country is on board - they've taken the same line with Boris for years now. I can see why he's in good spirits..
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
"Yet what Johnson rediscovered was a great British liberal tradition of making a lot of noise about science in order to cover up deliberate inaction, in the face of demands for a national and imperial strategy for agriculture and industry.....
One cannot magic an industry out of thin air, whether high end ventilators or batteries, but by referencing innovation one can pretend, for a while. And that is where the politics of Covid-19, and Brexit, are stuck, in cynical fantasies about innovation."
No, we haven’t. The industry already existed for ventilators.
Batteries are a different matter. There’s not insignificant research funding, but all the major plants are now being built in Europe, and the Brexit vote means that it’s relatively unlikely anyone from outside will choose to build plants here.
"it turns out that this is another area where profits are privatised and risks are socialised."
I think this is the crux of the matter. BTW I am not seeing Sinophobia now any more than I saw much Francophobia in Brexit.
However one thing we can all (right and left) demand of governments is that they do some long-term strategic thinking, and then put their finger on the scales of the free market where that is justified.
There wont be long term thinking after this. There will be fury over mistakes made or opportunities missed, a lot of preparations that people have subsequently with hindsight decided we should have had will be implemented, and then we will be blindsided by something unexpected we were not focusing on.
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
I’d be interested to see the maths. I suspect it might work ok.
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
That's true of PPE, which has marginal capital requirements.
But is there a single semiconductor plant that serves only a single market? Perhaps in some commodity space like DRAM or Flash you might make it work (although Flash is not as commodity as it appears.)
Is it true of any part of automotive? Or batteries?
Or the components that Murata and Rohm make in electronics?
I think the glory of TSMC and in general semiconductor manufacturing is that it is extremely flexible, a single foundry can make many types of silicon.
At a time where this country needs a great leader, we have Boris Johnson. Sad but true...
At a time when the country needs a good media we have Robert Peston and Carol Cadwallader. Sad but true.
Maybe but we have a PM who is culpable for many thousands of deaths. Think that should be the focus!
Of course you do - remind us of all your posts in February arguing for an immediate lockdown and telling the government to ignore the scientists' advice.
Mr. S, do you want the PM to follow scientific advice, or not?
If you want to blame a government for the coronavirus then maybe the pangolin-slaughtering, wet market-tolerating, whistleblowing-arresting one in China might be the place to start.
Scientific advice (early on) was mistaken. But establishing the principle that the Government should ignore scientific advice would be crackers.
This is a load of wank. Sorry. I keep waiting for the bit where Brexit gets the blame, as the heroic Beijing Remainers strive to solve the British bug
Underneath that's exactly what he's thinking.
Because he's obsessed by Brexit and that's how he thinks.
... and yet you're the ones mentioning it.
We're pointing out what lies underneath it all.
It's as obvious as hell, and that's been further reinforced by some podium-star Remainers coming on this thread this morning to shout "right-wing bullshitters" in unison.
You would be more convincing if you weren't talking about brexit in response to an article that doesn't contain even the slightest whiff of brexit.
Indeed. The kind of myopia that does this site discredit.
I really like Boris right now but anyone who defends this Government's handling of this crisis puts themselves in the same nefarious pit as the Chinese Government.
Well that's a strange statement. What does defending it mean? Has nothing gone ok which could be defensible?
Theres been quite the turn in the past week where a lot of people have switched to a 'because overall it looks bad there can be no defence of anything and nothing can be said to be acceptable' position.
We should be contemplating global supply chains and security of supply in areas beyond just energy.
A more diverse range of supply for vital goods in case of disturbance by not only disease but industrial accidents, terrorism, and natural disasters would be wise.
Meanwhile wrestling with what to do about father in home with CV19. The home is not communicating at all well, which suggests they are struggling. Phone calls mostly not answered, when you do get through you get carefully worded replies and emails not replied to.
Contemplating busting Dad out, although not sure is that is wise, legal or because of prescriptions etc technically possible.
So play nice on PB, this thing isn’t over.
I don’t know what to advise, especially without knowing your father’s particular circumstances, but you have my absolute sympathy.
If MPs who were elected in 2017 on a mandate to implement Brexit has done so, the PM wouldn’t be Boris, and wouldn’t have spent the early part of the pandemic trying to get the deal done.
So what you are saying is that it is Boris fault. He should have voted for May. 🤷♂️
He did, eventually, so he agreed with you even though it worked out better for him afterwards.
If MPs who were elected in 2017 on a mandate to implement Brexit has done so, the PM wouldn’t be Boris, and wouldn’t have spent the early part of the pandemic trying to get the deal done.
So what you are saying is that it is Boris fault. He should have voted for May. 🤷♂️
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
I’d be interested to see the maths. I suspect it might work ok.
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
That's true of PPE, which has marginal capital requirements.
But is there a single semiconductor plant that serves only a single market? Perhaps in some commodity space like DRAM or Flash you might make it work (although Flash is not as commodity as it appears.)
Is it true of any part of automotive? Or batteries?
Or the components that Murata and Rohm make in electronics?
You are expanding beyond what was envisioned. I believe you call it a “straw man”
We are talking about enhancing national resilience. These are goods which are largely purchased by governments - PPE, antibiotics, etc.
Good piece, there's a lot that justifies a boycott of China (not least the Uighur genocide) but it's weird to want to do it over something the Chinese already want to fix, and a time when most of western civilization is shutting down its means of production and China is starting theirs back up.
However there's another angle to this, which is that like alcohol China didn't just produce the problem, it also produced the solution. A few months ago we were looking at footage of the empty streets of Wuhan and talking their lockdown as this epic monstrous alien authoritarian Chinese thing, and yet here we are. The west has been used to being the leader, if not in raw wealth, of the world's governance and social ideas, and I think this is the first time in a long time that the leadership has been going in the opposite direction. It might be worth thinking what other epic monstrous alien authoritarian Chinese things might go down better with western voters than we used to think.
“There’s a lot that justifies a boycott of Nazi Germany (not least the Jewish genocide) BUT...”
You went back in time, singing Vera Lynn songs and dreaming of winning the war.
Of the innumerable bat-eating Chinese cities, towns and villages, the outbreak started in a market just next to the National Virology Institute in Wuhan.
Following a recent pb header, HMG has appointed the former Head of Olympics Deliverance as its PPE tsar, complete with wartime analogy.
Just as Lord Beaverbrook spearheaded the wartime efforts on aircraft production, the appointment of Lord Deighton will bring renewed drive and focus to coordinate this unprecedented peacetime challenge.
I must say that I am impressed that it has taken about 4 weeks into lockdown before some properly serious political troubles for the government to emerge, with accompanying hyperbole for those whom the gov stumbling and having genuine questions to be asked just isn't enough.
I'll predict that in about 2 weeks the govs ratings will take a sustained hit from the impact of negative stories and, hopefully, the plateau tapering off reducing a rally round the flag effect, combined with the ramping up of lockdown fatigue.
Within 4 weeks ratings will be about where they were pre crisis.
Why don't you see a expansion in UK manufacturing?
Particularly now, post Brexit, post covid, I can see a lot of future government orders coming with a make-it-here requirement.
The problem with manufacturing is that getting it started and then sustaining it comes with big upfront costs. If the only market is one of 65 million people its tough to recoup those. If we want to get round that we are going to need state subsidies or ownership.
I’d be interested to see the maths. I suspect it might work ok.
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
That's true of PPE, which has marginal capital requirements.
But is there a single semiconductor plant that serves only a single market? Perhaps in some commodity space like DRAM or Flash you might make it work (although Flash is not as commodity as it appears.)
Is it true of any part of automotive? Or batteries?
Or the components that Murata and Rohm make in electronics?
You are expanding beyond what was envisioned. I believe you call it a “straw man”
We are talking about enhancing national resilience. These are goods which are largely purchased by governments - PPE, antibiotics, etc.
Alternatively, you stepped in to a general discussion about the economy and industrial production, and are now trying to redefine it more narrowly.
I must say that I am impressed that it has taken about 4 weeks into lockdown before some properly serious political troubles for the government to emerge, with accompanying hyperbole for those whom the gov stumbling and having genuine questions to be asked just isn't enough.
I'll predict that in about 2 weeks the govs ratings will take a sustained hit from the impact of negative stories and, hopefully, the plateau tapering off reducing a rally round the flag effect, combined with the ramping up of lockdown fatigue.
Within 4 weeks ratings will be about where they were pre crisis.
This scary. The government might be tempted to boost its ratings by prematurely announcing successes and relaxation of the lockdown.
Moth du Jour: and just to add a little lightness amidst the bile, here sat on a sycamore leaf in my Devon garden is the much loved Ypsolopha sequella aka "The Buggs Bunny Moth"
I wonder who the first political casualty of Wuflu will be? I think we'll shortly have Hancock's testicle shaped head on a platter which will be a laugh.
Hancock's fall from grace clearly demonstrates that Dominic Cummings needs to run the Health SpAds just like he runs the Treasury team. Whether Hancock resigns or swallows this effective demotion depends whether he has the balls of the Saj or Rishi's ambition.
Rishi Sunak is the only minister who is a threat to the prime minister, not because he plans a coup but because his popularity means any other plotters don't need Boris to save their seats. It is hard to move the Chancellor now however, even though Boris's entire recent political career is founded on the Stalinist airbrushing of former Chancellors. He has ousted three already.
It would have been Jenrick but he is safe now because to sack him over 3rd-home-gate would put the spotlight on Boris's own household(s).
I can't get worked up about Pritti Patel stumbling over reading a number which was, I suspect, badly formatted in her script.
Some of the scientifically-trained Cabinet ministers might have been expected to be able to read a graph or a table and know what exponential means, so I'd wonder if any ill-advised told-you-so's might arouse Boris's wrath.
What a bunch of chancers they have running this all cast in teh mould of teh lying leader , Hancock a crap PR man, Jenrick a lying arsehole, IDS who is one of biggest crapbags in the country, Rishi who I bet has trouble counting his fingers, the odious creature Gove, etc etc . Are there any humans with any talent in the Tories or even one that is not a pathological liar.
I must say that I am impressed that it has taken about 4 weeks into lockdown before some properly serious political troubles for the government to emerge, with accompanying hyperbole for those whom the gov stumbling and having genuine questions to be asked just isn't enough.
I'll predict that in about 2 weeks the govs ratings will take a sustained hit from the impact of negative stories and, hopefully, the plateau tapering off reducing a rally round the flag effect, combined with the ramping up of lockdown fatigue.
Within 4 weeks ratings will be about where they were pre crisis.
This scary. The government might be tempted to boost its ratings by prematurely announcing successes and relaxation of the lockdown.
Let's see how popular the government is when unemployment touches 7m. Will people still be crying out to be placed under house arrest in their homes? Or will something else matter to them altogether.
An excellent article. The Chinese regime is deeply unpleasant. It is oppressive, murderous, deceitful, inefficient and interested only in its own survival - just like dozens of othsts, treats women as second class citizens, funds terrorist groups and is in the process of developing a nuclear bomb that will further destabilise an already highly unstable region - is about to buy Newcastle United FC.
We clearly need to be much more circumspect in our dealings with China. It’s not a country to be trusted. But it is not a country we can shun either. Like Saydi Arabia, we need what it offers.
Apart from your first, last and second last sentence - I agree with all of that.
I really don’t see what you object to in the article. China is too important to shun. The one thing Alastair misses, IMO, is that it is also a huge market to sell into. At this time especially that is not something anyone is just going to walk away from. Being less China-dependent is clearly important, but it is a process and will depend on other markets emerging. However, they will also rely to a large extent on strong relationships with the Chinese - just look at places like Brazil, India, Vietnam and the rest of SE Asia.
Billy no mates will need someone to trade with or borrow cash from, expect lots of brown nosing.
I think we need to think a bit more about how we got here. Post WW2 we had an economic system that greatly favoured the west. We pushed hard through GATT and numerous trade rounds to reduce tariffs and encourage free trade. Our economic theory of comparative advantage stated that this was in everyone's interests because global GDP would be increased as a result. It was, but for several decades such a system worked very much for our advantage and the results were highly unevenly distributed in our favour.
This started to change in the late 1970s, first with Japan and then with South Korea. These countries bridged the technological gap giving them as good and then better productivity than us making their products more competitive. The result was a massacre of much of our manufacturing base and a change in ownership of some of what remained. Their standard of living was suddenly the one that was soaring and we were treading water. Move on a decade or so and we have a need for cheap, trained labour. Training our own is too expensive because they want a higher standard of living than they are really worth. China, India and Vietnam look better bets and after all this shows we are winning, doesn't it, they are joining our system.
And many of us do gain, as do 1bn Chinese who are lifted out of grinding poverty into a more prosperous if vastly more polluted world. Those of us who design things, who supply professional services to those who do, do very nicely out of the supply of ever more sophisticated and cheaper goods that this cheap labour provides. Of course our less skilled lose out and our manufacturing base shrinks even further but this frees more people to work in our coffee shops and deliver our orders.
What there also is is an unprecedented and truly staggering transfer of wealth. Although the foreign owned manufacturing lines in China transfer a lot of the profit back to American companies who grow to the size of small countries as a result enough sticks in China to give them large surpluses and us corresponding deficits.
So here we are. We actually cannot continue running the deficits that we have for the last 20 years and maintain our standard of living. The Chinese in particular are starting to use their accumulated surpluses to boost their own markets and reduce their dependency on us. Things are not developing to our advantage.
In this context CV is a catalyst. The rules of Ricardo, Samuelson and others are pushing the advantage elsewhere. We need to think about what is in our best interests.
I must say that I am impressed that it has taken about 4 weeks into lockdown before some properly serious political troubles for the government to emerge, with accompanying hyperbole for those whom the gov stumbling and having genuine questions to be asked just isn't enough.
I'll predict that in about 2 weeks the govs ratings will take a sustained hit from the impact of negative stories and, hopefully, the plateau tapering off reducing a rally round the flag effect, combined with the ramping up of lockdown fatigue.
Within 4 weeks ratings will be about where they were pre crisis.
This scary. The government might be tempted to boost its ratings by prematurely announcing successes and relaxation of the lockdown.
I hope they do not get motivated by such a thing, but they are criticised when following scientific advice and criticised when not following it, so they might.
But it would be pointless. Rating at present I suspect are nothing to do with their actions. Media coverage has wavered a bit but has been pretty negative overall yet ratings are high because of the situation. If we relax and theres a resurgence (which presumably there would be, it's a question if its manageable) they wont get any boost from it. If there's no early relaxation conversely they wont be destroyed by the more serious negative coverage we are now getting, since the situation would remain serious and despite a hit I suspect ratings will be high.
I retain my prediction long term the government is screwed. Good response or bad I think the only thing that matters will be if people feel we have been harder or softer than other places. And whether it was their fault or not we have been harder than most.
Comments
There is and will be plenty to learn about how the Government and its scientific advisors reacted to the evolving situation, but to put it in the same league as the Chinese dictatorship is fatuous.
It is a reasonable bet that Norway and Germany are unlikely to attempt to become a global hegemony. Moreover, there is scope for shorter supply lines in the event of disruption.
IMV he’s say until after wave 1 at least
I wonder though if excessive fear of sinophopia may be partly to blame?
The media could and should make it clearer that the CCP has much to answer for, while pointing out that ordinary Chinese citizens were the first to suffer.
Meanwhile wrestling with what to do about father in home with CV19. The home is not communicating at all well, which suggests they are struggling. Phone calls mostly not answered, when you do get through you get carefully worded replies and emails not replied to.
Contemplating busting Dad out, although not sure is that is wise, legal or because of prescriptions etc technically possible.
So play nice on PB, this thing isn’t over.
What's the alternative? Ignoring scientific advice?
I'm not persuaded that's a sensible line.
The media's still viewing this through a political prism, when it's a medical/scientific story. The focus on u-turns and scalp-hunting questions seeking gotcha answers doesn't do much for me.
https://twitter.com/prcmarshall/status/1251732031815462913?s=20
https://twitter.com/prcmarshall/status/1251732692011552769?s=20
https://twitter.com/prcmarshall/status/1251733412320366594?s=20
https://twitter.com/prcmarshall/status/1251733827103395841?s=20
While he's right that it appears to be more (to an extent in hindsight) "Poor advice" rather than "ignored advice" Ministers still get to carry the can. What questions didn't they ask? Who did they get to play "devil's advocate" and so on.
Meanwhile, I assume those calling for Hancock's head will also be calling for the heads of his peers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where responsibility also lies?
All totalitarian states are repressive, and all lie. The one thing is not always evidence of the other.
Ultimately, this is why city states end up rich. They have no choice but to choose free trade and interdependence. And that means they always make the economically rational choice, rather than one based upon "national interests".
We will choose to limit the choices of British firms and people. They may not choose who they buy from. Companies and consumers will have thrown off the shackles of the EU only to wear the shackles of the "national interest".
And it won't make us richer, because global pandemics happen every century. We'll be the people buying earthquake insurance just after the big quake.
Which is, disgracefully, still government policy.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/18/uk-care-home-covid-19-deaths-may-be-five-times-government-estimate
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52341403
Let’s say government builds PPE factory for £20m. Leases it to company for 1m p.a. (so cheaper than company financing it itself).
Company then produces PPE for global market. May be the government pays over the odds for it. But it saves the costs of 200 people employed at said factory.
But is there a single semiconductor plant that serves only a single market? Perhaps in some commodity space like DRAM or Flash you might make it work (although Flash is not as commodity as it appears.)
Is it true of any part of automotive? Or batteries?
Or the components that Murata and Rohm make in electronics?
That is the price of having sources in government.
Interviews and records published so far suggest that the scientific committees that advised Johnson didn’t study, until mid-March, the option of the kind of stringent lockdown adopted early on in China, where the disease arose in December, and then followed by much of Europe and finally by Britain itself. The scientists’ reasoning: Britons, many of them assumed, simply wouldn’t accept such restrictions.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-path-speci-idUSKBN21P1VF
Sorry, but, as I've said before in the last ten years of my working life I was in and out of Care Homes on near enough a daily basis.
So, I wish you well, but quite frankly think you should continue your efforts to make contact, not bust him out; you'll only spread things. Probably.
The majority of these cases are work permit holders residing in foreign worker dormitories.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/596-new-covid-19-infections-confirmed-in-spore-majority-work-permit-holders-in-dorms?cx_testId=20&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s
There, you have only three nations (the US, Korea and Taiwan) who possess the technology and manufacturing expertise.
Though China is attempting to become the fourth, and the US has plants elsewhere (Eire, for example).
Batteries, yes.
Large plants are being built to serve single markets (China; the US - or Europe if you accept it’s a single market). The raw materials, obviously not (for now).
Problem is if you repulse China, can't get anything to work with the US and have previously rejected the EU, you don't have much left. Not clear what the way forward is with the current crowd in No 10. A sensible government (and I think I include Kier Starmer in this category) would quietly mend relationships with the EU.
On China I suspect it will be more or less business as usual with a few token pushbacks (eg Huawei in 5G). We will find we need their money.
https://twitter.com/PolhomeEditor/status/1251782028061749249
What once were crazy Corbyn ideas like a British industrial strategy and not selling off state assets to China, are now sensible and mainstream.
It makes sense to me that we should have a state owned or part owned facility that can rapidly produce millions of vaccine doses as required. Now is the time to invest in that. If there is a vaccine, everyone is going to want to produce at once.
Which events have more or less proven wrong.
Well said.
I've no time for politicians, but blaming them for things they have no influence over is, even for me, unfair. I used to be annoyed when they said they wanted scientific advice to be 'on tap' not 'on top'. Yet it's the journalists who now want to be consulted on which expert is correct.
Usually a graduate in PPE (the wrong sort) or expressive dance or something similar, they decide they're fitted to pronounce on competing scientific theories. You get far more sense from the viewers questions, untarnished by Mr Thicko, your local media man.
Most of the news is coronavirus porn, so they're forced to fill up those gaping holes with things they understand. U-turns, horror stories and cartoon characters. No wonder their own ratings have hit rock-bottom.
To be fair, the women are slightly more logical, and as a man, that's embarrassing. Please keep any journalist with dangly bits between their legs off the screen for the duration.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1063198/PETER-HITCHENS-How-China-created-new-slave-empire-Africa.html
Batteries are a different matter. There’s not insignificant research funding, but all the major plants are now being built in Europe, and the Brexit vote means that it’s relatively unlikely anyone from outside will choose to build plants here.
Peter Hitchens says that the miraculous new Chinese economy is not all that it seems
From magazine issue: 21 January 2006’
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-danger-of-china
If you want to blame a government for the coronavirus then maybe the pangolin-slaughtering, wet market-tolerating, whistleblowing-arresting one in China might be the place to start.
Scientific advice (early on) was mistaken. But establishing the principle that the Government should ignore scientific advice would be crackers.
Isn’t Carole lovely?
Theres been quite the turn in the past week where a lot of people have switched to a 'because overall it looks bad there can be no defence of anything and nothing can be said to be acceptable' position.
We should be contemplating global supply chains and security of supply in areas beyond just energy.
A more diverse range of supply for vital goods in case of disturbance by not only disease but industrial accidents, terrorism, and natural disasters would be wise.
Haha, that’s great
We are talking about enhancing national resilience. These are goods which are largely purchased by governments - PPE, antibiotics, etc.
Michael's Dick Dastardly schemes however seldom go to plan.
Talk of coincidence! lol
I'll predict that in about 2 weeks the govs ratings will take a sustained hit from the impact of negative stories and, hopefully, the plateau tapering off reducing a rally round the flag effect, combined with the ramping up of lockdown fatigue.
Within 4 weeks ratings will be about where they were pre crisis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldQpRMegYc0
You’ve had 20 years to prepare for the internet ...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/nearly-seven-million-jobs-at-risk-if-lockdown-lasts-for-months
This started to change in the late 1970s, first with Japan and then with South Korea. These countries bridged the technological gap giving them as good and then better productivity than us making their products more competitive. The result was a massacre of much of our manufacturing base and a change in ownership of some of what remained. Their standard of living was suddenly the one that was soaring and we were treading water.
Move on a decade or so and we have a need for cheap, trained labour. Training our own is too expensive because they want a higher standard of living than they are really worth. China, India and Vietnam look better bets and after all this shows we are winning, doesn't it, they are joining our system.
And many of us do gain, as do 1bn Chinese who are lifted out of grinding poverty into a more prosperous if vastly more polluted world. Those of us who design things, who supply professional services to those who do, do very nicely out of the supply of ever more sophisticated and cheaper goods that this cheap labour provides. Of course our less skilled lose out and our manufacturing base shrinks even further but this frees more people to work in our coffee shops and deliver our orders.
What there also is is an unprecedented and truly staggering transfer of wealth. Although the foreign owned manufacturing lines in China transfer a lot of the profit back to American companies who grow to the size of small countries as a result enough sticks in China to give them large surpluses and us corresponding deficits.
So here we are. We actually cannot continue running the deficits that we have for the last 20 years and maintain our standard of living. The Chinese in particular are starting to use their accumulated surpluses to boost their own markets and reduce their dependency on us. Things are not developing to our advantage.
In this context CV is a catalyst. The rules of Ricardo, Samuelson and others are pushing the advantage elsewhere. We need to think about what is in our best interests.
But it would be pointless. Rating at present I suspect are nothing to do with their actions. Media coverage has wavered a bit but has been pretty negative overall yet ratings are high because of the situation. If we relax and theres a resurgence (which presumably there would be, it's a question if its manageable) they wont get any boost from it. If there's no early relaxation conversely they wont be destroyed by the more serious negative coverage we are now getting, since the situation would remain serious and despite a hit I suspect ratings will be high.
I retain my prediction long term the government is screwed. Good response or bad I think the only thing that matters will be if people feel we have been harder or softer than other places. And whether it was their fault or not we have been harder than most.