FIRST THE SNOW THEN THE POTHOLES - 08:41 pm, Mon 18th Jan 2010
As the rain tumbled down on Thursday and Friday nights, the blanket of snow in Wolverhampton melted away, leaving hundreds of potholes. The snow, ice and freezing weather of recent weeks has fairly churned up the streets and there will be a big repair job on to get the roads back up to scratch.
Perhaps it was a good coincidence then that this week I visited Tarmac, a company that has an association with our constituency stretching back over 100 years. There have been many chapters in the company’s history since then but today the UK headquarters still stand in Ettingshall, employing over 500 people out of a total of some 7,000 nationwide.
The recession has been tough for companies like Tarmac, whose business is of course highway construction but also other construction materials. 50% of the company’s income comes from Government, either central or local. If the Government had not kept up investment in capital projects during the recession, things would have hit Tarmac and other companies dependent on such business much harder. It is yet another argument for not following the advice of the Opposition leader and cutting spending now, before recovery has been established.
And if the weather created potholes are bad news for our cars, maybe they will at least provide some business to Tarmac and its staff working locally.
Our local paper, the Express and Star is launching manufacturing awards. Quite right too. We are still the sixth biggest manufacturing country in the world. Making things is more important to our economy than people think. It accounts for half our exports and there are huge opportunities for UK manufacturing as we and other countries shift to a lower carbon economy. All those wind turbines, low carbon vehicles and the supply chain for new nuclear power stations has to be somewhere. Let’s have an ambition that British manufacturing succeed in the shift to low carbon.
