´óÏó´«Ã½

Today, I am reliably informed, is a red-letter day.

Yes, the Assembly Government has published its radical blueprint for the future of the Welsh economy, the Economic Renewal Programme. But as 80s film buffs will know - no, not me but I know a man who is - when Marty McFly and co fire up the DeLorean time machine at the end of 1985's Back To The Future, the date that's typed in is 25 years into the future.

Yes, it's today.

Now I don't know what you were doing in 1985 but it's fair to say that 2010 probably seemed a very, very long way into the future. Personally I'd just been told I'd be spending the rest of 1985 and most of 1986 in Austria, teaching English in a school near Vienna. They picked up my Welsh accent; I came home with their Viennese twang. The Welsh economy wasn't on my radar. But one thing we do know now is that back in 1985, those who were looking saw the beginnings of an economic strategy for Wales based on dangling huge grants in front of companies to locate themselves here.

Today's the day that this approach was finally buried - and a lot more besides.

There was little rewriting of history from the Minister for the Economy and Deputy First Minister, Ieuan Wyn Jones. He accepted that the performance of the Welsh economy "has not met expectations" over the past decades - hard to do anything else, given the largely stagnant GVA per head figures compared with the rest of the UK.

There was an interesting and carefully co-ordinated intervention from one of his predecessors though. Andrew Davies took to the airwaves this morning to denounce senior civil servants, who, he said, had frustrated his attempts to push through similar plans while he was in office. Perhaps he wishes he had his own DeLorean to go back and have his time again but as Mr Jones was left in no doubt from the questions at this morning's launch of the ERP - you only get one shot at this.

So what happens now?

Huge restructuring within the Department for the Economy for starters (and they know better than most that 'restructuring' means jobs in the firing line), an end to that grants culture, a focus on six key sectors in terms of attracting investment, get rid of the myriad of business support schemes, concentrate spending on infrastructure projects like next generation broadband, transport and so on.

As the film ends and the time machine prepares to fly into the future (to today), the final line is given to Doc Brown - "Where we're going, we don't need...roads".

Turns out we most certainly do. But with capital budgets about to take a serious hit over the next few years, the question is whether there'll be any money left to build them. If we could only invest in time travel...

As a footnote, I'm told there was a nice moment at the launch this morning at the Panasonic factory in Cardiff, which was the first of the big Japanese investments to come to Wales. Environment Minister Jane Davidson said she was particularly delighted to address the event, since her summer holiday job in 1976 was working on the first televisions to roll off the production line at the site.

Back to the Future indeed.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?