Some 'Facts' about the EU

I read an article today about the YouGov poll which has shown that since 5 January 2013, outright support for a British withdrawal from the EU has reduced sharply from 51% to less than 42%, with a rising number now supporting Britain's place at the heart of Europe, at least dependent upon a renegotiation of our position in it.

The EU is one of those strange subjects - almost no-one knows anything about it, but everyone has an opinion on it. UKIP would supposedly pull us out of it, despite the fact that it's the only part of politics where they wield any genuine influence. Labour admit they were wrong about it, but don't seem to know where they currently stand on it. Dave and his backbenchers quarrel over it all the time, and the promised referendum on continued membership still looks about as likely to arrive as the Rapture.

The thing that annoys me most is that amongst all the intelligent debate, there are a number of people who will insist on presenting their opinion as fact. For your benefit (and not least my own), I have done a little bit of research on the opinions of one 'elsyd', who does just that on the article above. Hopefully, it will answer some of those nagging questions that you always see thrown around in Facebook debate.

CLAIM: Britain's net contribution to the EU is in excess of £50 million a day.

ANSWER: False. The enclosed graph from the BBC shows that the UK contributes a net 3.5bn Euros per year, or approximately 9.831m Euros a day. Still not chicken feed, but let's at least be accurate. To give the figures context, the UK receives approximately £550bn in tax revenue each year, meaning that net EU spending accounts for less than 0.63% of our national income annually - akin to a person on an above-average income buying a Starbucks coffee each day. Or to express it exactly, we are contributing approximately 16 Euro cents each day for each person living in the UK.

There are those who will argue the value of what we receive, but just some of the potential benefits we receive in return for our money are that we avoid having to pay potential trade tariffs on new trade agreements, there are no legal obstacles for those who wish to set up businesses in any EU country, we receive subsidies for farmers and fishermen (though many will question the appropriateness and value of these), and we also gain a political union that can stand up to China, USA, Russia, Brazil and India in the global war for resources. As part of a bigger power base, the UK is more likely to be globally influential.

CLAIM: Auditors have failed to sign off account EU spending for the last 18 years.

ANSWER: True. This article in the Telegraph shows that the EU had an overall error rate of 3.9% in 2011, which is too high for the European Court of Auditors to sign off. The European Commission nonetheless point out that the error rate does not mean the money is lost, because when fraud or irregularities are detected, the EU claims the money back from the member state.

CLAIM: Britain cannot control immigration from EU because of open border regulations.

ANSWER: EU citizens have the unrestricted right to live and work in the UK where non-EU citizens require authorisation before taking a job. This is a strange thing to make an issue of, as citizens from outside the EU can still live and work in the UK if they fulfill certain criteria. The jury is out on whether this is a good or bad thing. Immigration brings skills that UK workers do not have and increases the flexibility of the labour market, but it also puts greater pressure om infrastructure, such as the housing market and the NHS.

CLAIM: Apart from Belgium, Holland and Malta, Britain has the highest density population in the EU, and is rising dramatically due to immigration.

ANSWER: True, or at least according to Wikipedia. The enclosed page gives these statistics. However, the UK has the second highest population in the EU too, so perhaps this is not surprising. As a comparison, Greece has one of the lowest population densities, so it cannot be suggested that low population density in itself is something to aspire to. Nonetheless, all the main political parties seem to be in agreement that the level of immigration should be controlled somehow.

It should be mentioned that there are potential benefits to high population. Many immigrants are young people looking for work, and this article from the Guardian suggests that this could help avoid shortfalls in pension liabilities that will be experienced in other nations where the numbers of young people are falling.

CLAIM: In excess of 500,000 Polish migrants alone are known to be in the UK (2011 Census).

ANSWER: True. The BBC have released the following figures from the 2011 census, showing that an estimated 579,000 Poles live in the UK. Once again, it is difficult to see the significance of this figure, particularly given the previous articles about how the population in the UK is set to grow to approx 77m by 2060. I am privileged to know several Polish people who work alongside me in local government, and the following Wikipedia page lists many individuals of Polish descent who have made significant contributions to the UK - including Labour leader Ed Miliband, who was born to a Polish mother.

CLAIM: If we left the EU, many of these jobs would be available to the British unemployed. Where sufficient British skilled workers are currently not yet available, visas could be issued to EU workers, as is the case for non-EU migrants at present.

ANSWER: Potentially, it would be possible to set up an arrangement whereby every immigrant, wherever they were from, would require a visa to work in the UK. However, immediately leaving the EU would not guarantee that many of the current immigrant population were forced to leave the UK - many could expect to receive visas by virtue of successive generations living and working in the UK - and as 'elsyd' himself implies, this does not guarantee that UK workers could be found to fill the gaps.

The counter question I would ask is that if you have a worker in post, who is diligent, effective and contributes both to your culture and your economy, why would you seek the upheaval of replacing them en masse just because of their nationality? Then again, perhaps we could find jobs for them in the new, massive, bureaucratic visa service...

CLAIM: There is a serious housing shortage in the UK which requires building on swathes of Greenfield sites. If we were not in the EU, many existing homes would become available, thus protecting our countryside.

ANSWER: Once again, this seems to imply that as soon as we left the EU, we could force large numbers of people to become immediately homeless, necessitating their swift return to the country of their origin. Leaving aside how ridiculous this suggestion is, we could instead look to articles such as this one, which suggests that greenbelt policy has more to do with boosting house prices than protecting the countryside. Then there are BBC articles that suggest only around 10% of land in the UK is 'urban', and that even less than that is actually built on. The one fact we can agree on is that if the population really is going to jump by 17 million people in the next fifty years, they will need homes to live in, so someone had better start building them, pronto.

CLAIM: Uncontrolled numbers of Bulgarians, Romanians and Roma Gypsies will have freedom to come to Britain at the end of this year.

ANSWER: As those nations become part of the EU, they will gain the right to move and work anywhere within Europe, as any other EU citizen already has. Some are likely to come to Britain, with the positive and negative impacts that have already been discussed. The Independent may like to suggest that Romanians in London are either 'beggars, pickpockets and prostitutes', but this ignores the fact that as with Poles and many other races before them, most of those that come here will do so to work and offer their families a chance at a better life.

CLAIM: EU migrants have the same access to benefits as UK citizens – jobseekers, housing, etc.

ANSWER: Partly true. However, the implication here is that anyone can stroll out of the EU and demand a huge house and limitless benefits without ever having worked in the UK. This presentation to Islington council makes it clear that those who have never worked in the UK are likely to have 'no recourse to public funds' (i.e. they are not eligible to receive benefits) and that the UK already has the right to restrict access to the labour market in the UK under existing EU treaties. This means that the UK can freely decide to restrict people from working, and by default, restrict their access to benefits.

CLAIM: The tremendous pressures on our NHS, Schools and Transport would be considerably reduced, if we left the EU.

ANSWER: The answer to this is far more complex than a simple statement of this kind can address. If fewer people lived in the UK, there would be less need for infrastructure, but also fewer taxpayers paying for it, and if all the foreign nurses employed in the UK were asked to leave the UK immediately, this would leave the profession in crisis. You could respond with a similarly incongruous argument - namely that the NHS, schools and transport could all do more if they received more funding, so logically, we should automatically increase the tax rate to do this.

CLAIM: UK trade is declining with EU whilst exports are growing to emerging economies such as China and India.

ANSWER: Figures from UKTradeInfo suggest that for the last two years, UK imports and exports both inside and out of the EU have remained largely static - significantly, long term trend data is not easy to come by, so this is surely a generalisation. The sentiment that 'elsyd' is expressing - that it is advantageous for the UK to trade with emerging economies - should not be taken to suggest that we do not benefit from trade with EU markets.

CLAIM: The EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has all but destroyed our own Fishing Industry. Free from EU rules we would be able to resurrect this great, renewable resource.

ANSWER: Short of sending out warships, it is hard to see exactly how we could protect our fishing waters. Regardless, it could be argued that the CFP has played a role in protecting future fish stocks through a number of policies which are explained in detail here. With many of our stocks already overfished, it is not as straightforward as simply leaving the UK and sending boats back out to sea.

However, there remain stories about boats dumping dead fish back into the sea, and CFP will retain its status as a contentious cornerstone issue of the UK's place in Europe.

CLAIM: As a member of the EU, we pay huge subsidies to French farmers. Is it not time we supported our own agricultural industry?

ANSWER: France receives farming subsidies, as does the UK. However, the figures show that like the UK, France is a net contributor to the EU.

CLAIM: Our country is virtually governed, not by British Law, but by EU regulations, including many of the idiotic rulings of the European Court of Human Rights. If we left, we would be free to keep the 'sensible' ones and create a 'UK Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.' Britain would then be free to legislate in the interests of its own people.

ANSWER: Ah, damn those human rights...if only we didn't have them, there'd be none of this nonsense requiring employers to pay a minimum wage, nothing obliging them to provide a safe and comfortable working environment and nothing preventing governments from installing whatever crazy laws they wanted, without anyone being able to do a thing about it.

Since EU law is created from a consensus based on member law (something that the UK contributes to), it is arguably more democratic than anything we have in the UK. Yes, it still makes silly mistakes, but those are inevitable in any legal system and a system external to the EU would not make the UK immune to this problem.

CLAIM: The EU is moving towards a Federal State of Europe, with ever greater fiscal and political integration. Britain’s ability to rule itself would disappear and we would be ruled by the bureaucrats in Brussels.

ANSWER: Those would be the same MEP bureaucrats that we...elect democratically on a regular basis, correct? Fiscal and financial integration does throw up some minefields (e.g the Euro, common interest rates) but these are not a cast iron argument against integration. You could argue, for example, that integration of members states hasn't worked out too badly for the US.

There are genuine questions to be answered about the UK's role in Europe, and we cannot afford to let our biased newspaper owners and editors to own the debate. I don't claim to have the answers, but I can at least frame the questions. For example, large numbers of us would apparently prefer a renegotiated relationship with the EU. What, then, should we be negotiating? It is perhaps ironic that Germany, the country traditionally viewed as the one that gets the most benefit from the EU, is its biggest contributor.

Why I Have Concerns About Military Schools

I must admit feeling just a little bit uneasy hearing Labour's Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg proposing in the Telegraph yesterday that the nation's children would benefit from a military ethos delivered by dedicated 'Service Schools'.

Twigg's initial point, where he claims that our military forces are central to our national character as well as our national security may be true but seems to me to be something of a moot point. Just because an institution forms part of a concept as undefinable as 'national character' isn't a justification for giving them a central role in education provision. Our NHS is at least as big a part of the British psyche as our army, but no-one is suggesting that doctors should be teaching in schools.

It can be safely assumed that only those individuals from a military background with teaching qualifications and experience would reasonably be suited to teaching youngsters, and comments from individuals on the Telegraph comments page attribute some credence to the notion that those teachers from a military background are the best at enforcing discipline in the classroom. Is the issue then simply that teachers could benefit from learning to impose that discipline? It is also a different matter imposing discipline on mouthy teenagers than on an army corps, where offending soldiers can face fatigues, loss of pay and other sanctions which are not an option in the classroom.

Twigg quotes 'responsibility, comradeship and a sense of hard work' as just some of the virtues that a military influence could have on schools. However, he never approaches the question of whether a veteran who has taken lives on a battlefield is the best example for children in a civilised society.

Twigg also makes no mention that those with a military background are more prone to aggression, depression and other mental illnesses than the general population. Of course, we would like to think that that no-one suffering from a life-impacting mental condition would find themselves teaching children. However, we must surely ask what it is about the culture of an organisation that results in a high incidence of mental illness, and whether imposing such a culture on an establishment is likely to be suitable for all children, especially given that a military-inspired culture is likely to be one where reasonable questioning of authority and challenging of accepted notions is actively discouraged.

The thing that causes me the greatest concern is the further encroachment of military influence on impressionable minds. What seems initially to be a plan to make use of those servicemen that are being rejected so comprehensively by our current government cannot be allowed to lead to people developing a rose-tinted viewpoint on the role of armed forces in society. One only has to look at a nation such as Pakistan to see how a ruling military party has resulted in economic and social stagnation, Burma to see how it has led to gross human rights abuses and international isolation, or the US, where militarism has invaded civil society to the point that it has created an inflated sense of relative value amongst the population that has resulted in tragically nonsensical foreign policy.

Perhaps the nub of the argument in favour of such 'Service Schools' is that offering the option of an educational system with an emphasis on discipline and comradeship to those for whom other systems have failed can only be beneficial. Whether this is necessary in a society where other options, such as the cadet movement, already exist remains open to debate. Given that children who are let down by conventional education will live almost exclusively in the poorest areas, the imposition of military education asks civil society uncomfortable questions. After all: would those in favour of such schools send their own children there?

Diane Abbott, Be Ashamed

I must admit that I'd been awaiting the outcome of the Stephen Lawrence murder trial with a degree of trepidation. The notion that that Gary Dobson and David Norris might somehow evade justice appalled me, but in equal measure I did not want to see them convicted solely to avoid further accusations of institutional racism in the criminal justice system. It was something of a relief to see the conviction announced with a minimum of fanfare, and it was humbling to see Doreen and Neville Lawrence, Stephen's parents, who have remained dignified through what must have been eighteen torturous years.

The backdrop of Britain's most high-profile racist crime is a unfortunate one against which to judge Shadow Health Minister Diane Abbott's tweet in which she announced that 'white people love to divide and rule.' To give the comment its proper context, Abbott was responding to criticism of black community leaders following the conviction of Dobson and Norris.

I recently read a newspaper article on the subject of memories of racism. The writers had shared many horrendous stories, most of which were fortunately now many years old. All of the contributors were black.

Some of the memories discussed in the article are truly disgusting and it will likely be difficult for white British people to comprehend how damaging the experiences might be. Nonetheless, it may have been interesting for comparison purposes to ask people of other racial groups what their experiences of racism in Britain have been.

I mention this because I lived in Birmingham some years ago, and it was the first time that I had experienced such a varied, dense mix of cultures. I also remember that while I was there, I was on the receiving end of a racial insult for the first time ever. It is one of the few times in my life that I remember being genuinely speechless, because it was so unexpected. It causes a complex mix of emotions purely because you know that you have been the victim of what is regarded as a criminal offence in law, but it is hard to feel truly upset about it when you are culturally secure as part of a sizable racial majority.

The truth is, I don't feel impugned by the implication that by virtue of my race I am somehow an expert at dividing and ruling others. Nonetheless, regardless of any suggestion that it was a reference to a long-gone colonial past, Abbott's statement remains offensive and reeks of ignorance. I am also annoyed by those who have jumped to Abbott's defense saying that they aren't upset because 'they knew what she was trying to say.' What could that possibly be? As I discussed in the previous paragraph, it may be easier to ignore racial insults when you are in a majority, but that doesn't make such insults forgivable.

I have no reason to believe that Abbott is a racist in the sense that she hates white people. However, I do believe that her actions are foolish and they suggest that she is incapable of leading in emotionally-charged situations. I believe that Ed Miliband has done the right thing by admonishing her. He would be entirely justified in asking her to reflect on how her actions have been damaging for the party and have distracted attention from the issues that Labour should be gainfully campaigning on.

N30: Putting the Strikes in Perspective

It's been a good week for the left-wing, and a bad week for Jeremy Clarkson. On Wednesday, two million public sector workers around Great Britain withdrew their labour and took to the streets of the nation to protest against proposed changes to their pension scheme.

I've been reading an excellent new blog by RepresentingtheMambo that talked about his experiences of attending a strike rally at the NIA.

It seems that the experience of being in opposition is a trying one for the left. Anyone who attended a pensions rally will be familiar with pro-Labour and anti-Conservative rhetoric, but how many trade unionists are really Labour supporters any more? The Labour Party has clearly forgotten about the hand that feeds it in a race to pander to the pampered interests of Middle Britain.

One of my previous posts concerned the ways in which the Labour Party needs to reinvent itself, and in turn how it needs to bring some hope back to the world by resisting the prevailing neoliberal way that is causing so much misery as it now struggles for survival. However, if we really want to start making positive changes to the country, we need to dare to make some really difficult decisions about how to prompt growth, rather than replicating the Tory cuts.

Now, however, is a the time for optimism and not fresh cynicism. For the first time in so long, people are standing up and opposing all of this government's cruel plans. The government may just have underestimated the strength of public support for its own sector. There may yet be scope for an alternative. And whatever the alternative might be, it has to be better than this coalition of continued abject failure.

How the Beckett Reform could save the Labour Party (and maybe even the UK...)

Political manifestos are dangerous things. In the run up to an election, a party can promise not to privatise the NHS (Conservatives), to oppose the introduction of student fees (LibDems) or pledge to oppose Free Schools (Labour). Then when attention is no longer focused on what you said, you do a nifty little u-turn, and no-one remembers what you said (or in Nick Clegg's case, what you look like, or do.)

But then, should we really be worrying about a few political white lies at this time? After all, the UK is in something of a crisis at the moment. Even David Cameron admitted this week that his plans for cutting the deficit have turned out to be ineffective - not that he seems to have any alternative ideas about how to improve matters, or any intention to use someone else's.

One major white lie that could yet resonate around British politics is the rapid rethink by all three major political parties, who were all supposedly keen on party funding reform pre-election, but have since changed their stance.

The reason why the ConDem coalition has had so much opportunity to force through their madly regressive policies is the failure of the Labour Party to offer a viable alternative to Conservative policies. This is partly due to the control that the media exercises over public opinion, but here at Four Thousand Words, I dare to be different. So here it is. The UK's deficit is no longer the major issue that should be on people's minds - instead, our major problem now is the lack of growth. And we need to tackle this, sooner rather than later.

Labour face a challenge to become relevant again, and they can't rely on disenfranchised Liberal Democrats to bring the ball back around to them. A strong opposition makes for a stronger challenge to government, which makes for a government that is more inclined to listen to the people. Hence, it is in everyone's interests that Labour gets its act together.

I should point out that I don't intend to go into detail here about state funding of politics or the capping of donation limits, though the fact remains that the latter suggestion, if implemented, really would put a cat amongst pigeons. Instead, I want to focus on Labour's relationship with the major trade unions, which is showing increasing signs of strain in the run-up to the planned public sector strike on November 30th.

Unlike the Conservatives, who receive a high proportion of their party funding from wealthy financiers in London, Labour funding comes mostly from trade unions, which means those same unions have to accept some of the blame for Labour's lily-livered showing in opposition. By not applying the necessary pressure in the media, Labour have shown themselves to be tremulous rather than terriers, and hence this is why you will often hear people say, 'but there's no-one worth voting for!'

Step forward, Margaret Beckett, a Labour Party member and former MP who has come forward with the idea that trade union members, rather than being offered the chance to opt-out of paying a share of their subscriptions directly to the Labour Party, should instead be asked if they wish to opt-in. It is a small change that could decimate the funding that the Labour Party receives.

Why would this be a good thing?, I hear you shout. Will it not cause the Labour Party to sink even further into irrelevance and stagnation, giving the rheumatic billionaires who run our banks yet more opportunity to decimate our once Green and Pleasant Land? Well, it could...or there's a chance that it could act as a catalyst for reform of the way the Labour Party is run.

Rather than simply running to the trade unions every time an election campaign appears on the horizon, the Labour Party would once again have to create policies that appeal to grassroots people. It would have to engage with those graduates who are forced to work as slave labour in order to get their unemployment benefit. It would have to engage those who stand to see their sickness and disability benefits reduced. And they would have to engage with both our lowly-paid private sector and our ravaged public sector, protect their jobs, their conditions, their pensions. In this Broken Britain, I don't believe they would have to look far in order to reconnect with their traditional supporters.

For their part, the trade unions have to do more to tackle the notion that seems to be ingrained in private sector workers - namely, that the public sector trade unions are somehow promoting superiority and privilege. Instead, by creating stronger ties with the private sector and engaging those same people we have already discussed, the link between the trade union workers of tomorrow and the Labour Party could once again be restored. They could yet collect us altogether in one place to boot out these millionaires without morals.

The noted Conservative writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton once said that 'a reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.' Bulwer-Lytton may have been making a distinction, but in the case of the modern Labour Party, he has unwittingly identified how one could be the catalyst for the other.

Guest Blogger: Karen Michael - Keep Britain Rolling!

Four Thousand Words is pleased to present another guest blogger and fellow local government employee. Karen Michael is a UNISON steward and native of Indiana, USA.

Keep Britain Rolling!

Great Britain – the country that brought you the industrial revolution and Fred Dibnah's lovely obsession with steam trains faces the closure of the last factory where workers have the skills to manufacture locomotive rolling stock.

This goes to the heart of the question of what makes a nation state viable and what the impact of allowing essential industry being manufactured at a distance: will we always be able to afford the energy to import these goods? Is this reliance on trading with companies who are at significant geographical distance not an unnecessary exploitation of a limited energy resource? Could we, inadvertently, be putting our own neighbourhoods at risk?

Sustainability is commonly thought of as being an issue relating to the provision of a continuing and generous supply of energy in a way that does not loot the natural resources nor pollute and cause global warming or other environmental damage. Part of the way sustainability can be enhanced is by limiting the length of manufacturing supply chains.

Back on 30 October 2006, journalist John Vidal wrote this in The Guardian:

'The biggest ship afloat is due to arrive in Felixstowe, Suffolk, this week on its maiden voyage from China with nearly 45,000 tonnes of Christmas presents and fare for the holiday season.

'The Emma Maersk, which is 400 metres long (1,300 ft), 56 metres wide and 60 metres tall, and dubbed the SS Santa, will unload more than 3,000 containers for supermarkets and stores before heading to mainland Europe.

'...the ship...[had a] cargo of crackers, DVD players, toys, puzzles and clothes....”

I well remember the reporters on Look East salivating with glee over the cocktail shakers that that famous Christmas-loving nation, China, sent to us in the spirit of the season. Had Great Britain lost the technical ability to manufacture Christmas tat?

Of course not! It was simply that the monetary cost of a British-based labour was much higher than that of Chinese-based labour. However the actual cost of the full productive and delivery cycle of this merchandise was not reflected in the price of the goods we purchased from that charitable enterprise, the “SS Santa.” The market didn't factor in the cost of the ecosystem damage that is caused by such a long supply chain. It also misses the fact that greenhouse gases produced in China damage the ecosystem just as surely as those pumped out by Manchester industries; both the manufacturing and shipping costs of environmental damage were missing from the price tag attached to the cocktail shakers. Economists call such hidden costs 'externalities.'

Extending this principle to the matter of Bombardier and the construction of rolling stock, it is therefore advantageous to manufacture essential goods as close as possible to home. If GB PLC (as it could be described in a capitalist context) is to remain viable, it is imperative that the supply chain either be as short as possible or are kept at home for crucial industries. The capacity to build infrastructural technology is a matter of profound national, regional, and local interest. The real argument is – yes – Bombardier should be cranking out rolling stock as quickly as its assembly lines possibly can; AND so should Siemens. There is a desperate world wide need for green-friendly mass transport and the improvement and extension of the rail stock and lines is one rational way to begin answering that requirement. The competition between these two manufacturers is an illusory necessity created by an absurd system of capitalisation that bases all decisions on how much paper (money) is created by a series of transactions and manufacturing rather than the usable values of those products.

In addition to the ecological and viability issues, the labourers of Bombardier are victims of the same capitalist system that is currently creating economic mayhem in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal: the credit rating industries. Siemens, German-based, has a triple-A credit rating; Canadian-based Bombardier has a B+ credit rating. Therefore when Bombardier borrows money, it pays a higher interest rate than its competition. Without regard to quality of product, the workers at Bombardier are disadvantaged in this ridiculous marketplace because of the shenanigans of their capitalist masters and their competitors, and of course, the ridiculous zero-sum environment in which the current regime forces them to operate.

Bombardier, the only UK-based manufacturer of locomotive rolling stock is facing the real possibility of closing because the UK government has found a 'better value' (for that, read 'cheaper') provider in the corporate person of German-based Siemens. The externalities (remember that word for the uncounted costs) in this case includes the costs of transporting the new stock to Great Britain; it also doesn't factor in the domestic externalities: unemployment (1,400 job losses – enjoy your new customers, Ian Duncan Smith!) and, as significantly, the potential loss of an entire and critical industry.

Bombardier is a Canadian-owned company located in Derbyshire. However, labour gives value to the product, not some multi-story office building in Montreal. Workers living in Britain must be allowed to retain the skills needed to keep the British region of Europe as economically independent as possible; it is a logical and necessary part of the road to sustainability and sensible stewardship of our planet's endangered resources. Saving Bombardier is a beginning of a potential strategy to ensure both the longer term survival of Great Britain and our larger human family. This is not protectionism or xenophobia: rather, it is common sense.

Messrs. Cameron & Clegg say they want GB to be a country that 'makes things'. Perhaps the first thing they should attempt to do is make sense of their own policies.