Dirigism rules, ok!

Well, maybe not that exactly, but something close to the BBC’s heart- the idea that Government should intervene as much as possible in the economy. In this article the BBC gives us a tale of two factories, one in Wales, one in England. One helped by the Welsh Assembly, one not helped by Westminster, you see where this is going?

It would be a neat little comparison were they not comparing a dishwasher assembly plant with LDV van manufacturers. It’s surely apples and pears. Subsidies of the sort offered in Wales may work for light industrial jobs, but probably not for complex manufacturers like LDV. Yet the BBC give vent to their conviction that Government should be helping, and there is no balancing voice.

A second dimension to the article is the free publicity and praise it offers to the devolved Welsh Assembly, which is made without reference to the Barnett formula by which the Welsh get a thousand squid more per head than the English from the central kitty- thereby potentially more than funding the scheme the BBC is set on praising, the so-called “ProAct”.

Naturally I sympathise with the workers who are struggling, and I also resent the Government’s preference for their corporate socialist big banking buddies, but the BBC is trying desperately to pretend that from the crisis there are good socialist lessons to be learnt. There aren’t. But even if there were some, there are other sides which should be considered alongside- such as the question of the long term sustainability of certain businesses (eg. especially automobile) in changing times, and the need for a low tax environment to help swell investment.