Posted to News on 12th Jun 2009, 00:00
Are the politicians simply shedding crocodile tears...
Last night I watched a programme on TV which promised to take me inside the crocodile. I rather foolishly assumed this meant inside the life of the crocodile, with new insights into its habits and lifecycle. In the event, the programme literally went inside the crocodile, courtesy of a rather gory dissection, which I have to say didn't sit too well with my ratatouille.
>I don't think of myself as being particularly squeamish, but if you're going to put this sort of programme on at dinner time then there ought to be some sort of warning at the outset.
>Once I'd got past the slightly disturbing visual similarities between the insides of the beast and my slightly mushed aubergines, the programme was absolutely fascinating. Here is a creature which has barely changed in over 100 million years. And why should it, when it's perfectly adapted to life in its environment. The crocodile really is the ultimate killing machine, able to hide itself in the shallowest water, and to lunge at and grab animals as large as wildebeest in an instant. Its massive jaws are built for clamping and holding, and it breaks its prey into munchable pieces by tossing it around until it simply tears itself apart.
>What was interesting from the dissection was to see just how little of crocodile's body was given over to its vital organs, and just how much was given over to muscle. And it's this turning over of so much of the crocodile's mass to muscle that makes it such an effective hunter, and is undoubtedly the key to the success of a species which survived the same cataclysm that wiped out the dinosaurs.
>Coincidentally, earlier in the day news had come to light that the number of politicians and their advisors in the UK has risen to almost 29,000 - a ten-fold increase in the last 30 years, and costing the general public a massive £500 million a year. Within the same period, the number of manufacturing jobs in the UK - the driving muscle of the country, if you will - has fallen from around six million in 1980 to just three million today. That means that our country now has one politician for every 100 manufacturing workers. I can't help feeling that's a little unbalanced.
>I'm prepared to accept that the politicians form a vital support system for the body of the country. But the muscle has been allowed to atrophy over the last three decades, and that can't be healthy. What does it say about our chances for survival in an increasingly hostile global landscape? Where once the UK was the industrial king of the worldwide manufacturing jungle, we are rapidly becoming the prey, willingly laying ourselves on a slab as easy pickings for the Asian tigers and the Russian bears and the various hostiles coming out of India and South America.
>All of these other manufacturing powers are evolving rapidly as the global environment changes around them. I have a suspicion that our complacent politicians see us as a crocodile - a power so strong that it is still perfectly adapted to the worldwide manufacturing habitat. But they are wrong. We have rested on our laurels, fattened ourselves up in the good times, and forgotten how to do the things we were once the best in the world at. If we carry on, the only way is down.
>We have to hope that the people at the top of government were watching the same programme, and learned the same lesson. There is a great will to succeed in this country, and the muscle is there waiting to be flexed. But that muscle certainly needs building up: if we want an industrial future, then we need to start now, or face manufacturing extinction.
Becky Silverton, 12 June 2009
