The challenge for today’s Samurai
20/07/2010 by FINANCIAL TIMES
By Brian Groom
Thomas Blake Glover was the archetypical 19th-century Scot on the make and he is still bringing benefits to his native land. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, part of the Japanese group of companies Glover helped to create, has agreed a tie-up with Scottish and Southern Energy that could create up to 1,000 low-carbon technology jobs.
Aberdeenshire-born Glover went to Nagasaki in 1859, initially buying green tea for Jardine Matheson, but was soon supplying arms and warships to Samurai warriors who toppled Japan’s Shogun overlords and restored imperial rule – earning Glover the nickname “Scottish Samurai”. He brought railways and coal mining to Japan and helped found a shipbuilding company that became Mitsubishi, as well as a brewery that became Kirin. Along the way he commissioned naval ships from Aberdeen. Sometimes he and his Japanese wife are linked with Puccini’s Madam Butterfly, also set in Nagasaki, though the evidence is tenuous.
SSE and Mitsubishi will collaborate to develop low-carbon technology, including offshore wind farms and carbon capture. Up to 100 skilled jobs will be created immediately at SSE’s centre of engineering excellence in Glasgow and more are expected over five years. Scotland, like north-east England, hopes to benefit from offshore wind and other green industries. Colin Hood, SSE’s chief operating officer, says low-carbon energy represents Scotland’s biggest economic opportunity since the heyday of North Sea oil.
The UK’s outlying regions need all the jobs they can get. As Oxford Economics’ forecasts for the FT last week suggested, job creation in the recovery may be concentrated in London and south-east England, with other regions struggling to replace jobs lost though public spending cuts. Wales faces the biggest challenge, having an above-average reliance on manufacturing and public sector jobs. But Scotland, Northern Ireland, northern England and the Midlands have problems too. Last week Barclays axed 254 Edinburgh jobs after its takeover of Standard Life Bank. England faces the double upheaval of spending cuts and replacement of regional development agencies with local enterprise partnerships.
To get through this, the UK’s regions will need every ounce of entrepreneurial energy they can muster. A little of the Scottish Samurai’s spirit – without the political intrigue, perhaps – would not go amiss.
MK, OK
Quite a week for Milton Keynes. First its 1970s shopping centre was made a Grade II listed building – the only one to be recognised in this way. Then the Buckinghamshire new town began a funky-looking inaugural two-week arts festival aimed at showing there is more to it than concrete and shops.
The owners of what is now called thecentre:mk have fought the listing for nearly a decade, warning it would hinder commercial development of the site. But English Heritage insists it is “a very elegant, spare modernist building”.
The highlight of the biennial IF festival is the Magical Menagerie by François Delarozière, the French designer who built the Sultan’s Elephant for London in 2006 and the 50ft mechanical spider that graced Liverpool’s Capital of Culture Year. Built for a French new town, the new work is a zany carousel where people can ride an elephant fish, buffaloes made from wine barrels and monster ladybirds. Milton Keynes, due to add 100,000 to its 230,000 population by 2025, wants to ensure its cultural development keeps pace with its physical expansion. That is a problem many towns in poorer parts of the UK would love to have.
Bum note in Brum
So Derry/Londonderry is to be the first UK City of Culture in 2013. Rivals suspect “wider political considerations” played a part, but judges were impressed by its vision and the scale of involvement of its people. Derry’s finest include the poet Seamus Heaney, artist Willie Doherty and The Undertones, the band that gave us John Peel’s favourite song, “Teenage Kicks”. It is a big opportunity for a city that still has many problems.
Frustration was felt in Birmingham, one of the losers, where the council’s deputy leader called for The Sun newspaper to be boycotted for highlighting a poll by a travel website claiming Brum to be the dullest place in Europe, full of ugly people. Exasperating, I am sure.
Copyright 2010 Financial Times Limited
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