Text version:

What, you may well ask, is the point of abolishing the monarchy and replacing it with an elected Head of State; how does that fit into the big picture? Well recently, I was reading that for 24 out of the last 30 years, this country has been bottom of the table of G7 countries in terms of private investment - that would be, obviously, per worker per annum to take account of differences in population sizes. Now, this hasn't just been limited to the last 30 years, it's been going on for decades, if not centuries, and has been a perennial problem with this country. We are currently 28th out of the 31 OECD countries in terms of levels of business investment per worker per annum so I thought I'll just ask Google why this country has had such a problem with lack of investment and of course up comes all sorts of answers such as poor infrastructure, high energy costs, a risk-averse culture amongst investors, low labour costs such that investing in capital intensive equipment isn't worth it because the returns are so low and then you'll also read of high labour costs preventing investment. All of which may be true but it doesn't answer the question, which is something again I've been aware of for many years, which is when foreign-owned companies set-up over here, such as Nissan, Toyota, Siemens and the rest and they've been over here for a decent period of time, analyses comparing levels of investment by those foreign businesses, compared to UK-owned businesses, have shown a clear difference. This rules out all of these other factors as they're on the same playing field and yet, there it is, staring you right in the face yet again - a consistent discrepancy between levels of investment per work per annum by foreign-owned companies compared to indigenously-owned ones.

So it's something more fundamental isn't it - why do UK companies not invest in their workforce? Well you have to ask yourself, why is it that this country persists with the lunacy of trying to overlay a modern technology-based economy onto the culture of an ancien regime? No other economically developed country attempts to do this; everybody else knows it's not possible because the two are simply incompatible. Now you might say well that's fine but all rather abstract: how does that come down to every day issues? How can people connect the monarchy and the associated attitudes of an ancient regime and all the rest of it with their day-to-day existence and business under performance? Well, I'll give you two specific examples - both come from the 1950's but they're just as relevant today in much the same way as The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and all of the themes in that book are just as relevant today.

The first example concerns the late and most definitely, great John Surtees; the only man to have been world 500cc motorcycle road racing champion (now known as Moto GP) and Formula 1 world champion. I remember watching a biographical programme about him on television some 30 years ago or so. In it, he said that in the 1950s, as a reigning multiple world champion, achieved riding Italian bikes, he was desperate to ride a British machine to the world title as he was very patriotic and wanted to win the World Championship for Norton. So at the end of one season, he made an appointment to go and see the Norton competition team chief and told him that with some new races on quite twisty circuits being introduced into the calendar the following year, the prospect of always being able to count on one or two wet races and the superior handling of the single-cylinder Norton allied to his riding skills, he thought he would have a decent chance of winning the world championship albeit that the multi-cylinder Italian bikes had a significant power advantage. This guy said to him that he would put his proposal to the board and would be in touch. Well, two or three weeks later he gets a call and goes to see this guy to hear the outcome. He said he walked in and the guy says, “Well Surtees” - and that's just how he addressed him, and proceeded to tell him that, in general, the board agreed with his arguments and they believed that he had a decent chance of winning for Norton but they could not possibly give the go ahead. When John Surtees asked why, he was told that the prize money he would receive, together with appearance money for other non-championship International events on top of the salary that Norton would have to pay him as their number one works rider plus all of the other sponsorship money that he would no doubt receive, would amount to an annual income greater than some of the members of the board of the company and for that very reason, they couldn't possibly sanction his proposal. John Surtees then told his interviewer that it has been attitudes such as that, that have held this country back and I agree with him.

The second example, again in the field of motorcycling, concerns the late Doug Hele and if you look up his obituary on the Guardian website, you'll find it pops up straight away. He died over 20 years ago but in the obituary there is an account of when he was a young design engineer at the Douglas Motorcycle Company in Kingswood, Bristol. The Douglas machines fundamentally were a good concept – a horizontally opposed twin with shaft drive that was quite advanced for the 1950's. However, the handling wasn't brilliant and they had some reliability issues so Doug, on his own initiative and in his own time came up with some proposed design changes that would have transformed the machines and the company's fortunes. But, as the obituary says, Doug had an experience all too common amongst British engineers as, “filled with hope and enthusiasm”, he put his proposals to the Chief Design Engineer, George Halliday. However, he was shocked to find that Halliday, far from welcoming his ideas and commitment, basically told him that it would probably be best to look for another job because he wouldn't be going anywhere within Douglas. Rather than adopt ideas to improve the company's fortunes, he saw making sure that this guy knew his place as far more important. Doug Hele's mistake, of course, was 'speaking out of turn'.

And so, if this country is to advance in any way in the long-term, it has to dispense with the culture of the ancient regime and a necessary but not sufficient condition for doing that and a bloody good place to start is to abolish the monarchy.

stevewarrin@gmail.com