We need action, now!

摘要

Speaking to an audience of guests from industry, government, press and academia, as well as member companies from the manufacturing technology sector and their customers, Paul Maynard, President of the MTA, reflected the feelings of all those in manufacturing at the MTA's annual dinner, saying: "Gordon Brown may have been bullish in his pre-budget speech, but it is hard for business people to have th same confidence when orders do not seem to be there. Sometimes, listening to the Chancellor, you feel like you are a character in Alice in Wonderland, with nothing as it really seems and the world you are living in being nothing like the economy he is talking about!" The President spoke of the main background to the current decline in manufacturing: "This lack of investment in manufacturing is due to the lack of confidence, and MTA has provided the Treasury with charts and figures which conclusively show that the UK's performance is lagging well behind our major international competitors, and not just for the last few years but for the last 40 years! This slow decline means that every time we have a major recession, we never get back to the peaks that we have previously enjoyed."