UK Manufacturing Fall Adds to Market Turmoil
Walk along the waterfront in Worcester as I did today and you will find many well appointed and quite well let/sold former canal and riverside buildings converted into flats. Just across the road from the museum set slightly back in a dark enclave, as the twilight wears on, sticking out ike a sore thumb, you will find a good old fashioned sheet metal working factory. Scarcely bigger than a petrol station, there is one next door! this place is humming with industry and has shadowy figures working amongst sparks on machines.
What was once common on every corner in our Cities is now a rarity and has given way in many places to buildings people live rather than work in. Much of our manufacturing now takes place in bland out of town settings or market towns, you may well do a double take but I speak true. Rural England now has more manufacturing jobs per capita than urban England. Much of it based in or on the edge of our towns.
That is why this story about a sudden unexpected downturn in manufacturing is bad news for rural England. It tells us: “Fears over the UK economy intensified on Tuesday, sending the London stock market slumping, after British factory production posted a surprise fall in June and the UK trade gap worsened. Alan Clarke, chief UK economist at Scotia Capital, said: “At the start of the year, two areas of the economy were identified as being the likely engines of growth that would propel a continued recovery in the UK economy – manufacturing and net exports. Half way through the year, neither appear to be delivering the sort of growth rates that we hoped for.”