00:02a 50 million pound boost for jobs and innovation in the west midlands but will it make a real
00:08difference to the region's economy i'm joined now by dr steve mccabe a politics expert steve
00:14the west midlands has seen a longer term decline in traditional manufacturing and engineering jobs
00:20how important is it to rebuild that part of our local economy well absolutely crucial in my opinion
00:27and there was a lot of discussion recently um on in terms of inequality and the sort of the fact
00:33that there is a increased joblessness particularly amongst young people and that's due to a number
00:39of sort of causes but mainly i believe uh and particularly in sort of northern areas and of
00:43course birmingham and sort of west midlands is north of london uh due to the fact that there are
00:48no longer opportunities in sort of manufacturing that there would have been certainly a couple of
00:52generations ago um the decline in manufacturing employment certainly uh if not in sort of the
00:58contribution to the economy because it's still a very significant industry um if this is not as
01:02another wake-up call to sort of to make things in this country and then uh i don't know what
01:06is
01:06no all that's really good and 50 million of course if we won that on the lottery would be absolutely
01:12sort of delighted because of course that was sort of stretched a long way the the issue is that um
01:17in
01:18an economy well at least the sort of this the sector in terms of its contribution to the economy
01:23is 16 billion now of course i know it's a very sort of crude um ratio but uh 50 billion
01:29um in terms
01:30of 16 billion is not a sort of a tremendous amount i was in wood lane in ervington yesterday and
01:37i was
01:38driving down there and i was just looking up and remembering all the factories from my childhood
01:42dunlop have gone the amax gone many many others we've lost these industries where can manufacturing
01:49work for us then in birmingham now what sort of sectors i suppose that the difficulty is that we've
01:54been so used to be able to buy cheap things from china and the far east um but of course
02:00as we know
02:01that those supply chains can be disrupted very easily and of course rooster vents will sort of uh
02:06um demonstrate that but i mean you're absolutely right i mean that the fact is though
02:10well i always go up in the 1970s there were factories everywhere but of course you look
02:14around and it's there are very few and far between and we've lost a number of major employers i mean
02:18i mentioned previously my mother worked for uh in manufacturing in joseph lucas that no longer
02:23exists now that's all part of if you like i suppose the sort of the offshoring that that we've gone
02:28through and of course motor manufacturing in particular it comes from sort of central government
02:33and their sort of lead so undoubtedly coming back to this 50 million it's a really good start
02:38but we need lots more of it to sort of to as i say put uh the west midlands birmingham
02:43of course
02:44back on the map as the sort of the place that you come to to buy really brilliant um items
02:48which of
02:49course this uh yeah made this country sort of what it was back in the victorian times
02:54beef thank you so much for your time today you're welcome
02:57you're welcome
02:57you're welcome
02:57you're welcome
02:57you're welcome
02:58you're welcome
02:58you're welcome
02:58you're welcome
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